#social-ontology — Public Fediverse posts

I'm not sure the gender debate is all that these days with the distraction factory in DC; nonetheless, I've been reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.

https://open.substack.com/pub/brywillis634737/p/the-striated-woman-no-one-owns-the?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I like Butler's ideas a lot, so I wanted to engage her material directly. Beauvoir is another favourite.

#philosophy #language #writing #blog #podcast #identity #women #feminism #judithbutler #beauvoir #socialontology #legibility #substack #ontologicalgrammar #gendertheory #criticaltheory #politics

Read a high-level summary of the chapters in The Architecture of Encounter.

https://open.substack.com/pub/brywillis634737/p/the-architecture-of-encounter?r=pvxh5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

When we're not writing, we may be performing ancillary activities like promotion and awareness. You are a witness. Video to follow. Do I need a new headshot?

#writing #philosophy #books #script #contents #ontology #logic #epistemoloogy #mediation #subjecthood #perception #language #socialontology #realism #normativity #SharingIsCaring #substack

I recently finished reading Richard Wollheim's "Painting As An Art".

I found much of it stimulating in the close attention paid to particular pictures and thought provoking with regard to his theory of "seeing in" as the way to understand our perception of paintings.

On the other hand, his use of psychoanalytic theory left me with questions.

Surprisingly, his use of this theory reminded of some recent reading of mine in evolutionary psychology. Both Wollheim and the evolutionary psychologists stress the significance of a common human nature and are inclined to downplay the importance of systems of symbols or culture in general.

I do think that a substantive concept of human nature makes sense, and I am open to the possibility of evolutionary psychology and psychoanalytical theory contributing to an understanding of of human nature.

Altogether less agreeable to me is the tendency of these theories to smuggle in a social ontology in which culture is merely the creation of atomized individuals. One can believe in the evolved nature of the mind and allow for the possibility of certain kinds of psychic forces at work in the individual without denying the importance, still less the existence, of social facts. Thinking about languages as at once learned and used by individuals but also existing as entities external to those individuals is helpful here.

Image: The Construction of the Tower of Babel -- Folio xvii, The Bedford Book of Hours -- 1423 - 30 - The British Library.

#Wollheim #RichardWollheim #PaintingAsAnArt #EvolutionaryPsychology #Psychoanalysis #SocialOntology #Art #Philosophy #IlluminatedManuscript #BookOfHours #BedfordBBookOfHours #15thCenturyArt #TowerOfBabel

Jan 22-23, 2026: not one #philosophy #conference in #Groningen but two:

1. #Sustainability and #CorporateResponsibility: The #Sustainable #Corporation (see https://www.rug.nl/filosofie/organization/news-and-events/events/2024/call-for-papers-sustainable-corporation-jan-2026?lang=en)

2. #Plessner and #Anthropology: Groningen Plessner Conference at @Bibliothecaris (https://www.rug.nl/library/heritage/plessner-conference-jan-2026?lang=en)

#PhilosophicalAnthropology #SocialOntology #BusinessEthics

Social ontology matters for how we attribute causality in relation to emerging technologies

From If… Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics, by Taina Bucher:

What remained puzzling throughout the ordeal was the apparent lack of vocabulary available to talk about what it is that algorithms do or are even capable of doing, as exemplified in the repeated attribution of bias either to the algorithm or to the humans involved. Words such as bias, neutrality, manipulation, and subjectivity abound, making the controversy one of locating agency in the right place. The prevailing sense in the discourse surrounding the event seemed to be that Facebook should not claim to use algorithms to make decisions when, in fact, humans make the decisions. Of course, what was being slightly overlooked in all of this was the fact that algorithms are always already made, maintained, and sustained by humans. Yet, if only the responsible people could be held accountable, the story went, it would make it easier to control or regulate such “manipulations” and “subjective orderings” in the future. From a relational perspective, however, determining the origin of action as if it belonged to one source only would be misleading. After all, as Latour puts it, “to use the word ‘actor’ means that it’s never clear who and what is acting when we act since an actor on stage is never alone in acting” (2005: 46).

