Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#27 Matheus Ferreira de Barros: Technology, Spheres, and the Human Being
16 Plays22 hours ago
In this episode of the AITEC podcast, Sam Bennett and Roberto Carlos speak with Matheus Ferreira de Barros, a philosopher of technology at PUC-Rio and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, about the work of Peter Sloterdijk. Ferreira de Barros introduces Sloterdijk’s philosophy of technology, focusing on the idea that human beings and technology co-evolve and that technology plays a constitutive role in human life rather than merely serving as an external tool.The conversation explores Sloterdijk’s Spheres project, including his account of insulation, distance from nature, and the creation of protective interiors that stabilize human existence at biological, psychological, and symbolic levels. The discussion also examines the loss of large-scale meaning structures in modernity, the role of religion and culture as technologies of existential security, and how contemporary technologies, including AI, may both disrupt and reshape the spheres through which human life becomes livable.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:16
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome to the ATEC podcast. Today we are joined by Mateus Fejera de Bajos, a philosopher of technology at PUC-Rio and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, whose work engages the philosophy of technology from the perspective of Heidegger, German philosophical anthropology, and contemporary environmental questions.
00:00:37
Speaker
He
Mateus' Journey from Engineering to Philosophy
00:00:38
Speaker
is the author of The Question Concerning Technology in a Planetary Age and co-author of the article Peter Sloterdijk's Philosophy of Technology from Anthropogenesis to the Anthropocene.
00:00:52
Speaker
Thanks for joining us, Matthias. Yeah, thanks a lot. It's my pleasure. I suppose we can start by getting a feel for who Matthias is, right? So why don't you tell us about yourself a little bit and how you got into maybe philosophy in general, but also, you know, the work of Peter Sloterdijk in particular.
Impact of Sloterdijk's 'The Rules for the Human Park'
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. ah Actually, and ah made my BA in engineering and also a master in engineering. I was very far from philosophical research when I was younger, but feed the humanity somehow is it's always something that has always attracted me a lot.
00:01:35
Speaker
And after I finished with my master, i realized that no it's not that fun made in making a PhD in in engineering so I decided to definitely at a distance myself a little bit from engineering and then I made another master in philosophy then I have started to study to study Heidegger German phenomenology things that I thought there was really exciting topics and then when I had begun my PhD I and was searching for some author which is like related to Heidegger but it was not the very popular somehow somehow I can could give a contribution studying like a different author from the usual landscape
00:02:35
Speaker
and then I landed up in a text, maybe it's the text, the most famous one from Sloterdijk, which is called the Rules for for the Human Park.
Teaching Philosophy of Technology
00:02:48
Speaker
It's a text which was published in 1999 and this text, when he was published, he really started a very, a query with the supporters of critical theory, mainly Ruben Hadamas.
00:03:07
Speaker
There was a really debate there, a debate about technology because he talks about a little bit about ah biotechnology in that text, at least it's the background discussion.
00:03:21
Speaker
And then this topic ah really got me and when I proceeded, I was doing a PhD dissertation about his work. yeah And yeah, this is how things go.
00:03:33
Speaker
And now I work as assistant professor in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and mainly teaching philosophy of technology to engineering students.
Overview of Sloterdijk's Major Works
00:03:44
Speaker
And yeah, this perspective somehow is really still attracts me a lot in developing stuffs stuff related to it.
00:03:58
Speaker
Very cool. So yeah, like you know you just brought up Slatterdyke and that's going to kind of our focus today is your work on Peter Slatterdyke's philosophy of technology.
00:04:09
Speaker
And yeah so for listeners who don't know Slatterdyke, you already mentioned um that one famous article. what was it? Rules for the Human Park? Rules for the Human Park. Is it sometimes translated to human zoo? I can't. Anyway, but... Yeah, yeah. It might be... Yeah, I think there's a different translation. Exactly. yeah Anyway, so, yeah, so if people don't know Sloterdijk, you know, could you just mention some of his other key works and then just kind of roughly indicate the sort of questions and topics he takes up?
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, Sloterdijk is in a very ah prolific author. And then... sim his first ah ah worker who turned to be very popular is called the critique of simple reason it was published in 1983 it's a worker when he was really engaged somehow with critical theory yet he was with a kind of a philosophical project of making critical theory a new fresh beginning somehow.
Metaphors in 'Spheres' Trilogy and Human Development
00:05:18
Speaker
He has a kind of diagnosis that this kind of theory, mainly after Habermas was not taking a kind of really exciting direction and he was really attached to the work of Adorno, but somehow he got into phenomenology and yeah it's a very interesting book and that in the 80s it was really a best seller in and Germany and also in other parts of the world it has been translated into many ah different languages after that we published it some minor
00:06:03
Speaker
minor essays which was which are always interesting somehow but it's really like a big work who projected him into the intellectual scene was this essay which I have already mentioned the rules for for the human park which is also translated by the rules of the human rule, there is a kind of discussion between what the correct translation, but never mind. Yeah, and after that, I guess, probably the main work, I guess, the most important is his trilogy Spears, I guess we will talk a little bit about it today.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's a very ambitious project which ah he departs from phenomenology, from French post-structuralism, from anthropology, science, he really makes a kind of a mess with ah a lot of different references.
