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Technics and Praxis. By Don Ihde. Dordrecht,

Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company. 1979.
Volume XXIV of Boston Studies in the Philosophy
of Science. Pp. xxviii, 151.

Kenneth Dorter

Dialogue / Volume 20 / Issue 03 / September 1981, pp 606 - 610

DOI: 10.1017/S0012217300023702, Published online: 05 May 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0012217300023702

How to cite this article:

Kenneth Dorter (1981). Dialogue, 20, pp 606-610 doi:10.1017/
S0012217300023702

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606 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

J'en viens a la these la plus originale du livre, que l'ouverture ne depend pas de la
croyance. J'accorde volontiers a l'auteur que la meilleure croyance ne nous
preserve pas du dogmatisme. Mais peut-on soutenir la these inverse : que la pire
croyance peut s'accompagner d'ouverture d'esprit ? Je doute qu'on puisse etre
nazi, ou stalinien, ou plus simplement raciste, et l'etre avec l'esprit ouvert ! Ces
croyances sont en elles-memes tendancieuses, fanatiques, irrationnelles. Un « nazi
d'esprit ouvert », cela pouvait signifier deux choses ; ou bien que le dit nazi ne l'etait
plus, et que son adhesion etait tout exterieure et hypocrite ; ou bien qu'il etait assez
intelligent pour comprendre les arguments adverses, tout en mettant sa com-
prehension au service de sa cause ; ainsi Goebbels apres Stalingrad, devancant dans
se propagande les arguments de celle de l'ennemi. Cela pour rejeter non pas
l'ouverture d'esprit mais le postulat trop optimiste qu'elle serait bonne sans
condition et sans restriction.
Plus generalement, une certaine ouverture d'esprit ne risque-t-elle pas d'en-
trainer la mort de l'esprit ? Hare denonce, a juste titre, ceux qui veulent empecher
les autres de considerer les vues des gens qu'on tient « a tort » (mistakenly) pour
racistes, notamment les partisans de l'heredite des dons. Oui, mais ceux qu'on tient
« a bon droit» pour racistes : n'a-t-on pas raison de les empecher de s'exprimer ?
L'auteur ne repond pas clairement. Je pense, apres la lecture de son livre, et grace a
elle, que si Ton est contraint d'empecher quelqu'un de s'exprimer on doit pouvoir
dire clairement pourquoi. Et cela meme exige d'avoir l'esprit ouvert.

OLIVIER REBOUL
Universite de Strasbourg (U.S.H.S.)

TECHNICS AND P R A X I S . By Don Ihde.

Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
1979. Volume XXIV of Boston Studies in the Philosophy
of Science. Pp. xxviii, 151.

Technics and Praxis is a collection of eleven papers relating primarily to the

phenomenology of technology, the first eight of which focus on various aspects of
technology itself, while the last three discuss respectively the relevant works of
Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and Harvey Cox. The papers were written
independently, and evidently not revised for this collection, as a result of which
several of them detail distinctions and definitions that had already been elaborated
earlier in the book (often by means of the very same examples), several times in
 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 607
some cases. This tends to make the reader want to skim, something which few
authors would deliberately encourage. All but one of the papers, however, discuss
some feature of technology that is appreciably different from the subjects of the
others. The exception is chapter six, "Technology and the Transformation of
Experience", which would be interesting on its own but contains little or nothing
that had not already been covered in previous chapters.
Although technology is often taken to be merely an extension of our body, and
therefore neutral with regard to our aims and attitudes, Ihde shows, in a series of
phenomenological analyses, that this is not the case. "Embodiment relations", as
he calls them, are certainly one feature of technology, but another, equally
important feature is what Ihde calls "hermeneutic relations", in which the
technological apparatus functions not as a "quasi-self' but as a "quasi-other" that
must be interpreted from without. An example of this would be the monitoring of a
technological system by means of gauges and dials. Here one must "observe" the
system not by an extension of one's bodily senses, but by means of symbols or
"analogues" that need to be interpreted (indeed, one must even allow for the
possibility of some of the instruments malfunctioning). If a technological apparatus
is not merely an extension of ourselves, but is a quasi-other (perhaps even a genuine
other, although Ihde denies this), it is less easy to believe that its impact on us is
neutral.
As a matter of fact, Ihde believes, technology is not neutral even in its
embodiment relations, much less in its hermeneutic relations, for the technological
amplification of our senses always occurs in conjunction with the limiting or
reducing of our sensory scope to a narrow function. A telephone, for example,
extends our perception of the other, but at the same time reduces that perception to
a tinny voice in place of the rich perceptions that we experience in person (pp.
9-10). Accordingly, technology unavoidably modifies our way of relating to the
world, at the same time that it amplifies it, and is therefore biased in certain
directions, rather than neutral. Different kinds of instruments incline us in different
directions: "The telic inclination made possible by the instrument creates a path of
least resistance or highest functionality which may be followed and often is
followed" (p. 43). Ihde feels, for example, that the speed of the typewriter favors a
more journalistic style of writing than the more meditative pace of the pen.
The most far-reaching effects noted by Ihde, however, are with respect to the
way we perceive the world, rather than our actions. Not only do individual
instruments have telic inclinations, but there is also a telos of technology as a
whole, namely "a desire to move in the direction toward transparency with the
secret wish and belief that somehow to 'see the things themselves' is the ultimate
and genuine form of knowledge" (. 38). Thus even hermeneutic relations are
transformed, where possible, into embodiment relations; there is a "latent telos of
608 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus j

