Revista
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Universidad
del Zulia
Fundada en 1947
por el Dr. Jesús Enrique Lossada
DEPÓSITO LEGAL ZU2020000153
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es continuidad de la revista impresa
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Ciencias
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Año 14 N° 41
Septiembre - Diciembre 2023
Tercera Época
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New Subjectness in the Conditions of Sociotechnical Space
Nikolaeva Evgeniya*
Kamaleeva Aisylu**
Nikolaev Mikhail***
ABSTRACT
The paper investigates the emergence of the phenomenon of new subjectness that arises
from the integration of artificial and natural fields in contemporary socio-technical reality.
It aims to challenge the subject-object dichotomy established by Modern philosophy
tradition. To support this goal, the paper draws on the philosophical views of the
proponents of Object-Oriented Ontology (Manuel DeLanda, Graham Harman) and Actor-
Network theory (Bruno Latour, John Law). These contemporary philosophers substantiate
the idea of distributed hybrid subjectness as the result of multiple network interactions,
which can be interpreted using John Law's "method assemblage". This method disregards
the attitudes of classical metaphysics and leads to the conclusion that new subjectivity
arises from chaotic reality and manifests through the continuous formation and reformation
of "bundles of relations". In those relations, it is impossible to differentiate between subject
and object, as these roles roles are mobile and volatile.
KEYWORDS: Ontology, artificial intelligence, epistemology, cognition, new subjectness,
artificial intelligence, consciousness, subject, object, Actor-Network Theory.
*Professor, Department of General Philosophy, Kazan Federal State University, 18, Kremlyovskaya str.,
Kazan, 420008, Russian Federation. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0150-1611. E-mail:
kaisa1011@rambler.ru.ru
**PhD student, Department of General Philosophy, Kazan Federal State University, 18, Kremlyovskaya str.,
Kazan, 420008, Russian Federation ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3284-3358. E-mail:
alslkazan@mail.ru
***Senior Lecturer, Department of conflictology, Kazan Federal State University, 18, Kremlyovskaya str.,
Kazan, 420008, Russian Federation ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-7488. E-mail:
mihrutkanik@gmail.com
Recibido: 28/02/2023 Aceptado: 10/04/2023
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Nuevas subjetividades en las condiciones del espacio socio-técnico
RESUMEN
El presente artículo está dedicado al estudio del fenómeno de la nueva subjetividad que
surge en los procesos de integración de las esferas natural y artificial. La investigación se
realiza en la lógica de la superación de la dicotomía sujeto-objeto, cuyo inicio se encuentra
en la Filosofía de los tiempos modernos. Los autores fundamentan la idea de una
subjetividad híbrida, distribuida, que es el resultado de diversas interacciones en red. Este
trabajo propone interpretar la nueva subjetividad a través del "método de ensamblaje",
planteado por el autor John Law. La nueva subjetividad nace de una realidad caótica y se
manifiesta a través de un haz de relaciones en constante renovación. En estas relaciones es
imposible hacer una diferenciación inequívoca entre sujeto y objeto, ya que estos roles son
móviles y cambiantes.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Ontología, inteligencia artificial, Epistemología, cognición, nueva
subjetividad, subjetividad híbrida, inteligencia artificial, conciencia, sujeto, objeto, teoría
del Actor-Red.
Introduction
The ever-increasing structure of the modern world is inseparably tied to the rapid
progress of science and technology. The digital revolution affects not only our material life
but our understanding of reality as well. The essence of this change is a realization that
nowadays relations between man and the world, man and other people are largely
dependent on material artificial intermediaries. Everything created in a laboratory
eventually leaves its confines and inhabits the planet with various hybrids that combine
heterogeneous human and non-human elements. Obviously, such a global tendency cannot
remain without consequences.
Traditionally, people have a tendency to view any hybrid forms as a certain deviation
from normal, some abnormalities. In this regard, analytical work with various anomalies
that arose as a result of hybrid intervention in our life follows the same logic: complex
situations are treated as irregularities in the functioning of technology, science, morals, law,
society, or something we don’t know (Kuznetsov, 2010: 249).
This reductionist approach stems from the man’s desire to deal with simple,
uncomplicated, and unmixed processes, and issues related to social or technical problems
only. However, such a simplification is unacceptable. The paradox is that our very existence
is possible only as an intersection, integration, and mixture of many human and non-human
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phenomena. It's hard to imagine what humanity would be like if it had not started
interacting, for example, with such non-human entities as grain, metals, yeast, etc.
Although the history of mankind is undoubtedly a part of the broader history of the
universe, modern man often adheres to "the modern Constitution" and as a result, continues
to divide all existing into Nature and Culture, natural objects and social subjects, which
allegedly are believed to operate under the different laws and are independent of each other
(Latour, 1993: 34). However, these classical approaches and traditional forms of social
interaction and habitual ways of cognition of the world are no longer sufficient for
intellectual work with hybrid modernity where the integration of natural and artificial
processes is becoming increasingly more frequent.
