Philosophy 101 Unit 1

I don’t understand this article, but I think I understand why I don’t understand. If anyone wants to help, that would be nice.

If you haven’t read it, Lihy wrote a lovely post that, as far as I can tell, accurately captures the general idea. Bruno’s thesis seems to go as follows: the object-subject dichotomy, while useful, is out dated, and a nonhuman-human dichotomy provides a more accurate way of approaching the distinction between the contrasting entities that compose a society. He illustrates this with a chart that shows that the concept of “object” and “subject” merge over time, and the resulting “imbroglio of humans and nonhumans” is what demands a new perspective.Then, he goes on to explain the eleven sociotechnical levels of this concept. I don’t know what he means by sociotechnical, and therefore can’t quite grasp what these levels are for, but I can only assume it is to break down the social aspects of technology, going from a mass scale (11. Political Ecology), to a more individualized level (1. Social Complexity). “Mass” and “individualized” aren’t exactly the right words for that, though. I’m think of this scale as level 11 looking at the planet as a whole, moving closer and closer until you reach the little electrons and stuff at level 1. That was an analogy, not what the article is seriously about (in case my obvious confusion and mental clutter is making you equally lost).

So, Bruno introduces these layers by saying, “For my present pragmatogony*[mythic origin of technology], I have isolated eleven distinct layers.” Calling it a “mythic origin of technology” made me think he was saying, “these layers are not real,” as though he were explaining what people mistake as layers when they use the object-subject frame. However, the levels seem to be defined by using examples of the appropriateness of the nonhuman-human paradigm. At this point, I decided I didn’t know the real definition of pragmatogony, and neither does the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and so I still don’t know. Between that and “sociotechnical,” I feel a little less than confident about my comprehension of this article.

Additionally, Bruno uses all these phrases such as “Machiavellian primates,” “Daedalus’s maze,” “Durkheim,” and so on, which presuppose knowledge about things that I apparently have no knowledge about. I’m hoping those were unimportant details that I missed, though.

That all sounded less academic and much more whiny than I intended it to. Whoops.

I feel like I kind of understand what the layers mean, even if I don’t know what they’re for. So, in the spirit of Lihy’s post, I’m going to continue summarizing the final six levels.

6) Internalized Ecology

“… we find the most extraordinary extention of social relations to nonhumans: agriculture and the domestication of animals. The intense socializeation, reeducation, and reconfiguration of plants and animals- so intense that they change shape, function, and often genetic makeup…” (186) .

He says that we need to give nonhumans-plants, animals, and proteins-social characteristics for them to fit into the “collective.”

5) Society

“a society is primitive indeed: it precedes individual action, lasts very much longer than any interaction does, dominates our lives… it is externalized, reified, more real than ourselves…” (186).

- He believes that society is not socially constructed, because “humans proliferate below the bottom line of social theory” (187), even though the term society is socially constructed.

-It is interactions that do construct society, and since so many “techniques” aid and enable interactions, they too are part of society.

4) Techniques

“articulated subprograms for actions that subsist (in time) and extend (in space)” (187).

-At this point, he isn’t talking about humans anymore, but “social prehumans.” Basically, stuff that is reorganized (he uses the example of a hammer and net), to make them different from the original.

3) Social Complication

“no society, no overarching framework, no dispatcher of roles and functions; there are merely interactons among prehumans…Here complex interactions are marked and followed by nonhumans enrolled for a specific purpse. What purpose? Nunhumans stabalize social negotiations” (187).

2) The Basic Tool Kit

“The extension of social skills to nonhumans” (188).

- He uses the example of monkeys who don’t have much technique, but still create and use social tools in a process of altering each other. This ability is also given to nonhumans, by “treating a stone, say, as a social partner, modifying it, then using it to act on a second stone” (188).

1) Social Complexity

“primates…engage in social interactions to repair a constantly decaying social order. They manipulate one another to survive in groups…” (188).

-Note: even though this is the last stage, it still uses techniques and tools just as much as the other ones.

The End.