Phänomenologische Forschungen 2024-2

The goal of this paper is to outline how digital technologies can be understood as existential media by analyzing how they shape embodiment. This requires examining the relationship between three terms, namely “digital,” “technology,” and “embodiment.” My intent is to show how these three terms can be understood from a phenomenological perspective, as well as to flesh out the relationship(s) between them. The paper is structured as follows: First, I discuss the digital from both a hermeneutic and an ontological perspective. Second, I explain some key concepts in postphenomenology that guidemy analysis of embodiment in relation to the digital. Then, I show how digital technologies shape one’s experience of being embodied on two levels: the first level is that of active extension: digital technologies enable one to extend into the digital sphere through the development of particular novel habits. The second level is that of passive constitution: digital technologies create digital objects of people that others can observe and interact with, and these observations and interactions feed back into embodied experience. In conclusion, I suggest that understanding embodiment in relation to the digital implies to understand the interaction between the two levels identified above.

Given the culture of self-presentation on social media or self-objectivation with self-tracking devices, Sartre’s notion of bad faith has become an important point of reference for discussing practices of subjectivation in digital lifeworlds. Contrary to the accusation that the digital self acts as a lever for bad faith, digital applications can also be the starting point for authentic relations with the self. This paper discusses digitally pre-structured aspects of possibilities for authentic self-representation. Representativeness (a), non-reproducibility (b) and instantaneity (c) are highlighted as key features of self-referential digital practices. The authentic digital self a) exists both analogue and digital as the same person, b) cites other people’s content while referencing its own freedom of choice, and c) seeks to create a moment of shared affective attention in which a gap between digital and subjective temporality makes room for acting authentically.

Searching for- and finding the right word is, especially if we want to be precise, enlightening regarding the realtion of language and thought. My thesis is that in the searching for- and finding of words we can see that language and thought are neither identical nor can they be separated. They represent a differentiated unity; furthermore, starting from the relation of language and thought a fundamental difference between the language pratices of humans like us and the way in which Large Language Models ‘find’ words comes to light.

This article explores what the method of phenomenological reduction and description can contribute to the analysis of users’ experiences in virtual reality (VR). While other philosophical accounts explain the virtual as either an extension or a replacement of the real, a phenomenological description of experiences in virtual environments reveals them as open horizons for exploring this new reality. In contrast to common epistemological approaches in VR research, phenomenology understands the lived body (Leib) as constitutive of VR experiences. Using two prototypical VR experiments, we analyze how a phenomenological account differs from other accounts and what it can contribute to understanding and advancing VR applications in art, gaming, learning, and virtual communities.

This article contributes to the ongoing research on the minimal self. This is the most elementary form of individual identity, rooted in fundamental bodily structures and schemas. The article will examine the topic of minimal selfhood from a phenomenological perspective, with a particular focus on the incorporation of technology. Some types of technology, such as prosthetics, are experienced by the user as an integral component of her or his own body. The question of whether there is a phenomenologically relevant relationship between the incorporation of a machine and minimal selfhood is particularly pertinent in the context of a new generation of incorporable machines, known as bio-machine hybrid technology. The technology benefits from notable advances in digital modeling of bodily signals, as well as research on bio-integrated materials. This article examines the relationship between bio-machine hybrid technology and the minimal self, discussing a case study in the field of biomimetic visual prosthetics.

Merleau-Ponty offers an insightful account of the relation between bodies and technology, specifically by understanding this connection as incorporation (i. e., extension of the body schema). This account is particularly convincing when considering interactions “at a distance.” (e. g., video conferences) However, two aspects of this relation are potentially problematic: (1) Current technologies, devices, and infrastructures enabling interactions “at a distance” are more complex than the examples discussed byMerleau-Ponty. (2) If the relation between bodies and technology is conceived as a relation of incorporation, how can technologies, devices, and infrastructures themselves be perceived? These issues are analyzed from a Merleau-Pontian perspective, notably by drawing on his account of the body schema, of sensory perception, and some aspects of his reading of gestalt theory.

In this paper I try to enter a specific field of the phenomenology of digital technologies in modern infrastructures by returning to an inside view of modern wastewater management. In order to open a broader context, I first draw attention to the enormous impact of a phenomenon that Erich Hörl defines as “the displacement of technological sense”. In my view, its origins lie in the pragmatist mindset and its realization in the cybernetic turn. I go on to spell out the concrete technological sense of modern wastewater management in terms of a hermeneutic frame that is constituted and limited by an institutional discourse. This leads to my thesis that digital technologies in modern wastewater management tend to extend the cybernetic regime without transcending its institutional limits. Sketching a phenomenology of digitally mediated experience in this context helps to identify a naturalness in dealing with digital devices that leads to essential problems due to increasing complexity.