Postphenomenology and Technoscience… Synthesising Pragmatism

IHDE, D. (2009) Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: State University of New York Press.

“The enrichment of pragmatism includes its recognition that ‘consciousness’ is an abstraction, that experience in its deeper and broader sense entails its embeddedness in both the physical or material world and its cultural-social dimensions. Rather than a philosophy of consciousness, pragmatism views experience in a more organism/environment model. The reverse enrichment from phenomenology includes its more rigorous style of analysis that develops variational theory, recognizes the role of embodiment, and situates this in a lifeworld particular to different epochs and locations.” (p19)

Annotation:
Pragmatism as a philosophy is enriched by seeing human ‘consciousness’ as a deeper embedment situated in a life-world within a socio-cultural context. This merges with phenomenology in order to analyses how to reveal this. Ihde’s postphenomenology makes connections more with Husserl’s transcendant version of phenomenology than it does with Heidegger’s existentialist version. As my study is Heideggerian I need to be careful what and who I synthesise postphenomenological ideas. What is important though is how pragmatism can be synthesised, which will be useful to ensure pragmatic aesthetics is synthesised into my thesis securely.