Journal articles on the topic 'Metaphysics ; Philosophical anthropology ; Animals (Philosophy)'

Abstract Despite recent interest in his work, little has been written about Løgstrup’s relation to phenomenology—what he thinks phenomenology is, how it informs his approach to ethics, and what he believes it can accomplish. Here I hope to stimulate further discussion of these matters. In this, consideration of Levinas’s understanding of phenomenology will be useful. While sharing many of Løgstrup’s concerns, Levinas insists on a distinction between phenomenological ontology and “metaphysics,” one that Løgstrup tends to blur in support of his argument that “absolute nihilism is an impossibility.” After showing why this distinction matters, I will argue that Løgstrup’s goal is better achieved if we embrace Heidegger’s transcendental version of phenomenology rather than follow Løgstrup or Levinas, despite much that remains phenomenologically valuable in both.

The article features several Polish philosophers and their contributions to world philosophy. Matthew of Kraków wrote the Rationale divinorum operum or the Rationality of Divine Works in which he discussed the philosophy of Plato and Saint Augustine on devil and created views on philosophical anthropology. Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski wrote five books on reformation during the Renaissance. Marcin Śmiglecki was a professor at the Vilnius Academy and wrote books on logic and metaphysics.

Western philosophical traditions have been haunted by an intellectualist thesis supported by two foundational assumptions: first, that humans can be defined in virtue of their minds, and second, that having a mind separates humans from non-human animals. Many phenomenologists have complicated this thesis, but there is nevertheless a tendency in phenomenology to remain fully within a human-centric research paradigm. This article will explore the possibilities of a posthuman phenomenology for unsettling this human-centeredness and suggest that certain forms of performance philosophy are the most effective methods for investigating this new terrain.

What is a philosophical religion? Carlos Fraenkel proposes that we use this term to describe “the interpretation of the historical forms of a religion in philosophical terms”. Such a philosophical interpretation allows religious traditions to be utilized in service of a political-pedagogical program, the goal of which is orienting society towards the highest good: human excellence. Here, I outline the idea of a philosophical religion as it can be found in the Arabic tradition of rationalist Aristotelianism and scrutinize Spinoza’s ambiguous response to this idea. Despite his programmatic separation of theology and philosophy, I argue, Spinoza, at least in some crucial passages, shows himself to be engaged in the project of retrieving the truths of philosophy through the interpretation of Scripture. Thus, there are two contradictory strains at work in Spinoza’s philosophy of religion: he systematically denies that Scripture is the locus of truth, yet he articulates parts of his philosophical anthropology and rational theology by means of Scriptural exegesis. Both of these strains, however, depend on the claim that the final arbiter of truth about the divine and the one true act of worship of God is metaphysics.

The desire for integration is so central to philosophy, I think, that no philosophical tendency will long endure without it. On the other hand, every attempt at integration which has been too grand has collapsed. — Hilary Putnam (Realism and Reason, 303)Feminist theory, whether specifically philosophical or not, has been integrative in a number of ways. In epistemology and metaphysics it has attacked dualisms and dichotomies and tried to show that mind and body, reason and emotion, civilization and nature are neither separate nor separable; in ethics, we have agreed that rules, principles and justice must be tempered with a sense of caring and community; and, more generally, we have been at pains not to draw too sharp lines between philosophy and psychology, history and anthropology, literary theory and sociology.

AbstractThis paper examines Hermann Cohen’s idiosyncratic construction of a medieval Jewish philosophical tradition, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on his Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis. This construction, not unlike modern accounts, is filtered through the central place of Maimonides. For Cohen, however, Maimonides’ centrality is defined not by his systematization of Aristotelianism, but by his elevation of ethics over metaphysics. The ethical and pantheistic concerns of Maimonides’ precursors, according to this reading, anticipate his uniqueness. Whereas Shlomo ibn Gabirol’s pantheistic doctrine of emanation, for example, assigned little weight to ethics, Abraham ibn Daud rebelled against such a doctrine. Ibn Daud—much like Bahya ibn Paquda and Abraham ibn Ezra—becomes part of a Jewish philosophical tradition that culminates in Maimonides’ rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, this paper examines the way in which Cohen envisaged the pre-Maimonidean philosophical tradition, putting his highly critical reading of Shlomo ibn Gabirol and his pantheistic obsession with prime matter in counterpoint with his more favorable readings of Abraham ibn Daud and Bahya ibn Paquda.

By what steps, historically, did morality emerge? Our remote ancestors evolved into social animals. Sociality requires, among other things, restraints on disruptive sexual, hostile, aggressive, vengeful, and acquisitive behavior. Since we are innately social and not social by convention, we can assume the biological evolution of the emotional equipment – numerous predispositions to want, fear, feel anxious or secure – required for social living, just as we can assume cultural evolution of various means to control antisocial behavior and reinforce the prosocial kind. Small clans consisting, say, of several extended families whose members cooperated in hunting, gathering, defense, and child-rearing could not exist without a combination of innate and social restraints on individual behavior.I shall argue for a naturalistic theory of morality, by which I do not mean the definitional claims G.E. Moore sought to refute, but a broader and more complex theory that maintains that a sufficient understanding of human nature, history, and culture can fully explain morality; that nothing is left hanging. A theory that coherently brings together the needed biological, psychological, and cultural facts I shall call a philosophical anthropology; it is a theory that:1) takes the good for humans – both an ultimate good (if there is any) and other important goods – to depend on human nature;2) argues that a rudimentary but improving scientific and philosophical theory of human nature now exists, and thus denies that people are “essenceless”;3) takes this theory to be evolutionary and historical, making the question “How did morality originate?” pivotal for ethical theory, but leaves open the empirical question of the relative importance of biological and cultural evolution; and4) takes the origin of the moral ideas to be explainable in terms of human nature and history.

What are Descartes’s views on the body and how do they change? In this article, I try to make clearer the nature of the shift towards an increased focus on the body as ‘my’ body in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul. The interest in the nature of passions, considered from the point of view of the ‘natural scientist’, is indicative of a new approach to the study of the human. Moving beyond the infamous mind-body union, grounded in his dualist metaphysics, Descartes begins developing a philosophical anthropology centred on the notion of power and better suited to practical philosophy.

The paper is a brief mapping of the situation in the field of didactics of philosophy in the Slovak Republic. We observe that, despite almost three decades of separation of official philosophy from the dominance of Marxist philosophy, there is no satisfactory basis for the didactics of philosophy. The discipline Didactics of philosophy is represented by improvising several enthusiasts instead of developing serious theoretical foundations. We try to post a few recommendations that belong to all who want to seriously deal with the didactics of philosophy. The most important of them is the establishment of the Slovak scientific journal of didactics, the establishment of the organization of trade didactics, the separation of philosophy from other core subjects and the accreditation of the third level of university education in didactics of philosophy. The author convincingly proves the need to introduce knowledge of philosophy in school, since it will help teach students to think better, apply knowledge more effectively, critically evaluate everyday life, including relationships with parents, teachers, classmates and others. The article emphasizes that the experience of philosophizing will allow students to express their thoughts in writing, as well as to explore at an accessible level “eternal” issues of metaphysics, epistemology, natural philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of culture, philosophy of law, philosophical anthropology. philosophy of politics, etc. The urgency of impoving the teacher's competence in teaching this subject at school, in particular, updating the methodological support, substantiation of educational innovations for the use in the study of philosophy, as well as the introduction of ICT in the educational process are substantiated.

