PHILOSOPHIES OF INFORMATION AND POWER

This course exposes students to a range of philosophical currents in a variety of contemporary areas of study, such as: cognitive sciences, social science, philosophy of politics, through the perspective of the current philosophical inquiry in cybernetics. Each field will be examined by tracing it back to its historical development and elaborating its future orientations. After a brief introduction to the general argument, the first sessions start with reading and commenting of Kleist’s short story, The Puppet Theatre: is the machine in the organism or the organism in the machine? The next sessions delve into preliminary references concerning logic: how we draw logical conclusion from not knowing and creativity (Peirce’s abduction) and the deconstruction of the notion of the human (Nietzsche). We then enter the specific topic of cybernetics as a first attempt to answer cognitive activity as common to machines and living organisms. The basic description is drawn from the historical survey by Pierre De Latil, Thinking by Machine, 1957 and Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human. Through Lynn Margulis we discuss the cybernetic of nature: how evolution may have an internal power of self-organization. Merlin Donald and Niklas Luhmann offer a sociological and anthropological view of humans ans interconnected entities or systems.

Evelyn Fox Keller’s Self-Organization, Self-Assembly, and the Inherent Activity of Matter casts light on another view of biological evolution. The last sessions are devoted to a new definition of knowledge through Donna Haraway (a Cyborg Manifesto), Kevin Kelly (Nine Laws of God), Ray Kurzweil (notion of singularity).

A film – probably Minority Report by Spielberg - will be screened and discussed. A journal kept by philosopher Francisco Varela about his liver transplant will be discussed.

Classes will consist of

1. Introductory lectures about the following interconnected topics analysed by reading excerpts from books (in electronic or paper formats).
2. Seminars on analysed topics, that is, in class discussions aimed at letting the students elaborate further and freely.

1. On information and war:

N. Wiener, Cybernetics:

https://www-jstor-org.jcu.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/24945913.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ae879353661707283f434115e39b6dda3&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1

N. Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, pp.20-26.

https://monoskop.org/images/9/90/Wiener_Norbert_The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings_1950.pdf

U. Eco, Inventing the Enemy (library)

Margaret Macmillan, War. How Conflict Shaped Us

https://profilebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/wpallimport/files/PDFs/9781782835486_preview.pdf

David Bates, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence (library ebook), Ch. 22, 23 (237-259), Ch. 28.

1. The Medium is the Message:

M.McLuhan, Understanding Media

N. Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media, pp. 1-22.

N. Luhmann, Social Systems, Ch.2, §§ I,II,III.

1. Information technologies and power:

W. Benjamin,  excerpts from Reflections and Radio Benjamin

K. Hayles, My Mother Was a Computer, pp. 241-243.

A. Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain, pp. 17-24. Ch.8.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/559622/a2ecec1cd9150219c53fefab2ab4d96a.pdf

Yuk Hui: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/137/544816/chatgpt-or-the-eschatology-of-machines/

All the materials can be found in the library on reserve for this course, or online. No book to buy.

By the end of the semester, students will have a general information about ongoing arguments in philosophic environments, both in Europe and the United States. They will be able to master philosophical argumentative discussions about current issues concerning knowledge and science, with a view at political consequences.