CC BY
11https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2024.02.06 Research article
Lebenswelt, Digital Phenomenology, and the Modification of
Human Intelligence
Alexander Vnutskikh ( ) and Sergey Komarov Perm State University, st. Bukireva, 15, 614068, Perm, Russia avnut@inbox.ru philos.perm@gmail.com
Abstract
The development of contemporary digital technologies leads to a profound modification of human intelligence. The authors assume that this modification should be studied by means of a special kind of phenomenology. It is digital phenomenology which examines the structures of consciousness of the modern technogenic subject. This builds on their previous works where the authors have already discussed a theory of the transformation of human intelligence driven by digital technologies. The influence of these technologies results in virtualization of affect. Affect becomes detached from its local manifestation in the human body and is manifested in material and energetic processes in digital infrastructure. As a result, space and time, categories of reason, and productive imagination become aspects of mobile devices and digital infrastructure. The aim of this contribution is to discuss the possibilities of digital phenomenology in the study of communication of the technogenic subject. Methodologically, the study refers to the phenomenological approach. Archetypes are compared of classical intelligence and technogenic subjectivity which defines the content of communication. The authors suggest that consciousness as a pure orientation can undergo digital modification, as the world of primordial objects is discovered through corporeal experience. A modern human body is not constituted within the boundaries of direct sensual experience but perceives digital devices as body organs. The peculiarities of the language of these devices determine human linguistic practices as well. So we can see non-human intelligence and non-human communication. Both intelligence and communication are becoming increasingly artificial. The prospect of further in-depth research in the digital humanities is outlined.
Keywords: Lebenswelt, Digital technologies, Digital modification of human intelligence and communication
Citation: Vnutskikh, A., & Komarov, S. (2024). Lebenswelt, Digital Phenomenology and Modification of Human Intelligence. Technology and Language, 5(2), 67-79.
https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2024.02.07
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
УДК 1.62-529
https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2024.02.06 Научная статья
Lebenswelt, цифровая феноменология и модификации человеческого интеллекта
Александр Внутских ( ) и Сергей Комаров Пермский государственный национальный исследовательский университет, ул. Букирева, 15,
614068, Пермь, Россия avnut@inbox.ru philos.perm@gmail.com
Аннотация
Развитие современных цифровых технологий приводит к глубочайшей модификации человеческого интеллекта. Авторы исходят из того, что эта модификация должна изучаться в рамках особой разновидности феноменологии - цифровой феноменологии, исследующей структуры сознания современного "техногенного субъекта". В свое время авторы уже обсуждали концепцию трансформации человеческого интеллекта под влиянием цифровых технологий. Было показано, что в результате этого влияния происходит виртуализация аффекта: последний отрывается от его локального проявления в теле человека и начинает существовать в форме материальных и энергетических процессов в цифровой инфраструктуре. В результате, пространство и время, категории рассудка, продуктивное воображение начинают выступать во все большей степени как функции не человека, а мобильных устройств и цифровой инфраструктуры. Целью данной статьи является обсуждение возможностей цифровой феноменологии при исследовании коммуникации техногенного субъекта. Методологическим основанием исследования является феноменологический подход, благодаря которому сравниваются архетипы классического интеллекта и техногенной субъективности, которые оказывают определяющее влияние на содержание коммуникации. Показано, что сознание как чистая направленность может претерпевать цифровую модификацию, поскольку мир примордиальных объектов открывается посредством телесного опыта. Конституирование же человеческого тела современного человека осуществляется не в границах непосредственно чувственного опыта, а включает в себя продолжение органов тела в цифровых устройствах. Особенности же "языка" этих устройств определяют человеческие языковые практики. Таким образом, мы фиксируем уже не вполне человеческий интеллект и не вполне человеческую коммуникацию - и то и другое существенно "артифицируется". Намечена перспектива углубленных исследований в области цифровых гуманитарных наук.
