[Nettime-bold] pragmatic media philosophy and the internet

["Content-Wire.com" <PGalaxy@compuserve.com>]

Thought the following article contains interesting bits

Not quite sure what the conclusion is - nor if I agree with it - 

 Am i the only one to wish that discussions could start with
the conclusion? 

pdm



http://www.uni-jena.de/ms/pi

Mike Sandbothe

PRAGMATIC MEDIA PHILOSOPHY AND THE INTERNET
When, as a philosopher, you concern yourself with issues of media theory,
you are often confronted with the, mostly rhetorical, question as to what
philosophy has to do with media. That logical, ethical, aesthetic, and
epistemological issues, or those concerning the philosophy of science and
of language, are genuine philosophical questions seems self-evident to us
today. The word formations 'philosophical media theory' or 'media
philosophy', however, sound unaccustomed, irritating, suspect. To some they
may even appear to be a contradictio in adjecto. In the following I would
like to argue that in conditions of modernity it is important and
meaningful to construe the question concerning media as a philosophical
question. 

Philosophical attention to the intertwinements existing between our
technical media of dissemination (print, radio, TV, Internet), our symbolic
media of communication (images, language, writing, music) and our media of
sensuous perception (space, time) has increasingly intensified at the close
of the 19th and in first decades of the 20th century. Media philosophical
issues have established themselves in close connection with a new
orientation in modern philosophy, which, following Richard Rorty, I would
like to call the "pragmatic turn".(1) What is meant by this is the
transition to philosophical activity for which the representationalist
question of our theories' reference to reality, with a view to their
cognitive or truth value, is no longer central, but instead of this the
anti-representationalist question of the usefulness of our thinking within
the framework of concrete, historically contingent, politically and
socially determined situations of action.(2) 

Rorty's opposition of representationalism with anti-representationalism,
which I have just made use of, is to be clearly delineated from the
distinction between realism and anti-realism stemming from Michael
Dummett.(3) In Rorty's usage the distinction between realistic copy
theories and anti-realistic construction theories of cognition does not
serve as a synonym for the opposition of representationalism and
anti-representationalism, but as an internal difference whose
differentiational work is performed within the realm of representationalist
positions. This is emphasized by Rorty when he writes: "I claim that the
representationalism-vs.-antirepresentationalism issue is distinct from the
realism-vs.-antirealism one, because the latter issue arises only for
representationalists."(4) The idea that human cognition aims primarily at
providing an adequate account of reality in Rorty's view determines both
copy-theoretical and constructivist epistemologies. Although copy theory
and constructivism apply different criteria of adequation and presuppose
different concepts of reality, both remain within the paradigm of a
representation aiming at correspondence. Whereas the adequation of a
representation in copy-theoretical terms is determined by its reference to
an object transcending representation, the constructivist correspondence
criterion is defined immanently with respect to representation itself. The
decisive question here is whether the constructivistically interpreted
representation of a matter formally corresponds with the rules for the
construction of something as something, which are grasped as being
conditions of possibility of representation altogether.(5) 

Rorty contrasts the representationalist cognitive model with the
anti-representationalist view that knowledge should be described not in
terms of its correspondence-theoretical reference to reality, but as an
element of action bound within situations of usage. Under the
anti-representationalist banner cognitive feats are apprehended not as
representations constructing or copying reality, but as pragmatic tools for
changing reality. If one makes the pragmatic turn linked with
anti-representationalism, then the representationalist distinction between
cognition as realistic 'discovery' of reality and knowledge as
constructivist 'making' of reality becomes irrelevant. Rorty highlights
this particularly clearly in his essay Relativism: Finding and Making when
he writes: "To treat beliefs not as representations but as habits of
action, and words not as representations but as tools, is to make it
pointless to ask 'am I discovering or inventing, making or finding?' There
is no point in dividing the organisms' interaction with the environment in
this way."(6) 