Recent Works and the Anthropocene
00:07:05
Speaker
but hey and in his trilogy he somehow constructed constructs a very clever theory, a kind of meta theory of what are human societies and what are the human beings.
00:07:25
Speaker
yeah the The first volume of the trilogy is called Bubbles, then got the globes and foams, which are metaphors for from this kind of spatial metaphors, which represent how human beings develop themselves through time, and how human societies develop themselves.
00:07:51
Speaker
We will talk about and a bit more about it, but I guess it's just more yeah interesting work. It was published in the beginning of the 2000s and recently he has published a lot of things. i would I stress ah a very interesting book which is called ah What Happened in the 20th Century.
Philosophy of Technology and Homo Technologicus
00:08:14
Speaker
It's a collection of essays which he talks about the Anthropocene, he talks about technology and probably it's a good, it's also a good recommendation of people who are interested interested in his work to to delve into a little bit.
00:08:32
Speaker
That sounds fascinating. And and it's, um you know, going back to what you said earlier about you teaching a a class, an introduction to the philosophy of technology. i mean, this is, I feel like it's a little...
00:08:45
Speaker
At least in my undergraduate education, nothing really even close to that was available to to me. i So I have a feeling that a lot of listeners are going to, a lot of this content is going to be new to them.
00:08:57
Speaker
ah So um I think a good way to kind of get into Slaughter Dyke might be to think about a pretty core claim of his, and maybe you can kind of help us understand what that means a little bit.
00:09:11
Speaker
So, um, you know, I think if we were going to you know invent Latin terms, you know, we we would be called, uh, Homo technologicus or something like that, right? that We are fundamentally technological beings.
00:09:24
Speaker
it It literally, according to Slaughter Dyke, constitutes what we are. So maybe as you are introducing us into this space of Slaughter Dyke's philosophy technology, let's start with that. what What does it mean that
Co-evolution of Technology and Humanity
00:09:41
Speaker
literally I am constituted by technology?
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, ah this is a very interesting form of introducing Slotodak's work and it's important to stress that this is not like a and novelty.
00:10:02
Speaker
He's really attached to a whole ah whole intellectual scenario or which we call the ah German philosophical anthropology, like earlier authors like Arnold Gillen, Paul Osberg, also Dieter Klassens, were authors who really influenced him and they were they had a similar thats um how similar positions regarding this radical relation between human beings and technology.
00:10:40
Speaker
But I guess the main argument for this stance that humans are constituted technological beings is the change, the complex change that we have experienced in our human evolution through technology. And he talks about it as a really
00:11:08
Speaker
Technology and human beings are like co-birth entities, like we i cannot grasp ah the birth of technology without thinking the birth of human beings, and we cannot think the birth of human beings without thinking the birth of this.
00:11:26
Speaker
ah technological mediation of the environment and his claims are both both developed from a kind of existential perspective that we are a kind of and naked beings and always making sense and mediating our relation with the world and with nature through technology But his claims are always based in scientific researches ah from anthropology and from human evolution, which is trust this radical kind of eccentric human evolution trajectory that was enabled through the mediation of technology like human gathering tools, so fire and the development of
00:12:24
Speaker
of societies which are kind of which are not nomads the building of spaces of walls of houses these are also technologies which ah modifies in a very deep way how the the environment makes our evolutionary pressure through our and then changes our biological constitution.
Technology Beyond Tools: Cultural and Existential Mediation
00:12:58
Speaker
I guess these are the ones. Yeah, I was thinking too, you know, you're talking about how what is his position on, you know, technology being partly constitutive of the human being.
00:13:09
Speaker
ah You're saying how that harmonizes with the German german tradition of philosophical anthropology. But, you know, I think also probably, i mean, I'm not I don't know too much evolutionary biology, but I feel like this is a pretty this corresponds with the the scientific consensus, you know, that I think probably evolutionary biology, people would agree that humans and technology co-evolved that, um, technology tool use. They're not really after thoughts, but actually kind of played a causal role in shaping our biology, shaping our cognition and our, um, social structures, you know, I mean, cause I mean, obviously tools, um,
00:13:56
Speaker
Anyway, I'm just pretty sure that like you know we we can find early stone tools that predated Homo sapiens. So it's not as though like you it's only with Homo sapiens that you find tools. You find the tools prior to Homo sapiens, and so that kind of suggests um um that you know we are going to co-evolve with these tools. At any rate, I guess one thing maybe to you know to think about... like I have a thought though, because it's not just tools, right? I mean, in this and in in this philosophy, culture is a technology as well, as is, ah you know, even a certain language, I don't want to call language games, that's too Wittgensteinian.
00:14:43
Speaker
So am I right about that, Matthias? It's really a conception of technology that is very expansive. Yeah, yeah, I mean he has a very broad the sense of what technology is definitely and this is somehow it's an approximation that he has with Heidegger, because for Heidegger technology is not just a a set of instruments and and tools, but the technology is a kind of way of unveiling what reality is, how we relate ourselves with the world and how ah ah we mediate ourselves with all the things that are
Existential Meaning-Making through Technology
00:15:26
Speaker
surrounding us.