#algorithms #causality #socialOntology #TainaBucher

The misuse of the concept of assemblage within digital social science

I’ve seen a growing trend to use the Deleuzian concept of assemblage in a way that fails to distinguish between internal and external relations. What distinguishes an assemblage from an entity or a totality is these elements are externally related, rather than the internal relation between elements which jointly constituted a whole. Or at last they are a mix of internal and external relations. It’s the difference between a relation which cannot exist apart from through its connection to a whole, as opposed to a relatively autonomous relation that can manifest in a different form. So for example the battery on my iphone has an internal relation to the phone, whereas the airpods have an external relation to it. You could extract the battery and install it somewhere else but it would have to enter a constitutive relation with another iphone, whereas the airpods can be used in relation to a range of entities.

This matters because if we treat assemblages as containing internal relations, we are basically talking about totalities while imagining we are doing the opposite. The analytical virtue of assemblage theory is that it helps us sketch out how heterogeneous elements are drawn together into complex coalitions of existing things, able to form and reform in dynamic and multifaceted ways. If you treat the assemblages as if they have internal relations then you are suddenly imagining vast totalities which loom across the social world, without recognising the dynamic character which is the whole analytical point of the theory. In this sense if you imagine ‘AI’ as an assemblage, without making this distinction, it becomes this vast and impenetrable juggernaut which rampages obscenely across a world which it transforms. It becomes a mega force, to use Filip Vostal’s phrase, to which we must either subordinate ourselves or reject in its entirely.

I’ve wondered recently why some critics of generative AI see it as uniquely obscene, as opposed to another expression of platform capitalism. I often agree with much of the substance of the critique, yet don’t end up in the same place politically and morally as they do. I wonder if there might, at last sometimes, be a disagreement about the ontology of ‘AI’ underpinning this. To the extent its seen as a totality, whether deliberately or through its misattribution as an assemblage, I part ways at an analytical level and I think a difference of moral and political opinion follows from this.

#AI #assemblage #deleuze #DigitalSocialScience #generativeAI #LLM #socialOntology

A summary from Claude of the arguments Milan Stürmer and I have made in recent conversations we've been recording

Based on the contents of your meeting transcripts, here are five propositions about the social ontology of generative AI, attempting to replicate your own voices:

1. Generative AI is not merely a mirror reflecting society, but rather a prism that refracts and elaborates upon the complexity we input into it. As Mark suggested, “You present it with complexity, and it refracts what you presented it with in a way that expresses the parameters the designers have provided, and which you have provided.”
2. The relationship between humans and generative AI is fundamentally iterative and co-constitutive. As Milan noted, “Chat GPT is real right? This is part of reality. And why should it not be allowed to participate in our elaborations?” This suggests that generative AI is not just a tool, but an active participant in our intellectual and creative processes.
3. The potentials of generative AI are realized relationally, dependent on the socio-cultural context and the user’s own cultural capital. As Mark observed, “The more skilled you are in manipulating a wide range of symbols, the more you can get out of these systems.” This points to the importance of education and cultural competencies in shaping the social impact of these technologies.
4. Generative AI presents both risks of proletarianization and possibilities for augmented reflexivity. As Milan mentioned, drawing on Stiegler, there’s a risk of losing “know-how” and even “know how to live.” Conversely, Mark suggested these systems could enhance our capacity for elaboration and introduce novel elements into our thinking processes.
5. The social ontology of generative AI is fundamentally tied to questions of creativity, judgment, and the nature of human cognition. As you both discussed, these technologies challenge us to reconsider what we mean by creativity, how we exercise judgment, and ultimately, what it means to think and to be human in an age of artificial intelligence.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/08/07/five-propositions-about-the-social-ontology-of-generative-ai/

#collaboration #generativeAI #MilanStürmer #socialOntology

Näkyy SEP:n uusittuihin ilmaantuneen kaksi jollain tapaa intressipiiriini kuuluvaa entryä, joita en jo löydä selaimen kirjanmerkeistäni, eli tuskin olen lukenut.

Etiikan alueelta supererogaatio (ylihyväntely, oma suom. justiinsa), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation/, ja metafysiikan puolelta sosiaalinen ontologia, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology/.

Kvanttilaskennasta kiihottuville olisi uusittuna tarjolla myös sitä koskeva perus-filosofinen entry, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/, ja biologisteille luonnonvalintaa, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-selection/.

#sep #new #philosophy #ethics #ontology #metaphysics #supererogation #socialOntology #quantumComputing #naturalSelection

Here's a question that may seem simplistic - are corporations objectively real?

@philosophy
#philosophy
#socialontology
#marxism
#politics
#politicalphilosophy
@psychology
#economics