Paper Type

Research-in-Progress Paper

Abstract

This paper starts from the premise that social computing now operates as a kind of globally distributed, technological apriori for the expression of understanding; what the philosopher Immanuel Kant more generally named “judgment”. Following a quick survey of areas online where the technical mediation of expressive judgment occurs, the paper locates historical bedrock for assertoric force in the late 19th-century analytic philosopher Gottlob Frege’s views on judgment. The paper gestures to some of the theoretical achievements built off of Frege’s work, highlighting various appeals to reference, rules, norms, intersubjective commitments, and speech acts that have been brought forward and disputed in the modern era. These are discussed in light of their influence upon informatics. Finally, the concluding sections of the paper turn to the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze, so that two more radical readings of the assertion can be presented as a contrast to the aforementioned account.

Share

COinS
 

Social Computing and the Manufacture of Sense

This paper starts from the premise that social computing now operates as a kind of globally distributed, technological apriori for the expression of understanding; what the philosopher Immanuel Kant more generally named “judgment”. Following a quick survey of areas online where the technical mediation of expressive judgment occurs, the paper locates historical bedrock for assertoric force in the late 19th-century analytic philosopher Gottlob Frege’s views on judgment. The paper gestures to some of the theoretical achievements built off of Frege’s work, highlighting various appeals to reference, rules, norms, intersubjective commitments, and speech acts that have been brought forward and disputed in the modern era. These are discussed in light of their influence upon informatics. Finally, the concluding sections of the paper turn to the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze, so that two more radical readings of the assertion can be presented as a contrast to the aforementioned account.