The transition from representationalism to antirepresentationalism,
according to Rorty, was effected in America by the famous advocates of
classical pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John
Dewey, and in Europe by pragmatically thinking philosophers like Nietzsche,
the early Heidegger and the late Wittgenstein.(7) The main concern of
pragmatic philosophers consisted of the attempt to establish a practical
orientation toward the hope of a better future as the central focus of
modern philosophy. This attempt was already inherent in the
metaphilosophical controversy implied in the thinking of Bacon and
Descartes, as well as of Kant and Hegel, about the question as to whether
the centre of modern philosophy is to be seen in the theoretical,
contemplative focus on cognition of the past or in the practical, active
orientation toward the hope of a better future. In this spirit, Rorty
states: ("Insofar as there is anything at all specific about pragmatism,
then it is that it replaces the concepts of reality, reason and essence
with the concept of a better human future."(8) A similar characterization
of pragmatism can be found with Hilary Putnam who calls "the emphasis on
the primacy of practice ... a central - perhaps the central - emphasis"(9)
of pragmatism. 

My considerations are organized in four parts. In the first part, with
recourse to the founders of classical pragmatism, Peirce and James, I will
demonstrate some basic features of the pragmatic turn. In the second part I
will built on this and reconstruct a pragmatic concept of media in order to
formulate four guiding maxims of a pragmatic media philosophy. In the third
part I attempt to show how these guiding maxims are expressed in the
pragmatic media philosophies of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Finally, in the
fourth part I will try to use the four guiding maxims of pragmatic media
philosophy to analyse the pragmatization of our usage of media in the
digital sign-worlds of the Internet. 


BASIC FEATURES OF THE PRAGMATIC TURN IN PEIRCE AND JAMES
To demonstrate some of the basic features of modern philosophy's pragmatic
turn I shall draw upon the twofold conceptual definition of pragmatism
provided by William James in the second chapter of his book Pragmatism. A
New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, published in 1907.(10) Under the
heading 'What Pragmatism Means?' James distinguishes two aspects which
comprise the "scope of pragmatism"(11): "first, a method; and second, a
genetic theory of what is meant by truth."(12) 

According to James the pragmatic method is "primarily a method of settling
metaphysical disputes".(14) It is a procedure for examining the meaning of
controversial terms, propositions or issues. The basic idea underlying the
pragmatist method is explained by James with recourse to Peirce's essay
'How to Make Our Ideas Clear'14 from 1878.(15) Peirce's classic formulation
of the "pragmatic maxim"(16) reads: "Consider what effects, that might
conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our
conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of
our conception of the object."(17) 

In contrast to James, Peirce, whose thinking by his own testimony took its
point of departure from Kantian transcendental philosophy,(18) construed
the pragmatic maxim in the sense of an evolutionary conception of
transcendental universalism. According to Peirce it holds not only that
"the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action".(19) But
rather, going beyond this, he defines the "identity of a habit"(20) in a
transcendental manner, with a view to "how it might lead us to act, not
merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as
might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be."(21) 

In opposition to this, for James it is the concrete and determinate, that
is the particular, situationally codetermined consequences of a concept
which constitute its meaning. Thus James emphasizes in his essay
Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,(22) which appeared in
September 1898 and forms the basis of the second chapter of his Pragmatism:
"I think myself that it [the principle of pragmatism - M.S.] should be
expressed more broadly than Mr. Peirce expresses it. The ultimate test for
us of what a truth means is indeed the conduct it dictates or inspires. But
it inspires that conduct because it first foretells some particular turn to
our experience which shall call for just that conduct from us."(23) 

In contrast to Peirce's universalist transcendental pragmatism, which is
oriented according to the model of scientific laboratory situations,
James's contextualist pragmatism can be directly applied to the multiply
determined and contingently structured conditions of everyday life as well
as to the strongly traditionally determined contexts of philosophy and
theology. Within the order of James's account of pragmatism this second
point of difference simultaneously refers to the second aspect of his
definition of pragmatism: the genetic theory of truth. 