Ключевые слова: Lebenswelt; Цифровые технологии; Цифровая модификация интеллекта и коммуникации
Для цитирования: Vnutskikh, A., Komarov, S. Lebenswelt, digital phenomenology and modification of human intelligence // Technology and Language, 5(2), 67-79. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2024.02.07
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
INTRODUCTION
Phenomenology is known to have two key methods at its disposal - intuition and phenomenological reduction. Intuition captures self-evidences where self-evidences are the key criteria for the existence of being in the classical philosophical tradition. The fact that a human being has intelligence and participates in communication is seen to be an example of these evidences. Here, however, the question presents itself: how far do intelligence and communication truly belong to a human being these days? The hypothesis of the research is that digital transformation which gave large language models and talking gadgets has significantly modified the intelligence of human beings per se. This human being is a technogenic subject that is utterly different from the archetype of the subject from the epoch of classical philosophizing. People communicate their thoughts. But do they always think as human beings do? We believe this question belongs to the field of so-called digital phenomenology aimed at examining the structure of a technogenic, specifically digital subject. Don Ihde wrote that phenomenology should be classified as the latest technology belonging to the Lebenswelt of the XXI-century person (Ihde, 2009). To do this, one should pay attention to the trends in the changes of its lifeworld and its social connections, including communicative ties.
THE CORE OF THE PRIMORDIAL WORLD
Let us start with theoretical grounds to the answer to the question: is digital modification of human intelligence possible at all and how deeply pervasive could it be? To answer the question, we refer to Edmund Husserl's (1973) methodology of primordial reduction. Husserl's phenomenological reduction of "existing givenness" is followed by the "primordial reduction" with its goal to achieve the world of my own experience where my own presentations matter. The second stage of Husserl's reduction results in reduced consciousness and its correlated primordial world with no indication of the Other. The primary structure in the basis of the primordial world is the transcendental subjectivity as an immanent structure of consciousness with the transcendent being the immanent transcendentality. Intentionality determines the primary layer of consciousness to be the transcendental ego with its inner intentional object - World as the Others. That is why we believe that it is impossible to directly modify the core of the consciousness' primordial world under the impact of digital technologies. However, since the world of primordial objects becomes open through physical experience, and an animate body becomes a flow of sensations which the world institutionalizes in (Husserl, 1973), this mediated modification turns out to be possible. What is more, it could be very deep, penetrating the entire experience of a subject's sensitivity, because digital technologies could change the entire physical experience of a human being.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE KINESTHETIC WORLD
Kinesthesis or flows of sensations associated with an animate body are the primary experience of orientation in the world (Merleau-Ponty et al, 2013). However, what happens when the children representing the generation of digital natives face the digital
technologies as their first objects constituted in their experience? In this case, the primary kinesthesis of sensitivity, materiality, space, and objectivity will be updated with one more kinesthesis when a human body is constituted not within its sensational experience, but rather perceives digital devices as its organs. These days, a child is typically provided with an access to the gadgets at an early age, and right from their early age their sensitivity horizon shifts beyond the borders of natural sensitivity to the sensitivity horizon of gadget sensors. Here the following analogy could be drawn: it is known that the point at which a vehicle driver (even with low driving proficiency) focuses his attention and which he subjectively associates with himself is located not inside his body but rather at some distance in front of the vehicle - and this distance increases with speed. Digital natives, on the other hand, dive into their sensitivity horizon with no sufficient experience of interacting with the objects of the material world via their natural sensitivity, that is why this subject dives into the horizon even deeper than a vehicle driver. Actually, a child with the parents tightly 'merged' with the gadgets at work, as well as at home, during their leisure time, has no other content choice.
