Bollettino Filosofico

Introduzione

Luca Illetterati Felice Masi Eugenio Mazzarella — 2023-10-19

Introduzione dei Curatori.

Mondo, natura, tecnica

Adriano Ardovino — 2023-10-19

Whether thought in terms of irreducible opposition, or in terms of co-belonging and even of identification, the nexus between “nature” and “technology” has often been unfolded by philosophical reflection in dichotomous terms, i.e. on the basis of a two-term theory. Exceptions are speculative projects, such as those of Hegel and Heidegger, who for his part in the Bremen Lectures (1949) deals with the “nature-technology” nexus on the basis of a third term, i.e. the “world”, capable of reorganizing and redefining this nexus in depth. The present article aims at bringing out such a peculiar framework in its essential features.

Keywords: Ereignis, Heidegger, Nature, Technology, World

Natura e dispositivo tecnologico. Alla luce di un'etica dei resti

Gianluca Cuozzo — 2023-10-19

The theme of remains (from domestic waste to trash) offers a philosophical test case for our projects of order and meaning, both personally and socially. Through a multilayered argumentative articulation, ranging from the theories of the subject (in light of the psychoanalytic problem of repression and the double) to a few paragraphs of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, and to the topic of the current technological waste (WEEE), the present paper attempts to lay the philosophical foundations of a “new humanism”. To that effect, the conclusions center on the figure of Aurelio Peccei, the founder of the Club of Rome, and on that of Jorge M. Bergoglio. Both of them propose, as a response to the danger of an imminent environmental catastrophe, a new anthropological model and a new theory of action.

Keywords: Action, Feedback, New Humanism, Repentance, Subject

La mente tra natura e tecnica

Claudio La Rocca — 2023-10-19

In the first section, the article attempts to reconfigure the relationship between mind and technology beyond the classical schema according to which technology is a product of mind. Relying on Richard Gregory’s idea of Potential Intelligence and its developments in the theory of the extended mind, it is argued that the relationship between mind and technology is constitutive and original, so that in some sense mind is a technological product. The second section outlines – with reference to Mark Rowlands – a reading of the extended mind that does not identify it with the mere “extension” of its cognitive states to specific elements of the external world, but with the constitutive character of processes of instrumental relation to the world that could be linked to those theorised by Heidegger: disclosing and revealing activities that constitute at the same time the origin of significance. The third section emphasises the weight of technology in ‘shaping’ the mind and redefining our purposes, considering the idea of several authors (from Cassirer to Gehlen, from Ellul to Mumford) of a sort of “autonomy” of technology.

Keywords: Extended Mind, Mind, Potential Intelligence, Significance, Technology

La fenomenologia tra analogico e digitale

Roberta Lanfredini — 2023-10-19

At first glance, talking about digital phenomenology sounds oxymoronic and talking about analogue phenomenology sounds pleonastic. The essay aims to overcome this initial impression. It starts from the thesis that phenomenology is a descriptive science, where description is not an explanation, and not even an explication, but an explicitation of experience. Starting from this basic assumption, two ways in which this explicitation can be realised are identified: the first, static, is grounded on the concepts of determination and characteristic note; the second, dynamic or processual, is grounded on the concepts of disposition and power. These two ways in which phenomenological explicitation can be interpreted will allow us to distinguish between a digital phenomenology (which finds its defining character in the sign) and an analogical phenomenology, the only one capable of returning to things themselves and thereby fulfilling the “principle of all principles”.

Keywords: Determination, Disposition, Experience, Phenomenology, Power

La fine del mondo. Geofilosofia della catastrofe ambientale

Caterina Resta — 2023-10-19

Beyond the persistent denialism, the ecological catastrophe is not the pessimistic prognosis of Cassandra, but a merciless diagnosis of the state of planetary health, which is supported by scientific data. It cannot simply be considered a crisis of the environment, as if it were only a process affecting nature; in the age of the Anthropocene, it is clear that ecological disaster is the result, the product, of man’s actions, due to his unbalanced relationship with the environment in which he lives. Its premise is the “calculative thinking” that has characterised Western rationality since the Modern Age and the scientific revolution, from which comes a development model that has now become unsustainable. Only a radical turnaround and an overall change in our way of life can perhaps prevent the imminent extinction of the human species. We should reconsider the Earth as Ecumene (Berque), as a World in which we co-habit together with other living beings, entering into a new pact of alliance with the biosphere. Only a Constitution of the Earth (Ferrajoli), capable of guaranteeing the protection of the environment and the inalienable common goods that are essential to humankind’s survival, could adequately face the challenge of a global world that is destined for catastrophe.

