Dr. Koshy Tharakan, from Goa University, Goa will be condicting a seminar titled "Technology and Body: Retrieving the Agentive Body". 

Abstract:

The presentation aims to explore the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of the body as a framework in understanding technology. In contrast to the many attempts at reducing 'mind' to 'body', where the 'body' is understood in the Cartesian framework, the continental philosophers in general repeatedly remind us that body has a significance that goes beyond its materiality as a bio-chemical physical substance. By questioning body, I wish to disentangle the 'technological' understanding of the body in terms of a distinction between the 'symbolic body' and the 'agentive body'. In doing so, we are able to see the link between technology and body as more than a fortuitous relation. Relying on the writings of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ihde, the paper attempts to show how a 'sense of body', particularly the notion of 'agentive body' as distinguished from the 'symbolic body', evolves from the way in which it is entangled in the technological matrix. 

About the Speaker:

Koshy Tharakan is Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Goa University, Goa. He works in the area of philosophy of social science and phenomenology.