As a result, one could observe a significant modification of space and time orientation of modern persons. The authors' previous work (Vnutskikh and Komarov, 2023) has already mentioned that a cellphone's space is manifested as a potential physical presence of a human body. Since geolocation is a basic feature of any cell device, space is synthesized a priori outside human consciousness. Space is given not as a type of external contemplation but rather as a type of representation of digital devices; it is made available as a function of this device rather than is synthesized with imagination. The actual geometry of space appears to be distorted by virtual topology, while the global space in reality acquires the structure of rigid cells of local existence. Social space is experienced as a set of 'local' places defining the possibility for social movements. This is manifested in greater disorientation of a person in space overall, a loss of connection with routine life, topological cretinism, and a loss of fundamental understanding of the global space beyond a mobile interface.
Like space, time also turns out to be a cumulative flow of all external rational processes and is grasped by sensations. That is why it appears to be a parameter of consciousness rather than self-consciousness of a modern person. This time is not constituted by our I, actions and activities of a person. On the contrary, it is defined by the flow of external events, time of the planners, clocks, and quantum generators of mobile devices. This is not human, not my time, but the time of devices.
Consciousness cannot catch up with reality, and thus becomes reproductive: the present turns out to be reconstructed from the archive of the moments of time. It means that memory is losing its function of storing things and identifying key moments of the past correlated with the present. A digital archive is the place to accumulate and store information, its timespan is not clear. This archive ontologically manifests hybrid reality on-demand once it is made: digitalized reality is on demand in this or that mode of time and depends on search samples. In other words, time and its modes are determined by the mechanism of filtration and data extraction.
This means human rationality is affectively inhibited so that time is experienced as the time started by external clocks, eternally reproduced and regularly multiplying the
same sensation. No matter how reactively time is represented, it is connected with understanding the difference between distribution and reproduction, representation and memory, the present and reconstruction, reality and archive. This is the contradiction between the time of life and the time of clocks, because human consciousness cannot be completely turned into a mechanical process. As a result, all sensations, evaluations and comments about the present as a whole lose their common basis and multiply. What is embodied in the digital devices is mirrored in social reality in the nature of discourse about time: the integral present uniting the past and the future is disintegrated into separate elements, and a modern person experiences these elements and speaks about them as isolated parts. For example, the genuine present can be experienced as the past or vice versa - the present can replace the past. Perhaps, it is a "digital anthropologist" who can understand these processes which change the humanway of being (Horst and Miller, 2013).
Here, Mark Coeckelbergh reasonably says that digital technologies could be used and understood provided there are a number of conditions for possibility or transcendental structures (Coeckelbergh, 2022a). He defines language, social relations, a human body, material infrastructure among these grammars or conditions which enable the meaning and use of digital technologies but which at the same time limit them. Indeed, for example, how we experience and think about something is embodied - cognition is an active attitude towards the world as it is manifested in a human body. Digital agents of communications or AI see that they are structurally perceived via our manifested mode of being and cognition. As a result, we can, for example, project a human body on an artificial agent of communication (Coeckelbergh, 2022a). However, in light of the above-mentioned transformation of the technogenic subject in relation to space and time, , this projection turns out to be at least not quite a human one but rather mainly an artificial projection imposed on a subject by a machine.
Here, one could observe a clash of phenomenological and analytical traditions because the use of language defines new grammars and narratives - not only to describe the sensations per se (kinesthesis) and the respective things of experience (world) but also to describe the I (Descombes, 2011). In other words, the words not only describe things. In a sense they do things and make others do them; thus, words and things are a part of practices or, what Ludwig Wittgenstein called, the game.
Similarly, descriptions of emotions in words turn out to be a constructive practice of experiencing these emotions, just like in a cartoon 'puzzle.' It is worth reminding us here that kinesthesis is the flow of sensations associated with the body, as well as a well-known fact of a mimic expression of emotions. The pattern of bodily manifestation of emotions could definitely be expressed with machine languages, which could be proven by way of successful simulation of emotional mimics in a hyperrealistic robot which appears to be quite skillful in, for example, predicting a human smile or initiating a smile - or initiating some other things (Robo-C2, Promobot, 2019). So, emotions are associated with kinesthesis, while they, in turn, could be technologically mediated, have their images in gadgets and their names as their horizons. In this situation, a human body is a transcendental structure of meaning, and we are bodies-intelligences interacting with the environment (Coeckelbergh, 2022a). The concern is that our monopoly on emotionally
defined understanding of the world is getting lost - digital infrastructure "conceptualizes" us with digital technologies. All kinesthesis and emotions could be comprehended without face-to-face human communication but solely with the grammars defined by artificial machine languages or AI.