In this article, the authors investigate ontological strategies in Meister Eckhart’s metaphysics, which remounts Neoplatonism and the Corpus Areopagiticum, and in two schools of Indian philosophical tradition, the Advaita Vedanta and Early Buddhism. Along with differences in the anthropology, epistemology, and soteriology of these traditions, we can find similar strategies of ontological negativity and mystical experience in both traditions: detachment from the world of images and forms as the highest blessing; non-association of oneself with corporality, feelings, cognitive ability and reason; interiorizing the intentionality of consciousness, and termination of its representative function. Practically all systems of Indian philosophy were projects of liberation or personal transformation from subjugation and suffering into being free and blissful. The idea of spiritual release is also the cornerstone of Christian salvation as with the renouncement of sin and entering blissful unity with God. The apophatic doctrine of Christian neo-platonic mystics about the concealment, non-comprehensiveness, and inexpressibleness of God as the One and Nothingness, and also the idea of comprehension of God by means of detachment from the created world and one’s own ego, gives us the opportunity for such comparative analysis.

There is not a newborn child who is not born in a state of fifrah. His parentsthen make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian, just as an animal is born intact.Do you observe any among them that are maimed (at birth)?’Though the discipline of psychology is a well-developed empiricalscience in the West today, few psychologists have dipped into the religiousand philosophical literature of the East. It is our intent here to discuss thepsychological discourse in classical Islamic literature, which offersinsights into human nature and the psychology of human behavior that arerelevant for contemporary psychotherapy. Such an undertaking will alsoreveal that the psychological facets of Islam are interwoven closely withits metaphysical, volitional, and ethical aspects. It would therefore beworthwhile to abstract psychological elements from the Islamic legacy,systematize them, and present the findings within an Islamic frameworkand in an idiom that would interest the modern psychologist.According to Isma‘il al Fmqi, the relevance of Islam to psychologyor any other discipline can be determined by discovering what the legacyof Islam has to say on the discipline in question? Although the discipline“Islamic psychology” does not exist within the Islamic legacy as weknow it in the West, there is no reason why such a discipline cannotdevelop. Contemporary efforts to bring about an Islamic psychology arefew and far between. We have yet to see an introduction to Islamic psychologysimilar to what we have seen in the cases of anthropology andsociology.’ Our contribution, therefore, consists of developing an introductionto Islamic psychology withfimh as our point of departure.At a time when psychology is struggling to emerge as an autonomousdiscipline by shedding its old links with philosophy, any attempt to go inthe opposite direction may seem retrogressive. However, today there is an ...

This paper outlines the views of two 17th century thinkers (Thomas Jackson and John Locke) on the question of the metaphysics of resurrection. I show that Jackson and Locke each depart from central 17th century Scholastic convictions regarding resurrection and philosophical anthropology (convictions laid out in section II). Each holds that matter or material continuity is not a plausible principle of diachronic individuation for living bodies such as human beings. Despite their rejection of the traditional view, they each provide a defence of the possibility of a personal afterlife. I outline these (quite different) defences in sections III–IV. I then argue (section V) that it is likely either that Locke had read Jackson on the issue of resurrection or that the two were influenced by a common source. I argue that matter might provide a suitable principle of diachronic individuation in both everyday cases of living bodies and in the case of resurrection.

The argument referring to a hidden God, deus absconditus, is a controversial but crucial point in the theology of Martin Luther. A key issue for Luther is the very distinction between the revealed and the hidden God, which prevents abuse and domestication of God’s name and authority. However, this topos can also be seen as a place of origin for modern atheism, as discussed by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. The claim of God’s hiddenness introduces a destruction of traditional metaphysics, and hence a radical reconsideration on anthropology, texts, and phenomena. The author analyses this topos of thought in modern philosophy, from Pascal and Kant to Jacobi, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida. He argues that the notion of deus absconditus remains a highly questionable place within philosophical discourse, but therefore also represents a continuous questioning of the intellectual premises for late modern atheism.

Abstract Mary Midgley belongs to a small group of most inspiring women philosophers of the 20th and early 21st century. Her impressive oeuvre, characterised by an exceptionally clear and witty style, combines contributions to such different fields of philosophical inquiry as moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of science in general and of biology in particular, as well as philosophy of religion. With her early article “The Concept of Beastliness”, we have something like a germ cell of her philosophy, introducing a range of concerns that will remain central to her work. The commentary focuses on five of them, traces how they show up in later works of Midgley’s, and suggests how they could inform philosophizing about humans and (other) animals today. These are, first, Midgley’s adherence to the concept of ‘human nature’. Second, her insistence that a comparative, ethologically informed perspective on humans and (other) animals helps to refute myths about both the (generically understood) animal and the human animal. Third, her alerting us to the fact that concepts of ‘human nature’ always influence our moral self-understanding. Fourth, her focus on the positive, open instincts in humans like caring, friendship, loyalty, or sociality that exist not only alongside but in a complex interplay with negative, open instincts such as aggression, and the idea that both classes of instincts can be shaped to some extent. And, finally, her focus on the conditions of social life that are important for people to be able to structure their lives in meaningful ways.

В статье проводится анализ философского контекста развития православной постмодернистской мысли. Автор дается краткое описание онтологии, антропологии и гносеологии постмодерна и таких идей как «смерть Бога», «смерть субъекта», «смерть истины», «конец метафизики» и др. Далее автор описывает основные черты концепций православных мыслителей-постмодернистов - Д. Харта, митр. Иоанна (Зизиуласа) и Дж. Мануссакиса и выявляет их связь с идеями философии постмодерна. Автор приходит к выводу, что Д. Харт в своей теоэстетике находит возможность выразить христианское учение о Боге в условиях «смерти Бога» и в противовес постмодернистской онтологии, в которой бытие понимается как хаос и насилие, формулирует «мирную онтологию», где бытие есть красота и дар. Митрополит Иоанна (Зизиулас) формулирует христианское учение о человеке с помощью концепта «Другой» и с учетом идеи «смерти субъекта». Дж. Мануссакис создает теорию мистического сенсуализма, с помощью которого он находит возможность говорить о Боге и богопознании в условиях «смерти истины» и «конца метафизики». Автор подчеркивает, что ни одна из описанных концепций не претендует на то, чтобы заменить собой святоотеческое богословие. Перед ними стоят иные задачи: актуализировать христианство в современной философии, выразить христианские истины на языке и с учетом мировоззренческих установок современного западного общества. The article analyzes the philosophical context of the development of Orthodox postmodern thought. The author gives a brief description of the ontology, anthropology and epistemology of postmodernism and such ideas as «the death of God», «the death of the subject», «the death of truth», «the end of metaphysics», etc. Further, the author describes the main features of the concepts of Orthodox postmodern thinkers - D. Hart, metropolitan John (Zizioulas) and J. Manoussakis and reveals their connection with the ideas of postmodern philosophy. The author comes to the conclusion that D. Hart in his theoesthetics finds an opportunity to express the Christian teaching about God in the conditions of «God’s death and in contrast to the postmodern ontology, in which being is understood as chaos and violence, he formulates a «peaceful ontology», where being is beauty and gift. Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) formulates the Christian doctrine of man using the concept of «the Other» and taking into account the idea of «the death of the subject». J. Manoussakis creates a theory of mystical sensualism, through which he finds the opportunity to talk about God and knowledge of God in the conditions of «the death of truth» and «the end of metaphysics». The author emphasizes that none of the theories described is not intended to be a substitute for patristic theology. They have other tasks: to actualize Christianity in modern philosophy, to Express Christian truths in language and taking into account the worldview of modern Western society.