the return to perception" (p. 39; cf. pp. 63-4). I found it somewhat surprising that |
Ihde should take this amplification of perception as the telos of technology, in view *
of the fact that he follows Heidegger in regarding technology as rooted not in the
theoretical stance of modern science but in praxis. It might seem more in keeping
with this to identify the telos of technology in terms of our will, taking technology as
an instrument of praxis, rather than in terms of our senses, which takes technology
as an instrument of theoria. Perhaps Ihde sees no tension here, but a discussion of
the issue would have been helpful.
If, in any case, amplification of our perceptions of the world is the telos - or a
telos, or even a by-product - of technology, one would expect, from what Ihde has
said, to find a corresponding reduction in the richness of perception. Chapters
seven and eight contain discussions that suggest, respectively, that this has
happened in seeing, and (in a somewhat different way) in the hearing of music (also
cf. pp. 40-1). Chapter seven is an attack on the "tradition which links vision with
objectification" (p. 83), in which Ihde argues that objectification does not result
from vision per se, but from a reduction of vision due to the influence of visual
technology such as movies and television. As we have increasingly come to look at
the world the way we look at movies and television, the richness of vision is reduced
to "viewing"; what is experienced becomes mere "spectacle", and we ourselves
spectators (p. 87). Ihde concludes that "There is a need for phenomenological
restoration of vision" (p. 91); but although such a restoration might technically
acquit vision of the charge that is entails objectification, it seems unlikely to stem
objectification itself. There seems little hope that such a program would have an
appreciable effect against the eroding force of visual technology, especially if the
telos of technology is the amplification of perception and if amplification is always
accompanied by reduction of richness.
In chapter eight Ihde argues, in effect, that the telic inclination of the phonograph
favors rock music over classical, thus accounting for the fact that the amount of
classical record sales "has not only remained stable in an otherwise expanding
market, but that its customers are growing older" (p. 93). With classical music,
"Any scratch, any barely audible hum, any interference became annoying and
threatened the enchantment of the experience" (p. 94). On the other hand, "The
sound of rock begins electronically, reproduction and amplification are part of its
very embodiment... Rock is the celebration of amplification and the electronically
embodied instrument" (pp. 96, 94). This does not seem to me to be an adequate
account. For one thing, rock listeners tend to be as impatient of imperfect
reproduction as are classical listeners. Moreover, if Ihde were right, one would
expect classical music to have a resurgence as tape and laser technology eliminate
the impurities that he mentions, but clearly he doesn't expect this to happen.
Again,since amplification is incomparably poorer on a phonograph than at a live
 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 609
rock performance, one could say that, if rock is the celebration of amplification, the
phonograph must be disappointing to rock listeners and therefore not favorable to
the music. Ihde's rejoinder to a student, who makes a similar point (p. 100 n.l), does
not answer that objection. Furthermore, one would expect classical electronic
music to have correspondingly increased in popularity, but this has not happened.
Ihde attempts to forestall this objection by saying that "These trends and the
experimentation within the 'new music' may not yet have found their proper
voice" (p. 98), but this is hard to reconcile with the fact that electronic classical
music is not only far older than amplified and electronic rock, but older even than
rock's non-electronic predecessor, rock 'n' roll.
An explanation for the decline of classical music, that seems to me more plausible
than Ihde's, may be put in terms of the ominous fact that in classical music the
composer and the audience are growing ever farther apart, so that few classical
music lovers have any sympathy with contemporary classical music, and for most
audiences classical music is no longer a living language but one written almost
exclusively by composers long since dead. In most cases the performer is the
music's only link with the living, and, accordingly, the excitement that once
accompanied the performance of new works is now largely transferred to new
interpretative performances of old works. It once was that concerts were the
vehicle by which composers exhibited their works to their contemporaries, but now
comparatively few works composed within the last seventy years appear on the
concert programs of major orchestras, and the few twentieth century composers
who are accepted by concert-goers - Ravel and Rachmaninoff, for example - write
in an idiom close to nineteenth century music (as is true melodically and
harmonically of most rock music as well, whose stylistic mutations are not at the
radical level of those of classical music). There has always been a time-lag between
the productions of innovative composers and their wide acceptance, but in the past
this has been on the order often years* or so, whereas now works - for example by
Schonberg, Bartok, and Ives - that were unwelcome to audiences in 1910 continue
to be unwelcome to most audiences seventy years later. It seems reasonable to
suppose that classical music's loss of vitality (or credibility) as a modern idiom is
connected with its decline in popularity, when, to recent generations, it largely
represents the music of long-dead composers.
In this regard I would agree with Ihde that the phonograph has been decisive (as, I
think, color photography has been in the analogous alienation of contemporary art
audiences from contemporary painters, although there are important differences),
however not for the reasons he suggests. Before the phonograph, one had to attend
concerts in order to listen to music, and the concerts regularly featured the work of
contemporary composers. Accordingly, music lovers were exposed to new music
at least as much as to old, and gradually learned to appreciate it. Since the
6io Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