00:15:27
Speaker
How we make sense ah from reality is a kind of technological ah making sense of reality. he somehow has he has some approximations with ah with that idea in the sense of not to taking technology as just as the set of instruments but really a really big power that it's it's present in and all our possibilities of interacting with the external world and also because of this so very big powerful way this if we take this big power from a historical perspective this has
00:16:18
Speaker
make ah make ourselves really different and change it how we can perceive reality and how can we make sense of everything that's surrounding us. It's a kind of feedback ah mechanism.
00:16:33
Speaker
So that's helpful. Because, yes, like like you said, Roberto, you know, probably what counts as technology. might be more expansive in the context of Slaughter Dyke.
00:16:44
Speaker
um Architecture, language, maybe. I mean, I imagine there are evolutionary biologists who think that way, but yeah, it's probably more expansive here. And then I think what is being constituted, in other words, like Who or what the human being is maybe is probably has a little bit of a different angle in Slaughteredike because like you just were bringing up with this like there's this element of meaning making, meaning orientation,
00:17:11
Speaker
world creation or world dwelling. you know that's so that's i guess what I'm saying is that like you know from the evolutionary biological perspective, they're probably more worried about like the organism's biological cognitive traits, how those evolve and how there's like a co-constitution between technology and those traits. Whereas probably Sloterdijk has a more existential dimension related to the human being as like a
00:17:42
Speaker
yeah, a meaning oriented creature and being. And anyway, do you you want to comment on that? Matthias? Is that, do you think that's like fair? What I just said about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I guess so what's a perhaps just sharpening up this that has somehow differences with ah evolutionary biology because I'm not a biologist but I have the the the feeling that scientists when they talk about human evolution they are really
00:18:15
Speaker
orientated to explain some phenomena in a kind of causal relation and really being definite or really being worried just ah about ah the the biological sense of of this phenomena.
00:18:35
Speaker
But what Sloterdijk really claims and that I think is really interesting in his work is relating this evolution of our very specific biological condition with how our societies have been constructed, how our cultures have been constructed, with how our religions have been constructed.
00:19:00
Speaker
And this all forms a kind of really ontological different background, right? It's not a kind of a scientific causal explanation, but a multicarious explanation taking it into account the religion experiences, cultural reality, how we perceive things and how we make sense of things.
Societal Evolution and Protective Spaces
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, so I hope we get to, I mean, you know I don't know how how far we're going to go, but I definitely wish we get to the ah ah theological you know aspects of of Slaughter Dyke, how that's a also a product, even even philosophy, but let's see if we get there.
00:19:43
Speaker
um I guess we can move now to the the primary function of these technological devices when construed in a very expansive way. ah So maybe you can tell us about how our way of living technology is is not only driving it forward, but there's a specific way in which we we are using technology.
00:20:09
Speaker
We are trying to get some distance from from nature, red and tooth and claw and all that good stuff. And we're instead trying to um make little, i think the word is bubbles for ourselves, of comfort and luxury. um So we go there next.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this kind of of a theory of distance ah production and distance making, somehow he iterates this theory from a German anthropologist called Dieter Klassens, who wrote a a very important book called The the Concrete and the Abstract.
00:20:57
Speaker
and and he develops a theory how society how societies evolves really are in the kind of mechanism of external uterus or how we tend to replicate this mechanism of isolation which uterus makes from the fetus to societal structures and then how we make like when we make cities and when we want to make ah houses we are really mediating our existential distance to other beings
00:21:34
Speaker
through these constructions, like when we set a family and we set up a house and we put like other human beings inside that house and other ah things that can need to be isolated outside that house, this is a form of making kind of an ontological relation and creating these spaces in somehow which are not the like physical spaces only but our psychological spaces, cultural spaces and even existential spaces somehow and he inverts that vision from Heidegger also because Heidegger also talks so a lot about ah space in a kind of existential sense
00:22:22
Speaker
and then Dieter Claessens is a very and important reference when he inherits his theory of how the development of of society and societal structures really emulates how the uterus function and through other means this is somehow related with this distance production and making Yeah. So that's yeah super interesting stuff. Like, so Clausen's and Slaughterbeck there's, they're both kind of thinking that, um, human societies kind of take the logic of the uterus in the sense of like creating a sort of protective interior. Um, and I mean, I guess it's like
00:23:15
Speaker
the on a biological level, you know, uterus functions as like a buffer for buffering the organism from the outside. So it's going to regulate temperature, nutrition, things like that, minimizes, um, exposure, you know, that sort of thing.