The pervasive and often uncritical acceptance of materialistic philosophical commitments within exercise science is deeply problematic. This commitment to materialism is wrong for several reasons. Among the most important are that it ushers in fallacious metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature of causation and the nature of human beings. These mistaken philosophical commitments are key because the belief that only matter is real severely impedes the exercise scientist’s ability to accurately understand or deal with human beings, whether as subjects of study or as data points to be interpreted. One example of materialist metaphysics is the assertion that all causation is physical- one lever moving another lever, one atom striking another atom, one brain state leading to another (Kretchmer, 2005). In such a world, human life is reduced to action and reaction, stimulus and response and as a result, the human being disappears. As such, a deterministic philosophy is detrimental to kinesiologists’ attempts to interpret and understand human behavior, for a materialistic philosophy, must ignore or explain away human motivation, human freedom and ultimately culture itself. In showing how mistaken these philosophic commitments are, I will focus on the sub-discipline of sport psychology for most examples, as that is the field of exercise science of which I am paradigmatically most familiar. It is also the field, when rightly understood that straddles the “two cultures” in kinesiology (i.e., the sciences and the humanities). In referencing the dangers of the materialistic conception of human beings for sport psychology, I will propose, that the materialist’s account of the natural world, causation and human beings stems from the unjustified and unnecessary rejection by the founders of modern science of the Aristotelian picture of the world (Feser, 2012). One reason that this mechanistic point of view, concerning human reality has gained ground in kinesiology is as a result of a previous philosophic commitment to quantification. As philosopher Doug Anderson (2002) has pointed out, many kinesiologists believe that shifting the discipline in the direction of mathematics and science would result in enhanced academic credibility. Moreover, given the dominance of the scientific narrative in our culture it makes it very difficult for us not to conform to it. That is, as Twietmeyer (2015) argued, kinesiologists do not just reject non-materialistic philosophic conceptions of the field, we are oblivious to their possibility. Therefore, I will propose two things; first, Aristotelian philosophy is a viable alternative to materialistic accounts of nature and causation and second, that Aristotle’s holistic anthropology is an important way to wake kinesiologists from their self-imposed philosophic slumber.

The article shows the retrospective of such modern philosophical movement as posthumanism, one of the basic ideas of which is the “posthuman”. The posthu­man in posthumanism is understood not as a being who has overcome his biol­ogy (as in transhumanism), but as a point of assembly of mythical, chimerical, technological, social, biological; as a further deconstruction of humanistic “vitru­vian man”. This aspect reveals the exceptional features of the new anthropology of posthumanism, which makes it possible to show the difference between tran­shumanism and posthumanism. The evolution of humanism, through anti-hu­manism and transhumanism (which is understood as “hyperhumanism”) leads to posthumanism. Its main features, according to R. Braidotti and Fr. Ferrando, are post-anthropocentrism, post-dualism and post-humanism. The article analyses each of these concepts, which allows us to delve deeper into the contexts of con­temporary philosophical anthropology. The analysis of the posthuman turn to­wards non-human agents and, as a consequence, the general trend of tendency of contemporary philosophy to the de-anthropologization is being carried out. The genealogy of this phenomenon includes fatigue from the hierarchy of hu­manism ideals, which, as M. Foucault showed back in the middle of the twenti­eth century, were conditioned by historical prerequisites of cultural development. Inheriting ideas of postmodern philosophy, gender theory, post-colonial studies, animal studies, unable studies, actor-network theory, and even quantum physics, posthumanism opens up a space for being in terms of subjectivity for all others previously oppressed in the era of humanism (animals, women, and all those whom Aristotle, as opposed to bios, referred to zoe). To illustrate this thesis, the article introduces a new term “post(non)human”, which reveals the concept of posthumanist discourse. The use of this term allows us to express more compre­hensively the results and consequences of the posthumanist turn in the philo­sophical anthropology of the twenty-first century.

Introduction. The article deals with finding environmental patterns for the digital environment – at the moment, digital environments are more likely to bring a person closer to machine and technical requirements. The article poses a question (and a detailed answer is given) about how and under what conditions technology does not absorb a person, but gives her the opportunity to reveal her potential, turning it into existential capital.Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on philosophical analytical research and precedents of the digital field, examples of research literature, methods of media philosophy, anarchic epistemology, and topological reflection are applied. In particular, the hypotheses of the digital space as simultaneously communicative and disciplinary (Habermas, Foucault) digital behaviorism by B. Fogg, the economics of forgiveness by D. Graeber, the anthropology of the game by R. Caillois, Internet animals by A. Pscher were analyzed: on their basis, the principles of digital ethology and ecology.Results and discussion. The task of converting interfaces into ecological and pharmacological environments is the task of organizing by means of interfaces of various types of agencies. They should be organized in such a way that the modes of energy consumption and operation are replaced by modes of energy saving and care. In this case, the interfaces of digital devices could be not a continuation of the technical bureaucracy, but the conditions for comprehending and collecting the experience of the world. The project for this reorganization of funds – from exploitation to pharmacology – was proposed in the article. The article shows that the interface of digital devices can be not only a tool (techne) or a form of vision and cognition of the world (episteme), but also an ecological life-saving environment (pharmacy) for this it is necessary to take into account a number of factors: 1) counter-standardization and counter-personalization of the interface – it must to collide not with oneself, but with another, in all the radicalism of one’s otherness; 2) the ability to move from meaning to presence, and focus not on the consumption of ideological texts as standardized scenarios, but on the creation of contexts of existential interaction; 3) rejection of the agonality of digital consumption (which leads to emotional burnout) in favor of recognizing the uniqueness and incommensurability of experience, and, accordingly, creating conditions for mutual recognition and mutual trust, which are the main capital of a modern person in an era of semantic impenetrability in digital, the growth of suspicion and cynicism.Conclusion. The interface turns from a disciplinary space into a field of care when it becomes possible by means of the interface to go beyond itself, when it grants the right to postponement, to inattention, to offline, when instead of a tool of intensifying life, it becomes a condition for its deeper living. To do this, one should turn from techniques of drawing attention in the interface to techniques of organizing and interpreting the experience of the world.

