Maurizio Ferraris and Design as Emergence:
Notes from the symposium for Realism in Design hosted by the Hochschule Düsseldorf. 08/05/2017
My notes are sparse and I fear my memory of the talk will fade before I have another change to record my impressions in detail. Here’s what I can reconstruct. It’s already difficult to tease apart some of my own reflections from what Maurizio actually presented, but or the most part, the arguments put forth are his.
He began by setting up what appeared to me to be a dichotomy between Intelligent Design (intentionally referencing the Christian notion of a universe created by God) and “Stupid Design” or rather Emerging Design.
To summarize, Intelligent Design is the prevailing model where by concepts produce the world; intentions produce recordings (or plans); Epistemology produces Ontology; Plans produce Objects; Representations precede Presentation.
Emerging Design, by contrast inverts the causal relationships of Intelligent Design. The world creates concepts; Recording produces intentions; From Ontology we arrive at Epistemology; Objects produce plans, Presentation precedes Representation.
I do not believe these models are necessarily mutually exclusive, especially in the arts there is a dynamic interplay between them. The directionality of the relationships may change, but the relationship is always a dynamic one in regards o the creative act.
Ferraris then went on to expand on the concepts. Intelligent Design privileges intentionality, while Emerging design favors documentality.
The intentionality of Intelligent design supports the view that “reality is created by what we have in mind”. Our perception produces reality. Ferraris invokes Seamless formulation of the construction of social reality “X counts as Y in context C” to show limitations of the Intelligent Design model. He gives 3 examples: 1.) the question of negative entities, e.g. debt; 2.) The question of collective intentionality in regards to producing reality (he uses the case of the guards and prisoners of Auschwitz as case proving absurd the notion that they shared a collective intentionality); 3.) What is the basis for the resolution of conflicts if collective intentionality is a farce?
He then posits that Emerging Design, in favoring Documentality, supports the position of the object as the product of a recorded act. Promise creates a new object—in the case of debt, the new object is a record of debt, thus resolving the handling of negative entities. The resolution of conflicts is achieved through documents or documentation. Agreements are recorded. Collective Intentionality is given form by or recorded in plans.
An example of Emerging Design that he gives is the cellphone. It started as the telephone, as a machine to solve the problem of connecting over vast distances, a long-distance speaking device. It then developed into an archive. The primary development from device to archive is memory. This change from device to archive was not planned by the creators of the telephone nor the cell phone. It was emergent from the properties contained within, i.e. memory.
Ferraris then turns to recording and examines two modalities: as a necessary condition and as sufficient condition for emerging design. As examples of recording as a necessary condition, he gives Posthumous Marriage,which is legal in France, and Marriage between two individuals suffering from Alzheimers. As sufficient cause, his example was the stock market. I lost track of the through line, but have in my notes that Recording is a sufficient condition for documents, but that the documents need agents to act upon them. There was a matter of intentionality which was used to raise the question of what separates machine from people. Which I don’t recall being sufficiently addressed.
I have written down the following cycle:
Intentionality creates a document (Intelligent design model) and documentation creates intention.
Posed as a chicken and egg problem. What separates human from machine? Intentionality, but from where does intentionality arise? The solution is in responsibility. What produces this responsibility? Accountability to a record. In the case of telephone to cellphone, memory produces this responsibility. Not for the phone, but for the users of that phone.
On the topic of construction, Intelligent Design upholds the notion that the Contract not only represents reality, but produces it. Construction requires representation. To tie it back to Christian Intelligent Design, God has (is) the representation or plan by which the world is constructed.
Emerging Design, instead of an a priori plan, has time. “When we have time, we don’t need construction”. Design emerges over time. This accounts also for the fact that human creators are not always aware of what they create, that is, they do not have a complete representation.
Citing the example of cave drawings as compared to Darwin’s diagram of the evolution of a set of species of birds, a consequence of working without a plan is the movement from Institution (intuition?) to Intention through recording. From traces, to rites, to myths, to money, to writing. The process of doing, then reflecting, formulating an idea, building a concept and then doing or recording again.
