Abstract
In Stig Hjarvard’s characterization, mediatization studies move beyond the positivist origins of the social sciences, as they must in order to avoid the fundamental contradiction between original commitments to classical determinism vis-à-vis human agency as acknowledged within mediatization studies. In order to sustain and enhance Hjarvard’s vision of the coherence between human agency and mediatization studies as a species of social science, I first sharpen these theoretical tensions by developing a robust account of human freedom as informed by Kant and virtue ethics. I then adopt precise understandings of complementarity and epistemological pluralism as initially developed in Quantum Mechanics and subsequently by Karen Barad and Judith Simon as frameworks that can coherently conjoin contemporary social (and natural) science with strong accounts of human freedom. The resulting coherency—or entanglement—between ethics and science implies new ethical responsibilities for social scientists as ‘virtuous agents’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
More precisely, the resulting epistemological and ontological structures are held together in relationships of connection alongside irreducible difference as articulated through analogical predication. Kant thereby invokes and refines a philosophical tradition for ‘knowing the unknowable’ (for him, the noumena) that extends back through St. Thomas Aquinas (God), Aristotle (underlying substance) and, ultimately, Pythagorean techniques for manipulating irrational numbers by way of proportional relationships with rational numbers (Ess 1983). These structures thereby closely approximate the understanding of complementarity that we pursue below. Indeed, a Kantian epistemology exercises a direct influence on the emergence of complementarity and epistemological pluralism especially in Quantum Mechanics (see footnote 2). In addition, then, to a Kantian-inspired account of phronēsis as a form of reflective judgment, these Kantian epistemological backgrounds are essential to our understanding the larger developments of complementarity and pluralism that I trace out here.
- 2.
It is important to note that both Einstein and the primary figures of the Copenhagen Interpretation, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, were fully aware of the Kantian project and its epistemological implications—i.e. there are direct influences and explicit discussions of the relationship between Kantian philosophy and their own emerging physics (see Ryckman 2005; Heisenberg 1958 for discussion).
- 3.
It is important to note that the meaning of the terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are transformed as we shift from positivist to post-positive epistemologies. Roughly, in their positivist usage, it is possible to radically separate the two, affiliating the personal, the arbitrary and the irrational with the former, while characterizing the latter in terms of universal, necessary and rational. Intersubjectivity, by contrast, means that subjectivity and objectivity are inextricably intermingled. A first example is Kant’s frameworks of time and space as both ‘subjective’, i.e. as grounded in human subjectivity, rather than in an external reality per se, and ‘objective’, i.e. as universally shared among human observers as necessary conditions for our human experience of an external world.
References
Anderson, E. (2017). Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/feminism-epistemology/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Aristotle. (1926). Aristotle in twenty three volumes, XIX: The Nichomachean Ethics (trans: Rackham, H.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2011). Erasers and erasures: Pinch’s unfortunate ‘uncertainty principle’. Social Studies of Science, 41(3), 443–454.
BBC News. (2016, November 23). Tess Asplund: The woman who faced down 300 neo-Nazis. BBC News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaNkoMWbPMM. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Berlinger, J. (2016, July 12). The Baton Rouge photograph that everyone is talking about. CNN News. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/us/baton-rouge-protester-photograph/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Blok, A., & Pedersen, M. A. (2014). Complementary social science? Quali-quantitative experiments in a Big Data world. Big Data & Society, July–December 2014, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714543908.
Bohr, N. (1957 [1938]). Atomfysik og menneskelig erkendelse [Atomic physics and human knowledge]. Copenhagen: Schultz.
Bourdieu, M. (2015). Auguste Comte. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/comte/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Carey, J. (2009). Communication as culture. Essays on media and society. Revised ed. New York: Routledge.
Chakravartty, A. (2016). Scientific realism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/scientific-realism/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Christman, J. (2011). Autonomy in moral and political philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/autonomy-moral/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
Ess, C. (1983). Analogy in the critical works. Kant’s transcendental philosophy as analectical thought. Dissertation Pennsylvania State University. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.
Ess, C. (1995). Reading Adam and Eve. Re-visions of the myth of woman’s subordination to man. In M. M. Fortune & C. J. Adams (Eds.), Violence against women and children. A Christian theological sourcebook (pp. 92–120). New York: Continuum.
Ess, C. (2010). The embodied self in a digital age. Possibilities, risks, and prospects for a pluralistic (democratic/liberal) future? Nordicom Information, 32(2), 105–118.
