Affording Our Culture: “Smart” Technology and the Prospects for Creative Democracy

• Authors: Solymosi Tibor
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

John Dewey, as Sidney Hook characterized him, was the philosopher of science and freedom. Dewey, as Larry Hickman has demonstrated, was also a philosopher of technology. And, as most people familiar with Dewey know, he was a philosopher of education and democracy. The complex of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy requires re-examination, not only because of our contemporary cultural political situation but also because of our growing insights into the human condition thanks to the technosciences of life, especially human life. Dewey’s philosophical method of reconstruction, equipped with insights from evolutionary neuroscience and ecological psychology, offers means of reconceiving and thus reevaluating our conception of tools and technology within our cultural context. I begin to take up Mark Tschaepe’s challenge to neuropragmatism to counter what he calls “dopamine democracy” – Plato’s critique of democracy resurrected in neural garb coupled with a critical examination of how social media and other so-called “smart” technologies undermine healthy democratic life. Central to this neuropragmatist approach are cultural affordances – opportunities for action humans have created initially for specific purposes and later retrofitted for other ends-in-view. Dewey’s reconstruction – as method as well as the reconstruction of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy as an entangled complex – is thus imagined as our best strategy for achieving the culture of creative democracy.

Keywords

EN

digital devices; social media; democracy; neuropragmatism; dopamine; affordances; neuroscience