To zoom out again. Intelligent design describes the evident structure of the world. Emergent design issues forth from a deep structure of the world. Knowledge is produced by a coevolution with the world.
How do we access emergent design if we don’t have the time? “We have hands.” The hand represents competence without comprehension. This evokes a do-think-do model of experimentation or design iteration. Tools being extensions of the hand, Ferraris introduces the notion of technology. He argues that one cannot do much without tools using the example of calculus and complex mathematics. It is difficult to conceive of a system of mathematics so advanced that did not arise from working with models and representations that took place external to thought, through tools in the physical world.
Tools, he posits, are themselves records. And the use of tools involves the gesture. The gesture employs the tool, the tool is activated by the gesture. “We don’t need Intelligent Design to have design which is intelligent.” The gesture then becomes a vehicle for intelligence. “Intelligence in design and interaction is in the had, not in the head.”
At this point, he sets up a relationship between Technology, Epistemology, and Ontology. He Invokes a quote by Kant:
“Deiser Schematismus unseres Verstandes, in Ansehung der Erscheinung und ihrer bloßen Form, ist eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele.”
Which roughly translates to:
“The structural manifestation (sloppy translation of Schematismus, transliterally “Schematality”) of our understanding, in regard its appearance and it’s basic form, is a hidden art in the depths of the human.”
He then poses the questions:
“Is Schematismus inside or outside?” (I ask of what?)
“Or [is it] in the gesture that links the inside and outside, and [as such] is synthetic and a priori?”
This seems to be hinting at a notion of object-hood and Harmon’s notion of interiority, though I lost track of the through line as he attempted to illustrate what he viewed to be a problematic line of though in regards to the relationship between an object, its mental model, intent, and action.
My impression is that he was arguing that there is not so much a hierarchy or privileged order to the process of interacting with reality (read objects and their reality).
He uses this problem to approach the question of meaning. Namely that in emerging design, there doesn’t necessarily have to be a meaning behind an action. This is the notion of the hand as competence without comprehension or the neuron in the brain, for example (the neuron is competent but has no comprehensions of the whole brain in which is functions). There is an interaction between the tool-gesture-imagination. From activity manifest as the gesture, facilitated by the tool, meaning may then be extrapolated. He uses the example of the Egyptian Pyramids to illustrate the idea. He posits that they began as a simple act of burial. Wealthy Pharos buried with their riches needed a bit of extra security to prevent thieves from ransacking the loot, and so their tombs are covered by more and more elaborate protective measures. At some point the structure took form enough that it became possible to ask, “Why this thing?”. What follows it the invention justifications, mythologies which imbue an activity and artifact with meaning, thus feeding back into intentionality. In closing, Ferraris leaves us with “The meaning, as intention, is the result of technology.”
The floor then opened for questions. The first question concerns where he places technology in his theoretical framework.
Technology, in Ferraris’s view, is a media, an in-between. What mediates Intellect and sensibility is imagination. Technology produces an emergence of things not conceived by the inventor. Imagination acts on tools through the gesture to produce affects in the world.
He claims that “Not a pure thought exists outside of technology.” Can we have pure thought? Although he can imaging though without language, he cannot imaging a thought without recording.
Recording gives rise to technology and technology is a form of recording. [Technology as record].
Markus Gabriel, whose talk I missed brought up the point that there are certain conditions necessary to grasp a thought, but that even still, one must have a robust notion of thought already. He observed that in regards to this idea of grasping a thought, Emergence describes a condition to grasp.
More is said on this, but what catches my ear is the idea that there is a Plutonic form of technology.
That there is this idea that in its very etymology, Technology requires a logic. Ferraris maintains that the basis for technology is recording [and memory, persistence].
From here I have my own thoughts on the matter:
Logic is embodied in subatomic particles. For example, in the Pauli-Dirac exclusion principle, there is a logical impossibility for two Fermions to occupy the same state in space-time. Exclusion is “baked” into the fundamental nature of the matter from which all things are built.