Classical pragmatism's genetic theory of truth results from the application
of the pragmatic method to the philosophical concept of truth. According to
James such concepts are to be considered true as best mediate between
different meanings within a historically given context on the one hand, as
well as between these meanings, our concrete behavioural habits and our
factual actions on the other. James dedicated "a whole lecture"(24) to the
formulation of his theory of truth, namely the sixth of the altogether
eight lectures in Pragmatism. In this sixth lecture, bearing the title
'Pragmatism's Conception of Truth' is found James's oft cited and
controversial definition of truth: "'The true', to put it very briefly, is
only the expedient in the way of our thinking."(25) 

As a paradigm for the pragmatic theory of truth, James elaborates the
process "by which any individual settles into new opinions. The process
here is always the same. The individual has a stock of old opinions
already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. (...)
The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had been a
stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass
of opinions (...) he tries to change first this opinion, and then that
(...), until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the
ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance for the latter, some idea that
mediates between the stock and the new experience and runs them into one
another most felicitously and expediently. This new idea is then adopted as
the true one."(26) 

With James truth no longer appears a mysterious property which accrues, or
does not accrue, to an idea or proposition in all eternity. Rather, truth
is a mark of performance, an index of the "power to 'work'"(27) which a
certain idea acquires, or does not acquire, in a certain context of
problems. In this "truth's cash-value"(28) consists in the networkability
of a proposition, that is, in the ability of a proposition, which
interprets a certain experience in a certain way, to interweave in a
sensible and as systematic as possible manner with other propositions in
which other experiences are expressed. As a rule this occurs only when
transformations, adjustments and shifts are undertaken both in the "stock
of old opinions"(29) and with regard to the interpretation of the new
experience. 

In this way the pragmatic theory of truth simultaneously demonstrates that
"either reality itself or truth itself is mutable."(30) The process of
"veri-fication"(31) - which takes place in our thinking and speaking as
permanent reorganisation, redefinition and reconstruction of our network of
beliefs - constitutes reality and truth as transversal processes of
entwinement which are constantly in metamorphosis. Summing up James states:
"For pluralistic pragmatism, truth grows up inside of all the finite
experiences. They lean on each other, but the whole of them, if such a
whole there be, leans on nothing. All 'homes' are in finite experience;
finite experience as such is homeless. Nothing outside of the flux secures
the issue of it. It can hope salvation only from its own promises and
potencies."(32) 

Against the background of the hopes of pragmatic salvation suggested here
by James I would like to emphasize the moralist founding of his thinking.
Hilary and Ruth Anna Putnam have pointed out that "attention to James's
ethical intentions is essential to an understanding of him."(33) And James
himself noted in the closing sections of his book Pragmatism: "I cannot
speak officially as a pragmatist here; all I can say is that my own
pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more moralistic
view (...)."(34) James expounded the basics of his moral philosophy in the
essay 'The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life'.(35) James emphasizes in
this essay: "must not the guiding principle for ethical philosophy (...) be
simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can?"(36) In the final
lecture of Pragmatism from 1907 James comes back to his guiding
moral-philosophical principle. There he describes "the pragmatistically
unified and ameliorated world"(37) as "a possibility, which becomes more
and more of a probability the more numerous the conditions of salvation
become."(38) A precondition for the salvational conditions actually
available says James is "that each (...) agent does its own 'level
best'"(39) and that we recognize that "our acts, our turning-places, where
we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow" are "the actual
turning-places and growing-places (...) of the world ".(40) 

James's moralism is a pragmatic moralism insofar as James keeps in mind the
price which must be paid for moral progress: "The pinch is always here.
Pent in under every system of moral rules are innumerable persons whom it
weighs upon, and goods which it represses (...)."(41) From this, however,
he infers anything but political resignation. For James is of the
conviction that, if one compares today's conditions with the past, it can
be said that "a vastly greater total number of [ideals] find shelter in our
civilized than in the older savage ways."(42) The social experiments made
throughout history have, according to James, equipped us with societal and
political institutions which make us "confident that the line of least
resistance will always be towards the richer and the more inclusive
arrangement, and that by one tack after another some approach to the
kingdom of heaven is incessantly made."(43) 

