Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 14:48:19 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: Bruno Latour's _Pandora's Hope_ -- Some thoughts.... (long)


Brad

"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote:

> (1) It seems to me that all theory is grounded in narrative (emotionally
> grounded in attachment to an imaginative model, e.g., believing that
> it is important to examine unreflected social customs and to live
> the life of a rigorous scientist), and that, while narrative can be
> thematized, whatever persons do, including theorizing, can proceed
> only on the basis of an "I want [whatever]".  Surely this has some
> connection to what I wrote in my posting about _Pandora's Hope_,
> about reason (episteme), reasonableness (phronesis) and [what
> Husserl so pointedly called:] "naivete" (doxa).  Our rational
> activity needs to be kept in perspective by reasonableness,
> and "perspective" seems to me to always have as one of its
> aspects narrativity.

As described above the notion of knowledge grounded in narrative is fine. I
believe however that narrative is often used to paper over problematic racks in
the arguments being presented. Thought experiments based on psuedo-evidence are
a comparatively common occurance in science and it is precisley in that use of
narrative that I get most nervous. The tendency seems to be to believe that
stories, narratives have in some way a grounding in truth, this is not I believe
the case.

> (2) What's wrong with *white space* in computer manuals?  I think
> each "point" the manual is trying to make should be surrounded
> by white space.  Why?  One reason is that it seems to give
> the point "closure" and suggests a natural unit of "digestion"
> and also a place to rest.  Also, the white space provides
> a place to write notes.  Maybe the way paintings are hung
> in museums with "wall space" (unlike the victorian
> way of filling the entire wall with pictures packed
> frame-to-frame) is an analogy?

Bad typographic practice, makes the information harder to read through making
the movements of the eye more jerky making the unit of digestion harder to
absorb - white space could be provided through bigger margins - personally I
write in notebooks...

> In _Pandora's Hope_, I do not think Latour is advocating
> "our liberal human democracies", i.e., democracy
> based on *voting* as his ideal/model.  I think he writes
> about the classical Greek polis because it was a model [albeit
> a very restricted model!] for participatory / conversational
> democracy.

Yes I'm inclined to agree, however I was interested in expanding the model
because of our ongoing need to get the social/political institutions to consider
the nonhuman as part of the legislative arena.

> As for artifacts being "full-fledged social actors", *my*
> position is that artifacts (Latour's nonhumans?) are
> not and cannot be *citizens* (Latour's humans?).  How
> the community decides to live can be negotiated
> only in the conversation of the citizens.  But (obviously?)
> artifacts increasingly determine what actually happens,
> as opposed to what the citizens may decide they
> want to have happen (did anybody really want Chernobyl
> or for the recent national forest "controlled burn" in
> New Mexico to get out of control, etc.?).

A future, scenario:
Why is this important, perhaps as important as the political strand? In the near
future somebody may create an AI system that could be considered to be alive -
this mess of silicon, atoms, gallium arsenide and electricity will need to be
protected from the idiot scientist, corporation and state who will reach for the
off switch.

>
> Taking such things into consideration (and trying to
> be succinct...), it seems to me that the citizens
> need to speak up not only for their own interests,
> but also as proxies for all the factors that cannot
> speak for themselves, including future generations
> and artifacts (although I don't think it is
> appropriate to anthropomorphize the artifacts; the
> voice we need to give to artfacts is more like: "This
> nonhuman system will do this to you if you do
> such-and-such", or: "No matter what you do, this
> artifactual system is going to have this impact"...).
>

Agreed - It is this aspect of the human, nonhuman discussion that I am
especially interested in. It is plainly impossible to get a 'rock' to vote,
however the political institutions need to consider these more concretely, both
for future generations but also because the rock, the nonhuman could be
considered in some sense or other as having rights! Anthropomorphisation should
always be avoided, if only because it does not give the object concerned the
respect it is due.

'can of worms.....'

regards

currently sharing my house with 3 humans, 3 cats, and a couple of billion
microscopic lifeforms...

steve.devos



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