N. N. Rostova's monograph is considered in the review as an actual textbook for the study of philosophical anthropology in the system of higher and secondary professional education. Of particular interest in this monograph is a critical understanding of the latest Western concepts that have appeared in the last two decades and have not yet been reflected in textbooks on philosophical anthropology. These are speculative realism, nature anthropology, poststructuralist anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophical horror. The article compares classical and post-non-classical concepts of man, his nature, essence, life purpose and place in the universe. Modern anthropology can be called anti-anthropology, because it denies human exclusivity, reduces man either to the organic world – animals, plants and microbes, or to the inorganic world – digital technologies.

This essay sheds lights on the framing process during the research on the crossing between natural and artificial systems. To approach this, we must outline the machine-natural system relation. From this notion, technology is not seen as an external thing, nor even in contrast to an imaginary of nature, but as an effect that emerges from our thinking and revealing being that, in many cases, may be reduced to an issue of knowledge and action. Here, we want to consider the concept of transduction from Gilbert Simondon as one possible framework for considering the socio-technological actions at stake. His thought offers a detailed conceptual vocabulary for the question of individuation as a “revelation process”, a concern with how things come into existence and proceed temporally as projective entities.Moreover, our approach to the work of philosopher Simondon marked the starting point of our interest and approach to the issue of technique and its politics. From this perspective, the reflection given by Simondon in his thesis on the Individuation and the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, is to trace certain reasons that are necessary for the development of this project and helping to explain it. In first place, Simondon does not state a specific regime of “human individuation”. The possibility of a psychic and collective individuation is produced, as is manifested when addressing the structure of his main thesis, at the heart of biological individuation; Simondon strongly attacks the anthropocentric tendencies that attempt to establish a defining boundary between biological and psychic reality. We may presume, then, that the issue of language as a defining and differencing element of the human does not interest him; it is at this point that our project begins to focus on employing the transduction of the téchnē as a metaphor of life (Espinoza Lolas et al.); regarding the limits that language may imply for the conformation and expression of the psychic reality. In second place, this critique to the economy of attention present across our research and in Simondon’s thinking seeks to introduce a hypothesis raised in another direction: towards the issue of the technique. During the introduction of his Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Simondon shows some urgency in the need to approach the reality of technical objects as an autonomous reality and as a configuring reality of the psychic and collective individualisation. Facing the general importance granted to language as a key element of the historical and hermeneutical, even ontological, aspects of the human being, Simondon considers that the technique is the reality that plays the fundamental role of mediating between the human being and the world.Following these observations, a possible question that will guide our research arises: How do the technologisation and informatisation of the cultural techniques alter the nature itself of the knowing of the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? In the hypothesis of this investigation we claim that—insofar as we deliver an approach and perspective on the technologisation of the world as a process of individuation (considering Simondon’s concept in this becoming, in which an artificial agent and its medium may get out of phase to solve its tensions and give rise to physical or living individuals that constitute their system and go through a series of metastable equilibria)—it’s possible to prove this capacity of invention as a clear example of a form of transindividual individuation (referring to the human being), that thanks to the information that the artificial agent acquires and recovers by means of its “imagination”, which integrates in its perception and affectivity, enables the creation of new norms or artifacts installing in its becoming, as is the case of bioeconomy and cognitive capitalism (Fumagalli 219). It is imperious to observe and analyse the fact that the concept of nature must be integrated along with the concept of Cosmotecnia (Hui 3) to avoid the opposition between nature and technique in conceptual terms, and that is the reason why in the following section we will mention a third memory that is inscribed in this concept. There is no linear time development in human history from nature to technique, from nature to politics.The Extended MindThe idea of memory as something transmissible is important when thinking of the present, there is no humanity outside the technical, neither prior to the technical, and it is important to safeguard this idea to highlight the phýsis/téchnē dichotomy presented by Simondon and Stigler. It is erroneous to think that some entity may exceed the human, that it has any exteriority when it is the materialization of the human forms, or even more, that the human is crossed by it and is not separable. For French philosopher Bernard Stiegler there is no human nature without technique, and vice versa (Stigler 223). Here appears the issue of knowing which are the limits where “the body of the human me might stop” (Hutinel 44), a first glimpse of externalized memory was the flint axe, which is made by using other tools, even when its use is unknown. Its mere existence preserves a knowledge that goes beyond who made it, or its genetic or epigenetic transmission is preserved beyond the organic.We raise the question about a phýsis coming from the téchnē, it is a central topic that dominates the discussion nowadays, about technology and its ability to have a transforming effect over every area of contemporary life and human beings themselves. It is being “revealed” that the true qualitative novelty of the technological improves that happen in front of our eyes resides not only in the appearance of new practices that are related to any particular scientific research. We must point out the evident tension between bíos and zôê during the process of this adaptation, which is an ontological one, but we also witness how the recursivity becomes a modus operandi during this process, which is both social and technological. Just as the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of biology confronts its own limit under the light shed by the recursive algorithms implemented as a dominant way of adaptation, which is what Deleuze called societies of control (Deleuze 165). At the same time, there is an artificial selection (instead of a natural selection) imposed by the politics of transhumanism (for example, human improvement, genetic engineering).In this direction, a first aspect to consider resides in that life, held as an object of power and politics, does not constitute a “natural life”, but the result of a technical production from which its “nature” develops, as well as the possibilities of its deployment. Now then, it is precisely due to this gesture that Stiegler longs to distinguish between what is originary in mankind and its artefactual or artificial becoming: “the prosthesis is not a simple extension of the human body, it is the constitution of said body insofar as ‘human’ (the quotes belong to the constitution). It is not a ‘medium’ for mankind, but its end, and it is known the essential mistakenness of the expression, ‘the end of mankind’” (Stiegler 9). Before such phenomena, it is appropriate to lay out a reflexive methodology centered in observing and analysing the aforementioned idea by Stiegler that there is no mankind without techniques; and there is no technique without mankind (Stigler 223). This implies that this idea of téchnē comprises both the techniques needed to create things, as the technical products resulting from these techniques. The word “techniques” also becomes ambiguous among the modern technology of machines and the primitive “tools” and their techniques, whether they have become art of craft, things that we would not necessarily think as “technology”. What Stiegler is suggesting here is to describe the scope of the term téchnē within an ontogenetic and phylogenetic process of the human being; providing us a reflection about what do