WORLD AS THE OTHERS. CONSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIAL WORLD
What is a social world? In terms of phenomenology and phenomenological sociology, the social world is knowledge objectification in human practice. Alfred Schutz (1962) writes,
«I am a human being born into the social world, and living my daily life in it, perceive it as it is, constructed before my time, opened for my interpretation and actions correlated with me, a relevant biographically determined situation. A particular type of connections acquires its specific meaning in relation to me. I designate this meaning with a word "we." The Others are "you" in relation to "us" with me at the center. A third party "they" is defined in relation to "you" that is correlated with me» (Schutz, 1962, p. 15).
At the same time, Schutz says that communication as a realized inner speech can rarely be seen in people: people automatically grasp situations and actions and rely on socially borrowed/socially approved typifications transferred via language as typifying agents.
However, the problem is that this typifying agent is referred to not only by people. Robots have long become the objects of people's talk and started talking not worse than many people in terms of their forms: we can just refer to the latest versions of ChatGPT. It turns out that both people and non-people become the users of natural language, while the devices and machine can also do something with the words, typify the elements of the social world in a specific manner and make others (both machines and people) do something. This involves the integration of machines into social material practices (Coeckelbergh, 2020). We are so deeply immersed into interaction with the elements of digital infrastructure that only a "disconnection" can make its "logic" visible to us (Kaun, 2021).
It is clear that technologies do not think, human beings think. Technologies, on the other hand, speak in terms of a language game, while we learn this language, enter into a dialogue with it and then change it. Language is a transcendental structure of technology. In this case, features of this language start to define our (human) language practices, which results in specific features of both self-understanding and understanding the World as the Others. These Others act as addressants-communicators-counterparts. Does this experience have the criteria for clear distinction between human and non-human subjects of communication, for example, robots? In terms of intersubjectivity, these others are organized in our communication as quasisocial subjects, although Coeckelbergh (2022b) reasonably asks to be careful when referring to this notion.
What does AI change in the intersubjective world?
First of all, it changes the perception and understanding of the others: gadgets in their anthropologic dimensions are no different from human beings. That is why Coeckelbergh suggests something akin to „word-building" of technologies.
«I propose to call technology a formator. It is not just object and substance, not just a thing. It forms worlds... humans... also form. There is... co-formation» (Coeckelbergh, 2022a, p. 153).
Secondly, this leads to adopting the behavior practices which traditionally lack any reasons to distinguish robots from people, as well as to cheating. The way we speak about others and ourselves is particularly important. Language initially structures and defines the way we communicate, including with the machines. Wittgenstein showed that language is perceived by an individual as a natural language game learnt by practice. But what should be done if this "natural" language is actually artificial? Any language, including AI language, has its own metaphysics and is not neutral to the social reality perceived by an individual. That is why it is not only that robots are social subjects, but inversively we can realize ourselves as "natural" robots (thus, AI understanding becomes an explanatory model for natural intelligence).
The trend is to understand the natural by analogy to the artificial. The latest significant change in understanding the correlation between the natural and the artificial is mainly connected with the changes in digital technologies. It could be assumed that this could lead to a kind of turning over: the human natural is turned into the artificial in terms of human communication, consciousness, human subjectivity on the whole; and, vice versa, digital reality is built as the natural with its own objective laws.
