This document discusses technological determinism and reconceiving its philosophical plausibility. It proposes using Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Radical Embodied Cognition (REC) to show how technology shapes cognition through the embodiment of tools, media, and prosthetics. Experiments are mentioned that show how technology can enhance perception by extending the body and brain, such as through creating new senses using devices that translate visual input to sound. The document argues that technology should not be seen as simply causing social changes, but rather as integrating with our minds and bodies in a mutually constitutive relationship.

1. Media and
Bodies
Reconceiving
technological determinism
Francesco Parisi - University of Messina
fparisi@unime.it

2. Talk points and goals
- Defining technological determinism: technology is the
only cause
- Prosthetic relation and feedback
- Reconceiving determinism and endorse its philosophical
plausibility by:
- MET (Material Engagement Theory)
- REC (Radical Embodied Cognition)
- Experiments
- Concluding remarks

3. What is technological determinism
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
SOCIAL DETERMINISM
Technology shapes society
Society shapes technology

4. A distinction
media
technology
dispositive
knowledge
Michel Foucault
1926-1984
Marshall McLuhan
1911-1980

5. Causal relationship
Nikola Tesla
1856-1943
MASTERY OF ELECTROMAGNETISM
TECHNOLOGY: RADIO, INTERNET...
caused

6. Prosthetic relation and Feedback
Smith M, Morra J., The
prosthetic impulse.
From a posthuman present
to a biocultural future,
Cambridge, MIT Press,
2006
Stelarc
(1946)
Performer

7. Extended Embodied Enactive Minds:
the constitutive commitment
Menary, R. The Extended Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010.
Stewart, J., Olivier G., Di Paolo E. A. Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2010.
brain
body
environment
media
COGNITION

8. Techniques of the Observer
Crary J.,
Technics of the observer.
On vision and modernity in the
Nineteenth century,
Cambridge, MIT Press, 1990
“My contention is that a reorganisation
of the observer occurs in the
nineteenth century before the
appearance of photography. What takes
place from around 1810 to 1840 is an
uprooting of vision from the stable and
fixed relations incarnated in the
camera obscura”
1810
Physiological
optics
1839
Photography
Philosophy
1870’s
Instantaneous
image
Impressionism
1860 1895
Cinematograph

9. The very question
Why should we consider it theoretically acceptable that
the technologically produced process of causation is
more important and qualitatively different from the
process triggered by knowledge?

10. REC (Radical Embodied Cognition)
Hutto D.D., Myin E. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
Hutto D.D., Myin E. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2017.
Clark A. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016.
CONTENT
REPRESENTATIONS

11. REC (Radical Embodied Cognition)
Hutto D.D., Myin E. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
Hutto D.D., Myin E. Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2017.
Clark A. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016.
INFORMATION

12. MET (Material Engagement Theory)
Malafouris L. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2013.
Malafouris L. Before and beyond representation: towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic image.
Renfrew C. & I. Morley (eds) 2007, Image and Imagination: A Global History of Figurative Representation.
Cambridge: The McDonald Institute, pp. 287-300 (2007).
“I propose that images like the ones we see, already 30,000 years before present, at the caves
of Chauvet and Lascaux before and beyond representing the world they first bring forth a new
process of acting within this world and at the same time of thinking about it.” (Malafouris
2007, 295).

13. Peri-personal space modulation
Maravita A., Iriki A. Tools for the body (schema). Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(2), 2004, 79-86.

14. Peri-personal space modulation
Maravita A., Iriki A. Tools for the body (schema). Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(2), 2004, 79-86.
“If external objects can be reconceived as belonging to the body, it may be
inevitable that the converse reconceptualization, i.e. the subject can now
objectify its body parts as equivalent to external tools, becomes likewise
apparent. Thus, the tool use may lead to the ability to disembody the sense of
self from the literal flesh-and-blood boundaries of one’s skin.” (CIT)

15. Mirrors
Preston C., Kuper-Smith B.J., Ehrsson H.H. Owning the body in the mirror:The effect of visual perspective and
mirror view on the full-body illusion. Scientific reports, 5, 2015, 18345.
Iriki A., and Taoka M. Triadic (ecological, neural, cognitive) niche construction: a scenario of human brain
evolution extrapolating tool use and language from the control of reaching actions.", Philos. Trans. R. Soc.
Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 367(1585), 2012, 10-23.
“If external objects can be reconceived as
belonging to the body, it may be inevitable
that the converse reconceptualization, i.e.
the subject can now objectify its body parts
as equivalent to external tools, becomes
likewise apparent. Thus, the tool use may
lead to the ability to disembody the sense of
self from the literal flesh-and-blood
boundaries of one’s skin”

16. Perception enhancement
Théodore Géricault, Le Derby d'Epsom (1821)

17. Perception enhancement
Eadweard Muybridge, Horse in motion (1878)

18. Perception enhancement
Eadweard Muybridge, Horse in motion (1878)
‘It's not the union between the eyeborg and my head what converts me into a
cyborg but the union between the software and my brain, a union that has
created a new sense in my brain that allows me to perceive colour as sound. I
never take the eyeborg off: I wear it to sleep, and in the shower. It feels
like a part of me. When I started to hear the sound of colour in my dreams,
that’s when I began to think of myself as a cyborg.’

19. The case of electromagnetism
Phillip Kennedy
Neurotrophic
Electrod

20. Miguel Nicolelis

21. Media Embodiment/Mind Extension
Thanks!