The New Ghosts in the Machine: ‘Pragmatist’ AI and the Conceptual Perils of Anthropomorphic Description

Algorithms are becoming interwoven with increasingly many aspects of our affairs. That process of interweaving has brought with it a language laden with anthropomorphic descriptions of the technologies involved, which variously hint at ‘human-esque’ or ‘conscious-like’ activity occurring within or behind their operations. Indeed, the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) seems to refer to a quality that is thought to be largely human; namely, intelligence. However, while anthropomorphic descriptions may be useful or harmless, when taken at face value they generate a false picture of algorithms as well as of our own thinking and reasoning practices by treating them as analogues of one another rather than as distinct. Focusing on the algorithm, and what it is misleadingly said to be and to be like, in this article we outline three “perspicuous representations” (Wittgenstein 1953: §122) of AI in specific contexts. Drawing on Wes Sharrock’s ethnomethodological and Wittgensteinian work, our aim is to demonstrate that by attending to the particular, occasioned and locally accountable, not to say highly specified, usages of language that accompany the ‘New AI’ in particular, we can avoid being haunted by the new task performing ghosts currently being discursively conjured up in our algorithmic machines

Kenna Record, 07-22-1910

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/kenna_news/1023/thumbnail.jp

An investigation into the nature of cross-national managerial work.

This thesis documents a research project into the nature of cross-national managerial work, the work of managers operating abroad in multinational business organisations. The study focuses upon the impact of national cultural differences upon such work, and seeks to explain how cultural differences can lead to the development of costly and destructive problems, involving conflict, mistrust or resistance to parent company directives. The research breaks new ground in the study of cross-national managerial work by examining what has largely been overlooked to date, namely the experience of working in cross-national organisational settings. The study establishes the practical importance of this aspect of cross-national managerial work, by showing how the experience of working with cultural differences plays a constitutive role in the development of organisational problems. In discussing what has been overlooked to date, this thesis identifies an important area for future research, and suggests different ways in which this can be explored. It is intended that this thesis will contribute to knowledge about the nature of cross-national managerial work, such that national cultural differences may be better, more knowledgeably managed

The archive saga:shepherds of data, documents and code, and their will to order

This thesis is an enquiry into expert-intensive work to support the aggregation and mass-dissemination of scientific articles. The enquiry draws on computer-supported actions and interactions between the people who worked as daily operators, and submitters who worked the system from remote as end-users. These recorded actions and interactions render visible matters of practical responsibility and competence with reference to reportable-accountable use of objects and devices. As a scholarly contribution, this thesis draws on the work started by Garfinkel and his followers, ie., the study programme of ethnomethodology. It poses a simple question—how do the people involved in these computer-supported actions and interactions do just what they do? In the attempt to answer that question, the enquiry shows that a competent and accountable use of system supports is manifested in reference to particular phenomena that need constant management—eg. warnings,anomalies, unknown entities, failing processes, disorderly work objects, and spurious actions—in short, phenomena of disorder. Records of how these phenomena are detected and attended to, and how particular problems are solved, reveals a complex relationship between computational functions and subtle human judgements. Without making generalised theoretical claims about this relationship, I conclude that remarkably little is known about the actual lived work that takes place in the operation and use of computer systems that are worked specifically to detect and cope with `anomalies' and thus require detective and reactionary labour. I offer this enquiry into the goings-on at this particular site as a singular opportunity to respecify problems of disorder

Interaction, Identity & Social Class

Social class is a longstanding locus of sociological inquiry. Prior research has investigated the phenomenon in an array of domains through a myriad of methodologies and theoretical perspectives. The heterogeneity that is posed by previous studies empirically and theoretically, however, is predicated upon a homogenous set of epistemological and ontological assumptions. This has resulted in a number of programmatic, enduring omissions. Most notably, research has neglected how social class is conceptualised and made relevant by members in forms of talk-in-interaction. Aligning with the commitments of Ethnomethodology (EM), and using Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) specifically, this thesis addresses this lacuna. Data are composed of ordinary, naturalistic forms of talk-in-interaction conducted synchronously in the English language over the last half-century (n=959). The empirical contributions of this research concern the ontological affordances, formulative possibilities and praxiological functions of two families of interactional practices that occasion the relevance of classed identities recurrently – namely, “membership categorisations” and “place references”. Chapter 4 addresses the former, canvassing the agentic, ontological and intersubjective dimensions of linguistically classed membership categories. Chapter 5 introduces the latter as a resource used to actuate classed identities in a designedly referential and metonymic faculty. Chapter 6 then recovers the activity of “accounting” for which both practices are employed across action-types; specifically, “assessments”, “complaints” and “teases”. The central objective of this thesis thus concerns the “respecification” of social class as a “members’ phenomenon”; one that is made relevant within ordinary instances of talk-in-interaction through a stable set of interactional practices in order to accomplish a diverse range of practical tasks. The thesis concludes with a review of several candidate lines of analysis for future EM/(M)CA inquiry that are anticipated by the findings of this research uniquely