00:23:35
Speaker
Um, but I guess like these external uteruses, so to speak,
00:23:43
Speaker
they have like ah more of like an existential function perhaps. I mean, I guess they also have ah biological function, Um, which I think, you know, I think evolutionary biologists would agree on. Obviously a house has a biological, you know, nature distancing function, right? Like I'm at a more of a distance from nature, so to speak in my house, because I'm not as, you know, um, subject to, uh, the climate, like that sort of thing. Like, uh, it's a kind of buffer, but I guess it's like,
00:24:18
Speaker
So there's like biological distancing where you reduce physical exposure to like colds and predators. But then there's like a slaughtered type of distancing, which is going to have to do with like reducing maybe like existential exposure, managing anxiety.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I don't know. So anyway can you talk me about like that a this idea of like and a more like existential exposure. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. i mean Because we can take a a space, ah when we talk about space, we can take it just like physically, as you have said.
00:24:55
Speaker
ah We can make this make sense of this theory, like, no, we are just the distancing ourselves from dinosaurs and from climate. but we when we set up like a cultural a background and a cultural kind of structure, we distance ourselves from other ah human groups, because we set a kind of rules and practices and and for other human beings to be integrated in that group, he needs to
00:25:28
Speaker
ah to behave in somehow, to behave in a specific way, to practice this ritual, this form of life with you, exactly.
Religious Experiences and Societal Order
00:25:40
Speaker
And this is all also related with how we negotiate distances with with other groups. and this is somehow can be read also psychologically because when we set like a home and a place like an institution we also add sprint the ah the ability of make things ah predictable right and this is related to safety and to ah how we are not supposed to external stress because we know how things will become in the future
00:26:17
Speaker
So these kinds of constructions are always also places which can isolate ah ourselves from external psychological stresses. I've talked about a culture and also.
00:26:33
Speaker
and yeah And I guess when Slotoday talks about this in his trilogy about how we mediate these spaces,
00:26:43
Speaker
he is
00:26:47
Speaker
is also worried about ah how we can reconstruct a history of describing these forms of isolating ourselves from the environment and then uh making a kind of diagnosis of our epoch in the sense of this historically sense making of uh technologies of isolation and and in negotiation spaces with other human beings right it's not a a diagnosis that based in a in a very like a temporal relation but uh it's a really spatio maker special special
00:27:37
Speaker
category which is fundamental to make this kind of civilizational diagnosis of our time.
00:27:45
Speaker
I want to go back to something you said about reducing uncertainty, because I think for you know a lot of people, the idea of a protective sphere from from nature is very straightforward.
00:27:58
Speaker
I don't want to get rained on. i don't want to... there um I live in California. I have many friends who have bears in their yard sometimes, right? So you don't want to be near the bears. So all that makes sense.
00:28:09
Speaker
There's also... i mean, Slutterdike is also saying that we create constructs to protect ourselves from anxiety. So this reminds me a little bit of like, you know, maybe ah Hobbes or Freud, who said that we come up with theological constructs to protect ourselves from the anxiety of of death.
00:28:32
Speaker
Or also like Adam Smith says that we came up with religion to get some sort of explanation for why things are the way they are, right? It had some kind of ah explanatory power and that's why, you know, we created these to have a little bit of a, I don't know, um
00:28:53
Speaker
to let... us at least feel that we have some knowledge about what's going on. So so is is you know i just want to double click on this. This is what's something similar to this is what Slaughter like is saying, right? We create theological constructs, even philosophical qua constructs to feel less epistemic uncertainty which translates to biological stress? Did I did i get that right?
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There is a ah very interesting part in the second volume of the trilogy of fears, which Sloterdijk talks a lot about religion and He reminds us that religion experiences can be interpreted in a special ah relations, like when we set up a religion ah practice, for instance, and a set of institutions which are related to this.
00:29:53
Speaker
we somehow need to separate what is pure from what is impure, what is evil from what is good, like what is sacred from what is profane, and this act of separating things, like ah putting things outside and making things that can be assimilated from near from us,
00:30:19
Speaker
is also our kind of religion experience,
Symbolic Structures in Human Evolution
00:30:22
Speaker
right? When we are and involved in that, we need to build up these environments and make this kind of separation rules, which can be interpreted in a special sense somehow.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I guess you you're right when you return to these
00:30:42
Speaker
other philosophers and authors, when when you talk about this talked about this regarding to a relation i mean other inference other interesting references for Sloterdijk is Donald Winnicott this British psychoanalyst because Donald Winnicott he yeah stress a lot to how this kind of mother-newborn relation
00:31:15
Speaker
it's a kind of inclusive relation how how we we set up in the world we make our ourselves ah sure about how our things and how we have a kind of stable psychological structure is related with this kind of inclusion mechanism and inclusion relation, right? And this is also can be interpreted in a kind of spatial sense, like we create bubbles of security, like ah relationship so a some mother and a newborn, and after you grow up you create another sphere like the relation with your family and with your
00:31:55
Speaker
ah your whole friends and with the institutions and you. Life is also a movement of creating and destruction destruction of spheres. He emphasis this a lot, right?
00:32:10
Speaker
yeah Matthias, what would you say to a question like this? Kind of like someone might be thinking you know about this. like um Okay, you know from a biological point of view, they can see how we create... like niches or spheres that buffer us from physical threats like cold, hunger, predators. Everyone can come see, obviously, we need to kind of create those buffering spheres.