Let us explain. Classical science from Plato and Aristotle defined the natural to be everything with the reason for its existence in itself, from nature (nproxa ano xi 9^0^), while everything with the reason in the other was seen to be artificial (to nproxo orqv xsxvn). The latter was typically understood as something created by a human being; even automata, at first sight, acted as the natural, which surprised Aristotle among others (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E./1965, 734b 7-19). However, at modern times the sciences assume that "the first by nature" could and should be artificially reproduced. This is what science and engineering of modern times deal with: they artificially create the conditions to reproduce the natural phenomenon which is now controlled, rationalized and is becoming more technological.
At the same time, the artificial colonizes what has been considered to be the natural up till now - the human body and consciousness (soul). The philosophy of modern times is dominated by the notions of correction and purification - to perceive the natural phenomena - of the human mind. This could be evidenced with the titles of the treatises written by the creators of the modern times' philosophy and science - On the Improvement of the Understanding or Rules for the Direction of the Mind etc. Consciousness, sense, mind given to us by nature are not quite perfect, they are limited, blinded by various fictions, ambiguous and fake ones, which penetrate human consciousness (Spinoza, 1901). On the other hand, thinking itself for some time has been considered to be a human ability that is why it preserves the characteristics of the natural, an ability given to a person by nature.
However, the development of computing technologies in XX - XXI centuries brought about the so-called artificiation of human thinking as their natural ability. Now, the natural is artificially reproduced. For this it does not matter that analogue or digital operations just simulate the natural brain processes. Computation rate and amount determine and define understanding of thinking as the artificial process being more perfect than the natural human ability. This development of neural networks ultimately transforms the meaning of the natural and the artificial: human thinking is not just rationalized - what the philosophers of the modern age dreamt about; it is also not just technicalized and technologized - what the scientists of the 20th century assumed; it is becoming the artificial in its strict sense, since all its key elements can now function under the impact of external digital technological infrastructure (Vnutskikh and Komarov, 2023).
CONSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD
This question might be seen to be paradoxical, but it is still worth asking: do physical things exist in this world? Postphenomenology claims that the things are the agents between us and the world, although when the things turn into the users of language, they change their phenomenal status.
First of all, technologies constitute reality by creating material infrastructure and other material prerequisites. Phenomenologically, it means that the things per se are constituted in terms of the role they play in the technological sphere of our experience. It has been mentioned that digital technologies change our perception of time and space, imagination is deformed when reality is perceived, our ability to think (sense) is being transformed when it demands a colossal digital infrastructure for it to work properly (Vnutskikh & Komarov, 2023). For example, the internet is a special type of space which could set the meanings to a person, thus Homo virtualis or a personality in the internet is no longer one of the human identities. Ontologically it is defined within a self-regulating virtual reality, while the attempts to limit it are perceived by the users as artificial (Bylieva, 2016). From this perspective, virtual beings in the social networks replace their living, sensual corporeal being for a person. The virtual world becomes more real to a person than vague physical being. We rely on our virtual experience which, instead of personal experience, starts defining the non-virtual living being of a person.
Secondly, language defines the perception and understanding of the reality: it is known that grammar and syntax give language some metaphysics (Carnap, 1950). But all programming languages manifest their metaphysics in a different manner, and that is why they can perceive the outer world in a different manner (Bogost, 2012). The question whether artificial intelligence and all information reality affect the developing living intelligence and its perception of the physical world is quite ambiguous. If a child constitutes the physical world via the gadgets rather than their practical contact with physical things, then the things are not physical objects but rather animated ones with their role of talking assistants, virtual objects, etc. This means that things do not act on their own. It is next to impossible to see a thing as it is, per se, as its material entity, outside its instrumental, informational and other characteristics, in its pure materiality,
sensuality and form. Therefore "pure ontology," as Aristotle or Heidegger understands it, is incompatible with "digital being" (Koulouris, 2020).