Interaction, Identity & Social Class

Social class is a longstanding locus of sociological inquiry. Prior research has investigated the phenomenon in an array of domains through a myriad of methodologies and theoretical perspectives. The heterogeneity that is posed by previous studies empirically and theoretically, however, is predicated upon a homogenous set of epistemological and ontological assumptions. This has resulted in a number of programmatic, enduring omissions. Most notably, research has neglected how social class is conceptualised and made relevant by members in forms of talk-in-interaction. Aligning with the commitments of Ethnomethodology (EM), and using Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) specifically, this thesis addresses this lacuna. Data are composed of ordinary, naturalistic forms of talk-in-interaction conducted synchronously in the English language over the last half-century (n=959). The empirical contributions of this research concern the ontological affordances, formulative possibilities and praxiological functions of two families of interactional practices that occasion the relevance of classed identities recurrently – namely, “membership categorisations” and “place references”. Chapter 4 addresses the former, canvassing the agentic, ontological and intersubjective dimensions of linguistically classed membership categories. Chapter 5 introduces the latter as a resource used to actuate classed identities in a designedly referential and metonymic faculty. Chapter 6 then recovers the activity of “accounting” for which both practices are employed across action-types; specifically, “assessments”, “complaints” and “teases”. The central objective of this thesis thus concerns the “respecification” of social class as a “members’ phenomenon”; one that is made relevant within ordinary instances of talk-in-interaction through a stable set of interactional practices in order to accomplish a diverse range of practical tasks. The thesis concludes with a review of several candidate lines of analysis for future EM/(M)CA inquiry that are anticipated by the findings of this research uniquely

Sibyl 1991

https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/yearbooks/1020/thumbnail.jp

Mystical strategies and performative discourse in the theologia mystica of Teresa of Avila: A Wittgensteinian analysis

The thesis argues that a Wittgensteinian approach to the 'mystical' writings of a 'mystical theologian' such as Teresa of Avila reveals that rather than exhibiting an ontological mysticism these writings are better understood as enacting what are termed 'mystical strategies' or 'performative discourse'. The notion that both Wittgenstein and Teresa employ what are termed 'therapeutic or transformational strategies' to effect change in their readers is central to its argument. In this respect the thesis concludes that their writing is fundamentally transformational in character.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Looking with Narcissus: Oscar Wilde’s Reception of the Dying God

‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors,’ writes Oscar Wilde in his ‘Preface’ to the 1891 book edition of his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. By transferring agency away from the originator to the recipient, Wilde’s aphorism could be considered a late nineteenth-century version of reception theory, which has sought to challenge conventional critical ideas of influence or tradition in classical studies in recent decades. The Introduction to this thesis relates the classically educated Wilde’s epigram, which supposedly originated with his Trinity College Dublin tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, to the dissolution of authority both inside and outside Classics during the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter 1 explores the broadly similar critical sentiments in Wilde’s press correspondence and his defence of his writings in his 1895 libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading, I argue, are informed by the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Chapters 2 and 3 turn Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading on their head. Chapter 2 argues that Wilde’s use of the Orpheus story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is revealing about not only Dorian Gray’s but also his author’s troubled relations with both sexes. Chapter 3 shows how Wilde uses Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in his fairy tales and plays to represent unhappy heterosexual relations in contradistinction to a positively portrayed Platonic pedagogical pederasty—a juxtaposition that is reflected in Wilde’s life as well as his work. Chapter 4 reverts to Wilde’s idea that artistic meaning is in the eye of the beholder. The religious relativism and oscillation between literary sources in Wilde’s drama Salomé, which is viewed as an example of ‘Alexandrian’ Euripideanism, contribute to an atmosphere of narcissistic subjectivism and projectionism that meet with the full condemnation of official authority