Psychoanalysis Of Technoscience

This book presents a psychoanalysis of technoscience. Basic concepts and methods developed by Freud, Jung, Bachelard and Lacan are applied to case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning, virology). Rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, psychoanalysis focusses on primal scenes (Dubois' quest for the missing link, Pavlov's discovery of the conditioned reflex) and opts for triangulation: comparing technoscience to "different scenes" provided by novels, so that Dubois's work is compared to missing link novels by Verne and London and Pavlov's experiments with Skinner's Walden Two, while virology is studied through the lens of viral fiction.

The key objective of this volume is to allow philosophy students and early-stage researchers to become practicing philosophers in technoscientific settings. Zwart focuses on the methodological issue of how to practice continental philosophy of technoscience today. This text draws upon continental authors such as Hegel, Engels, Heidegger, Bachelard and Lacan (and their fields of dialectics, phenomenology and psychoanalysis) in developing a coherent message around the technicity of science or rather, “technoscience”. Within technoscience, the focus will be on recent developments in life sciences research, such as genomics, post-genomics, synthetic biology and global ecology. This book uniquely presents continental perspectives that tend to be underrepresented in mainstream philosophy of science, yet entail crucial insights for coming to terms with technoscience as it is evolving on a global scale today. This is an open access book.

This book offers an innovative view of everyday reality. It clarifies how the spatial dimension of reality, as well as our personal and inter-personal perception and interaction with reality, aggravates human separateness at the expense of human connectedness. It shows how many urgent societal challenges are affected by an imbalance between spatial and the non-spatial aspects, and offers an analysis of the impoverishment of society, both in spatial terms (spatialisation) and in informational terms (digitalisation). Drawing on insights from quantum physics and depth psychology, it proposes an unorthodox view of the potential of humans, and of reality in itself, that was lost in this impoverishment. "I found this book hugely interesting, highly original and very well written. I haven’t come across these ideas presented in quite this way, and so the book could be considered a groundbreaking contribution" Dr Stephan Harding, Resident Ecologist Schumacher College, Author of 'Animate Earth'. "It rarely happens that we are invited by a scholarly text to look at reality in a basically different way than the one we are used to, at least in a way that is seductive and compelling at the same time. But this is precisely what the text of Pieter Brabers has done with me." Dr John Rijsman, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Tilburg University.

The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Technology uniquely provides a comprehensive overview of human subjectivity in the technological age and how psychoanalysis can help us better understand human life. Presented in five parts, David M. Goodman and Matthew Clemente collaborate with an international community of scholars and practitioners to consider how psychoanalytic formulations can be brought to bear on the impact technology has had on the facets of human subjectivity. Chapters examine how technology is reshaping our understanding of what it means to be a human subject, through embodiment, intimacy, porn, political motivation, mortality, communication, interpersonal exchange, thought, attention, responsibility, vulnerability, and more. Filled with thought-provoking and nuanced chapters, the contributors approach technology from a diverse range of entry points but all engage through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, practice, and thought. This book is essential for academics and students of psychoanalysis, philosophy, ethics, media, liberal arts, social work, and bioethics. With the inclusion of timely chapters on the coronavirus pandemic and teletherapy, psychoanalysts in practice and training as well as other mental health practitioners will also find this book an invaluable resource.

What does humankind expect from AI? What kind of relationship between man and intelligent machine are we aiming for? Does an AI need to be able to recognize human unconscious dynamics to act for the "best" of humans—that "best" that not even humans can clearly define? Humanizing AI analyses AI and its numerous applications from a psychoanalytical point of view to answer these questions. This important, interdisciplinary contribution to the social sciences, as applied to AI, shows that reflecting on AI means reflecting on the human psyche and personality; therefore conceiving AI as a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of human identity. AI gives rise to processes of identification and de-identification that are not simply extensions of human identities—as post-humanist or trans-humanist approaches believe—but completely new forms of identification. Humanizing AI will benefit a broad audience: undergraduates, postgraduates and teachers in sociology, social theory, science and technology studies, cultural studies, philosophy, social psychology, and international relations. It will also appeal to programmers, software designers, students, and professionals in the sciences.

The way we experience, investigate and interact with reality changes drastically in the course of history. Do such changes occur gradually, or can we pinpoint radical turns, besides periods of relative stability? Building on Oswald Spengler, we zoom in on three styles in particular, namely Apollonian, Magian and Faustian thinking, guided by grounding ideas which can be summarised as follows: "Act in accordance with nature", "Prepare yourself for the imminent dawn" and "Existence equals will to power". Finally, we reach the present. How to characterise the new era we entered around the year 2000?

Social suffering commands increasing public attention in the wake of several historical processes that have changed the ways victims are perceived. In making suffering eloquent by rendering it in conceptual form, philosophy runs the risk of muting suffering, thereby neutralizing its ability to mobilize responses. In the experience of suffering philosophy finds a limit it must recognize as its own. Yet only by fulfilling its duty towards suffering - only by having the abolition of suffering as its ultimate goal - can philosophical thinking withstand a tacit complicity with injustice.