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 4(6)
• Pages: 46–69

Dates

published

2018-12-28

Contributors

author

Solymosi Tibor

• Department of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University

References

• Aziz, Qasim, and David G. Thompson. “Brain-Gut Axis in Health and Disease.” Gastroenterology, 114, no. 3(1998): 559–578. DOI: 10.1016/S0016-5085(98)70540-2.
• Bywater, Bill. “Becoming a Deweyan Apprentice: A Struggle Against White Supremacy.” In The Role of the Arts in Learning: Cultivating Landscapes of Democracy, edited by Jay Michael Hanes and Eleanor Wiseman, 19–35. New York and London: Routledge, 2018.
• Bywater, Bill, and Zach Piso. “Neuropragmatism and Apprenticeship: A Model for Education.” In Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy and Pragmatism: Brains at Work with the World, edited by Tibor Solymosi and John R. Shook, 185–214. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
• Bywater, Bill. “Tarrying with the Negative: An Interview with Noëlle McAfee.” Kettering Review 29, no. 1 (2011): 53–58.
• Cryan, John F., and Timothy G. Dinan. “Mind-Altering Microorganisms: The Impact of the Gut Microbiota on Brain and Behaviour.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 13 (2012): 791–712. DOI: 10.1038/nrn3346.
• Dennett, Daniel C. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking Books, 2003.
• Dewey, John. “The Basic Values and Loyalties of Democracy,” [1941]. In The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 14, edited by J. A. Boydston, 275–277. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991.
• Dewey, John. “Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us,” [1939]. In The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 14, edited by J. A. Boydston, 224–230. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991.
• Dewey, John. “Education as Politics,” [1922]. In The Middle Works of John Dewey, Vol. 13, edited by J. A. Boydston, 329–334. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press (1969–1991).
• Dewey, John. Experience and Nature, [1925]. In The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 1, edited by J. A. Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press (1969–1991).
• Dewey, John. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, [1938]. In The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 12, edited by J. A. Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991.
• Dewey, John. “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” [1896]. In The Early Works of John Dewey, Vol. 5, edited by J. A. Boydston, 96–109. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991.
• Elise, Abigail. “Gamer Dies In Internet Cafe After Three Day Gaming Binge, Hardly Anyone Notices.” International Business Times, 19 January 2015. Available at: https://www.ibtimes.com/gamer-dies-internet- cafe-after-three-day-gaming-binge-hardly-anyone-notices-1787936. Accessed 27 October 2018.
• Franks, David D. Neurosociology: The Nexus Between Neuroscience and Social Psychology. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2010.
• Freeman, Walter J. How Brains Make Up Their Minds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011.
• Guarino, Ben. 2017. “Prominent gamer died during live-streamed attempt to play ‘World of Tanks’ for 24 hours,” The Washington Post, 23 February 2017. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2017/02/23/va-man-died-during-marathon-attempt-to-play-video-game-for-24-hours/?utm_ term=.79ac6663e3b0. Accessed 27 October 2018.
• Hickman, Larry A. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990.
• Hickman, Larry A. Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001.
• Hickman, Larry A. Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey, New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.
• James, William. Pragmatism. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907.
• Johnson, Clay A. The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2012.
• Johnson, Mark. The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality, and Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Johnson, Mark. Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Johnson, Mark. “Keeping the Pragmatism in Neuropragmatism.” In Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy, and Pragmatism, edited by Tibor Solymosi and John R. Shook, 37-56. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
• Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Johnson, Mark. Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Chemero, Anthony, and Stephan Käufer. Phenomenology: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
• Knorr Cetina, Karin. “The Synthetic Situation: Interactionism for a Global World.” Symbolic Interaction 32, no. 1(2009): 61–87.
• Konturek, S.J., Konturek, J.W., Pawlik, T., Brzozowki, T. “Brain-Gut Axis and Its Role in the Control of Food Intake.” Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 55, no. 1 (2004): 137–154.
• Lakoff, George, and Srinivas Narayanan. “The Neural Mind: What You Need to Know about Thought and Language.” Unpublished manuscript, last modified 2017. PDF.
• Laland, Kevin N. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
• Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018.
• Lebowitz, Shana. “Silicon Valley Parents are so Panicked about Kids’ Screen Time that They’re having Nannies Sign ‘No-Phone Contracts’ and Posting Photos of Rule-Breakers Online,” Business Insider, 30 October 2018. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-nannies-monitor-kids-screen-time-2018-10 Accessed 8 November 2018.
• Lustig, Robert H. The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. New York: Avery, 2017.
• Lende, Daniel H. and Greg Downey, eds. The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012.
• Plato. The Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.
• Schulkin, Jay. Adaptation and Well-Being: Social Allostasis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Schulkin, Jay. Rethinking Homeostasis: Allostatic Regulation in Physiology and Pathophysiology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
• Schulkin, Jay. “Social Allostasis: Anticipatory Regulation of the Internal Milieu.” Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, January 2011: 1–15. DOI: 10.3389/fnevo.2010.00111.
• Shook, John R., and Solymosi, Tibor. “Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry: Moving Beyond Creeping Cartesianism.” Intellectica 60, no. 2 (2013): 137–159.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Against Representation: A Brief Introduction to Cultural Affordances.” Human Affairs 23, no. 4 (2013): 594–605. DOI: 10.2478/s13374-013-0151-3.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Cooking Up Consciousness.” Contemporary Pragmatism 10, no. 2 (2013): 173–191.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Dewey on the Brain: Dopamine, Digital Devices, and Democracy.” Contemporary Pragmatism 14, no. 1 (2017): 5–34. DOI: 10.1163/18758185-01401002.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Neuropragmatism, Old and New.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 3 (2011): 347–368. DOI: 10.1007/s11097-011-9202-6.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Neuropragmatism on the Origins of Conscious Minding.” In Origins of Mind in Nature, edited by Liz S. Swan, 273–287. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2013.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Neuroscience.” In Handbuch Pragmatismus, edited by Michael Festl, 342–347. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler Publishing, 2018.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “Recovering Philosophy from Cognitive Science.” In Pragmatism and Embodied Cognitive Science: From Bodily Interaction to Symbolic Articulation, edited by Roman Madzia and Matthias Jung, 143–164. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
• Solymosi, Tibor. “We Deweyan Creatures,” Pragmatism Today 7, no. 1 (2016): 41–59.
• Swisher, Kara. “The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley.” New York Times, 2 August 2018. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/opinion/the-expensive-education-of-mark-zucker- berg-and-silicon-valley.html Accessed 27 October 2018.
• Swisher, Kara. “Who Will Teach Silicon Valley to Be Ethical?” New York Times, 21 October 2018. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opinion/who-will-teach-silicon-valley-to-be-ethical.html Accessed 27 October 2018.
• Tononi, Giulio. PHI: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.
• Tschaepe, Mark. “The Dopamine Democracy: Leaving Leadership to Tyrants.” Philosophy Club Leadership Summit, Prairie View A&M University, 20 November 2013.
• Tschaepe, Mark. “Undermining Dopamine Democracy Through Education: Synthetic Situations, Social Media, and Incentive Salience.” Pragmatism Today 7, no. 1 (2016): 32–40.
• Turkle, Sherry. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.
• Vincent, James. “Former Facebook Exec Says Social Media is Ripping Apart Society.” The Verge, 11 December 2017. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761016/former-facebook-exec-ripping-apart-society. Accessed 12 December 2017.
• Weller, Chris. “Silicon Valley Parents are Raising their Kids Tech-Free — and It Should be a Red Flag,” Business Insider, 18 February 2018. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-parents-raising-their- kids-tech-free-red-flag-2018-2/ Accessed 27 October 2018.
• Wrangham, Richard. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

Identifiers

DOI

10.26319/6916