Thirdly, it has been mentioned that technologies talk. Daria Bylieva reasonably says that "language used to be seen as a purely human technology, but now language is acquired by non-people. Chat-bots, voice assistants, embodied dialogue agents and robots have acquired the ability to communicate via language and can often present themselves as humanoid personalities. People perceive them in an ambivalent manner; they recognize them to be the Others. Thus, artificial intelligence exploits language in a way which is not determined by the human method of using it" (Bylieva, 2022, p. 111). The phenomenological status of material things is changing: their physical givenness is replaced by their virtual image.
Fourthly, how does the real world constitute itself in this case, how is it described by all natural sciences? Husserl believed this layer of the lifeworld is based on the intersubjective experience of science (Husserl, 1973). The unified picture of the world described by the natural sciences is rooted in the intersubjective invariance of primary experience in perceiving the physical world and invariant language structures of its description. Modern conditions turn science into technological building of these objects rather than into research and acts as technoscience. Then, what is the real physical world in this context? The sciences become a complicated system of knowledge represented and mediated by intellectual networks. This knowledge makes things lose their material nature and thingness as they are mediated by language structures, knowledge arrays and artificial intelligence rather than human experience about them. Their scientific images are defined not by the primary experience of perceiving things, but, on the contrary, it is the knowledge images of things that substantiate the experience of their perception. In this context, things themselves appear to be sets of data as their intellectual images suggest, they are reduced to data and act as data: technologies act "as the author of language, as a user of language, and as a creator of the world" (Coeckelbergh, 2020, p 22). An objective world is presented as an information network image or an infinitely expanding database as a virtual copy, a virtual construction of a digital language.
THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
The world of values and ideals constitutes a special layer in a person's Lebenswelt; this is the subject of humanities. The human spiritual world is being transformed like the physical world which becomes manifested in the databases of the natural knowledge. First of all, some values are being modified in that they are being replaced by the implicit principles of metaphysics of programming language (as Rudolf Carnap understands it) or by the metaphysics of natural language which has already been reformatted under the impact of digital technologies (as shown above). The function of reality reproduction and its never-ending reconstruction prevails in intellectual networks due to data digitalization and its reverse decoding in databases (digital archives). This is highly likely to modify fundamental values - since the perception of time modes and existence modalities are being modified. Here, for example, we can refer to the fact that the digital era is clearly focused on a structured future rather than the actual accomplished past, and that is why
history can be revised while objective reasons for ongoing events are ignored. Modality of possibility, in its turn, has its priority over modality of necessity (Vnutskikh and Komarov, 2023). We believe it means that values are being relativized as the „must" or „has-to" turns out to be just a status for the virtual and could be revised, if necessary. Therefore, we have to talk not just about the transition of traditional values into a digital format. We have to talk about a fundamentally new dimension of values and meanings (Bolshakova, 2024). Ideals of meaning can also act as the settings for the efficient exploitation of software.
Secondly, the way of thinking is changed under the impact of digital technologies so that the ability to put meanings in the strings of representations - sense - is also being deeply transformed. Today, we can talk about objectivation of sense into a colossal body of modern digital infrastructure. Technogenic factors develop a rigid but quite rational structure towards human subjectivity. Located outside the individual, transcendental structures of sense break through to the surface of the affective life of consciousness as a set of rational ties with reasons and motives in their technogenic nature. For persons this signifies the degradation of their logical reasoning; this degradation leads to a magical attitude towards machine reasoning (Bylieva and Zamorev, 2022). Poor logical reasoning, on the one hand, results in a loss of value of well-reasoned knowledge, while, on the other hand, weakens our ability to extract the meanings from fairy tales.
