Mediated Cognition: Information Technologies and the Sciences of Mind

This dissertation investigates the interconnections between minds, media, and the cognitive sciences. It asks what it means for media to have effects upon the mind: do our tools influence the ways that we think? It considers what scientific evidence can be brought to bear on the question: how can we know and measure these effects? Ultimately, it looks to the looping pathways by which science employs technological media in understanding the mind, and the public comes to understand and respond to these scientific discourses. I contend that like human cognition itself, the enterprise of cognitive science is a deeply and distinctively mediated phenomenon. This casts a different light on contemporary debates about whether television, computers, or the Internet are changing our brains, for better or for worse. Rather than imagining media effects as befalling a fictive natural mind, I draw on multiple disciplines to situate mind and the sciences thereof as shaped from their origins through interaction with technology. Our task is then to interrogate the forms of cognition and attention fostered by different media, alongside their attendant costs and benefits. The first chapter positions this dissertation between the fields of media studies and STS, developing a case for the reality of media effects without the implication of technological determinism. The second considers the history of technological metaphor in scientific characterizations of the mind. The third section consists of three separate chapters on the history of cognitive science, presenting the core of my case for its uniquely mediated character. Across three distinct eras, what unifies cognitive science is the quest to understand the mind using computational systems, operating by turns as generative metaphors and tangible models. I then evaluate the contemporary cognitive-scientific research on the question of media effects, and the growing role of electronic media in science. My fifth and final section develops a content analysis: what is said in the media about the popular theory that media themselves, in one way or another, are causing attention deficit disorders? The work concludes with a summary and some reflections on mind, culture, technoscience and markets as recursively interwoven causal systems

Штучний інтелект

Funding: Research, preparation of materials and preparation of the textbook were carried out under the project – grant no. PPI/KAT/2019/1/00015/U/00001 "Cognitive technologies – second-cycle studies in English" and were carried under the KATAMARAN program Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). The program is co-financed by the European Social Fund under the Knowledge Education Development Operational Program, a non-competition project entitled "Supporting the institutional capacity of Polish universities through the creation and implementation of international study programs" implemented under Measure 3.3. Internationalization of Polish higher education, specified in the application for project funding no. POWR.03.03.00-00-PN 16/18. The project was carried out in cooperation with the Silesian University of Technology (project leader – Poland) and the Kiev National University of Construction and Architecture (project partner – Ukraine).Фінансування: Дослідження, підготовка матеріалів та підготовка підручника були здійснені в рамках проекту - грант №. PPI/KAT/2019/1/00015/U/00001 "Когнітивні технології-навчання другого циклу англійською мовою", які здійснювалися за програмою КАТАМАРАН Польське національне агентство академічного обміну (NAWA) . Програма спільно фінансується Європейським соціальним фондом у рамках програми "Знання" Оперативна програма розвитку освіти, позаконкурентний проект під назвою "Підтримка інституційної спроможності польських університетів через створення та реалізація міжнародних навчальних програм ", що реалізуються відповідно до Заходу 3.3. Інтернаціоналізація польської вищої освіти, зазначена у заявці на фінансування проекту POWR.03.03.00-00-PN 16/18. Проект здійснювався у співпраці з Сілезьким технологічним університетом (керівник проекту - Польща) та Київським національним університетом будівництва та архітектури (партнер проекту - Україна)

Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: An Analysis of Work in the Artificial Intelligence Industry

Karl Marx theorized capitalism as a relation between labour, capital and machines. For Marx, capital, the process of self-augmenting value appropriated from human labour, is inherently driven by competition to replace labour in production with machines. Marx goes as far as to describe machines as capital’s “most powerful weapon” for suppressing working class revolt. Marx, however, could not have predicted the computing machines – such as artificial intelligence – which now form the basis for an increasingly cybernetic capital. Since Marx’s time, many Marxist thinkers have sought to apply or update his approach to the cybernetic era. The influential post-operaismo school argues that fundamental revisions to Marx’s approach are necessitated by the changed nature of high-tech capital wherein arises a novel “immaterial” type of labour. Immaterial labour, the argument goes, appropriates the machines of capital and achieves a new autonomy from capital, which can no longer control labour and instead, can only attempt to capture the fruits of its autonomous productive capacities. This dissertation’s goal is to assess the validity of post-operaismo’s claim for a new autonomy of immaterial labour from capital. It does so by conducting an analysis of work in the contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Work in the AI Industry should be, according to post-operaismo, immaterial labour par excellence. Therefore, this dissertation answers the following research question: does work in the AI Industry evince the new autonomy from capital attributed to immaterial labour by post-operaismo? I argue that it does not. I mount this argument with a multimodal methodology. I employ documentary analysis and qualitative interviews with workers and management in the AI Industry to produce a history, political economy analysis and labour process analysis of the AI Industry. This is followed by a theoretical analysis which assesses the claims of post-operaismo by the example of the AI Industry. I argue that work in the AI Industry remains under the control of capital and that, antipodally to claims of a new autonomy of labour, this industry evinces an increasing autonomy of capital. I conclude the post-operaismo mistakes obsolescence for autonomy