Keywords: Anthropocene, Earth Constitution, Ecumene, Environmental Catastrophe, Calculative Thinking

Una macchina per produrre dei. Da Heidegger a Bergson

Rocco Ronchi — 2023-10-19

In the Protagoras myth, which inspired twentieth-century reflection on technology, the machine is presented as a prosthesis. It must make up for the “lack” that is distinctive of the human being in contrast to the other living species. Technology is thus included in the horizon of the Aristotelian Poiesis, of work, and is assigned to the human sphere alone. The possibility is feared that the machine could transform man into its appendage, annihilating his sovereignty. In Bergsonian philosophy, machines are instead treated as organs of life, in continuity with the causality of nature. That is, technology is included in the horizon of the Aristotelian Praxis and the human agent is seen as an operator of the natural machine. Mechanics and mysticism share the same vital drive that runs through matter. Thus, Bergson provides the basis for a cosmological consideration of technology (cosmotechnics) and for a “general organology” that is radically opposed to Heidegger’s anthropological-existential conception of technology.

Keywords: Cosmotechnics, Homme-Machine, Mysticism, Organology, Power

Para physin. Spunti aristotelici, e non, intorno al concetto di macchina

Nicola Russo — 2023-10-19

By reading the first pages of The Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanics, the distinction between “according to nature” and “against nature” is reviewed and corrected: it is not a radical opposition, but rather a kind of symbiosis between two ways of proceeding that are realised both in nature and technically. This contributes to understanding the difference between the machine and its mechanism in the context of the Aristotelian distinction between the four causes.

Keywords: “Contro Natura”, Mechane, Physis, “Secondo Natura”, Techne

Dove si nasconde la natura in un'«era sintetica»

Leonardo Samonà — 2023-10-19

The essay starts from what Hegel defined as the enigma of nature, i.e. the internal contrast in the constitutive reference of the human being to it. The purpose is to underline that this “anthropocentric” definition still intercepts the issue of safeguarding the biosphere from the intrusiveness of human intervention, which has become central. Starting from the analysis of the relationship between nature and technology in Aristotle, this contrast is developed as an antithesis between the human desire to save the fragility of nature and the desire to escape from it. It is pointed out how even this escape into a completely technicized reality, is generated by the desire to save the nature. Today, the tragic human involvement in the fragility of nature, in an advanced technological world, help us to rediscover the deepest meaning of “salvation”: taking care of the habitability of the world for human beings, and therefore guarding its fragility, without trying to eliminate it.

Keywords: Anthropocentrism, Aristotle, Nature, Salvation, Technology

Heidegger e l’altro inizio nell’età della tecnica

Giusi Strummiello — 2023-10-19

The comparison of ecological thought with Heidegger’s philosophy is played out in the tension between the call for an alternative ecological ethos to the world of technology and the impossibility of an exit from it. Starting with the lecture The Question of Technology, the contribution aims to consider the way in which Heidegger, through his meditation on technology and art, conceives the overcoming (Verwindung) of technology and opens up to another (poetic/dichterisch) way of inhabiting the earth.

Keywords: Art, Ecology, Ereignis, Heidegger, Technology

Verità, natura e tecnica: servirsi, serbare, osservare

Mauro Visentin — 2023-10-19

What we call “technology” is rooted in an original disposition of consciousness that consists in the ability to make use of something in view of something. To make use is a meaning that refers back to serve and to preserve. Both of the latter expressions have to do with the condition of the servant, that is, one who serves a master, who guards another's possession, who preserves on behalf of others. First and foremost, the purpose of technology is to preserve something that does not belong to us or belongs to us provisionally and which, therefore, we are at risk of losing. First of all, individual life. In this aspect it contrasts with nature, which preserves the collective life (of the species) through the succession of individual lives and, thus, by virtue of their mutual sacrifice. Technology does not address that possession that we are not at risk of losing i.e., the possession of truth. That which is a cause, has a purpose, is a means belongs to technology; truth is an object of contemplation. This means that truth does not serve (it is not the servant or handmaiden of anyone or anything) and that technology does not need truth, as it does not base its effectiveness on it.

Keywords: Contemplation, Preserve, Serve, Technology, Truth

La tecnica: Strumento di incatenamento o di liberazione? Tra Nietzsche e Prometeo

Gemma Bianca Adesso — 2023-10-19

This paper consists of three parts: in the first one, we point out the problem of technology in Nietzsche’s thought and its contradictory relationship with nature and science; in the third one, we meditate on Prometheus since Nietzsche allows us to interpret the myth as the symbol of the Western knowledge crisis. An intermediate space will be dedicated to the image of chains which, according to Nietzsche, starting from the connotative symbol of Prometheus, become metaphor of education as well as of technology.

