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7. Artificial Intelligence and the Need to Redefine Human Traits

Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 165–185)

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Metadata
Title7. Artificial Intelligence and the Need to Redefine Human Traits
ContributorGalit Wellner(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.07
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0421/chapters/10.11647/obp.0421.07
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightGalit Wellner
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-10-16
Long abstractGalit Wellner argues that digital and virtual technologies like AI not only change how we experience the world, but also transform human mental capacities. While industrial technologies predominantly concern embodiment relations (e.g. extending or replacing manual labor), technologies like AI bear on the mind, notably in terms of imagination and attention. Wellner argues that Ihde’s phenomenological analyses insufficiently articulate this contrast because of their emphasis on embodied perception, which appears less relevant in technologies like cryptocurrency and generative AI. Turning to the theme of attention, the chapter first presents Husserl’s classical phenomenological interpretation of attention as ‘searchlight’, as well as Merleau-Ponty’s critique of this interpretation. Wellner subsequently indicates the limits of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘field of attention’ which, like Ihde, unduly prioritizes embodiment and fails to account for the phenomenon of multitasking. Wellner accordingly calls for supplanting the phenomenological first person perspective with a layered approach focusing on plateaus, where embodiment relations make way for embrainment relations.
Page rangepp. 165–185
Print length21 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Galit Wellner

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1686-5079

Galit Wellner lectures at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Wellner specializes in philosophy of digital technologies and their inter-relations with humans. She is an active member of the postphenomenology community. Her book A Postphenomenological Inquiry of Cellphones: Genealogies, Meanings and Becoming was published in 2015 in Lexington Books. She translated into Hebrew Don Ihde’s book Postphenomenology and Technoscience (Resling, 2016). She also co-edited Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human–Media–World Relations (Lexington Books, 2017). Galit is interested in the ways in which digital technologies transform medical and scientific practices.

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