Mechane

Tecnica e scrittura

Redazione — 2024-12-19

Vivere per contarla. Le nuove scienze della scrittura e la fenomenologia della scrittura di calcolo

Felice Masi — 2024-12-19

Since the 1990s, writing studies have undergone a concrete turn, focusing on the manipulation of material symbols and the links between writing and calculation. On the other hand, the claim that Husserl had an idea of language as calculus has not produced a revision of his conception of writing. I intend to propose a neo-Husserlian analysis of writing as a cognitive function of computation. The essay will thus be divided into four parts. In the first, I will outline the reasons for a neo-Husserlian supplement to the science of writing. In the second part, I will present the main results that archaeological investigations, psychological-cognitive analyses, philosophy of mathematical practice and philosophy of mediality have achieved on writing. In the third part, I will schematically present the Husserlian definitions of counting, operation, calculation, symbolic writing and reading. In the fourth part, I will show the different uses of writing for the achievement of the evidence of clarity and the evidence of distinction and why the latter is also could be defined as computational evidence.

Cosa “inscrive” una macchina? Alcune ipotesi su tecnica e scienza

Luigi Laino — 2024-12-19

In this paper, I will analyse the import of the concept of “machine” for the emergence of scientific knowledge. After a short introduction, I will provide, in the second section, a definition of technology that bears on the verification of theory, but not in the sense that it realises theory in practice. Rather, I aim to show that technology is the counterpart of theory. In the third section, by leveraging the distinction between apotelestic and sympleromatic machines, I will show that “scientific” machines are mostly sympleromatic, as well as I will compare the Antikythera mechanism with contemporary colliders, in order to explain why and how a machine “represents” a theory. In the fourth section, I will reflect on the origin and meaning of science and the role and essence of machines.

Language and deontology in social ontology

Luca Forgione — 2024-12-19

In his book Documentality, Ferraris imagines a wedding scenario where all participants have Alzheimer. The ceremony proceeds as normal, and by its end, a new husband and wife exist. However, the next morning, the spouses forget everything. This scenario underscores the importance of writing in Ferraris’ theory. A recorded document, such as a marriage certificate, could confirm their marriage. Ferraris’ approach to documentality and social ontology illustrates that if the discovery of this document occurred after the death of the spouses, it would confirm a real marriage in which the spouses were unaware they had been married (§§ 1-2). The central question addressed in this paper is: Can documentation replace the deontic and constitutive functions of language? Searle’s philosophy of society, through his philosophy of language and mind, will be examined to discuss how language creates social objects via collective intentionality (§§ 3-6). It is precisely language, with its inherent deontology, that enables the existence of real marriages even without recorded evidence (§ 7-9).

Jones in the cognitive niche. The metaphilosophical problem of writing in the linguistic approaches to mind

Danilo Manca — 2024-12-19

In this essay, I adopt a metaphilosophical approach to investigate the role of writing in the context of the development of a linguistic approach to the philosophy of mind. In the first section, I portray the 20th-century analytic and pragmatist philosophy as unitedly committed to countering the representationalist image of the origin of conceptual activity. The aim is to show how this tradition is, however, internally divided between those who do not ascribe an instrumental role to language and those who, conversely, continue to describe language in terms of a tool. In the second section, I suggest that the difference between the two positions lies in the choice of adopting oral or written language as models for interpreting the relationship between mind and language. In the third, I ask whether writing can be interpreted as a niche-building activity.

Dall’intenzionalità alla preterintenzionalità. Una riflessione sui sistemi intelligenti

Roberto Redaelli — 2024-12-19

In the debate about the moral standing of artificial intelligence, the question of whether or not technical artefacts have some form of intentionality that would allow them to be considered part of the moral world (or excluded from it) plays a crucial role. The problem of intentionality in fact constitutes a cornerstone in the construction of the notion of moral agency, as demonstrated, among other things, by the fact that technological objects have so far been excluded from the field of ethics because they lack intentionality. In contrast to this exclusion, there is now a trend in the opposite direction, which increasingly attributes some form of intentionality and moral status to AI systems. This paper addresses the clarification of the notion of technological intentionality in artificial intelligence, and especially in generative AI. To this end, it analyses a number of paradigmatic positions in this debate, highlighting their merits and shortcomings. Finally, it proposes replacing the notion of intentionality with the notion of preter-intentionality, which better expresses – according to the thesis put forward – the human-artificial intelligence relationship.

Pratica pietrificata: esiste una coreografia vernacolare dei movimenti neandertaliani?

Jürgen Richter — 2024-12-19

Gli strumenti in pietra preistorici permettono una dettagliata comprensione dei movimenti del corpo umano e della mobilità di individui e gruppi. Questa prospettiva comportamentale, radicata nella cosiddetta “Archeologia Processuale”, è il punto di partenza del nostro approccio volto a decifrare le coreografie vernacolari della vita quotidiana dei primi esseri umani. Utilizziamo siti della penisola di Crimea per descrivere la mobilità umana su tre scale differenti. Tutti i siti sono occupati dai tardi Neandertal, risalenti a circa 45.000 anni fa. Su piccola scala, ricostruiamo metodi per la produzione di strumenti in pietra con braccia, mani e dita, all’interno della cinesfera o spazio cinestetico di un singolo individuo Neandertal. Le performance incarnate della scheggiatura vengono considerate “tecniche del corpo” nel senso di Marcel Mauss. Altre due scale vengono trattate con minor dettaglio: su scala intermedia, un piccolo accampamento viene considerato come un “palcoscenico” coreografico per movimenti del corpo umano (camminare, stare in piedi e sedersi) relativi allo smembramento di tre animali cacciati nelle vicinanze e portati nell’abitazione. Su larga scala, confrontiamo un gruppo di siti che presumibilmente appartenevano allo stesso sistema di mobilità stagionale, descrivendo così un itinerario annuale degli umani attraverso il loro paesaggio. Suggeriamo conclusivamente l’opzione di comprendere artefatti e oggetti come espressioni di una pratica antica, guidata da una coreografia vernacolare.

Smarginare il corpo: il processo di scrittura e la costituzione d’identità

Emma Lattanzi — 2024-12-19

This essay focuses on the relationship between writing and identity. First, it analyzes certain premises that, if left unchallenged, could lead to dogmatic positions. Elevating Derrida’s exercise of suspicion to an operational method, it questions the centrality of oral language, the binary opposition between reason-desire and representationalism. Consequently, the writing process is understood from the perspective of a desiring, embodied and situated subject, based on a synthesis of Butler, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s ideas. Far from being merely a tool of disembodied reason, writing is one of the ways that specifically describe Homo sapiens’ way of being in the world. Writing shapes human beings and the environment they inhabit within a continuously open and generative horizon of meaning.

Tecnica, scrittura e storia nella morfologia di Henri Focillon

Pierpaolo Ascari — 2024-12-19

The article attempts to rethink Henri Focillon’s morphology in the perspective of a footnote that Jacques Derrida dedicated to him in Of Grammatology. From this circumstance, the article derives the possibility of reflecting specifically on the notions of technique and writing.

Nichilismo e sovversione. Una nota su Kafka cento anni dopo (1924-2024)

Pierandrea Amato — 2024-12-19

The contribution is devoted to an essential character of Kafka’s writing: its subversive nature that is located in the attempt to end literature but without abandoning it but by excavating in literature itself its end. The contribution reveals this intention of Kafka by handling some of the philosophical readings of his work (Agamben, Benjamin, Blanchot, Deleuze, Guattari).