Digital´s aporetic and maieutic
10
Dec
In the time of the pre-Socratics, philosophy called the sophist had as a presupposition to
create discourses to favor the rulers and this soon led to Greek democracy to languish and a moral relativism, Socrates who lived in the century. IV a.C. proposed a method to address this which was to develop the maieutic, a method of asking which developed the logos.
But the aporetic state that lived was necessary more than to ask, an interlocutor had to abandon its preconceptions and the relativism of the opinions demanded something more than just to ask, something that would make a birth in the new thought, hence the maiuêutica name that was the the art of giving birth, so it was not a matter of “creating” knowledge, but of giving birth.
There is no doubt that the digital medium became twisted of “opinions”, the doxa as the Greeks called them, but can one parturize and inquire in the digital medium? a digital maieutic is possible, the case is not just how twisted (claques in Portugal) are organized, but how they are manipulated by sophisms, now updated as”fake news”.
The sophistry exists in history, never left or will cease to exist, in digital times the problem is the viral process, but the publishing groups through newspapers and TV channels have already done this and there has always been a maieutic that opposed manipulation to the facts.
Let us return to the method of Socrates, he did not initially know any, did not make his judgments according to tradition, customs, opinions, nor had an episteme, or an elaborate method, just asked, the problem today is that the questions are and modernity has already created “organized” knowledge (in the systematic sense rather than the truth), but we can use this for a new digital maieutic, repelling wrong speeches.
I think it’s not by chance that Artificial Intelligence is evolving, but practical intelligence, phronesis coupled with techné and praxis itself (which is therefore a part of the practice) may help, so Martha Nussbaum’s speech makes a lot of sense.
Many people talk aboutmaintaining “focus” (but it may be wrong) or emotional intelligence, which, disconnected from practical wisdom (phronesis), can fall into paralysis or alienation.
All we have today is not due to the digital world, it affect its, is a means and so it is incorret to see it as the final or initial cause, not even was the industrial revolution that caused it, but the set of values and feelings built in modern society, which is nothing more than a forma of being-in-the-world, a Dasein as Heidegger writed and explained.
Digital resources seem welcome, but we still have the barrier of preconceptions, an elaborate human hermeneutics is necessary