00:32:38
Speaker
But why, Slaughterweg, is that physical buffer incomplete? like why What is it about the human that we need those kind of like symbolic distinctions? or if we I mean, it's...
00:32:53
Speaker
yeah Anyway, I'm not sure how to put it, but like it's like, why why do we seem to need to make those distinctions of like pure and impure, sacred and profane? Why is that necessary for stabilizing human life? Because I'm just imagining someone who's listening to something like, oh, you know making those distinctions of um pure and impure, sacred and profane, that's really problematic. We should just only make spheres that are like physical protection.
00:33:18
Speaker
we don't we shouldn't have that um those symbolic distinctions. um Anyway, yeah does this question kind of make sense? is Yeah, I guess this is related with our evolutionary trajectory somehow, because as a human being has evolved in ah very different way,
00:33:45
Speaker
and with a bigger and bigger brain and with some more complex ah tools he was able he was enabled to to to see reality in a different way right it's a kind of feedback ah mechanism when you isolate yourself from the environmental threats yeah you also changes your physical constitution, like physiological constitution, and maybe to a structure where you have you don't have like to mediate your relation and to the environment ah with your physical body, but with your tools.
00:34:31
Speaker
And this requires a more... more refined the relation to a tool and to a conceptual level of making that tools and this with a conceptual level of what but the reality is and maybe what this evolutionary anthropologist make sense is this feedback relation and the progress of the complexity of our neuronal system
00:35:02
Speaker
and of the structure of social groups and how this enables earlier symbolical structures and how we can how we need to make sense of these external threats, not just with ah physical means, but also with the very rudimental, symbolical meanings of what death is, and how we can isolate some some dead corpse from our tribe. right
00:35:36
Speaker
And this beginning of symbolical exteriorization of our human capacities has a kind of straightforward
00:35:49
Speaker
path gaining more and more complexity. And this complexity can then need to be tamed in a more refined structure.
00:36:00
Speaker
I mean, we have this kind of relation which can yeah explain this progressive complexity. I don't know. yeah Yeah, it's really, I mean, it's fascinating to think about how, you know, the whole, I mean, everyone kind of knows about this, but like the whole idea of like, they now, could you know, um major nations will consider loneliness to be a sort of major threat at even a physical level. And i mean i guess that what's just interesting about human beings is that, yeah, we can be warm fed. i mean, maybe this applies to other animals too, but like we can be warm fed and safe, but
00:36:42
Speaker
physically safe, but we can still be anxious. We can still be ashamed. we can still be alienated and disoriented even when we are warm fed and
Interdependence Mediated by Symbolic Constructs
00:36:51
Speaker
physically safe. And so, like you said, there's some, there's some kind of complexity to the human being, um, a higher, like existential level of security beyond,
00:37:11
Speaker
to to avoid alienation, to avoid disorientation and those sort of things. Yeah, yeah, sure. And I mean, this is very ah related to Sloterdijk's claim that we we are we are somehow co-existential beings, right? We are not, as Heidegger has claimed, it like a ah radically open to true existence, right in this kind of abyss of of of nonsense, of the the opening of being, but to get sense of this, to this radical openness, we always count on the kind of dyadic formation, right we always count with ah one another, which we
00:38:05
Speaker
can help us to make sense of what this opening is and this like another is not like ah another human being not just another human being or another tool but can be really something else like can be a metaphysical construction a religion, a religious structure ah symbolic mechanism Because this is the kind of theatic relation, somehow can help us to tame this radical openness of reality.
00:38:45
Speaker
So I have ah i guess ah a comment and ah and a follow-up question. I'll give you the comment first. I can totally see I mean, I know, for example, that um if you are a religious believer, at end of life, you have sort of more, um you're calmer, you have less anxiety and all that.
00:39:04
Speaker
And that's a a clear benefit of religion. And apparently non-believers like myself will be freaking out completely when at the near end of life. but um So there's a good example of of you know how the symbolic... at least Join us, Roberto. Join us. I'm trying. I'm working on it.
00:39:22
Speaker
um So yes, the the symbolic, on on my view, would be very beneficial there. But maybe it's not as easy to see why um let's ah let's just say that I'm with something that everyone is familiar with. Like, i'm um ah let's just say I believe in Plato's theory of forms.
00:39:42
Speaker
i have a metaphysical perspective and I know what the meaning of like, you know, the sky is blue is it has to do with. the big blue thing form that Plato believes in. Why would um believing in that sort of philosophical framework or a metaphysical framework of that sort um alleviate some anxiety? i don't know if you can do anything to kind of motivate that idea.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Sloterek talks about this kind of historical trajectory of of this making sense and constructing spaces of of reality, which is really important for him.
00:40:24
Speaker
So earlier experiences of the first religions and then meca metaphysical thinking and then the scientific thinking of how we can explain reality and this also this really develops ourselves today in a kind of technological society which ah people cannot ah hold themselves like a this is like a kind of ah progressive movement right of making sense of the reality in true this religious metaphysical mechanisms because we are passed through
00:41:09
Speaker
a lot of narcissistic wounds,
Historical Shifts and Human Self-View
00:41:12
Speaker
right? This is a very also important concept for Zloterdijk, like Galileo has taught us that we are not as important as we thought because we are not in the center of the universe.