There was also a question raised about material properties. That design is contracted in some degree to how a material actually behaves as opposed to how it is anticipated to behave in a certain application. Markus Gabriel made the point that the material that the designer was working with in their plan or model was imaginary. In my own thoughts. A material misbehaves not because it is misbehaving per se, but because its model is inaccurate, we have imagined it wrong. The fallacy is to mistake the model for reality in this case; these the material we were working with was imaginary.
[What we may consider material is itself to be imaginary in so far as it is a mental/conceptual model fashioned based on a real material which is not ontologically exhausted by said model. Further more, an imaginary material has some reality in so far as it informs our plans or interactions with the material itself.]
My reflections on the notion of Technology as Recording:
Memory is a pre-condition or necessary condition for technology.
Technology also embodies a logic.
Affiliate terms are:
Persistence and Memory
Thought
Idea
Gesture/Use
Intent
Competence
Tools
Is a concept contained within the object itself?
No. The concept is a model, a mental map, and therefore separate (but not necessarily independent) from the object.
What is the relationship between imagination, the idea, and intent in regards to an action?
Imagination perhaps produces and idea, which then translates into intent and informs an action.
What is required for an action in regards to imagination or an idea?
An action may take place that has no intent, involves no imagination or idea.
Does intent produce an action or necessarily inform action? From the above, it is not necessary for an action to involve intent. In the case where intent is involved, an action may arise from an idea as a product of imagination. Imagination way also be sparked or initiated by an action.
There is perhaps a diagram that could illustrate this more clearly. But for now: A result of an action may be the production of intent which may produce or inform future actions. An action may inspire imagination which produces an idea. That idea is then executed by way of imagining to produce an action.
An action is executed through a gesture tool hybrid in the act of creation.
The tool is a technology (gesture as efficient cause?), media/medium, recording.
Technology as hybridology or chimerality, a composite of other technological objects.
Is there are way of mapping design space in terms of intent or comprehension and competence?
With Competence on the X axis, and Comprehension on the Y, what kind of space have we mapped?
(Competence, Comprehension) - Perhaps this is the domain of intentional design (not necessarily intelligent design)
(Competence, Without Comprehension) - This fits the emerging design as described by Ferraris
(Without Competence, Without Comprehension) - This fits the bill of stupid design, but perhaps this space is not even design at all.
(Without Competence, Comprehension) - This space is perhaps clumsy design (if executed) or conceptual design.
In my notes I then go on making an attempt to reformulate my view of technology in regards to its physical embodiment and its trace through artifacts.
I define the technological artifact as the Impact or Effect of deployment (or its operation with or without intent or comprehension). The artifact is in effect a trace, imprint, or negative consequence in that it is not the technology itself as present but as evident.
As on object, technology manifests as a tool or instrument, a construct or physical thing.
Technology can be viewed as an emergent property of Logic (as an underlying feature of matter), Persistence, and Malleability. If quantum mechanics is accurate and its description of the world in terms of probabilities is correct, then there is a logic structure that emerges. Assuming that this model holds and infant reflects reality in general, we can the move on to address memory. Memory is an emergent property of matter, a product of bi-stability. That is, matter can be changed, but persists in form. Not all configurations of matter produce this property. Memory is particular to those configurations which produce persistence but also allow for change and the persistence of that change.
If recording itself is a technology, then we no longer have need of a cultural definition of technology that is anthropocentric in nature. As a part of technology, knowledge emerges from recording itself.
Technology is a record of a process. Can behaviors be described as a form of technology? or are they an emergent property of a particular form of recording/technology?
Technology as media is a tool that produces artifacts. It is also the product of recording, which produces the condition for thought itself.