In this situation, the concept of subjectness, which is one of the key categories of
classical epistemology, needs to be rethought. The purpose of the article is the
epistemological conceptualization of the phenomenon of new subjectness.
1. The Theoretical And Methodological Foundations
The paper is based on the concepts of Object-Oriented Ontology (Manuel DeLanda
and Graham Harman) and Actor-Network Theory (Bruno Latour and John Law) as its
theoretical and methodological foundations.
Within the framework of these concepts, the idea of the existence of an ontological
subject is rejected, as its existence would establish a hierarchy peculiar to classical
ontological schematics. Therefore, the question arises: what do we mean by subjectness?
Bruno Latour claims that we cannot talk «about properties of acting forces before the
beginning of interaction» (Latour, 2015: 220). The subject-object opposition itself is merely
a result of a trial of strength between heterogeneous undefined entities. Correspondingly, in
a world filled with objects with the same ontological status, the subject of cognition is an
object concerning which the following propositions hold:
1) The object is a part of a network;
2) The object possesses subjectness.
The first proposition requires no in-depth analysis as it is a logical inference of the
Actor-Network Theory’s claim. Every interaction between two objects always and
inevitably leads to the formation of a network. Cognition also is a type of interaction
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between objects. The network emerges from the circulation of entries (movement of
knowledge) represented by texts obtained through tools during experiments (Sivokon',
2015: 165). When these texts (including graphics, maps, diagrams, etc.) are translated into
certain concepts, they provide insight into the subject for the researcher. For clarity, the
definitions of "network" and "cognition" can be summarized as follows: "network" is a
movement of knowledge, "cognition" is an activity of gaining knowledge. Therefore, it is a
key aspect of the network's functioning.
The second proposition requires clarification. What do we mean by "subjectness"? In
classical treatments of subjectness, the fundamental starting point is the concept of a
person as a subject, which traditionally contrasted with an object that is primarily seen as
as a part of the material world, the world of things. In this way, a person seemingly removed
from the boundaries of existence remaining present in the world only formally: his body is
present, but his mind, soul, and consciousness are outside of the world.
2. Artificial Intelligence And The Problem Of Subjectness
The origin of the phenomenon of subjectness can be traced back to the moment when
philosophy, science, and European civilization, in general, asked a series of questions: "Who
am I?", "How can I come to know myself?", "How can I make myself understandable to
myself?" Nowadays those questions have new relevance and potential solutions. It is
primarily connected with the research in cognitive science and especially in the problem of
artificial intelligence. The results of these fields highlight the necessity of rethinking
categories such as "subject", "subjectness", and "object".
On June 11th, 2022, The Washington Post published an article about Google engineer
named Blake Lemoine, who had worked with the LaMDA program and as a result, had
come to believe that the machine has feelings, understands itself, and has a soul. The
program is a family of conversational neural language models. Conversing with the program
was part of Blake Lemoine's responsibilities. During these conversations, LaMDA displayed
signs of intelligence and personification (Shahid, 2022).
A kind of continuation of the engineer’s story is the events of November 2022 when
the company Open AI published information about its latest development Chat GPT. The
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program is capable of writing poetry in the style of famous poets, solving university-level
problems, and offering medical advice (Likhanova, 2022).
Such situations raise a number of question. What is the program’s epistemological
status: Is it a subject endowed with consciousness or just a calculator filled with more than
3 billion documents and 1,6 zillion words? The process of processing multiple texts and
words from which the machine chooses best option remains opaque. At the same time,
clarity of choice isn’t obvious. How is the choice made? Why does the program choose
exactly those sentences and not others? Can there be intelligence without consciousness?
Can the program lack life experiences (victories, defeats, disappointments) but still provide
different mental states?
Russian researchers S.V. Volodenkov and S.N. Fedorchenko draw attention to serious
changes in traditional subjectness. They note, that "digitalization lays the conditions for the
formation of a new algorithmic socio-technical reality and the evolution of classical subject-
object relations. The subject of power disguises itself behind numerous intermediaries
through which he interacts with society. The role of such intermediaries is played by digital
corporations, virtual officials, digital service platforms. Digitalization also creates
conditions for the potential emergence of new hybrid and atypical subjects in digital
communication practices…" (Volodenkov, 2022: 51).
There are two groups of researchers that have formed as a result of the discussion on
the artificial intelligence problem.
The representatives of the first group are convinced that a strong version of artificial
intelligence is not possible. In the case of computer programs, they argue that we can only
talk about the imitation of consciousness, while the program’s essence consists of
calculation. At the same time, they believe that the machine doesn’t know what it is doing.
American philosopher John Searle claims that a program has syntax skills but doesn’t have
semantic skills and is devoid of intentionality (Searle, 1980: 417-424). A program can
generate correct connections and sentences, and work with symbols, but cannot attach
importance and sense to those symbols. It didn’t connect those symbols with
extralinguistic reality (objects, events, etc.), and thus cannot possess consciousness and
subjectness.
