Table of Methodologies

Tentative Table of Historiographical Methodologies

	Historical Empirical Sources	Historical Objects of Inquiry	Actors under Inquiry	Categories for Inquiry (ways of making sense of the objects of inquiry)
Gould, chs. 5-6	Binet, Goddard, Terman, &c. (ch.5); Spearman and Burt (chs. 6)	Tests/Techniques for Testing; Data Analytic Methods; Ideas	Technicians & Scientists of Intelligence	“Fallacies of Thought” (p. 56)
Darby/Ruhr, chs. 1-4, etc.	Kant/Hume (ch. 2); Cooper, Du Bois (ch. 4)	Ideas, Discourses; School Practices (later chs.)	Theorists and Intellectuals;  School Administrators	Ideologies
Malabou, chs. 1-2	Galton, Binet, Terman (ch.1); IBM, Human Genome Project, Makram [Blue Brain Project], True North, Kurzweil &c. (ch.2)	Discourses (about brains), and their Concepts; Technological Artifacts; Institutional Projects	Technicians & Engineers of Intelligence	“Metamorphoses” (Paradigms, Stages)   “Mediations” (xvii)   Scientific Concepts

Malabou, Morphing Intelligence, third selection (Ch. 3 + Conclusion)

Group’s Questions

Can the argument that CM draws through JD be threaded through the following conceptual chain?  Habit-action-Intelligence-sociality-communication-education.  Are there other concepts in the sequence?  Is that the right chain?

 

How does one make sense of the analysis of JD in terms of “automation”?  How would we square this with the existing secondary literature on Dewey?

 

How does the Bourdieu quote (98) orient the inquiry of the chapter?  Does this lead to a post-disciplinary conception?

 

Gap between unintelligent/reactive and intelligent/exploratory inquiry? (102)

What is the relationship between inquiry and reflexivity for CM?

 

Is the idea of “a fair and emancipatory political vision of a cybernetic being-together” (123) to be understood in terms of an idea of “the commons?”  Is it possible that this political vision lets technology and democracy off the hook too easily?  For instance, in the context of colonial tendencies of technology and democracy?  Can these be on the hook without a technophobic impetus driving them?

 

 

 

Group’s Responses

On automation, Malabou’s conception here involves “a double valency of mechanical constraint and freedom” (100).  This connects to Dewey’s notion of habit (and also connects to Foucault on conduct and counter-conduct we think).  “Rendering the indeterminate determinate,” is central in Dewey (103).  For Malabou, this is to be understood in the context of the practical (rather than the theoretical/intellectual) (101).

 

After discussion, here is the chain for Dewey on CM’s reading (filling in a few missing details):

·         [Automation] – action – habit – experience – inquiry – intelligence – democracy – sociality – communication – education

·         The chain is one of successive clarification and enrichment (a dialectical chain)

 

So what this clarifies for us is that automation for CM is a mediation concept, not a domination concept.  Automation is a dialectical concept.  Automation without guarantees.

 

“The same plasticity can be called upon to contradict any predestination, all hierarchization in the aesthetic and cognitive response to forms,” (137).

 

The project of the book works to move away from technophobia, and without falling into techno-optimism.  But does the negation of technophobia offer a positive politics of technology?

Malabou, Morphing Intelligence, second selection

Group’s Questions:

How is CM not reproducing a conception of intelligence as a kind of empirico-transcendental object of study? 

Is the argument that “natural intelligence” and “artificial intelligence” are similar at the level of “architecture” (86, 92, 113)?

What is the best concept for the relation between natural and artificial intelligence?  Is it a model, a simulation, an explanation, an identity?  (It is not an ‘analogy’; cf. 87).

Is the text committing the homunculus fallacy (explaining a thing, such as intelligence, by making use of the concept that is being explained)?

If we consider the apparatuses that are linked to the operations/conceptions of intelligence, such as the U.S. military, how does impact CM’s analysis of the discourse of intelligence?

 

Group’s Discussions:

A key idea for this chapter, if not the key idea, is an epigenetic understanding of intelligence (this is the second metamorphosis, p. 14).

The epigenetic shift in natural intelligence is represented/expressed by Piaget.  CM builds on Piaget to describe a conception of intelligence as assimilation-accommodation.  This is a notion of intelligence as a process.

[Where does this leave us with respect to the classical conception of intelligence in Terman, Binet, et. al.?]

The epigenetic shift in artificial intelligence describes a similar process of assimilation-accommodation.

But this does not apply to something like a “thermostat” because it does not rewrite its own code.  The thermostat, we might presume, is not sufficiently reflexive.

                Where is Turing in all of this?

The claim is that the neuro-synaptic process “is a synapse” (p. 83), not that it functions or imitates a synapse.  The claim is that the plasticity that belongs to the brain also belongs to the synaptic chip.