Keywords: Chains, Nature, Nietzsche, Prometheus, Technology

Tra esperienza vissuta e tonalità emotiva. L’affettività nella riflessione heideggeriana su natura e tecnica

Aldo Bisceglia — 2023-10-19

This essay offers a new reading of the relationship between nature and technology in Heidegger’s post-Turn writings, starting from the question of affectivity. The emphasis will be on writings from the 1930s to the 1960s, when an in-depth investigation into the question of Stimmung and the role played by Grundstimmungen became increasingly relevant within the context of the thinking of Event. The purpose of this essay is twofold: it aims to show that for Heidegger mood ultimately always determines both the human-technology and the human-nature relationship; also, it attempts to show that disposedness, in its authentic version (Stimmung), as in its inauthentic one (Erlebnis), plays a decisive role in redefining the capabilities and limits of the technological man in their relationship with nature.

Keywords: Affectivity, Heidegger, Measure, Nature, Technology

Embodiment e pensiero algoritmico: Una prospettiva fenomenologica sul rapporto tra mondo della vita e intelligenza artificiale

Federica Buongiorno — 2023-10-19

The article critically examines the difference between Artificial Intelligence and human intelligence, specifically the distinction between simulation and embodiment, while analyzing the issue of human embodiment in its technically and digitally augmented dimension. The idea that digital processes do not simply imply a detachment from the body, dematerialization, or disembodiment is supported by many scholars, starting from those who, as early as the 1980s, reacted to cyberpunk narratives and their tendency to introduce a new mind-body dualism. However, the article aims to frame this thesis not so much within the discourse on the post-human but within a phenomenological perspective, employing specific conceptual tools. In particular, it considers: 1) the distinction proposed by Katherine Hayles between practices of embodiment and practices of inscription; 2) the notion of structural coupling by Maturana and Varela; 3) algorithmic thought and its temporal structure.

Keywords: Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Embodiment, Life-World, Phenomenology

Mitsein, tecnica e linguaggio. Il fondamento ecologico dell’umano

Lorenzo De Stefano — 2023-10-19

The aim of the essay is contextualizing Heidegger’s views on technology and language in the light of contemporary anthropological theories of Tomasello and Malafouris. Starting from the well-known dichotomy between man and animal in relation to the world, as exposed in the 1929-30 work The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, we will discuss Heidegger onto-anthropological framework in relation with Tomasello’s category of intentionality. In this context, we test if Heidegger’s discontinuity between man and animal is still actual and analyze how the concept of Mitsein could still be considered an essential category for anthropology. An ecological theory will emerge about the origin of language and technology, considered beyond the subject-object scheme of western metaphysics.

Keywords: Anthropology, Heidegger, Language, Mitsein, Technology

Anne Imhof: Sulla relazione non oppositiva tra natura e tecnica nell’arte contemporanea

Laura Dequal — 2023-10-20

The paper aims to examine how philosophical reflection on the relationship between nature and technology finds a productive tool in the comparison with contemporary artistic production. I intend to carry out my analysis on the basis of some considerations on the systematic role of art within Hegel’s philosophy and the presentation of a case study, namely Anne Imhof’s durational performance SEX. Contemporary art suggests that until we move within a paradigm that either thinks of nature in oppositional terms to the human or reduces existence to a naturalist matrix, it will not be possible to think correctly about the increasingly complex interweaving of the technical and natural dimensions. My thesis is that in order to understand the nature we encounter in contemporary art we have to proceed to a “denaturalization of nature”. That is, freeing it from a conceptualization in terms of otherness with respect to everything that is traditionally considered to be proper to the sphere of the human.

Keywords: Art, Contemporary, Hegel, Nature, Technology

Non dalla testa di Zeus. Heisenberg, Wheeler e il rapporto con il passato della scienza

Stefano Furlan — 2023-10-20

Werner Heisenberg and John Wheeler, besides being crucial figures of 20th-century physics, developed grand views and offered a series of broader reflections whose philosophical interest seems beyond doubt. And yet, the genesis of such ideas and their intertwinement with other philosophical viewpoints get systematically distorted, impaired, decontextualized and/or neglected. This contribution aims to offer a few methodological considerations to address more fruitfully, faithfully and interestingly their thought (or that of similar cases), as well as to underline their peculiar (at least for recent physicists) relationship with the past – not irrelevant for who intends to meditate on “Nature and Technology”.

Keywords: 20th-Century Physics, Historical Epistemology, Future of Science, Scientific Narratives, Physics-Philosophy Interactions

Technisch symbolisiert der Mensch. Il simbolismo umano fra tecnica, natura e cultura

Luigi Laino — 2023-10-20

In this paper, I aim to present symbolism, through the lens of technology and language, as the natural condition of human beings. After a brief introduction, in the second section, I will show how technology and language depart from primates’ manipulations and gestures to overcome the pressure of the environment and the world of expression in human beings. Therefore, I will define meta-environmentality as the distinctive feature of the human condition. In the third section, I will address the rise of language from its mutual coexistence with motricity and explain how meta-environmentality leads to exteriorization. Finally, I will discuss Facchini’s multi-layered scale of symbolic degrees as a possible theoretical framework for my endeavour.

