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This book investigates how we should form ourselves in a world saturated with technologies that are profoundly intruding in the very fabric of our selfhood.¿
New and emerging technologies, such as smart technological environments, imaging technologies and smart drugs, are increasingly shaping who and what we are and influencing who we ought to be. How should we adequately understand, evaluate and appreciate this development? Tackling this question requires going beyond the persistent and stubborn inside-outside dualism and recognizing that what we consider our "inside" self is to a great extent shaped by our "outside" world. Inspired by various philosophers - especially Nietzsche, Peirce and Lacan -this book shows how the values, goals and ideals that humans encounter in their environments not only shape their identities but also enable them to critically relate to their present state. The author argues against understanding technological self-formation in terms of making ourselves better, stronger and smarter. Rather, we should conceive it in terms of technological sublimation, which redefines the very notion of human enhancement. In this respect the author introduces an alternative, more suitable theory, namely Technological Sublimation Theory (TST).
Extimate Technology will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of the self, phenomenology, pragmatism, and history of philosophy.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003139409, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I: What Is the Self?
1. The Essentialist and Dualist Self and Why it Cannot Be Sustained
2. From "Self" to "Self-Formation"
Part II: Is Self-Formation in a Technological World Possible?
3. The Autonomous Self and the Determined Self
4. The Artifactual Mind
5. Brain Imaging Technologies and Critical Self-Formation
6. How Critical Is Critical Self-Formation?
Part III: How Should We Technologically Form Ourselves?
7. Technological Self-Formation as Enhancement
8. The Technological Uncanny as a Permanent Structure of Selfhood
9. Self-Formation as Sublimation and the Question Concerning Technology
10. Technological Sublimation Theory Applied to Three Existential Technologies
Epilogue: Groundwork for a Philosophy of Existential Technology
About the author
Ciano Aydin is Full Professor of Philosophy of Technology, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS) at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He has published in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Philosophy and Technology and other journals. See www.cianoaydin.nl for more information about his current research.
Summary
This book investigates how we should form ourselves in a world saturated with technologies that are profoundly intruding in the very fabric of our selfhood.