When James opens up such global horizons he by no means does this as a
relativist. The 'we' which James speaks of encompasses humanity and is not
- as it is today, for instance, by Rorty - ethnocentrically relativized to
the western world.(44) Therein lies a universalist aspect of James's
pragmatism, one otherwise bearing a contextualist signature. The history of
our network of beliefs and the development of the forms in which we live
together transcends, in James's view, all cultural differences. James
proceeds - like Peirce - from the assumption that there is a uniform
history of our "ways of worldmaking".(45) However, whereas Peirce takes the
view that this uniformity is founded in an external force - one fatefully
determined from outside the evolution of our beliefs, so that in the long
run they garanteee realistic correspondence with a reality which itself is
developing - James thinks that such correspondence cannot be assured by
anything and also that it need not be assured. It suffices for James that
we be concerned with the uniform development and internal optimization of
our ways of worldmaking, through which the production of inner coherence in
the framework of our network of beliefs and patterns of action is
guaranteed. The question as to whether, for its part, this internal
optimization is to be explained once again remains unanswered with James. A
consistent pragmatic answer to this question was first provided by Rorty,
who understands the generation of global coherences ethnocentrically as
being the dissemination through media transmission of political
vocabularies developed in western industrial nations in the Enlightenment
age in Europe and America.(46) 


THE PRAGMATIC CONCEPT OF MEDIA AND FOUR GUIDING MAXIMS OF MEDIA PHILOSOPHY
The intertwined conditions existing between our technical media of
dissemination, our symbolic media of communication and our media of
sensuous perception(47) had already come into view at certain points in the
classical pragmatist texts of Peirce and James quoted in the first part of
my paper. Thus in his essay 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' Peirce emphasizes
that disregard of the pragmatic maxim often leads to convictions giving
rise to one and the same habit of action, and which in this sense have one
and the same meaning, one being falsely considered to be different
convictions. This happens particularly when, in a representationalist
manner, "mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them"(48) are
taken to be substantial differences. And Peirce continues: "Another such
deception is to mistake a mere difference in the grammatical construction
of two words for a distinction between the ideas they express. In this
pedantic age, when the general mob of writers attend so much more to words
than to things, this error is common enough."(49) 

Similar formulations are to be found in James's Pragmatism, and here they
are aimed with a critical view to the word-fetishism of metaphysics. James
writes: "Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest.
You know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know
what a great part words have always played. If you have his name, or the
formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie,
afrite, or whatever the power may be. (...) So the universe has always
appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be
sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name.
(...) 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' 'Energy' are so many
solving names."(50) And James continues: "But if you follow the pragmatic
method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must
bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the
stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a
program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways
in which existing realities may be changed."(51) 

At another point in the same book James, like Peirce, establishes a
connection with print culture when he delimits the attitude of pragmatism
from the rationalist worldview of philosophical tradition using the
following print-technology imagery: "On the pragmatist side we have only
one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places,
especially in the places where thinking beings are at work. On the
rationalist side we have a universe in many editions, one the real one, the
infinite folio, or édition de luxe, eternally complete; and then the
various finite editions full of false readings, distorted and mutilated
each in its own way."(52) 

For those dealing with the media-theoretical aspects of pragmatism, a
valuable pointer for the pragmatic concept of media can be drawn from the
quoted passages from Peirce and James. Peirce and James distinguish two
different ways in which a word can be apprehended or used as a medium. On
the one hand, from a representationalist perspective we can apprehend words
as being, so to speak, magical cognitive media and mediating authoritities,
by and through which the truth of being or the truth of appearances is
revealed to us. This is the traditional theory of meaning in language,
which - with both a pre-Kantian realistic, and a Kantian constructivist
signature - is closely linked with the correspondence theory of truth. On
the other hand, we can understand words from a pragmatic perspective as
being media in an artisanal sense by using them as a "program for more
work"(53) and as means in the sense of instruments with "which existing
realities may be changed."(54) 

If one detaches the media pragmatic utterances of Peirce and James from
their fixation on the medium of written and spoken language, then they can
be used in a general sense to delimit the pragmatic media concept from the
theoretical one. The ambiguity in the media concept which is pointed to
indirectly by Peirce and James is already etymologically inscribed in the
word 'medium'. Whereas the Latin 'medius' still primarily denoted that
which is 'located in the middle', that 'lying between', in a spatial sense,
the appropriated English as well as German word, which can be traced back
to the 17th century, develops two different fields of meaning.(55) Within
the first field of meaning 'medium' denotes 'that which mediates between
two things', that is, 'medium' is used in the sense of 'middle',
'mediator', 'middle link' (in chemistry and grammar). Within the second
field of meaning, which was derived from the first before establishing
itself independently, 'medium' functions as a word denoting 'that which
serves the attainment of an end', that is, 'medium' is used here in the
sense of 'means', 'aid' and 'instrument'. This ambiguity is reflected right
through to the meaning, first established in the course of the 20th
century, of 'media' and 'mass media' as 'means of communication' or as
'conveyors' of information, information conveying institutions'.(56) 