we “possess as a fundamental thing” for our being as humans is also fundamental to how “we experience time” since the externalization of our memory into our tools, which Stiegler understands as a “third kind” of memory which is separated from the internal memory that is individually acquired from our brain (epigenetic), and the biological evolutive memory that is inherited from our ancestors (phylogenetic); Stiegler calls this kind of evolutive process epiphylogenetic or epiphylogenesis. Therefore, we could argue that we are defined by this process of epiphylogenesis, and that we are constituted by a past that we ourselves, as individuals, have not lived; this past is delivered to us through culture, which is the fusion of the “technical objects that embody the knowledge of our ancestors, tools that we adopt to transform our surroundings” (Stiegler 177). These supports of external memory (this is, exteriorisations of the consciousness) provide a new collectivisation of the consciousness that exists beyond the individual.The current trend of investigation of ontogeny and phylogeny is driven by the growing consensus both in sciences and humanities in that the living world in every one of its aspects – biologic, semiotic, economic, affective, social, etc. – escapes the finite scheme of description and representation. It is for this reason that authors such as Matteo Pasquinelli refer, in a more modest way, to the idea of “augmented intelligence” (9), reminding us that there is a posthuman legacy between human and machine that still is problematic, “though the machines manifest different degrees of autonomous agency” (Pasquinelli 11).For Simondon, and this is his revolutionary contribution to philosophy, one should think individuation not from the perspective of the individual, but from the point of view of the process that originated it. In other words, individuation must be thought in terms of a process that not only takes for granted the individual but understands it as a result.In Simondon’s words:If, on the contrary, one supposes that individuation does not only produce the individual, one would not attempt to pass quickly through the stage of individuation in order arrive at the final reality that is the individual--one would attempt to grasp the ontogenesis in the entire progression of its reality, and to know the individual through the individuation, rather than the individuation through the individual. (5)Therefore, the epistemological problem does not fall in how the téchnē flees the human domain in its course to become technologies, but in how these “exteriorization” processes (Stiegler 213) alter the concepts themselves of number, image, comparison, space, time, or city, to give a few examples. However, the anthropological category of “exteriorization” does not bring entirely justice to these processes, as they work in a retroactive and recursive manner in the original techniques. Along with the concept of text and book, the practice of reading has also changed during the course of digitalisation and algorithmisation of the processing of knowledge; alongside with the concept of comparison, the practice of comparison has changed since the comparison (i.e. of images) has become an operation that is based in the extraction of data and automatic learning. On the other side, in reverse, we must consider, in an archeological and mediatic fashion, the technological state of life as a starting point from which we must ask what cultural techniques were employed in first place. Asking: How does the informatisation of the cultural techniques produce new forms of subjectivity? How does the concept of cultural techniques already imply the idea of “chains of operations” and, therefore, a permanent (retro)coupling between the living and the non-living agency?This reveals that classical cultural techniques such as indexation or labelling, for example, have acquired ontological powers in the Google era: only what is labelled exists; only what can be searched is absolute. At the same time, in the fantasies of the mediatic corporations, the variety of objects that can be labelled (including people) tends to be coextensive with the world of the phenomena itself (if not the real world), which will then always be only an augmented version of itself.Technology became important for contemporary knowledge only through mediation; therefore, the use of tools could not be the consequence of an extremely well-developed brain. On the contrary, the development of increasingly sophisticated tools took place at the same pace as the development of the brain, as Leroi-Gourhan attempts to probe when studying the history of tools together with the history of the human skeleton and brain. And what he managed to demonstrate is that the history of technique and the history of the human being run in parallel lines; they are, if not equal, at least inextricable. Even today, the progress of knowledge is still not completely subordinated to the technological inversion (Lyotard 37). In short, human evolution is inseparable from the evolution of the téchne, the evolution of technology. One may simply think the human being as a natural animal, isolated from the external material world. What he becomes and what he is, is essentially bonded to the techniques, from the very beginning. Leroi-Gourhan puts it this way in his text Gesture and Speech: “the apparition of tools as a species ... feature that marks the boundary between animals and humans” (90).To understand the behavior of the technological systems is essential for our ability to control their actions, to harvest their benefits and to minimize their damage. Here it is argued that this requires a wide agenda of scientific investigation to study the behavior of the machine that incorporates and broadens the biotechnological discipline, and includes knowledges coming from all sciences. In some way, Simondon sensed this encounter of knowledges, and proposed the concept of the Allagmatic, or theory of operations, “constituted by a systematized set of particular knowledges” (Simondon 469). We could attempt to begin by describing a set of questions that are fundamental for this emerging field, and then exploring the technical, legal, and institutional limitations in the study of technological agency.Information, Communication and SignificationTo establish the relation between information and communication, we will speak from the following two perspectives: first with Norbert Wiener, then with Simondon. We will see how the concept of information is essential to start understanding communication in an artificial agent.On one side, we have the notion from Wiener about information that is demarcated in his project about cybernetics. Cybernetics is the study of communication and control through the inquiry of messages in animals, human beings, and machines. This idea of information arises from the interrelation with the surrounding. Wiener defines it as the “content of what is an interchange object with the external world, while we adjust to it and make it adjust to us” (Wiener 17-18). In other words, we receive and use information since we interact with the world in which we live. It is in this sense that information is connected to the idea of feedback that is defined as the exchange and interaction of information in our systems or other systems. In Wiener’s own words, feedback is “the property of adjusting the future behavior to facts of the past” (31).Information, for Wiener, is influenced, at the same time, by the mathematic and probabilistic idea from the theory of information. Wiener refers to the amount of information that finds its starting point at the mechanics of statistics, along with the concept of entropy, inasmuch that the information is opposed to it. Therefore, information, by supplying a set of messages, indicates a measure of organisation. Argentinian philosopher Pablo Rodríguez adds that “information [for Wiener] is a new physical category of the universe. [It is] the measure of organization of any entity, an organization without which the material and energetic systems wouldn’t be able to survive” (2-3). This way, we have that information responds to the measure of organization and self-regulation of a given system.Moreover, and almost in complete contrast, we have the concept given by Simondon, where information is applicable to the whole possible range: animals, machines, human beings, molecules, crystals, etc. In this sense, it is more versatile, as it exceeds the domains of the technique. To understand well the scope of this concept we will approach it from two definitions. In first place, Simondon, in his conference Amplification in the Process of Information, in the book Communication and Information, claims that information “is not a thing, but the operation of a thing that arrives to a system and produces a transformation in there. The information can’t be defined beyond