phonograph, however, one need not attend concerts in order to listen to music, and
so one need no longer expose oneself to the new and demanding, when the old and
comfortable is readily available. And now that the potential audience has the means
of indulging itself in familiar music if it wishes, orchestras as wellfindit necessary to
offer familiar music if they wish to sell many tickets. The result is that the
phonograph, which has given classical music a larger audience than was previously
dreamt of, has also, by making previously assimilated musical forms ever-present,
allowed the audience to dote on the past rather than confront the present - for
although older works have present, and even timeless worth, they do not belong to
the present in the same way that contemporary works do - and it has undercut the
living relationship between composer and audience. The more common explana-
tion for the unpopularity of this music - that it is simply ugly and that composers
now write only for each other - supposes that for perhaps the first time in history
composers suddenly ceased to express the culture of which they are part, and have
continued this culturally irrelevant existence now for four successive generations.
But there is no justification for claiming that composers express their culture less
now than in the past, and if audiences find the music unattractive the reason more
likely lies with the audience than the composer, perhaps in the way mentioned
above, or perhaps too our culture simply finds the contemplation of itself less
enjoyable than did past cultures.
Although my disagreement with Ihde on this point is substantial, I found myself
in agreement with most of what he writes elsewhere in the book. The studies are
perceptive and illuminating, a welcome addition to the small but burgeoning
literature in the philosophy of technology.

KENNETH DORTER
University of Guelph

B R A I N S T O R M S : P H I L O S O P H I C ESSAYS ON
MIND & PSYCHOLOGY. By Daniel C. Dennett.
Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford Books. 1978. Pp. xxii, 353.
It seems that no sooner had Content and Consciousness appeared than Daniel
Dennett set about rewriting it. Brainstorms consists of an introduction and
seventeen papers (seven previously unpublished) which he presents as "a revised
and extended version of the theory'' of the earlier book, "in much the same order as
its ancestor". The contents are: Part I, Intentional Explanation and Attributions of
Mentality: i. Intentional Systems, 2. Reply to Arbib and Gunderson, 3. Brain