>From this elementary inner differentiation of the media concept four
guiding maxims can be drawn, which I will use as orientation in the
analysis of Nietzsche's and Wittgenstein's media philosophy. The first
guiding maxim reads: "Stop using the words 'medium' and 'media' in a
primarily theoretical and representationalist sense, according to which
what's understood by a 'medium' is a transmissive element between a
(non-mediatic) reality and its (mediatic) copy or construction! Try instead
to understand media in the pragmatic sense in terms of their function as
means and instruments in the framework of concrete contexts of action!" The
second guiding maxim is closely linked with the first. It states: "In your
considerations bear in mind that the representationalist view of media as a
mirror of reality or generator of reality is closely linked with
book-printing culture. It is the closed culture of printed book-worlds
which, for sheer words, overlooks the actions connected with them, and puts
a hierarchy of editions, which stand in complex representational or
constructional relations to one another, in the place of a uniform context
of experience." 

>From these two maxims two further maxims can be derived which point the way
beyond Peirce and James to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. So as to emphasize
the connection with the first two maxims, I will continue the enumeration
and speak of the two following maxims as being the third and fourth guiding
maxims of a pragmatic media philosophy. The third guiding maxim states that
it is only when we move in a medium whose structure makes the pragmatic
character of our use of signs clear that both philosophy and common sense
can be freed of the confusions in which they have become entangled in the
media conditions of print culture. 

If this idea is referred back to the first two guiding maxims, then a dual
task for media philosophy results from this as a fourth guiding maxim: One
task consists of the attempt to expose and resolve the confusions arising
within the intellectual culture determined by the representationalist
medium of the book. The other task amounts to cooperating in the shaping of
a media culture which, already as a result of its technical constitution,
contributes to these confusions' no longer even arising, because in its
pragmatic use it in actu exposes and makes explicit mediality itself.
Guided by these four maxims I would like to demonstrate the contribution
made by Nietzsche and Wittgenstein towards the foundation of a pragmatic
media philosophy. 


PRAGMATISM AND MEDIA PHILOSOPHY WITH NIETZSCHE AND WITTGENSTEIN
I shall begin with the first guiding maxim. It articulates the advice that
a pragmatic media philosophy should avoid building up the words 'medium'
and 'media' as magic cult words which allow the eternal puzzles of
philosophical tradition finally to be resolved, and should instead of this
pay attention to the concrete use we make, or don't make, of media in
certain situatio
ns of action. Within the framework of the implicit media philosophies of
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein explicit remarks can be found to the effect that
they are concerned not with creating new philosophical cult words, but
rather with establishing the concrete practice of decidedly pragmatic
criticism of language and media. 

Philosophical confusions, such is the basic idea of Wittgenstein's late
philosophy, can be unmasked by bringing into view the concrete use we make
of certain words and propositions within the framework of different
"language-games".(57) What Wittgenstein means by language-games are more or
less ritualized situations of action which contain both linguistic and
extra-linguistic elements and which are embedded in inclusive forms of
life.(58) The pragmatic turn, expressed in his attentiveness to the
entwinements existing between language games and forms of life, is
conceptualized by Wittgenstein when in the same context he demands: "the
axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed
point of our real need".(59) 

In place of the traditional view that appoints mind and meaning as agents
of thought and conceives of language as the medium of expression for
meanings, which, for their part, are thought of as transmissive media
between word and object, Wittgenstein draws attention to our factual use of
signs in concrete situations of action.(60) The philosophical question then
no longer reads "what does this sign mean?" but "how is this sign used?
What does it do?" Wittgenstein suggests understanding signs no longer as
media in the sense of pure intermediary mental authorities or ideal spheres
of knowledge. Instead, according to Wittgenstein, they should be viewed
pragmatically as means, in the sense of instruments, which serve certain
ends. The simple advice, which Wittgenstein provides in the eleventh
section of the Philosophical Investigations, reads: "Think of the tools in
a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a
glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. - The functions of words are as diverse
as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are
similarities.)"(61) 