this act of transformative incidence, and the operation of receiving” (Simondon 139). From this definition it follows the idea of modulation, just when he refers to the “transformation” and “act of transformative incidence” modulation corresponds to the energy that flows amplified during that transformation that occurs within a system.There is a second definition of information that Simondon provides in his thesis Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, in which he claims that: “the information signal is not just what is to be transmitted … it is also that what must be received, this is, what must adopt a signification” (Simondon 281). In this definition Simondon clearly distances himself from Wiener’s cybernetics, insofar as it deals with information as that which must be received, and not that that is to be transmitted. Although Simondon refers to a link between information and signification, this last aspect is not measured in linguistic terms. It rather expresses the decodification of a given code. This is, signification, and information as well, are the result of a disparity of energies, namely, between the overlaying of two possible states (0 and 1, or on and off).This is a central point of divergence with Wiener, as he refers to information in terms of transference of messages, while Simondon does it in terms of transformation of energies. This way, Simondon adds an energy element to the traditional definition of information, which now works as an operation, based in the transformation of energies as a result of a disparity or the overlaying of two possible elements within a system (recipient). It is according to this innovative element that modulation operates in a metastable system. And this is precisely the last concept we need to clarify: the idea of metastability and its relationship with the recipient-system.Metastability is an expression that finds its origins in thermodynamics. Philosophy traditionally operates around the idea of the stability of the being, while Simondon’s proposal states that the being is its becoming. This way, metastability is the condition of possibility of the individuation insofar as the metastable medium leaves behind a remainder of energy for future individuation processes. Thus, metastability refers to the temporal equilibrium of a system that remains in time, as it maintains within itself potential energy, useful for other future individuations.Returning to the conference Amplification in the Process of Information, Simondon points out that “the recipient metastability is the condition of efficiency of the incident information” (139). In such sense, we may claim that there is no information if the signal is not received. Therefore, the recipient is a necessary condition for said information to be given. Simondon understands the recipient as a mixed system (a quasi-system): on one hand, it must be isolated in terms of energy, and it must count with a membrane that allows it to not spend all the energy at the same time; on the other hand, it must be heteronomous, as it depends on an external input of information to activate the system (recipient).The metastable medium is the one indicated to understand the artificial agent, as it leaves the possibility open for the potential energy to manifest and not be spent all at once, but to leave a remainder useful for future modulations, and so, new transformations may occur. At the same time, Simondon’s concept of information is the most convenient when referring to communication and the relationship with the medium, primarily for its property of modulating potential energy. Nevertheless, it is also necessary to retrieve the idea of feedback from Wiener, as it is in the relationship of the artificial agent with its surrounding (and the world) that information is given, and it may flow amplified through its system. By this, significations manage to decode the internal code of the artificial agent, which represents the first gesture towards the opening of the communication.ConclusionThe hypotheses on extended cognition are subject to a huge amount of debate in the artistic, philosophical, and science of cognition circles nowadays, but their implications extend further beyond metaphysics and sciences of the mind. It is apparent that we have just began to scratch the surface of the social sphere in a broader way; realising that these start from cultural branches of the sight; as our minds are; if our minds are partially poured into our smartphones and even in our homes, then it is not a transformation in the human nature, but the latest manifestation of an ancient human ontology of the organic cognitive and informative systems dynamically assembled.It is to this condition that the critical digital humanities and every form of critique should answer. This is due to an attempt to dig out the delays and ruptures within the systems of mass media, by adding the relentless belief in real time as the future, to remind that systems always involve an encounter with a radical “strangeness” or “alienity”, an incommensurability between the future and the desire that turns into the radical potential of many of our contemporary social movements and politics. Our challenge in our critical job is to dismantle the practice of the representation and to reincorporate it to different forms of space and experience that are not reactionary but imaginary. What we attempt to bring into the light here is the need to get every spectator to notice the limits of the machinic vision and to acknowledge the role of image in the recruitment of liminal energies for the capital. The final objective of this essay will be to see that nature possesses the technique of an artist who renders contingency into necessity and inscribes the infinite within the finite, in arts it is not the figure of nature that corresponds to individuation but rather the artist whose task is not only to render contingency necessary as its operation, but also aim for an elevation of the audience as a form of revelation. The artist is he who opens up, through his or her work, a process of transindividuation, meaning a psychical and collective individuation.ReferencesDeleuze, Gilles. “Post-Script on Control Societies.” Polis 13 (2006): 1-7. 14 Feb. 2020 <http://journals.openedition.org/polis/5509>.Espinoza Lolas, Ricardo, et al. “On Technology and Life: Fundamental Concepts of Georges Caguilhem and Xavier Zubiri’s Thought.” Ideas y Valores 67.167 (2018): 127-47. 14 Feb. 2020 <http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ideasyvalores.v67n167.59430>.Fumagalli, Andrea. Bioeconomía y Capitalismo Cognitivo: Hacia un Nuevo Paradigma de Acumulación. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2010.Hui, Yuk. “On Cosmotechnics: For a Renewed Relation between Technology and Nature in the Anthropocene.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 21.2/3 (2017): 319-41. 14 Feb. 2020 <https://www.pdcnet.org/techne/content/techne_2017_0021_42769_0319_0341>.Leroi-Gourhan, André. El Gesto y la Palabra. Venezuela: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1971.———. El Hombre y la Materia: Evolución y Técnica I. Madrid: Taurus, 1989.———. El Medio y la Técnica: Evolución y Técnica II. Madrid: Taurus, 1989.Lyotard, Jean-François. La Condición Postmoderna: Informe sobre el Saber. Madrid: Cátedra, 2006.Pasquinelli, Matteo. “The Spike: On the Growth and Form of Pattern Police.” Nervous Systems 18.5 (2016): 213-20. 14 Feb. 2020 <http://matteopasquinelli.com/spike-pattern-police/>. Rivera Hutinel, Marcela.“Techno-Genesis and Anthropo-Genesis in the Work of Bernard Stiegler: Or How the Hand Invents the Human.” Liminales, Escritos Sobre Psicología y Sociedad 2.3 (2013): 43-58. 15 Dec. 2019 <http://revistafacso.ucentral.cl/index.php/liminales/article/view/228>.Rodríguez, Pablo. “El Signo de la ‘Sociedad de la Información’ de Cómo la Cibernética y el Estructuralismo Reinventaron la Comunicación.” Question 1.28 (2010): 1-17. 14 Feb. 2020 <https://perio.unlp.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/question/article/view/1064>.Simondon, Gilbert. Comunicación e Información. Buenos Aires: Editorial Cactus, 2015.———. La Individuación: a la luz de las nociones de forma y de información. Buenos Aires: La Cebra/Cactus, 2009 / 2015.———. El Modo de Existencia de los Objetos Técnicos. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2007.———. “The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis.” Parrhesia 7 (2009): 4-16. 4 Nov. 2019 <http://parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia07/parrhesia07_simondon1.pdf>.Stiegler, Bernard. La Técnica y el Tiempo I. Guipúzcoa: Argitaletxe Hiru, 2002.———. “Temporality and Technical, Psychic and Collective Individuation in the Work of Simondon.” Revista Trilogía Ciencia Tecnología Sociedad 4.6 (2012): 133-46.Wiener, Norbert. Cibernética y Sociedad. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1958.

