Dr. Arun Iyer, from Seattle University, Seattle, USA will be delivering a seminar titled "Technology and the Materiality of Knowledge".

Abstract

This paper will assess Davis Baird's most recent and most comprehensive attempt to expand our conception of knowledge by unveiling what he characterizes as the much overlooked material dimension of knowledge, which he calls the thingliness of knowledge. It will then proceed to discuss what I consider to be the major limitations of his attempt, which center around the question of what truly constitutes the materiality of knowledge. Rather than simply equating materiality with thingliness, I would like to use the two different accounts of knowledge found in the the works of Edmund Husserl and Michel Foucault to show how the materiality of knowledge implies something much deeper than the thingliness of instruments, models and devices. For Edmund Husserl the materiality of knowledge is essentially manifested by the mechanical repeatability and manipulability that characterizes it, traits which are exemplified by the thingliness of technological instruments but not exhausted by it. For Foucault, on the other hand, the materiality of knowledge is evident in the opacity, impenetrability and inexplicability of the "discursive" relations, which enable the existence of knowledge in the first place and which Foucault discovers and describes. Technological instruments are embedded in these discursive relations. Embracing Baird's central concern of expanding the scope of knowledge beyond that of justified true belief, I articulate how the interventions of Husserl and Foucault can be combined to introduce a new theoretical framework for understanding what the materiality of knowledge means.

About the Speaker

Arun Iyer teaches philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of the book Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures: The Case of Heidegger and Foucault published by Bloomsbury. He is the co-editor and translator with Pol Vandevelde of the three volume critical edition featuring all of the previously untranslated essays of Hans-Georg Gadamer, also with Bloomsbury. The first volume of this edition titled Hermeneutics between History and Philosophy: The Selected Writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer: Volume I will be out next year. His research interests have centered around the question of ruptures in epistemology focusing on 20th century continental philosophy especially the work of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Edmund Husserl in conjunction with some of the systematic developments within analytic philosophy after Edmund Gettier. Taking the theme of rupture further he plans to expand his research towards more overtly political questions concerning revolutionary praxis.