I met up with Ferraris, after his talk and in a conversation afterwards received his approval regarding the following thoughts:
If a consequence of technology being a media (an intermediary and a record) and recording is an activity that occurs without intent (competence without comprehension—and thereby emergent) then its possible to conceive of a technology without intention. Comprehension is not necessary for the emergence of technology. And if logic is still a necessary condition for recording and by extension technology, then we can find it in the underlying structure of matter as developed by quantum mechanics and experimentally verified through high energy physics, i.e. in our previous example with Fermions. Logic is baked into our material reality. Therefore it is not out of place to call DNA a technology, as its building blocks are themselves embodiments of a logic inherent to matter as we currently understand it, and it is a medium for recording. In other words, technology is independent of human intent. In a sense we are the product and embodiment of technology as a record in matter expressed through matter.
To take it one step further, we are technological objects; we are tools. Tool-ness is not meant to imply that we have no agency, but rather that there is an agentive potential within tools that arises from their particular configuration. We are tool-agents, technology with agency. It’s this tool-being that is an a priori of the human condition (though it is not unique to it).
In the development of our practice of making tools, we start with ourselves as the primal tool. Unaided, we have the problem of persistence, to maintain. For the time being, we will have to set aside the motivations for persistence, or survival. I have an idea that at some point, we are able to make a model of the world, to comprehend it in such a way, that we become aware of and take advantage of competence. That is, we become reflective of our operationally, or being in the world. We learn to fashion tools to solve our problem of persistence; the tool-agent learns to make tools with intent. Simplifying technological evolution a bit and skipping forward tens of thousands of years, we become tools, that fashion tools to create tools to solve the problem of persistence (perhaps as a hold over of that feature necessary for being a technological object, or a recording: memory).
A tool, or technological object, exists without meaning or significance. Prior to its utilization, it is latent with potential. Meaning is a product of its utility combined with comprehension. Significance arises from process, a tool in action, application. Through application and comprehension, significance is converted into meaning.
On Humans and Machines.
“Is it about a machine?”
Humans are machines (what is the tool - machine relationship?). We are machines that make machines in our own image or based on a concept of self identity, of what it human. The resulting machine alters our understanding of what is human while also altering what we as humans are through its deployment.
There is an important distinction to be made between what a human is, and its self conceived model. The model we have of what it is to be human, our own mental self-image, is not what we as humans are. We are not ontologically exhausted by this model we create of ourselves.
This has consequences for the hypothetical situation proposed by many transhumanists and adherents to the convergence as formulated by Ray Kurzweil. Namely, that if humans create machines to act or operate as humans do, they do so based on a model, one which does not ontologically exhaust the actual human. The result is a machine which embodies this model to some degree. Even if the machine were a perfect embodiment of the model, it is still not human. The machine also is not ontologically exhausted by the model used to create it. The machine has its own unique properties, ones which possibly emerge as divergent from its model. If the human comprehends what it has created, the difference between the former model and its instantiation in the machine becomes apparent. This alters the mental model of the human of itself. The human is then further modified by the relation to the machine as a unique entity operating in the world, and by the changed mental model of itself.
Even if it were possible to replicate or simulate 1:1 all functions of a human in a machine, those functions would still only be models and not the actual functions themselves. It won’t be the human that inhabits the machine but its models, because the machine is an embodiment of the model, but not only. There will never be a perfect replica of the human in a machine, but a unique entity. Thus the project of simulating a human in a machine and expecting equivalence is doomed to fail. What it will have succeeded in, however, is the production of a new being, perhaps one that is able to form its own models and operate with its own agency. It will be human-like, but distinctly machine as well.
But the question is not whether it is possible to reproduce humans in machines. It is one of agency in the context of a society. As humans, were have a responsibility to the consequences of our actions due to a social materiality. The question of these new beings is who and to what degree is responsible for their actions? Materials “misbehave” because their reality escapes the grasp of our comprehension. The model should never be mistaken for reality. Therefore we should never mistake these new beings for even the models they embody because the conditions necessary for that embodiment produce a thing which cannot be exhausted by the model. In short, they will be unpredictable and it is something that no degree of design can resolve.