At the very beginning of the Philosophical Investigations - once again in
section 11 - Wittgenstein informs us about the origin of philosophical
illness, which he seeks to combat therapeutically in his later work. In
doing this he formulates, at the same time, the second guiding maxim of a
pragmatic media philosophy. Wittgenstein's media philosophical answer to
the question of the aetiology of philosophical illness reads: "Of course,
what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them
spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not
presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy!"(62) A
quite similar aetiology for a quite similar diagnosis is provided by
Nietzsche, when in a fragment from the period between autumn 1885 and early
1886 he writes: "Words remain: People believe that the concepts thus
denoted do so too!"(63) Before looking more closely at the question of
aetiology I would like to append Nietzsche's version of the diagnosis, that
is, his formulation of a pragmatic media philosophy's first guiding maxim. 

Like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche breaks with the 'theoretical' view of
language, truth and knowledge in a pragmatic recourse to determinations of
usefulness and conditions of interest. Thus in the Gay Science he
emphasizes with regard to truth and knowledge: "We simply lack any organ
for knowledge, for 'truth': we 'know' (or believe or imagine) just as much
as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species
(...)."(64) The associated degradation of language, which traditionally
functioned as a distinguished cognitive organ and medium of truth, to being
a pragmatic instrument in the service of power interests becomes explicit
when Nietzsche, in Towards a Genealogy of Morals, makes the following
suggestion in answer to the question of the origin of language: "The lordly
right of giving names extends so far that one should allow oneself to
conceive the origin of language itself as a expression of power on the part
of rulers: they say 'this is this and this,' they seal every thing and
event with a sound and, as it were, take possession of it."(65) 

Nietzsche understands images, language, writing and music as mediatic
instruments of power, which are not only to be sought out in their working
contexts, to be genealogically reconstructed and - as material instruments
of the will to power - to be analysed, but which are simultaneously to be
instrumentalized for one's own purposes. This is also expressed in the
manner in which the second guiding maxim for a pragmatic media philosophy
shapes up with Nietzsche. The second maxim establishes the connection
between the philosophical confusions brought about by a representationalist
misunderstanding of media and modern print culture. It is the aspect of
theoreticization and decontextualization of language through its fixation
in the supposedly neutral medium of writing which Nietzsche foregrounds in
his criticism of the 19th century's book culture. In a note dating from
summer 1883 he speaks of the 19th century as being a "scribbled age",(67)
in which theoretical culture was spreading through mass media to all levels
of the population. In the second of his Unfashionable Observations
Nietzsche describes the self-paralysis and lethargy of action of a world
determined by print, science, and journalism in the following manner: "At
no point does the work give rise to an effect, but always only to a
'critique', and the critique likewise produces no effect, but instead is
subjected to a further critique. (...) The historical cultivation of our
critics does not even permit them to produce an effect in the true sense of
that word, namely, an effect on life and action (...)".67 And in a note
dating from 1882 Nietzsche concludes from this: "Another century of
newspapers and all words will stink."(68) 

In contrast to James and Dewey, who had developed an exoteric and
democratic pragmatism, Nietzsche spells out his Will-to-Power pragmatism in
an elitist and anti-democratic manner. Nietzsche understands the "sentiment
of distance",(69) which he practices through to and in his style of
writing, as being a pragmatic method of awakening the book medium from its
lethargy and making books useful as instruments aiming at actions. The
price Nietzsche is prepared to pay for his attempted pragmaticization of
the book medium consists of the restriction to a selected and consciously
limited circle of readers. In the 1872 preface for a collection of lectures
'On the Future of our Educational Establishments', a work, however, which
was never published by him in book form, Nietzsche writes: "The book is
meant for calm readers, for people who are not yet caught up in the
dizzying haste of our rolling age and who do not yet sense idolatrous
pleasure in being crushed by its wheels - that is, for few people!"(70) And
Nietzsche demands of the chosen few to whom his writing is directed: "Be
(...) readers of this book so as, afterwards, to destroy it and to consign
it to oblivion by your deed!"(71) 

