The Double Meaning of “Replacement” and the Moral Value of

Human and Nonhuman Inforgs: Crossroads of Philosophy of Information

and Actor-Network Theory

Vassilis GalanosUniversity of Edinburgh

onesecbeforetheend@hotmail.com

Mechaphobia

● Fear of the unknown [monsters, savages, gods, etc]

● Fear of the nonhuman [wild animals, natural disasters, etc]

● Fear of the machine [automation, materialism, reification,

hylomorphism, malevolent robots, cyborgisation, addiction, etc]

is actually

● Fear of the known [human, male, white, European, adult, organic, etc]

● Fear of being replaced [technophobia, skepticism, potential of being interchangeable]

Replacement

Mechaphobia

“Spielberg’s movie mechas give us the basis for a fine name for the fear associated with machines: mechaphobia. Mechaphobia that can be insidious is not just fictional. Among its potent effects, mechaphobia is a very real factor in the progress, or lack thereof, toward education on planet Earth”

(Breck, 2002, p. 34, original emphasis)

Mechaphobia

Being-with-ICTs

● We cannot think of humans apart from ICTs.

● “Making kin” with our artificial companions (Haraway, 2015).

● Paradox: Learning to live in the environment and seeing it as an existential threat.

Conceptual Methods

● Heideggerian origin of words

● Philosophy of Information

● Actor-Network Theory

Martin Heidegger

“He occasionally coins new expressions from older roots […] words which have undergone a long history of semantical change are used afresh in their older senses” (Macquarrie & Robinson in Heidegger, 1962, p. 13-14)

“over and above the attempt to determine the essence of 'man' [sic] as an entity, the question of his [sic] Being is rather conceived as something obvious or 'self-evident'” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 75)

Replacement, def. 1 [1753]

● New book in the library, new employee, new fiancé, new set of cutlery [but never a book instead of a fiancé and vice versa]

● Element B replaces element A, but they are both of the category X. [taxonomy, speciecism]

● Substitution

Replacement, def. 2 [1590]

● The cap on the pen or bottle, the book in the shelf, the vase on the table [always in relation to a function]

● Element A returns to its initial position, not necessarily belonging to category X.

● Reconstitution.

Re-placement of Replacement

● Substitute replacement with re-placement.

● Reconstitute replacement as re-placement.

● Replacement: operatively indistinguishable function and form [no need to question – new librarian, human or robot does exactly the same]

● Re-placement: slight or intense differences of function and form [new values, robot librarian does better, what does the human do?]

What is irreplaceable?

Actor-Network Theory

● Generalised symmetry of agents against dichotomies [human/nonhuman, organic/inorganic, individual/system, nature/society, etc]

“the presence of objects which have been rendered 'able' to object to what is told about them” (Latour, 2000, p. 115)

Actor-Network Theory, cont.

“ANT states that if we wish to be a bit more realistic about social ties than ‘reasonable’ sociologists, then we have to accept that the continuity of any course of action will rarely consist of human-to-human connections (for which the basic social skills would be enough anyway) or of object-object connections, but will probably zigzag from one to the other” (Latour, 2005, p. 75)

“To be symmetric, for us, simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations” (ibid. p. 76)

‘Sociology may know about class, or about gender. But how much does it know about speciesism – the systematic practice of discrimination against other species? And how much does it know or care about machines?’’ (Law, 1991, p. 6-7)

Philosophy of Information/Information Ethics

“ICTs are not merely re-engineering but actually reontologizing our world. […] Human-Computer interaction is a symmetric relation” (Floridi, 2010, p. 11) [agreement with ANT]Infosphere “denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all informational entities (thus including informational agents as well), their properties, interactions, processes, and mutual relations” (Floridi, 2007, p. 59)

“Substitute now 'life' with 'existence' and it should become clear what information ethics amounts to. It is an ecological ethics that […] replaces biocentrism with ontocentrism. It suggests that there is something even more elemental than life, namely being – that is, the existence and flourishing of all entities and their global environment” (Floridi, 2010, p. 112)

Conclusions: An Ontology of Re-placement as Virtue Information Ethics

Replacement: (1) Threat (2) SubstitutionRe-placement: (1) cross-species communication (2) mutual verification of the species (3) reconstitution

Borders clash: the onlife condition, Ubiquitous Computing, Ambient Intelligence, Internet of Things ||| Training! |||Exercise of “moral character” - Virtue Ethics

Conclusions: An Ontology of Re-placement as Virtue Information Ethics

Ethical issues in AI, ICTs etc are “not just about rights (deontology) and welfare (utility); they are often also about issues of character” (Wallach, Allen, & Smit, 2008, n.p.) - A Virtue Information Ethics… [to be introduced in Information Ethics & Literacy curricula]

Techno-logies can be viewed as medicine to previous patho-logies. Pathos (passion/passivity) is turned into

Techne (art/craft).

Technology is pharmakon [drug: poison+remedy] (cf. Derrida, 1981)

Mechaphobia: Technology as pathology.

Re-placement: Technology as medicine.

“The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger” (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27)

Thanks a ton!Questions?