00:41:26
Speaker
Darwin has taught us that we are just ah one species from another. Freud has taught us that we are not like so conscious and rational as we would like.
00:41:41
Speaker
And this kind of narcissistic wounds lead us to a kind of making sense of the reality which which is very technological, it's really something like taming these environmental threats and really challenges us of constructing and theories and constructing and having a kind of ability of making histories for ourselves to to feel this this this sense, but
00:42:18
Speaker
it somehow locates this yes this this claim that you made in a kind of greater historical movement which is related to the development of technology itself and how we do not live ah in a world in a world anymore with a whole metaphysical unity like in the medieval age but we live in a very scattered world in which we isolate ourselves mainly through technological devices and this kind of existential void that we experience see is a kind of backlash of this process of secularization as ah Max Weber has also thought about.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting to think about how it's like In modernity, you know, we can we can think about progress in many ways, and I think it's legitimate, but it's interesting to think about, like, like in in certain ways, the you know pre-modern ideas were more like existentially sound in the sense of creating these, like, these things.
00:43:36
Speaker
like existential spheres of protection in the sense of like, yeah, you know, with Copernicus, like you said, you know, you have the... we're not the center of the of the cosmos um anywhere anymore. So like this idea that the cosmos itself is like a protective...
00:43:52
Speaker
um sphere sort of collapses, if that makes sense. And then with Darwin, you know, humans are not specially created. It's, you know, we're from blind evolutionary processes with Freud.
00:44:05
Speaker
You know, we're no longer transparent to ourselves. The ego is not the master of its own um house kind of thing. And it's like, that's like a collapse of inner life or like even your own inner life is no longer
00:44:23
Speaker
existentially safe or something. I'm not sure how to put this, but anyway, it's just interesting to think about how it's like, yeah, it's in so many many ways. It seems like modernity is, is, is, is progress and increase in technological power and an increase in comfort. But there's a, there's, there's a lot of like dissolution of like, you know, structures of meaning, I guess and that, um, we're,
00:44:49
Speaker
were were useful to us, I guess, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, this is... This is still to this thing that you've mentioned is totally related to the metaphor that Lottodike uses to describe our world, actually, which is called forms, which is the the third volume of spheres, right?
00:45:12
Speaker
Because forms are kind of a very fluid ah structure, which reminds us of like this very fluid reality that we have, that changes a lot, and more more more and more quickly.
00:45:30
Speaker
And this form is also, has a kind of allegory to we have about we do not experience a kind of unified metaphysical system as we have experienced, at least in the West, and and we live in a kind of co-isolated structure, right? Because we have a lot of bubbles that are superposed with each other, and individuals that are connected to each other, but at the same time are isolated.
00:46:04
Speaker
because we have a great difficulty of making big narratives of constructing like a large scale meaning makes sense, right? And this is very related somehow to our political situation nowadays and how democracies are like struggling, right? Because we live in a society which is more and more difficult to make these experiences of big
00:46:42
Speaker
sense-making histories and making these histories and and at the same time not going into a kind of fascist or very extreme totalitarian regime,
Globalization and Diverse Narratives
00:46:58
Speaker
right?
00:46:58
Speaker
How we construct bigger
00:47:03
Speaker
big histories with ah which can connect us and at the same time, ah which is histories are ah flexible enough ah to assimilate the differences and alterities, right?
00:47:17
Speaker
It's a really a challenge, here ah basically, and the challenge is bigger when we think our planetary scale that we live nowadays, right?
00:47:28
Speaker
so I have a question here just to make sure that I understand it because ah this is I feel like this is ah this is a big deal and I think I grasp it. So we lost all these huge metanarratives, right? you know Copernicus, where all we lost those.
00:47:45
Speaker
and And then so now we try to come up with... um maybe smaller scale narratives to give us meaning and all that. Maybe someone is like, I know a person who like is super into science and they're like, at least we're discovering what the world is really like. And I feel like you know it's a little too hardcore for me. I'm more more of but an instrumentalist about science than a realist, but whatever.
00:48:09
Speaker
And so he has his narrative, but then other people have their narratives. And it's like, I don't know, something, some kind of nationalism or whatever.
00:48:19
Speaker
And then these narratives can't coexist very well. and And so that's not much coherence across the society. Right. And so that is what's causing the the the more large scale institutions to not function as well. is Did I get that right?
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean this is probably our challenge, right? How we make this very pluralist view of ah cultures and and lifestyles and sense-making the religious experiences of working together in ah an age which is more and more a difficult to to
00:49:04
Speaker
to organize these things in a kind of environment which people have a kind of a previsibility of what the tomorrow will be, right?
00:49:17
Speaker
And how we can build these institutions to to make all this plurality work together, right? Because we are more and more dependent on upon each other, right? We are more and more in a globalized economy, which commerce is, and fluxes are more and more important.
