{"id":111697,"date":"2019-06-25T10:55:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T08:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog\/?p=111697"},"modified":"2019-06-25T10:55:59","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T08:55:59","slug":"universite-catholique-de-lille-introducing-andrew-feenberg-le-20-juin-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pauljorion.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/25\/universite-catholique-de-lille-introducing-andrew-feenberg-le-20-juin-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Universit\u00e9 catholique de Lille, \u00ab\u00a0Introducing Andrew Feenberg\u00a0\u00bb, le 20 juin 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ouvert aux commentaires.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Du fait qu’elle est en anglais, je ne pensais pas vous proposer ici les notes de mon introduction \u00e0 l’oeuvre d’Andrew Feenberg<\/a> que j’ai propos\u00e9e \u00e0 Lille mercredi dernier en sa pr\u00e9sence. Mais comme je viens d’en faire ma r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 un commentateur, je la reproduis ci-dessous dans une pr\u00e9sentation mieux format\u00e9e. Ce n’est pas un article publiable, ce sont des notes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Workshop with Andrew Feenberg<\/strong>
\nUniversit\u00e9 catholique de Lille, June 20, 2019<\/p>\n

Introducing Andrew Feenberg<\/strong>, by Paul Jorion<\/p>\n

\u201cAndrew Feenberg (born 1943) is an American philosopher. He holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His main interests are philosophy of technology, continental philosophy, critique of technology and science and technology studies\u201d (Wikipedia)<\/p>\n

Philosopher Andrew Feenberg has taken in earnest Marx\u2019 precept \u201cThe philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to\u00a0change\u00a0it.<\/em>\u201d In this he has been walking in the footsteps of his master Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) and in accordance with the Frankfurt School as a whole.<\/p>\n

Democratic control of progress<\/strong><\/p>\n

Examining in particular the impact of technology on society Feenberg claims that \u201cThe exclusion of the vast majority from participation in decisions about [the design of technology] is profoundly undemocratic\u201d and calls for the democratic transformation of technology.<\/p>\n

It is the merit of the Parisian students of May 1968, says Feenberg, to have claimed that \u201cprogress shall be what we wish it to be\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is the issue, how did it come about, what can we do and what are the prospects of a democratic control of progress?<\/p>\n

\u201cValues\u201d vs. \u201cfacts\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Technology is in one particular way, being determined by \u201cfacts\u201d that engineers are taking into account. Society wants often technology to be different than as moulded by engineers, due to the unpleasant \u201ceveryday experience\u201d of either users or more often of \u201cinnocent bystanders\u201d, i.e. collateral victims of side-effects which were undetected or deliberately ignored for being regarded as irrelevant. For instance, that a particular industry is polluting, while the civil society, \u00ab\u00a0ordinary folks\u00a0\u00bb want it to be clean out of health concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryday experience\u201d of technology leads ordinary folks to remind of \u201cvalues\u201d, as opposed to \u201cfacts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Does remedying the fact that technology is prone to neglect its negative imprint require the advent of communism? \u201cNot necessarily\u201d, says Feenberg.<\/p>\n

But take another example: the logic of capitalism leads to extinction, young people in particular wish that not to take place. Does that require the advent of communism? Maybe. The advent of some alternative to capitalism in any case.<\/p>\n

The \u201cunderdetermination\u201d of efficient protest<\/strong><\/p>\n

A democratic control of technology will not take place without a wake-up call eliciting awareness, and as a follow-up, a lucid assessment of what needs to be done and how to proceed.<\/p>\n

It is the merit of Feenberg of having scrutinised meticulously how different strands of philosophy and of philosophy of science have so far examined the co-evolution of technology and protest against the \u201ceveryday experience\u201d of technology. And by that, suggesting how to unite all valuable perspectives into an integrated whole. Doing so Feenberg has made it clear that although there is good in the many different approaches, an enlightened and critical synthesis may be better than every one of them.<\/p>\n

But does that mean that Feenberg sees efficient protest as a technical issue that, as engineers maintain, has therefore one best solution, or, in the vocabulary of technologists, is there a \u201cglobal optimum\u201d of efficient protest as a technical issue, as opposed to a number of \u201cgood\u201d solutions, i.e. local optima?<\/p>\n

Indeed \u201cIn\u00a0applied mathematics\u00a0and\u00a0computer science, a\u00a0local optimum\u00a0<\/em>of an\u00a0optimization problem\u00a0is a solution that is optimal (either\u00a0maximal or minimal) within a\u00a0neighbouring set\u00a0of candidate solutions. This is in contrast to a\u00a0global optimum, which is the optimal solution among\u00a0all possible solutions, not just those in a particular neighbourhood of values\u201d (Wikipedia).<\/p>\n

Neither Feenberg nor philosophers use such a mathematical idiom. Feenberg along with constructivists labels the existence of technological local optima, \u201cunderdetermination\u201d. Don Ihde calls them, the \u201cmultistability of technology\u201d.<\/p>\n

Feenberg assumes that technological solutions are \u201cunderdetermined\u201d, meaning that many apply, as is made clear by the fact that democratic control can lead to an entirely new approach to an issue that engineers had initially tackled in one particular way. That may mean however moving, from a purely technical standpoint, from a global to a local optimum, or even to a sub-optimal solution, i.e. in terms of measurable efficiency defined one way or other.<\/p>\n

A phenomenological point of view<\/strong><\/p>\n

In surroundings where engineers work in a world made out of \u201cfacts\u201d, and ordinary folks, in a world of \u201cvalues\u201d, says Feenberg, what democratic control seems to amount to is that once and for all \u201cvalues\u201d overcome \u201cfacts\u201d as these are amenable to different ways of looking at them as is evidenced by the seemingly technical underdetermination<\/em> of artefacts.<\/p>\n

