# World Making and Technology  ## Metadata - Author: [[Leonie Möck]] - Full Title: World Making and Technology - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The text explores how technologies shape our understanding and creation of the world symbolically, emphasizing the importance of language and symbolism in technology studies. It discusses Nelson Goodman's worldmaking concept and how technologies play a role in creating and shaping different worlds through symbolic practices. The text suggests that while Goodman's approach offers valuable insights, considering the materiality of technology through concepts like Haraway's material-semiotic worlding practices could enhance our understanding of technological worldmaking. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/177857711 - Source File: Worldmaking and Technology by Leonie Möck.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > The goal of Goodman’s approach to the making of worlds lies mostly in describing the functional modes of symbolic systems. Prominently presented within Ways of Worldmaking, but also throughout other works, he develops and defends the claim that sciences, art, and perception are different branches or ways of worldmaking. He consequently argues for instance that the line between art and science isn’t marked by a line between the subjective and the objective but that both science and art are epistemological practices that rely on different symbolic systems (Goodman 1978, 170). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywbxxpk3ydxt5sy2w2a8zpp)) > Recently, there has been a growing hermeneutic interest in the symbolic effectiveness of technology. This can partially be seen as a reaction to what has been called an “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology, mainly in postphenomenology and actor-network theory, focusing on the material aspects of technologies. One unintended result of this empirical turn though can be seen in the neglect of language and of the symbolic, which are important factors of the shaping of worldly relations (for a comprehensive critical analysis of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, see (Smith 2018). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywy8cfe60y7z8vb0c4bh8kn)) > Firstly, hermeneuticians are interested in the ways in which technologies co-shape interpretative practices, for instance our narrative attitudes (Coeckelbergh and Reijers 2016) or our habitus within technified environments (Romele 2023). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywyb5tkppjp92z5j8shas1v)) > Another way to look at the hermeneutic aspects of technologies is by approaching the ways we conceive of technology. These crystallize for instance in our cultural representations and artefacts, like fictional stories, narratives, or metaphors of technology (Keymolen 2021; Natale 2018). By capturing the ways in which we conceive of these technologies, we get a so-to-speak better understanding of our understanding of technologies and through this can situate our interpretative attitudes towards technology. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyx3hrz81016gjw816cf66d0)) > I believe that we need more analytical tools to grasp the symbolic embeddedness and effectiveness of technologies. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywyn9b1fqc759h7cyp822k0)) > In Of Mind and other Matters Goodman specifies that with worldmaking he refers mainly to a making through thinking, through language and other symbol-systems, not a making with hands (Goodman 1984, 69). So worldmaking for Goodman is mainly(?) a cognitive practice. We might also hear an echo of one of the prominent slogans of the linguistic turn – “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein 2021, §5.6) – when Goodman goes: “We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbols.” (Goodman 1978, 6). But at the same time, Goodman’s focus is specifically not only on representation, on words and ways of telling worlds into being, but also on other symbolic forms such as images, on ways of showing and expressing worlds. He situates himself within the philosophical tradition of an interest in the structures of accessing the world, beginning with Kant and his focus on the structure of the mind and resulting in an > interest in the structure of symbolic representations; worlds in a way function as formal devices to capture and gather the products, rules and structures of symbolic practices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywyr7v4twpq1sq3gk8496mj)) > Goodman’s pragmatist approach to worldmaking is best expressed in his emphasis on rightness (rather than truth) as the epistemic criterion of choice. He argues that truth is a subcategory of rightness, a specific case of rightness. To show that truths in different worlds can stand in conflict with each other he gives the example of a guard who is asked to shoot every captive who is moving. Since the earth is constantly moving, the guard shoots everyone (Goodman 1978, 121). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyx9hq3pgarfc6hc31r0h96f)) > Technologies are enablers, manifesters, enhancers, facilitators, or disruptors for symbolic worldmaking processes. Technologies for instance enable and materialize new ways of representation in science and medicine, enhance sensory capacities, change the ways people do art, etc. It would be easy to give countless examples for ways in which technologies are part of different ways of worldmaking practices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywc6tem4n4cbt8g3aj0j8b3)) > But it’s important to note that Goodman isn’t interested in the material dimensions of the technologies but in the symbolic processes they are a part of. See for instance the following example: Goodman mentions the change from an analogue to a digital thermometer as a form of worldmaking as deletion. By introducing the digital thermometer with readings in tenths of a degree, we erase the steps between 20 and 20,1°C, they become unmeasurable. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywc7fxq5njcypgkyc5c62mj)) > This shift itself can be situated again. In the context of everyday life, it won’t matter too much if we can read the steps between 20 and 20,1°C. But in the context of scientific measuring practices, little differences in temperature play a role for our epistemic practices. The quality of worldmaking through technology is world-dependent. A technology might have an enabling effect within one worldmaking practice and a disrupting one within another one. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywc8afrbtv1bp410trfsqd0)) > Not only do technologies show their nature to us only within the interaction with them but they are interpreted and used differently within different cultural settings. With the worldmaking approach we can add that these different stabilizations of technologies are also governed by different rules, depending on the worldmaking context they are used in. In artistic practice, generative AI applications such as Stable Diffusion or Dall-E are used and evaluated differently than in the marketing context for instance. This reminds us to not read technology’s effectiveness in an isolated way but in a situated one. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hywcb6hfxcsp4ycpm8ezyzd4)) > Goodman discusses five categories of worldmaking, meaning ways in which worlds are made from other worlds: Composition and decomposition, weighting, ordering, deletion and supplementation, and lastly deformation (Goodman 1978, 7–17). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyx9wcgxrkhqdnzk3b33v1by)) > Still, one can say that in Goodman’s systematic approach to symbolic systems, technologies fulfil a rather passive role. One argument for why technologies should be considered as actively involved in worldmaking practices can be found in the hermeneutic mediating role of technologies. So let’s stick with the thermometer for a moment. Don Ihde also uses the example of the thermometer in his postphenomenological account. For Ihde, the thermometer is an example for a technology mediating a hermeneutic relation of humans to the world (Ihde 1996). What he means by this is that in a way a thermometer interposes itself between us and the world; we relate to the world by interpreting or reading the thermometer to understand if it’s cold or warm, not by for instance looking outside the window and ‘seeing’ the > temperature with our own eyes. The technologies become direct establishers of our access to the worlds, thereby mediating the worldmaking practices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyx53e4b5vpd238hd1efeg2x)) > Here we see that by implementing the technologies into our worldmaking practices, our worlds are changing in ways that we don’t always expect or foresee. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyx56j6p48kt60my1bffp30b)) > Exemplification is the relation of a sample, example, or other exemplar to the fea- tures or properties it is a sample or example of. The features or properties exempli- fied may be dynamic or static, may be monadic or relational, and may be at any level of generality or abstraction. A tailor’s swatch exemplifies its fabric, pattern, texture, and weave; an example worked out in a logic text exemplifies the application of the rules of inference being studied; an example of poison ivy exemplifies a species of toxic plant. (Elgin 2012, 401) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyxcavyjn47mqf0yr65axed0)) > A smart phone and a computer for instance can be exemplars of the rare earths they are made of, focusing our attention on the environmental aspects of technological production. On a metaphorical level they on the one hand might exemplify access to the world, or a surveillance apparatus. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hyxcs34x6r4gc6v4jjgrxej6))