NEOSUBSTANTIVISM AS COSMOTECHNICS

Abstract

Yuk Hui refers to cosmotechnics as the deep interweaving of human action and technology as shaped by diverse moral universes. In this article, I pit two views of cosmotechnics against each other. I begin by characterizing the present, dominant cosmotechnics through the lens of neosubstantivism, a view where technology is naturalized and seen as propelled by an autonomous logic of development. I focus on the Transhumanist Synthesis (TS) in its cosmotechnical aspects, as articulation of cosmology, technology, and ethics. TS is Silicon Valley’s mutant breed of ideology that rose from the failure of “soft” humanistic transhumanism. I examine the interests TS serves and the future it enables. Next, I examine the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon in this same cosmotechnical context. Simondon offers a prospective theory of cosmotechnics in which technical modes of thought arise from previous modes of magical, ethical, and religious thought. The naturalization of technology in Simondon takes a very different path that confronts the ruling cosmotechnics in challenging ways. Simondon offers an original vision of the relation between humans, nature, culture, and technology, rethinking these terms and their relations in ways that may break the hold of TS.

Keywords:

• cosmotechnics
• Yuk Hui
• Gilbert Simondon
• transhumanism
• Ray Kurzweil

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Theology is the study of the divine and of religious belief. I use the term in two more specific senses. Firstly, as an account of the origin and destiny of human creatures in the context of a meaningful cosmos either created by God or rendered rational by the future arrival of a God to come: the reign of “Homo Deus” (Harari), or the human rendered divine by technology. In the second sense, theology refers to political theology, following the philosophy of Carl Schmitt: the way theological narratives and structures consolidate into earthly power structures. In this last sense, theology is “the study of the structures and sources of legitimacy – of the ways that people attempt to answer the question of who should be in charge and why” (Bailes).

2 We should keep in mind that the Singularity also features in Nick Land’s “dark accelerationism” as the anti-humanist version of Kurzweil’s cozy, humanist narrative (see Land, “Meltdown” and “Ideology, Intelligence, and Capital”).

3 The term technology, as opposed to technics, has a number of interpretations. I will use technology to also encompass technics in general, except in certain passages where drawing the distinction becomes crucial to the argument. Following Simondon, I will employ technology to refer to: (1) the modern epoch in the history of technics; and (2) a structured and universal body of knowledge on technics.

4 Ellul published his major work, La technique ou l’enjeu du siècle (The Technological Society) in 1954, an annus mirabilis for technological substantivism, since it also saw the appearance of Martin Heidegger’s Die Frage nach der Technik (appearing in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954)). This work of Heidegger is also considered to advance a strong substantivist view of technology, although based on very different premises than those of Ellul. Due to reasons of space, we will not get a chance to discuss Heidegger here.

5 When Ellul denounces the encroachment of technology on nature, and the subsequent creation of a “second nature” as a technological totality that envelops human existence, he seems to assume there is a remnant of “nature” out there somewhere, and that technology can only replace nature from the perspective of the human. For example:

Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature. Technique is the complex and complete milieu in which human beings must live, and in relation to which they must define themselves. It is a universal mediator, producing a generalized mediation, totalizing and aspiring to totality. (Ellul, “The Search” 23)

6 The problem is twofold: (1) market-driven eugenics cannot guarantee future beneficence; and (2) the emphasis on “hi-tech” means of enhancement, as opposed to socio-economic reforms or the equitable distribution of “old” technologies, is arbitrary. Langdon Winner nicely sums it up: “Better genes and electronic implants? Hell, what about potable water?” (“Are Humans” 44).

7

The true principle of individuation is the genesis itself taking place, that is, the system in the course of becoming, while the energy actualizes itself. The true principle of individuation cannot be sought in what exists before individuation occurs, nor in what remains after individuation is accomplished; it is the energetic system that is individuating insofar as it realizes in itself that internal resonance of matter taking shape, and a mediation between orders of magnitude. The principle of individuation is the unique way in which the internal resonance of this matter is established in the process of taking this form. The principle of individuation is an operation. (Simondon, L’individuation 48; my translation, emphasis in the original)

8 At this point, the question of Simondonian politics is opened up. We don’t have enough space to deal with it here. The reader is referred to the body of literature on the constitutive role of technologies in the shaping of transindividual dynamics. See Combes, Bardin, and Read.

9 Another reason is that, for Simondon, there is no difference between function and structure. A description of a function coincides with the performance of the relevant structures. Function is immanent to structure (see Vaccari, “El artefacto”).

10

[…] a phase is only a phase in relation to others, from which it distinguishes itself in a manner that is totally independent of the notions of genus and species. The existence of a plurality of phases finally defines the reality of a neutral center of equilibrium in relation to which there is a phase shift. This schema is very different from the dialectical schema, because it implies neither necessary succession, nor the intervention of negativity as a motor of progress […] (Simondon, Mode of Existence 173)