Using Words and Things This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relation- ship between language and technology, and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and arte- facts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is rethought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three “extreme,” idealtype, untenable positions: (1) Only humans speak and nei- ther language nor technologies speak, (2) Only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and (3) Only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and (philosophy of) technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn. Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, and (part-time) Profes- sor of Technology and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, UK. His publications include Growing Moral Relations (2012), Human Being @ Risk (2013), Environmental Skill (2015), Money Machines (2015), New Romantic Cyborgs (2017), and numerous articles in the area of philosophy of technology. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com 83 Time and the Philosophy of Action Edited by Roman Altshuler and Michael J. Sigrist 84 McTaggart’s Paradox R. D. Ingthorsson 85 Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy Edited by Rik Peels 86 Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind An Essay in Neo-Sellarsian Philosophy T. Parent 87 Facts and Values The Ethics and Metaphysics of Normativity Edited by Giancarlo Marchetti and Sarin Marchetti 88 Aesthetic Disinterestedness Art, Experience, and the Self Thomas Hilgers 89 The Social Contexts of Intellectual Virtue Knowledge as a Team Achievement Adam Green 90 Reflective Equilibrium and the Principles of Logical Analysis Understanding the Laws of Logic Jaroslav Peregrin and Vladimír Svoboda 91 Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation Edited by Michele Paolini Paoletti and Francesco Orilia 92 Using Words and Things Language and Philosophy of Technology Mark Coeckelbergh Children’s Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Using Words and Things Language and Philosophy of Technology Mark Coeckelbergh First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informal business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Mark Coeckelbergh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-69416-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-52857-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Words and Things 1 PART I Humans Speak (Subjects versus Objects) 21 2 Speaking with and about Technology 23 3 Giving Meaning to Technology: A Searlean Social Ontology of Technological Artefacts 50 PART II Language Speaks (Subjects Change Objects) 81 4 Language and the Social Construction of Artefacts 83 5 All about Language: Postmodern Interpretations, or the Muting of Humans and Technology 106 PART III Technology Speaks (Objects Change Subjects) 139 6 What Technology Tells Us (to Do) (Part 1): Media, Artefacts, Networks 141 7 What Technology Tells Us (to Do) (Part 2): Narrative Technologies, or Interpreting and Materializing Ricoeur 211 viii Contents PART IV Humans, Language, and Technology Speak (Subjects and Objects Entangled) 251 8 Using and Performing with Words and Things 253 Index 289 Acknowledgments Many thanks to Andrew Weckenmann, Allie Simmons, and their colleagues from Routledge for supporting and working on this book project. I warmly thank Michael Funk, Stefan Koller, Wessel Reijers, Peter Rantasa, Martin Kusch, and Hans Bernhard Schmid for our discussions about topics relevant to this book, including Wittgenstein, use, performance, Searle, collective intentionality, Ricoeur, narrative, and voice. I am also very grateful to Yoni Van Den Eede and Martin Kusch for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this manuscript, to the anonymous reviewers for reading and appre- ciating my initial book proposal, and to Agnes Buchberger for her assistance with formatting and correcting the final version of the manuscript. Finally, with this essay on language and technology I wish to honor Carl Mitcham, Don Ihde, Langdon Winner, and other “first generation” contemporary phi- losophers of technology, without whom this field would not exist in its pres- ent form, and to whose pioneering work this book can read as a respectful footnote.