00:49:42
Speaker
This is not something that we can engage upon, I guess. at least reverse in the short term. and But the challenge of making this arrangement arrangement of small-scale narratives into big scenarios which are stable are kind of put into the challenge of our our political task.
The Womb's Influence and Protective Interiors
00:50:06
Speaker
Our micro-bubbles are getting in the way of a bigger bubble. Yeah. in This is a little bit of a shift, but I just wanted to kind of... um you know quickly touch on the theme weve we've brought up earlier, which I think is one of the more interesting dimensions of Slaughter Dyke, is this whole idea of the human being sort of having basically our our origin in the womb is really important to Slaughter Dyke. He makes a big deal about that. you know Before we're in the world, we are in the womb, so to speak. And
00:50:45
Speaker
he thinks this origin, this, um, this intrauterine origin is like very important for everything that follows in human life because like after birth, his thought is we're kind of continually trying to recreate these sort of protective interiors, these artificial room, like spaces, whether it's through technical means or symbolic means, maybe those are the same, but, um, don't know. Can you just talk a little bit that that comes the book spheres. He talks a lot about, um,
00:51:15
Speaker
um this this original situation of being in the room and how it's a lot more significant than we might normally assume. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is really interesting from a philosophical point of view, because I do not have a notice of a philosophy ah philosopher making this perspective as part as important as Schlotterdijk makes.
00:51:46
Speaker
And this is somehow really original, like ah for ah for example ah Heidegger when he talks about our existential condition and being in time, one big point of this this whole Heideggerian narrative is okay, but when when the Dasein comes up, when the Dasein becomes Dasein, there is kind of a temporal and cut that we can make, like the baby is not a... a how he becomes this meaning this entity which makes meanings of that of our own existence, right?
00:52:27
Speaker
This is a big ah challenge, how we can somehow organize this and make a dialogue between biological scientists biological sciences and existential perspective of reality, for example.
00:52:49
Speaker
I was just talking about Heidegger because this is a ah big question like for hegen for people who research Heidegger, how we can integrate this relation between psychoanalysis and human development into an existential perspective and what Sloterdijk makes when he talks about this or how wombba being in a womb is a kind of primeval condition and describes our ah development, our human development as an act of a progressively destructioning destructing spheres and making spheres, like ah when we were born, we destructure obviously a sphere of of the womb,
00:53:40
Speaker
but we establish a new sphere of the mother-newborn relation and when we grow up we destroy a previous bubble and we create a new structure of a relation with our family and with our friends and this is a progressive movement to our develop development And this theory, I guess this is really important because it really makes a ah dialogue with the existential philosophy and phenomenology with the biological sciences, which claims this this importance to this development.
00:54:23
Speaker
like ah nowadays a lot of people research how that the the relation when we are a a fetus, like from like musical experiences and like the voice patterns that we hear outside can modify our existence ah afterwards and when we are adults, right?
00:54:46
Speaker
and how we can make this sense of these things from an existential perspective. I guess the Zlotadak's theory is very interesting because we can make this dialogue very smoothly and organic somehow.
AI as a Challenge to Human Uniqueness
00:55:01
Speaker
That's right. I started listening to heavy metal in the womb. That's why I still like heavy metal. yeah um Let's talk about AI very briefly now then, because ah there's there's so many things we can talk about here. But um yeah, let's let's.
00:55:20
Speaker
OK, how about this? and Let me start with this one i and then I'll see where you take a very open ended question for you, Matthias. um AI is now able to do all sorts of tasks that that I used to think was like, you know you need a human brain for this, right? But it can do things much more quickly than I can, shockingly fast. and And we've already seen in the history of AI, people kept saying, oh, computers won't be able to do that, but then it keeps happening. And now it does...
00:55:49
Speaker
ah basically some pretty high levels tasks is AI or particular generative AI, I guess I should specify. Is it? Is it? You know, it's a good or bad? I guess that's a really open ended question for you. Right? is Is it? Is it shattering our bubbles? Is it? Is it strengthening our bubble? What?
00:56:09
Speaker
What's it doing to us? Yeah, there is a a kind of interesting perspective that at least I i defend that we can read AI in nowadays using this theory of humanology from Sutterdijk and from the kind of the history of narcissistic wounds because as we we mentioned it earlier Freud began his... this... had make up this this term when he was kind of defending psychoanalysis from people who are not the very... ah
00:56:50
Speaker
very... who were not very positive related to justos psychoanalysis and he was trying to kind of justify how ah this resistance to psychoanalysis is a kind of rejection from an anesthetic wound, right?
00:57:10
Speaker
As Galileo has ah taught us that we are not the center of the universe, he received a lot of criticism and Darwin as well, and Freud, he was not very humble, but he was just ah making his point like that I am a kind of psychoanalysis, the kind of third narcissistic wound ah in the history of humanity and this is a claim that Slotbeck makes in a text called ah wounded by machines and that he claims but this history does not ah stop with Freud like when we have like discovered the
00:57:49
Speaker
the the DNA and something like that we have also made a kind of a magic wound right? we yeah because we can perhaps our behavior and a lot of stuff can be explained from the arrangement of molecules and proteins somehow, and AI nowadays can be interpreted as a kind of narcissistic wound in this in this view, right? Because we are we may think, oh, we are not somehow so intelligent and so special as we thought that we that we are.
