Anthony Miccoli
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Western Colorado University
https://anthonymiccoli.substack.com/
My main field is posthumanism and gender studies, focusing specifically on the cultural and philosophical roles of technology in our daily lives. Exploring the points of interface between the human and the technological, my research views the technological as an epistemological – and ultimately ontological – expression of humanity. Being-in-the-world depends upon a self-image reflected by, and through, our technological constructions. Humans are, and have always been, through technology. My philosophical specialization is the philosophy of technology and posthumanism, covering postphenomenology, epistemology, and ontology; especially in relation to cultural studies.
My first book, _Posthuman Suffering and the Technological Embrace_ is the culmination of nearly a decade of research that began in the field of literary theory and eventually led me to the then-evolving field of the philosophy of technology. In it, I contend that Posthumanism portrays technology as an “other” to be embraced, and consequently has lost sight of the basic realities of the human/technological boundary. Technology becomes a superior model of information processing to which humans aspire. We do not embrace technology to expand and augment our selves, we embrace technology so that it may embrace us. The posthuman view reconceptualizes the human being to be made more compatible with computerized systems or possible artificial intelligences.
All my latest writing can be found on my substack: https://anthonymiccoli.substack.com/
I think it's important that we understand the unique ways in which humans, animals, and machines perceive the world, allowing us to re-cast the process of consciousness in a way that allows for a more holistic approach to environmentalism and technological development. Such work will also help us to better position ourselves as developments in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and prosthetics further destabilize an already tentative representation of self-other dichotomies. I integrate many of these concepts into my courses at Western, and cover a plethora of posthumanist ideas in my sections of Introduction to Philosophy, Reality and Representation, and Philosophy of Science. I also teach Women & Gender in Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Eastern Philosophy, as well as other special topics courses.
Phone: 970-943-3004
Address: Western State Colorado University
Taylor Hall
600 N Adams Street
Gunnison, CO 81231
USA
Western Colorado University
https://anthonymiccoli.substack.com/
My main field is posthumanism and gender studies, focusing specifically on the cultural and philosophical roles of technology in our daily lives. Exploring the points of interface between the human and the technological, my research views the technological as an epistemological – and ultimately ontological – expression of humanity. Being-in-the-world depends upon a self-image reflected by, and through, our technological constructions. Humans are, and have always been, through technology. My philosophical specialization is the philosophy of technology and posthumanism, covering postphenomenology, epistemology, and ontology; especially in relation to cultural studies.
My first book, _Posthuman Suffering and the Technological Embrace_ is the culmination of nearly a decade of research that began in the field of literary theory and eventually led me to the then-evolving field of the philosophy of technology. In it, I contend that Posthumanism portrays technology as an “other” to be embraced, and consequently has lost sight of the basic realities of the human/technological boundary. Technology becomes a superior model of information processing to which humans aspire. We do not embrace technology to expand and augment our selves, we embrace technology so that it may embrace us. The posthuman view reconceptualizes the human being to be made more compatible with computerized systems or possible artificial intelligences.
All my latest writing can be found on my substack: https://anthonymiccoli.substack.com/
I think it's important that we understand the unique ways in which humans, animals, and machines perceive the world, allowing us to re-cast the process of consciousness in a way that allows for a more holistic approach to environmentalism and technological development. Such work will also help us to better position ourselves as developments in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and prosthetics further destabilize an already tentative representation of self-other dichotomies. I integrate many of these concepts into my courses at Western, and cover a plethora of posthumanist ideas in my sections of Introduction to Philosophy, Reality and Representation, and Philosophy of Science. I also teach Women & Gender in Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Eastern Philosophy, as well as other special topics courses.
Phone: 970-943-3004
Address: Western State Colorado University
Taylor Hall
600 N Adams Street
Gunnison, CO 81231
USA
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Books
In the age of technology our own limitations are legitimized as unique to the human condition. Through those limitations, we can distinguish ourselves from our machines, making us superior to them via our own imperfection. Posthumanist discourse from scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, and others, often fails to address the underlying meaning behind our technological aspirations, and actually perpetuates the belief that properly embracing technology allows us to overcome the very need to technology itself; if we possess the right apparatus to take in the world and the code which instantiates it, then the world will give us everything it has to offer. In so doing, we sacrifice the objective of experiencing the world for the object through which it should be experienced.
By revealing the theoretical and historical foundations of posthumanism through the work of Elaine Scarry, Freud, Heidegger, and Lyotard; and tracing narrative representations of failed posthuman ontologies in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Steven Spielberg's film, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Posthuman Suffering and the Technological Embrace re-frames the core assumptions of posthumanism in terms of psychological trauma and the physicality of the human/technological interface itself."
Chapters & Articles
http://blog.posthumanbeing.com/2017/09/epilogue-denial.html
In order to achieve this, we must -- perhaps counterintuitively -- re-emphasize technology as an artifact, placing those artifacts on equal discursive footing with the ontological self or “mind.” When we start a posthumanist analysis of interface with the “object” or “artifact” rather than the human using it, we can more readily achieve a discourse of the “distributed self,” which takes the shape of the environment it occupies; a self which morphs across a spatiotemporal continuum and is as affected by phenomena traditionally considered “outside” of it as it is by the biological processes which sustain it. In such a scenario, “interface” is rendered
moot, and becomes a signifier for arbitrary and shifting designations of that which is and isn’t the self.
Talks
Papers
In the age of technology our own limitations are legitimized as unique to the human condition. Through those limitations, we can distinguish ourselves from our machines, making us superior to them via our own imperfection. Posthumanist discourse from scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, and others, often fails to address the underlying meaning behind our technological aspirations, and actually perpetuates the belief that properly embracing technology allows us to overcome the very need to technology itself; if we possess the right apparatus to take in the world and the code which instantiates it, then the world will give us everything it has to offer. In so doing, we sacrifice the objective of experiencing the world for the object through which it should be experienced.
By revealing the theoretical and historical foundations of posthumanism through the work of Elaine Scarry, Freud, Heidegger, and Lyotard; and tracing narrative representations of failed posthuman ontologies in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Steven Spielberg's film, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Posthuman Suffering and the Technological Embrace re-frames the core assumptions of posthumanism in terms of psychological trauma and the physicality of the human/technological interface itself."
http://blog.posthumanbeing.com/2017/09/epilogue-denial.html
In order to achieve this, we must -- perhaps counterintuitively -- re-emphasize technology as an artifact, placing those artifacts on equal discursive footing with the ontological self or “mind.” When we start a posthumanist analysis of interface with the “object” or “artifact” rather than the human using it, we can more readily achieve a discourse of the “distributed self,” which takes the shape of the environment it occupies; a self which morphs across a spatiotemporal continuum and is as affected by phenomena traditionally considered “outside” of it as it is by the biological processes which sustain it. In such a scenario, “interface” is rendered
moot, and becomes a signifier for arbitrary and shifting designations of that which is and isn’t the self.