Keywords: Culture, Meta-Environmentality, Nature, Symbolism, Technology

Pensare “con” la tecnica: La nozione di individuo nella filosofia di Gilbert Simondon

Saverio Macrì — 2023-10-20

This paper examines the contribution of technological thought in Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation. Simondon’s merit consists in having rethought the traditional theme of individuality, refuting the ontological primacy of the category of substance in favor of a theory of relations. What distinguishes the originality of the French thinker is the fact that this speculative system is nourished by his research in the field of technology. Indeed, he draws from the information theory a model to illustrate the processes of individuation, from the physical to the vital level, from the psychic to the collective. Terms and concepts belonging to the field of technology – such as amplification, communication, modulation, relay, and transduction – are thus redefined to describe the relational character of the individual.

Keywords: Individuation, Information, Interactivity, Relation, Technology

La mediazione tecnica nel conflitto fra le due immagini del mondo. Sellars, Husserl e l’estensione della mente

Danilo Manca — 2023-10-20

In this article, I will reflect on the use of technology in scientific investigation. My aim is to understand the extent to which such reflection can contribute to the dispute between the manifest and the scientific image of man in the world. I will begin by pointing out the aporias underlying Sellars’s arguments, thus comparing them with Husserl’s theses on how the “technization” of knowledge breaks with the life-world. In light of this, in the second part of the essay, I will firstly consider how Ihde’s critique of Husserl’s concealment of the role of the technology of science meets with the theory of niche construction; secondly, I will focus on the sense in which we can describe language as a tool (or artefact) according to the extended approach to mind.

Keywords: Language as a Tool, Life-World, Technological Mediation, The Extended Mind

Considerazioni sul continuum natura/tecnica. Il cibo come artefatto ibrido

Erica Onnis — 2023-10-20

Feeding is a fundamental physiological need that falls within the realm of what we consider natural. However, throughout history, human beings have developed and employed several techniques to produce and manipulate food. Therefore, if the classical metaphysical distinction between natural and artefactual entities must be accepted, our food seems to predominantly fall into the latter category. Yet, discussions of artefacts do not typically involve organisms but rather material objects that cannot be found “in nature”. Thus, food may appear as a sui generis artefact. This paper, after an analysis of the relationships holding between food and human beings, suggests that the former, rather than being an unusual artifact is the quintessential artifact, one that seems to reflect better than any other the complex connections between Homo sapiens and its environment.

Keywords: Artefacts, Artefactual, Food, Natural, Nature/Technology

La materia del sapere. Riflessione ed errore dalla tecno-scienza alla filosofia (e ritorno)

Daniele Poccia — 2023-10-20

What does thinking mean in a world of techno-scientific performativity? And what kind of power can still be attributed to thought? The digital age marks another step in an evolutionary trajectory of technology that moves beyond the concept, requiring a new theoretical grammar, where power relates only to itself. Thinking, as such, implies removing the theological overdetermination of technology and spelling out the modes of knowing that the latter entails. In this view, it is possible to describe the sphere in which thinking and being interact by introducing the concept of error, as an incremental and thus non-absolute becoming. Considering through the lens of error the transfinite nature of reflection, both technological and philosophical, emerges as a matter of the knowledge that, in turn, is also a knowledge of the matter.

Keywords: Error, Knowledge, Power, Reflection, Techno-Science

Corpo, mondo e tecnica. Una riflessione a partire dall’antropologia plessneriana

Roberto Redaelli — 2023-10-20

The extent to which new technologies are changing our lifestyles and our concept of the human being requires new thinking in order to explain the epochal transformations our world is undergoing. In this direction, the anthropological reflections of Helmuth Plessner, although they do not constitute a philosophy of technology, can still be useful today to rethink the relationship between human body, world, and technology. This paper evaluates the significance of these reflections and intends to highlight, on the basis of Plessner’s reflections, what can be defined as the artificial nature of the human being.

Keywords: Anthropogenesis, Embodiment, Helmuth Plessner, Philosophical Anthropology, Philosophy of Technology

Per una filosofia della natura tecnica in Gilbert Simondon

Francesca Sunseri — 2023-10-20

The following paper intends to read the French thinker Gilbert Simondon’s two doctoral theses, by putting them in relation to trace what the author of the research defines as a new philosophy of nature. This is a first step in a research that promises to be complex because of the profound relationships Simondon weaved with the major thinkers of his time, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Canguilhem and Norbert Wiener. The step taken in this contribution is to outline the lines of research by showing the strong link between technology and nature in Simondon’s thought.

Keywords: Being, Nature, Simondon, Technical Mind, Technology