00:58:27
Speaker
But a second on the development on this diagnosis, which is very important, is when we analyze this history of narcissistic wounds, is because this Narcissic Mundo is not a symmetrical true society, right?
00:58:43
Speaker
There are a lot of people who are kind of in the vanguard of this Narcissic Mundo and they have a kind of privilege of transmitting this novelty and this news to people and they can make up a kind of privileged position when this new narrative and this new story uh a kind of developed develops true society and they can have a lot of benefits from this uh kind of uh
00:59:17
Speaker
disposition, right? And another group can be just a passive receiver and can just ah suffer in the short term, like, ah can start like, oh my god, what is happening with the quiteta my life, with ah our society, what our destiny, right?
00:59:37
Speaker
And what we we could think about this whole development of of AI regarding these questions of AI as this i could is really this stuff that people think.
00:59:53
Speaker
But we can think about how we can design this political institutions somehow and political frameworks in order to to make this development smoother and not to shatter our social structures, right?
01:00:13
Speaker
Because as this development goes, there will be a lot of reaction, there will be a lot of reactions, reactionaries to this kind of technological breakthroughs.
01:00:27
Speaker
And we as as our, we ah as society, we should think ah politically how we can design these technologies not ah just profit oriented, but as their own development they can help ah everyone regarding this asymmetry of how this technology ah breakthrough affects the whole group of the people.
Integrating AI Thoughtfully
01:00:57
Speaker
this is This is really one of the very interesting aspects of your work, you know this idea that um, AI is inflicting another narcissistic wound.
01:01:08
Speaker
Um, you know, cause like, I think, you know, prior to AI, maybe, you know, you might've had the thought that like the human being is alone in, in terms of interpreting the world, in terms of reasoning, um, kind of having meaningful conversation, providing explanation. But now it seems like, okay,
01:01:28
Speaker
we have this uncanny situation where, yeah, the tools we use, the technology is now, um doing those things that might've seemed, um, like only we could do And i mean, it sounds like to me, like you're saying, you know, from a kind of slaughtered perspective, we need to think about um,
01:01:56
Speaker
how AI might be harmful in terms of creating um yeah spheres of existential safety, i guess. I'm not sure. Just like we need to think about um yeah like how they might be harming our attempt to kind of create livable...
01:02:18
Speaker
existential worlds or something like that. right why the bubbles Yeah, exactly. yeah yeah And one ah important ah thing regarding this whole story is like we can see in this this in the history of science and technology, like after these narcissistic wounds, to humanity always finds a way of dealing with this wonder somehow, right? And integrating these technologies and these scientific developments into societal structure.
01:02:50
Speaker
And we are doing this with AI now, right? ah ah Universities are changing our the whole system of production of knowledge of ah of the job market is changing.
01:03:03
Speaker
But what we, what our really, or really like hardcore task is how can we design this hybrid relation that we have with technology and that we have always been with technology. We have talked about a lot about this today, like our evolutionary condition, our past as a species, which is totally related with technology and this is also our future right this is not something that now no now like 20 years ago we are very distant from technology and now we are very near from it no we have always been really near from technology and what counts for our future is our ability to design together to politically engage
01:03:53
Speaker
ah and into how this technology can cooperate with our new modes of living, right? And not making a kind of sense that we can stop this technological development and we can like isolate AI, no, no, no.
Future Research Plans in Paris
01:04:11
Speaker
ah like from tomorrow on and no one will use like shotgp or other stuff right but we need really to delve into this challenge and to how to build a kind of co-intelligent religious relationship with those machines that will not lead from a blink on from our view.
01:04:35
Speaker
Fascinating yeah that's ah that's a that's a good thought. um Maybe to wrap things up, you can tell us ah what you're going to work on next. Are you still going to continue with Slaughter Dyke's philosophy of technology or are you doing something else?
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah. And now until March, I'm um in Paris, so working in the University of Paris 8, which is a very exciting a place, very important for French post-structuralism.
01:05:07
Speaker
and because I'm really interested now in and french French theory as as we talk and mainly about an author which it has a lot of resonances with Zlote Dijk which is called Bernard Stigler is an author which develops a lot about the technology and he has a very Kind of similar position with this, our very intimate relations with technology, but he departs from other the theoretical perspective, which is more like related to French paleoanthropologist, André Leroy-Gohan, Guilbert Simondon, this other framework.
01:05:53
Speaker
and now I'm really interested in how we can and build ah and read the ah similarities between the work of S. Rotherdeck and this French philosopher called Bernard Sigler which is are also really engaged into how we can read more profoundly this relation between humans and technology.
01:06:24
Speaker
You'll have to tell us about it. so Okay. We've been in conversation with Matthias Ferreira de Bajos. Matthias, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks a lot.
01:06:35
Speaker
It's pleasure.