Introduction The trope of food is often used in the humanities to discuss aspects of a culture that are customarily overlooked by a textualist approach, for food embodies a kind of knowledge that comes from the direct engagement with materials and processes, and involves taste as an aesthetics that exceeds the visual concept of the “beautiful.” Moreover, cooking is one of the most ancient cultural practices, and is considered the habit that defines us as humans in comparison to other animals—not only culturally, but also physiologically (Wrangham). Today we have entered a post-human age in which technological augmentations, while promoting the erasure of embodiment in favour of intelligence (Hayles), create new assemblages between the organic and the digital, thus redefining what it means to be human. In this context, a reassessment of the practice of cooking as the manipulation of what constitutes food—both for thought and for the body—may promote a more nuanced approach to contemporary culture, in which the agency of the non-human (from synthetic materials to the digital) affects our modes of being and reflects on our aesthetic sensibility. In the 1980s, Guy Debord observed that the food industry's standardisation and automation of methods of production and consumption have anaesthetised the consumer palate with broader political and cultural implications. Today the Internet has extended the intertwinement of food and technology to the social and aesthetic spheres, thus further impacting on taste. For instance, cultural trends such as “foodism” and “slow food” thrive on blogs and social networks and, while promoting an artisanal style in food preparation and presentation, they paradoxically may also homogenise cooking techniques and the experience of sharing a meal. This leads to questions regarding the extent to which the digitalisation of culture might be hindering our capacity to taste. Or, given the new possibilities for connectivity, can this digitalisation also foster an aesthetic sensibility associated with different attitudes and approaches to food—one that transgresses both the grand narratives and the standardisation promoted by such gastronomic fashions? It also leads to the question of how such activities reflect on the collective sphere, considering the contagious character of networked communication. While foodism thrives online, the Internet has nevertheless prompted a renewed interest in DIY (do-it-yourself) cooking techniques. As a recent issue of M/C Journal testifies, today cookbooks are produced and consulted at an unprecedented rate—either in print or online (Brien and Wessell). Taking the example of the online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes, I will below trace the connections between cooking, computer culture, and taste with the support of Gilbert Simondon's metaphysics of technics. Although Simondon never extensively discussed food in relation to technology, the positioning of technicity at the heart of culture allows his work to be used to address the multifaceted nature of taste in the light of recent technological development, in particular of the Network. As a matter of fact, today cooking is not only a technical activity, in the sense that it requires a certain practical and theoretical skilfulness—it is also a technological matter, for the amount of networked machines that are increasingly used for food production and marketing. Specifically, this paper argues that by disentangling the human—albeit partially—from the capitalist cycle of production-marketing-consumption and by triggering an awareness of the increasingly dominant role technology plays in food processing and manufacturing, the online sharing of home-cooking advice may promote a reconfiguration of taste, which would translate into a more nuanced approach to contemporary techno-culture. In the first part of this discussion, I introduce Simondon’s philosophy and foreground the technical dimension of cooking by discussing cheese-making as a process of individuation. In the second, I focus on Simondon’s definition of technical objects and technical ensembles to position Internet culture in relation to cooking, and highlight how technicity folds back on taste as aesthetic impression. Ultimately, I conclude with some reflections on how such a culinary-aesthetic approach may find application in other techno-cultural fields by promoting an aesthetic sensibility that extends beyond the experience of the “social” to encompass an ethical component. Cooking as Individuation: The Networked Dimension of Taste Simondon is known as the thinker, and “tinkerer”, of technics. His project is concerned with ontogenesis—that is, the becoming of objects in relation to the terms that constitute them as individual. Simondon’s philosophy of individuation allows for a better understanding of how the Internet fosters certain attitudes to food, for it is grounded on a notion of “energetic materiality in movement” (Deleuze and Guattari 408) that explains how “immaterial” algorithms can affect individual experience and cultural production. For Simondon, individuation is the process that arises from objects being out-of-phase with themselves. Put differently, individuation allows for “the conservation of being through becoming” (Genesis 301). Likewise, individualisation is “the individuation of an individuated being, resulting from an individuation, [and creating] a new structuration within the individual” (L’Individuation 132). Individuation and individualisation are processes common to all kinds of being. Any individual operates an internal and an external resonance within the system in which it is enmeshed, and produces an “associated milieu” capable of entering into relation with other individuals within the system. Simondon maintains that nature consists of three regimes of individuation, that is, three possible phases of every being: the physical, the biological, and the psycho-social—that develop from a metastable pre-individual field. Technology traverses all three regimes and allows for further individualisation via transductive operations across such phases—that is, via operations of conversion of energy from one form to another. The recent online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes lends itself to be analysed with the support of Simondon’s philosophy. Today cheese dominates degustation menus beside the finest wines, and constitutes a common obsession among “foodies.” Although, as an object, cheese defies more traditional canons of beauty and pleasure—its usual pale yellow colour is not especially inviting and, generally speaking, the stinkier and mouldier it is, the more exclusive and expensive it usually is—it has played a sizeable role in the collective imagination since ancient times. Although the genesis of cheese predates archival memory, it is commonly assumed to be the fruit of the chemical reaction naturally occurring in the interaction of milk with the rennet inherently contained in the bladders made of ruminants’ stomachs in which milk was contained during the long transits undertaken by the nomadic cultures of Central Asia. Cheese is an invention that reportedly occurred without human intervention, and only the technical need to preserve milk in high temperature impelled humans to learn to produce it. Since World War II its production is most exclusively factory-based, even in the case of artisanal cheese (McGee), which makes the renewed concern for homemade cheese more significant from a techno-cultural perspective. Following Simondon, the individualisation of cheese—and of people in relation to cheese—depends on the different objects involved in its production, and whose associated milieu affects the outcome of the ontogenetic process via transductive operations. In the specific case of an industrial block of cheese, these may include: the more or less ethical breeding and milking of cows in a factory environment; the types of bacteria involved in the cheese-making process; the energy and costs inherent in the fabrication of the packaging material and the packaging process itself; the CO2 emissions caused by transportations; the physical and intellectual labour implied in marketing, retailing and selling; and, last but not least, the arguable nutritional value of the factory-produced cheese—all of which, in spite of their “invisibility” to the eyes of the consumer, affect physical conditions and moods when they enter into relation with the human body (Bennet). To these, we may add, with specific reference to the packaging: the RFID tags that electronically index food items into databases for a more efficient management of supplies, and the QR codes used for social media marketing purposes. In contrast, the direct engagement with the techno-material conditions at the basis of the home cookery process allows one to grasp how different operations may affect the outcome of the recipe. DIY cheese-making recipes are specifically addressed to laypeople and, because they hardly demand professional equipment, they entail a greater attunement with, and to, the objects and processes required by the recipe. For instance, one needs to “feel” when milk has reached the right temperature (specifically, 82 degrees centigrade, which means that the surface of the milk should be slightly bubbly but not fully boiling) and, with practice, one learns how the slightest movement of the hand can lead to different results, in terms of consistency and aspect. Ultimately, DIY cheese-making allows the cook to be creative with moulding, seasonings, and marinading. Indeed, by directly engaging with the undiscovered properties and potentials of ingredients, by understanding the role that energy (both in the sense of induction and “transduction”) plays on form and matter, and by developing—often via processes of trial and error—technics for stirring, draining, moulding, marinading, canning, and so forth, making cheese at home an exercise in speculative pragmatics. An experimental approach to cooking, as the negotiation between the rigid axioms that make up a recipe and the creative and experimental components inherent in the operations of mixing and blending, allows one to feel the ultimate outcome of the cooking process as an event. The taste of a homemade cheese is linked to a new kind of knowledge—that is, an epistemology based on continuous breakages that allow for the cooking process to carry on until the ultimate result. It is a knowledge that comes from a commitment to objects being out-of-phase, and from the acknowledgement of the network of technical operations that bring cheese to our tables. The following