In this sense, ChatGPT can be looked at as a tool which simulates and even replaces dying-out human logical reasoning. The question-answer structures of Socratic dialogues, as well as the dialogues of the founders of modern science used to be valid tools for exploring objective reality but are no longer relevant under modern conditions. There are several reasons for this. First of all, the elements of this reality are turned into sets of data and constituted as regards to their role in technological patterns of our experience. Secondly, the reasoning skills of one party, namely of the person, in a modern digital dialogue leaves much to be desired as we go forward. For example, one commercial says that if you refer to the Alexa Voice Assistant for help to prepare your speech, this will be equal to having over 1,000 virtual assistants that could help you with your preparation. This raises the questions: where is the place for a person, and who is the owner of the prepared speech?
CONCLUSION
This study is preliminary by its nature, and it is worth noting here that the authors do not suffer from technophobia. The undeniable fact is that technologies accompany human beings from the moment of birth and define social progress. However, after Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology and subsequently the digital transformation of the Lebenswelt, technologies should not be perceived as a simple tools to satisfy human needs. One should be aware that the digital transformation, just like any other human-made thing (Mould, 2018), is ambivalent in its possible application, complicated and multi-faceted, and not all its aspects can be thoroughly examined in the context of an economically determined accelerated exploitation of digital technologies.
The results of these studies could provide a lot for socially responsible (in the full sense of the word) developments of modern technological systems.
Nowadays, the authors of humanities use digital methods and very often explore the interaction between human beings and digital technologies. These authors refer to these approaches as "digital humanities." However, the transformation of the Lebenswelt in the contemporary context opens up prospects for deeper research, because the human being is no longer identical to the pre-digital human being. The use of digital tools is secondary, because it is "superimposed" on the already transformed human being, on the already transformed social.
The authors think the transformation of the Lebenswelt in modern conditions calls for important further study. First of all, digital technologies transform the corporeal experience of a person and one's orientation in space. Here, digital phenomenology merges with digital anthropology.
Secondly, the transformation of Lebenswelt is manifested in the phenomenon when things lose their physical givenness under the impact of digital technologies: this givenness is replaced by phenomenological virtual being. Things speak the language of intellectual networks which are not the agents between a person and reality but rather reality itself. The objective world is only a virtual construction of a digital language (code). This aspect of digital transformation reveals the need for defining and developing digital ontology.
Thirdly, digital communication produces a person as an actant without ego, with emotions turned inside out, and subjectivity subordinated to digital infrastructure -represented and self-represented with language modified by the linguistic practices of digital devices. This constitutes the field of digital psychology.
Fourthly, digital technologies penetrate both the self-perception of a person and the perception of other people as being different from me. In modern conditions, the social world is being constituted through intellectual networks and the language of their representation. The language of intellectual networks appears to be an instrument for constituting social reality as a quasisocial being. It calls for the development of a specific digital sociology.
Fifthly, values are relativized due to their isolation from the actual physical world, the loss of value of objective knowledge and its reasoning becoming replaced by databases and quite challenging fact checking. As a result, the spiritual world as a layer of the lifeworld becomes a set of relative and replaceable values, while the ideals are constituted only as possible references for human behavior. This is dealt with in digital axiology.
It is worth emphasizing once again that our phenomenological analysis is preliminary and diagnostic. However, this examination opens up the new areas of study mentioned above. It also opens up new content for the constitution of Lebenswelt for a modern person - digital anthropology, digital psychology, digital sociology, ontology of digital being, and axiology of digital world. Each area is based on the physical experience which is associated with the introduction of digital technologies, digital code, and language, artificial intelligence in the respective area of a person's lifeworld.
Thus, phenomenology reveals its new nature: it is not only a heuristic method for the analysis of a person's Lebenswelt in the digital era. First of all, it discovers the phenomena of human-AI interaction which cannot be identified through the analysis of AI or in just human-AI interaction. The digital codes and language structures become the phenomena of the lifeworld rather than the elements of software. Secondly, an analysis of the constitution of the digital lifeworld captures a genetic, although not always positive role of digital technologies, digital code, and language in accumulating the experience of a modern person. Digital codes appear to be the packages of meanings, while the gadgets and digital agents are only the machines of genesis of person's lifeworld. Databases, digital agents, electronic gadgets, neuronets, and AI are not pure physical material objects and derivatives only of engineering activity. We see digital phenomenology to be a promising area for the analysis of AI, digital agents, and digital codes as social phenomena.