Architecture Saturated with Free-Thinking Machines

This thesis explores the benefits and disadvantages for human occupants living within intelligent buildings and responsive environments that have developed the autonomy and the ability to make their own intelligent decisions and act on those choices in our place. The thesis is split into two parts. The first half is a discussion of collected research material. It discusses the balance between deskilling and augmenting the skill of individuals as we continue to delegate more mental and physical effort away from our own bodies through our co-evolution with technology. It examines how to maintain human agency within autonomous environments as they become more capable but unpredictable. Finally, it seeks an equilibrium between the need for human privacy and the need for autonomous environments to observe to act intelligently. Through this analysis, it speculates on the eventual form a human-built environment crowded with artificial minds may take; and it describes the potential need for conversational and autobiographical agents to act as intermediaries between the rest of an intelligent environment and its human occupants. In addition to impacts on our own agency, this thesis also discusses the agency of the built environment itself, its moral responsibilities, and what moral consideration it may deserve. The second half of the thesis is a science fiction short story that applies the discussion of the first half of the thesis. This story is inspired by the value of using speculative stories to contemplate future social change and by the narrative form this thesis proposes machine interfaces will eventually take. This story describes a conversation between a mistrustful man burned by the past and an intelligent environment’s artificial caretaker that seeks to regain his approval

Living in a natural world

Die Dissertation besteht aus drei Teilen: der erste behandelt Rationalität und deren Bedeutung für alle Fragen des Lebens, nicht nur für einen reduzierten – für wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen reservierten – Teilbereich der Welt; der zweite Teil ist metaphysischer Natur und skizziert den postulierten Aufbau der Welt anhand der im ersten Teil erläuterten Prinzipien. Im dritten Teil frage ich – und gebe vorläufige Antworten – wie die Ergebnisse der vorherigen Teile unseren Blickwinkel auf empfindsame Wesen des Universums – darunter Menschen – ändern. Nur wenn wir rational sind können wir das Maximum an Information aus unserer Umwelt extrahieren. Unser beste Weg zum Erkenntnisgewinn sollte auch Leitfaden für unsere Spiritualität, Ethik, unsere Ansichten über den Sinn des Lebens etc sein. Es ist wichtig die sich mit unserem Erkenntnisstand ändernden Standards der Rationalität auf alle menschlichen Unterfangen anzuwenden. Für Individuen bedeutet Wissen gute mentale Modelle der Welt zu besitzen: je genauer effektive Faktoren in der Welt gespiegelt werden, umso besser können angestrebte Ziele erreicht werden. Unwissenheit führt zu Inaktivität und Passivität. Die Bewährungsprobe für Wissen und Philosophie ist die: werden durch sie die Art und Weise wie wir die Welt, unser Leben, und – letztlich am Wichtigsten – die Art und Weise wie wir handeln, verändert?The thesis consists of three parts: the first being on rationality and its import in tackling all questions facing us in our lives, not only a reduced domain of scientific investigation; the second, metaphysical in nature, forming an essay on the nature of the world, especially as informed by the principles of rationality sketched in the previous part; and the third, applying the findings of the previous sections to sentient agents – among them humans – in this universe. I argue that the rational approach is the best way to approach all questions facing us in our lives. Only by being rational can we extract as much information from our environment as possible. Our best way of gaining knowledge should quite naturally also influence our spirituality, our ethics, our view of the meaning of life and so on. It is important to apply the open standards of rationality to all areas of interest to humans. The agent centric approach is central to the thesis. For individuals, knowledge means having a good mental model of the world: the closer to the actual effective factors in the world, the more potential there is for action leading to achievement of goals. Ignorance condemns one to inaction and passivity. The litmus test for knowledge – and philosophy – is this: does it change the way we view the world, our life, and, ultimately and most importantly, the way we act

Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis

The great acceleration that has become known as the Anthropocene has brought with it destructive consequences that threaten to give rise to a dangerous and potentially explosive convergent reaching of limits, not just climatically or biospherically, but psychosocially. This convergence demands a new kind of thinking and a reconsideration of fundamental philosophical, political and economic theory in light especially of the age of computational capitalism, in order to prevent this convergence from becoming absolutely catastrophic. The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler argued that the basis for such a reconsideration must be, in a very general way, the thought of entropy. Psychopolitical Anaphylaxis examines, draws on, and dialogues with Stiegler’s work, and aims to take steps towards this new kind of thinking. Borrowing also from Georges Canguilhem and Peter Sloterdijk, among others, it argues as well for an immunological perspective that sees psychopolitical convulsions as a kind of anaphylactic shock that threatens to prove fatal. The paradox that must ultimately be confronted in the Anthropocene conceived as an Entropocene is the contradiction between the urgent need for a global emergency procedure and the equally necessary task of finding the time to carefully rethink our way beyond this anaphylaxis. The task of thinking today must be to inhabit this paradox and make it the basis of a new dynamic