section discusses how another kind of object may affect the outcome of a recipe, with important implications for aesthetics, that is, technical objects. The Internet as Ingredient: Technical Objects, Aesthetics, and Invention The notion of technical objects complements Simondon’s theory of individuation to define the becoming of technology in relation to culture. To Simondon: “the technical object is not this or that thing, given hic et nunc, but that of which there is a genesis” (Du Mode 20). Technical objects, therefore, are not simply technological artifacts but are constituted by a series of events that determine their evolution (De Vries). Analogously to other kinds of individuals, they are constituted by transductive operations across the three aforementioned phases of being. The evolution of technical objects extends from the element to the individual, and ultimately to the technical ensemble. Elements are less than individualised technical objects, while individuals that are in a relation of interconnection are called ensembles. According to Simondon, technical ensembles fully individualise with the realisation of the cybernetic project. Simondon observes that: “there is something eternal in a technical ensemble [...] and it is that which is always present, and can be conserved in a thing” (Les Cahiers 87). The Internet, as a thing-network, could be regarded as an instance of such technical ensembles, however, a clarification needs to be made. Simondon explains that “true technical ensembles are not those that use technical individuals, but those that are a network of technical individuals in a relation of interconnection” (Du mode 126). To Simondon, humankind has ceased to be a technical individual with the industrialisation and automation of methods of production, and has consigned this function to machines (128). Expanding this line of thought, examples such as the viral spreading of memes, and the hypnotic power of online marketing campaigns, demonstrate how digital technology seems to have intensified this process of alienation of people from the functioning of the machine. In short, no one seems to know how or why things happen on the Internet, but we cannot help but use it. In order to constitute “real” technical ensembles, we need to incorporate technics again into culture, in a relation of reciprocity and complementarity with machines, under the aegis of a technical culture. Simondon specifies that such a reconfiguration of the relation between man and machines can only be achieved by means of an invention. An invention entails the individualisation of the technical ensemble as a departure from the mind of the inventor or designer that conceived it, in order to acquire its own autonomous existence (“Technical Mentality”). It refers to the origin of an operative solidarity between individual agents in a network, which provides the support for a human relation based on the “model of transidividuality” (Du Mode 247). A “transindividual relation” is a relation of relations that puts the individual in direct contact with a real collective. The notion of real collective is opposed to that of an interindividual community or social sphere, which is poisoned by the anxieties that stem from a defected relation with the technical ensemble culture is embedded in. In the specific context of the online sharing of DIY cheese-making recipes, rather than a fully individualised technical ensemble per se, the Internet can be regarded as one of the ingredients that make up the final recipe—together with human and the food—for the invention of a true technical ensemble. In such a framework, praxis, as linked to the kind of non-verbal knowledge associated with “making,” defines individuation together with the types of objects that make up the Network. While in the case of foodism, the practice of online marketing and communication homogenises culture by creating “social phenomena,” in the case of DIY cooking advice, it fosters a diversification of tastes, experiences, and flavours linked to individual modes of doing and cooking, that put the cook in a new relation with the culinary process, with food, and with the guests who have the pleasure to taste her meal. This is a qualitative change in the network that constitutes culture, rather than a mere quantitative shift in energy induction. The term “conviviality” (from the Latin con-vivere) specifically means this: a “living together,” rather than a mere dinner party. For Simondon, a real technical ensemble is an assemblage of humans, machines, tools, resources and milieus, which can only be éprouve—i.e., experienced, also in the sense of “experimented with”—rather than represented. A technical ensemble is first and foremost an aesthetic affair—it can only be perceived by experimenting with the different agents involved in the networked operations that constitute it. For Simondon “aesthetics comes after technicity [and] it also returns to us in the heart of technicity” (Michaud in De Boever et al. 122). Therefore, any object bears an aesthetic potential—even something as trivial as a homemade block of cheese. Simondon rejects the idea of an aesthetic object, but affirms the power of technicity to foreground an aesthetic impression, which operates a convergence between the diverging forces that constitute the mediation between man and world, in terms of an ethical treatment of technics. For Simondon, the beautiful is a process: “it is never, properly speaking, the object that is beautiful: it is the encounter operating a propos of the object between a real aspect of the world and a human gesture” (Du Mode 191 emphasis added). If an analysis of cooking as individuation already foregrounds an aesthetics that is both networked and technical, the relational capabilities afforded by networked media have the power to amplify the aesthetic potential of the human gesture implied in a block of homemade cheese—which today extends from searching for (or writing) a recipe online, to pouring the milk and seasoning the cheese, and which entails less environmental waste due to the less intensive processing and the lack of, or certainly a reduction in, packaging materials (Rastogi). The praise of technical creativity resounds throughout Simondon’s thought. By using the Internet in order to create (or indeed cook) something new, the online sharing of DIY cooking techniques like cheese-making, which partially disengages the human (and food itself) from the cycle of production-marketing-consumption that characterises the food industry in capitalist society by fostering an awareness of the networked operations that constitute her as individual, is an invention in its own right. Although the impact of these DIY activities on the global food industry is still very limited, such a hands-on approach, imbued with a dose of technical creativity, partially overcomes the alienation of the individual from the production process, by providing the conditions to “feel” how the individualisation of cheese (and the human) is inscribed in a larger metabolism. This does not stop within the economy of the body but encompasses the techno-cultural ensemble that forms capitalist society as a whole, and in which humans play only a small part. This may be considered a first step towards the reconciliation between humans and technical culture—a true technical ensemble. Indeed, eating involves “experiments in art and technology”—as the name of the infamous 1960s art collective (E.A.T.) evokes. Home-cooking in this sense is a technical-aesthetic experiment in its own right, in which aesthetics acquires an ethical nuance. Simondon’s philosophy highlights how the aesthetics involved in the home cooking process entails a political component, aimed at the disentanglement of the human from the “false” technical ensemble constituted by capitalist society, which is founded on the alienation from the production process and is driven by economic interests. Surely, an ethical approach to food would entail considering the biopolitics of the guts from the perspective of sourcing materials, and perhaps even building one’s own tools. These days, however, keeping a cow or goat in the backyard is unconceivable and/or impossible for most of us. The point is that the Internet can foster inventiveness and creativity among the participants to the Network, in spite of the fixity of the frame in which culture is increasingly inscribed (for instance, the standardised format of a Wordpress blog), and in this way, can trigger an aesthetic impression that comprises an ethical component, which translates into a political stand against the syncopated, schizophrenic rhythms of the market. Conclusion In this discussion, I have demonstrated that cooking can be considered a process of individuation inscribed in a techno-cultural network in which different transductive operations have the power to affect the final taste of a recipe. Simondon’s theory of individuation allows us to account for the impact of ubiquitous networked media on traditionally considered “human” practices, thus suggesting a new kind of humanism—a sort of technological humanism—on the basis of a new model of perception, which acknowledges the non-human actants involved in the process of individuation. I have shown that, in the case of the online sharing of cheese-making recipes, Simondon’s philosophy allows us to uncover a concept of taste that extends beyond the mere gustatory experience provided by foodism, and in this sense it may indeed affirm a reconfiguration of human culture based on an ethical approach towards the technical ensemble that envelops individuals of any kind—be they physical, living, or technical. Analogously, a “culinary” approach to techno-culture in terms of a commitment to the ontogenetic character of objects’ behaviours could be transposed to the digital realm in order to enlighten new perspectives for the speculative design of occasions of interaction among different beings—including humans—in ethico-aesthetic terms, based on a creative, experimental engagement with techniques and technologies. As a result, this can foreground a taste for life and culture that exceeds human-centred egotistic pleasure to encompass both technology and nature. Considering that a worryingly high percentage of digital natives both in Australia and the UK today believe that cheese and yogurt grow on trees (Howden; Wylie), perhaps cooking should indeed be taught in school alongside (rather than separate to, or instead of) programming. References Bennet, Jane. Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. 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