Ess, C. (2014). Trust, social identity, and computation. In R. Harper (Ed.), The complexity of trust, computing, and society (pp. 199–226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ess, C. (2016). What's love got to do with it? Robots, sexuality, and the arts of being human. In M. Nørskov (Ed.), Social robots. Boundaries, potential, challenges (pp. 57–79). Farnham: Ashgate.
Ess, C. (2017a). Can we say anything ethical about digital religion? Philosophical and methodological considerations. New Media & Society, 19(1), 34–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816649914.
Ess, C. (2017b). God out of the machine? The politics and economics of technological development. In A. Beavers (Ed.), Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy (pp. 83–111). Farmington Hills: Macmillan Reference.
Gerdes, A. (2014). Ethical issues concerning lethal autonomous robots in warfare. In J. Seibt, R. Hakli, & M. Nørskov (Eds.), Sociable robots and the future of social relations: Proceedings of Robophilosophy 2014 (pp. 277–289). Berlin: IOS.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Greenstein, G., & Zajonc, A. G. (2006). The quantum challenge. Modern research on the foundations of quantum mechanics (2nd ed.). London: Jones and Bartlett.
Heisenberg, W. (1927). Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik. Zeitschrift für Physik, 43(3–4), 172–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01397280.
Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and philosophy. New York: Harper and Row.
Hjarvard, S. (1997). Forholdet mellem kvantitative og kvalitative metoder i medieforskningen [The relationship between quantitative and qualitative methods in media research]. Norsk Medietidsskrift, 2, 59–80.
Hjarvard, S. (2013). Personal communication. Used by permission.
Hjarvard, S. (2017). Mediatization. International encyclopedia of media effects. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0107.
Johnson, R., & Cureton, A. (2017). Kant’s moral philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/kant-moral/. Accessed 1 Mar 2019.
King, M. L., Jr. (1964 [1963]). Letter from the Birmingham Jail. In M. L. King, Jr. (Ed.), Why we can’t wait (pp. 77–100). New York: Mentor.
Laplace, P. S. (1951 [1812]). A philosophical essay on probabilities (trans: Truscott, F. W., & Emory, F. L.). New York: Dover.
Lundby, K. (2014). Mediatization of communication. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Mediatization of communication (pp. 3–35). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Mackenzie, C. (2008). Relational autonomy, normative authority and perfectionism. Journal of Social Philosophy, 39(4), 512–533.
Meyrowitz, J. (1993). Images of media. Hidden ferment—and harmony—in the field. Journal of Communication, 43(3), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01276.x.
Peat, D. (1991). Einstein’s moon. Bell’s theorem and the curious quest for quantum reality. Chicago: Contemporary Books.
Plato. (1914). The apology. Plato in twelve volumes (Vol. 1, pp. 68–145) (trans. H. N. Fowler, introduction by W. R. M. Lamb). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pratt, S. L. (2008). Pluralism. In J. Lachs & R. B. Talisse (Eds.), American philosophy. An encyclopedia (pp. 594–596). New York: Routledge.
Ryckman, T. (2005). The reign of relativity. Philosophy in physics 1915–1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simon, J. (2015). Distributed epistemic responsibility in a hyperconnected era. In L. Floridi (Ed.), The onlife manifesto. Being human in a hyperconnected era (pp. 145–159). London: Springer Open.
Thorseth, M. (2008). Reflective judgment and enlarged thinking online. Ethics and Information Technology, 10, 221–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-008-9166-6.
Vallor, S. (2016). Technology and the virtues. A philosophical guide to a future worth wanting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zevenbergen, B., Mittelstadt, B., Véliz, C., Detweiler, C., Cath, C., Savulescu, J., & Whittaker, M. (2015). Philosophy meets Internet engineering. Ethics in networked systems research. GTC workshop outcomes paper. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
Acknowledgment
I am very grateful indeed to Knut Lundby who organized a workshop on “Mediatized conditions” at UC Berkeley, California, 5–6 December 2013. This workshop opened up the conversation and debate with Stig Hjarvard, Lundby and others that catalyzed much of the work on mediatization in play here. I am further grateful to both Knut Lundby and Stig Hjarvard for their subsequent encouragement and assistance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ess, C.M. (2019). Ethics and Mediatization: Subjectivity, Judgment (phronēsis) and Meta-theoretical Coherence?. In: Eberwein, T., Karmasin, M., Krotz, F., Rath, M. (eds) Responsibility and Resistance. Ethik in mediatisierten Welten. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26212-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-26212-9_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-26211-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-26212-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)