This may sound to an outsider to that field of studies as the way a phenomenologist would look at things, but a phenomenologist only \u2013 and this might be where the influence of Heidegger on Marcuse and of Marcuse in turn on Feenberg remains traceable.<\/p>\n

I would personally argue though that there is a different way for looking at things implying in particular that technical underdetermination of artefacts might be an optical illusion, and that what appears to be so might be due to a number of factors, such as two different types of rationality at work (of ends<\/em> and of means<\/em>) entering in conflict, and technical specifications being as a rule too narrow in scope, i.e. ignoring collective effects, which Feenberg clusters with other considerations under \u201csocial requirements\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let me expand on this.<\/p>\n

The rationality of ends<\/em> and the rationality of means<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Two types of rationality have dominated historically the Western world: the first one was defined by Aristotle twenty-five centuries ago, the second dates from the 1870s. The first one is that of logical <\/em>rationality, the second is that of economic<\/em> rationality.<\/p>\n

Logical rationality supposes that starting from established truths it is possible to discover new truths deductively as the conclusion of a syllogism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Established truths are of three types according to Aristotle: a common agreement based on the evidence of the senses, definitions, which are true by convention, and conclusions of prior valid syllogisms.<\/p>\n

In the syllogism, from two propositions connecting each two terms, and where there is a third common term<\/em> to them, it is possible by bringing together the other two terms, the so-called extremes<\/em>, to produce a new truth, as the conclusion<\/em> of the syllogism.<\/p>\n

Logical rationality is especially apt at helping to develop a rationality of ends<\/em>. Having defined a goal to meet, it is possible to establish deductively how to meet that goal (Aristotle\u2019s \u00ab\u00a0final cause\u00a0\u00bb).<\/p>\n

Economic rationality is of an entirely different nature. It was defined concurrently in the 1870s by Stanley Jevons in Britain, Carl Menger in Austria and L\u00e9on Walras in France. Used by an individual, it aims at allocating optimally scarce resources according to subjective utility. The same principle applied to a business results in a reduction of costs and the boosting of profits.<\/p>\n

Economic rationality is especially apt at developing a rationality of means<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Needs to be emphasised however that economic rationality arises within a social background preventing it from being purely objective.<\/p>\n

Indeed, profit may at first glance look like another of those \u201cfacts\u201d which are only one way, but examined from closer, being the difference between sales price and costs, it is determined within sales price and within costs by the power balance between sellers and buyers, of which supply and demand is one objective ingredient no doubt but as I have been able to show on numerous examples from traditional economies to financial markets (see Jorion, Le prix<\/em>, 2010) supply and demand is only one of several factors determining that power balance. As suggested already by Aristotle in his time, it is foremost the surrounding political system that constitutes the framework determining the power balance between buyers and sellers that gets enacted in a sale (the power balance also between lenders and borrowers in a different context).<\/p>\n

Starting at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century, the Western world has thus been able to resort concurrently to two types of rationality. Because it requires financing, technology has been ruled almost exclusively by a rationality of the economic type, i.e. a rationality of means. Meanwhile, ordinary folks have continued to operate according to a rationality of ends. They aspire that a state of happiness and an absence of concerns prevail and will determine what is welcome and what is intolerable in that particular perspective.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted therefore to translate Feenberg\u2019s contrast between \u201cfacts\u201d and \u201cvalues\u201d into that idiom of \u201crationality of means\u201d vs. \u201crationality of ends\u201d.<\/p>\n

The financiers of technological innovation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who are the sources of financing for technological innovation? For centuries already the financiers of technology have been the market and the military.<\/p>\n

It is by buying or refraining from buying new products that ordinary folks decide about the life or death of a new item. Consumers may be victims of the markets but they are also complicit. They are the victims of advertisement and consumerism but may be complacent towards propaganda under its different guises.<\/p>\n

Since armed conflict remains \u00ab\u00a0the continuation of politics by other means\u00a0\u00bb, all armies are caught in an arms race for offensive or defensive purposes. Once an innovation has been made by the military it will diffuse in society as a whole as soon as defence secrecy about it has been lifted.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to envisage that any time in the future democratic control might be exerted on military initiatives. Should any ethics committees be set up by the military, it would still be impossible for ordinary folks to have any say in their behind closed doors decision-making.<\/p>\n

Therefore, these two sources of financing independently and combined imply that technological development will keep taking place in a semi-autonomous way, whatever the amount of democratic control that may appear in the future. As a consequence it would be sound for civil society to assume the existence of a \u00ab\u00a0it will take place in any case\u00a0\u00bb principle and regard it as a manifestation of the cunning of reason<\/em> in need to be deciphered at all times to maintain an awareness of \u201cwhat the f*** is going on?\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ambiguities of \u201csocial requirements\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concurrently, ordinary folks do not constitute a united front: some of them will like parts of the new technology while others hate them, the divide being most often between eager consumer and innocent bystander.<\/p>\n

Take for instance roundup, originally a product of the Monsanto firm, now of Bayer. Agriculturalists love it as it boosts profit, innocent bystanders \u2013 who don\u2019t buy the product but are harmed by it, hate it. When ordinary folks claim: \u201cWe\u2019re at war with lobbies!\u201d, that is precisely what they mean to say: \u201cWe\u2019re innocent bystanders of the collateral damage occasioned by other people who are the collaborators of the villains, siding with the enemy\u201d. This underlines the lack of a united front of ordinary folks, as they may stand on both sides of a war against particular technological devices.<\/p>\n

When Feenberg talks of \u201csocial requirements\u201d he seems to me to conflate a number of elements that I believe should be carefully distinguished:<\/p>\n