REFERENCES
Aristotle. (1965). De generatione animalium [Parts of Animals]. In Aristotelis de
generatione animalium. Clarendon Press. (Original work published 350 B.C.E.) Bogost, I. (2012). Alien Phenomenology, or, what it's like to be a Thing. University of Minnesota Press.
Bolshakova, A. S. (2024). Pareidolia of Meanings of Digital Axiology. In Society:
Philosophy. History. Culture (pp. 99-106). Hors. Bylieva, D. (2016). The Internet as a New Type of Space. Terra Linguistica, 2(244), 124130.
Bylieva, D. & Zamorev, A. (2022). Father Christmas: Magic and Technology. Technology and Language, 3(4), 76-89.
https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.04.06 Bylieva, D. (2022). Language of AI. Technology and Language, 3(1), 111-126.
https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.01.11 Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue internationale de philosophie, 4, 20-40.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2020). When Machines Talk: A Brief Analysis of Some Relations between Technology and Language. Technology and Language, 1(1), 22-27. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2020.01.05 Coeckelbergh, M. (2022a). The Grammars of AI: Towards a Structuralist and Transcendental Hermeneutics of Digital Technologies. Technology and Language, 3(2), 148-161. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.02.09 Coeckelbergh, M. (2022b). Response: Language and robots. Technology and Language,
3(1), 147-154. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.01.14 Descombes, V. (2018). Le complément de sujet [The Subject Complement]. Gallimard. Horst, H. A., & Miller, D. (2013). Digital Anthropology. Bloomsbury. Husserl, E. (1973). Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage [Cartesian Meditations and Paris Lectures]. Martinus Nijhoff.
Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking university lectures. Suny Press.
Kaun, A. (2021). Ways of Seeing Digital Disconnection: A Negative Sociology of Digital Culture. Convergence, 27(6), 1571-1583.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211045535 Koulouris, T. (2020). Prolegomena to the Study of Digital Ontology. In MeCCSA. University of Brighton.
https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/publications/prolegomena-to-the-study-of-digital-ontology
Merleau-Ponty, M., Landes, D., Carman, T., & Lefort, C. (2013). Phenomenology of
Perception. Routledge. Mould, R.F. (2018). Industrial Applications. A Century of X-Rays and Radioactivity in
Medicine (pp. 103-107). CRC Press Robo-C2, Promobot. (2019).https://promo-bot.ru/production/robo-c/ Spinoza, B. (1901). Improvement of the Understanding: Ethics and Correspondence. MW Dunne.
Schutz, A. (1962). Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Collected Papers I. Phaenomenologica, vol 11. (pp. 3-47). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2851-6 1 Vnutskikh, A., & Komarov, S. (2023). Technogenic Subjectivity and Its Social Projections. In E. Isaeva, & A. Rocha (Eds.), Science and Global Challenges of the 21st Century - Innovations and Technologies in Interdisciplinary Applications. Perm Forum 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems (vol 622, pp 653-668). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28086-3 61
СВЕДЕНИЯ ОБ АВТОРАХ / THE AUTHORS
Комаров Сергей Владимирович philos.perm@gmail.com ORCID 0000-0001-7358-6151
Внутских Александр Юрьевич
avnut@inbox.ru
ORCID 0000-0003-4162-1033
Sergey Komarov philos.perm@gmail .com ORCID 0000-0001-7358-6151
Alexander Vnutskikh avnut@inbox.ru ORCID 0000-0003-4162-1033
Статья поступила 1 марта 2024 Received: 1 March 2024
одобрена после рецензирования 1 июня 2024 Revised: 1 June 2024
принята к публикации 15 июня 2024 Accepted: 15 June 2024