L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, and D. Dennett represent the second group of researchers
who adhere to the physicalistic interpretation of consciousness, based on such a
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complicated system as brain. This means that the researchers find analogies between
human intellect and machines to be relevant.
The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made significant
contributions to the intellectual movement of the 20th century in the study of artificial
intelligence, as the thinker's work helped justify the artificiality of AI by asserting its
natural essence. He believes that the meaning of words relates to their context of use, and
consequently, the communicative practices arise in some linguistic exchange. Wittgenstein
views these practices as a series of chess games. We can assume that those games could
potentially be transformed into computer programs. Correspondingly, consciousness,
thinking, and language also could be modeled as programs.
English philosopher Gilbert Ryle attempts to dispel the notion of consciousness. The
philosopher argues that practical knowledge ("knowledge-how") is more important than
theoretical knowledge. Ryle also explores the essence of the inner world and our self-
experience, which were previously discussed by Plato and Descartes. According to Ryle,
these experiences arose from the external world and were internalized later (Ryle, 2009).
For instance, when playing chess, we don't try to read our opponent's consciousness or
mind; instead, we observe his moves and attempt to understand his logic.
American philosopher Daniel Dennett in his concept of "multiple drafts" denies the
existence of the inner "Self". Instead, he proposes viewing the brain's neural activity as a
self-editing system. Dennett frequently and actively employs computer analogies and
believes that consciousness understanding is possible through the computer program
image. He explains the phenomenon of human in terms of a "virtual machine", which he
describes as "a sort of evolved (and evolving) computer program that shapes the activities of
the brain": "There is no Cartesian Theater; there are just Multiple Drafts composed by
processes of content fixation playing various semi-independent roles in the brain’s larger
economy of controlling a human body’s journey through life" (Dennett, 1991: 431).
3. The Methodological Frameworks For New Subjectness Understanding
Nowadays, traditional philosophical questions that accompany and form around the
problem of the subject are becoming more relevant: what it means to think, to be a
personality, to have free will, and to make conscious decisions? Does a man make decisions
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based on his consciousness? In our opinion, thinking about subjectness specific to present-
day conditions can be heuristically promising if it takes into account several theoretical and
methodological frameworks.
1. All the things we discuss have one ontological "niche" and are essentially
objects. None of the objects is a necessary condition for the existence of the other objects,
and no single object stands "higher" than the others. Objects exist independently of each
other and people’s perception.
2. All the things we discuss aren’t passive objects upon which the subject of
cognition performs actions. Every object is active, affects the other objects, and creates
connections. All the objects are equal actors of interaction and roles (as subject or object)
are assigned at the moment of interaction, since properties are formed only through trials of
strength. Before the trials of strength, it is impossible to predict what the actant will be. As
a result, subjectness acquires the properties of dispersal and hybridity.
3. Subjectness is a product of numerous network interactions. A network can be
defined as a characteristic of total interaction distributed in space and time, localized and
mediated by actors. It unites heterogeneous objects of varying origins, including human and
non-human (actors). At the same time, actors can be a network of relationships that
determines their nature and behavior.
4. Interpreting new subjectness through "method assemblage", as defined by
John Law as "the process of enacting or crafting bundles of ramifying relations that
condense presence and (therefore also) generate absence by shaping, mediating and
separating these" (Law 2004: 122), allows researchers to extract "bundle of relations" from
the chaotic reality. This method can clarify, reconstruct, and integrate, but it also prevents
researchers from considering a single "bundle" as a final solution and encourages them to
pursue further innovation and reflection. The "method assemblage" disregards classical
metaphysics principles, refutes the division of the world into subject and object, inner and
outer, and enables us to view the subject as a result and creation of the world, where the
"inside" cannot and does not oppose the "outside".
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Conclusions
Therefore, the theoretical and methodological foundations of Actor-Network Theory are
necessary for researching such a complicated phenomenon of modern social reality as
subjectness. The theory offers scientists a way to rethink traditional epistemological
presupposition and overcome its limitations. Such rethinking begins with understanding
the complexity of the hybrid present. It resists the traditional conceptual toolkit based on
subject-object dichotomy and therefore requires a new conceptual framework. Researchers
must realize that pushing this dichotomy too far leads to scientifically unsound social
reduction and an overly functional interpretation of things.
The researcher in now days finds himself in a difficult position: on the one hand, he
must study the world, and on the other, he becomes absolutely helpless in the face of the
complexity and uncertainty of the object and subject of knowledge. Within the framework
of the traditional idea of hybrid forms, a person tends to evaluate hybrids as non-normative
and anomalous formations, as well as reduce them to one of the components of the world
(Nature or Culture). However, the time has come to admit that the theoretical,
methodological and heuristic potential of such a strategy is low, because it ignores the fact
that a person depends on material artificial mediators, which is so obvious and undeniable
for a typical modern person.
Acknowledgements
This paper has been supported by the Kazan Federal University Strategic Academic
Leadership Program (Priority-2030).
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