The third maxim of a pragmatic media philosophy states that it is only when
we move within a medium which structurally permits the pragmatic character
of our sign usage to become clear that both philosophy and common sense
will be freed from the representationalist confusions which held it captive
in the media conditions of book culture. We have already seen how
Nietzsche's writing in a certain sense pursues an implosive structure.
Within the medium of the book Nietzsche attempts to overcome the bookish
writing style. Against the "scholarly manner of bookmaking"(72) which he
castigates harshly Nietzsche sets his aphoristic writing style, which, in
Twilight of the Idols, he praises in the following way: "The aphorism, the
apophthegm, in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of
'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says
in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book"(73) 

Less polemical, visionary and exaggerated, but amounting to a similar
strategy, are Wittgensteins remarks in the preface to the Philosophical
Investigations, written in 1945. With regard to the patchwork of material
forming the basis of the Philosophical Investigations, published
posthumously in 1953, consisting of single elements from typescripts which
he repeatedly cut up and recombined in various ways, Wittgenstein wrote:
"It was my intention at first to bring this all together in a book (...).
After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a
whole, I realized that I should never succeed. (...) And this was, of
course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this
compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every
direction."(74) 

To sum up it can be said that both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein experiment
with writing strategies pointing beyond the order of the classical book.
But at the same time their publishing remains bound to the technical medium
of book printing. From this results, as the fourth guiding maxim of a
pragmatic media philosophy, the task of cooperating in the shaping of a
media environment which permits the binds of representationalist book
culture to be overcome. The four guiding maxims of a pragmatic media
philosophy I have expounded are shaped by the experience of the media
transformations currently taking place. Moreover they are intended to steer
towards the question of whether and to what extent a pragmatization of our
use of media is taking place in the digital sign-worlds of interactive data
networks. In the final part of my considerations I would like to outline
briefly what I have in mind with this. 


THE PRAGMATIZATION OF OUR USE OF MEDIA IN THE INTERNET
I will begin with the linear textual services made available by the Net and
will concentrate on the synchronous communications services of IRC, MUDs
and MOOs. The linking of writing back to synchronous conversational
situations in the one-to-one or many-to-many communication in MUDs and MOOs
leads to a pragmatic recontextualization of the use of written signs. Using
written signs, speech acts between people take place in MUDs and MOOs that
would be very difficult to carry out in a book or a newspaper: people fall
in love with each other, make promises to one another, argue with one
another and reconcile themselves, laugh, cry, flirt with each other and do
all the things that we are able to do in direct reciprocity with
face-to-face communication or on the telephone. (In media which address a
diffuse public in a unidirectional manner communicative acts like that can
be performed only in the asynchronous mode through the interposition of
letters or the telephone.) In the situation of synchronous interpersonal
communication, which is characteristic of MUDs and MOOs, writing serves not
primarily, or even exclusively, to make statements about something. Rather
it is purposefully employed as an instrument for the coordination and
conducting of shared social actions. 

This also applies for scientific communication. When I talk to someone in
MIT's Media MOO about media philosophy we don't simply lecture each other
about our ideas. Rather we also get to know each other as people straight
away, that is, we carry out social speech acts, begin, for example, to
argue or to amuse ourselves together about this matter or that. Through
this our knowledge becomes socially situated, is related to our
convictions, wishes, aims and hopes and is in this way disrobed of its
supposedly purely theoretical signature, that is, it is pragmatically bound
within and concretized with regard to our individual aims in action and
life. 

In MUDs and MOOs even those actions which are not speech acts in the
classical sense, but actions which in real life we would grasp as
non-linguistic actions, are also carried out in the mode of writing. This
is because in interactive writing, as a form of communication which is
restricted to the medium of writing, only what takes place as a written act
attains communicative reality. My smile only becomes present in a MUD or
MOO when I write the sentence 'Mike smiles'. The same applies when I drink
a beer in a virtual bar or sit on the desk in the virtual office of a
colleague at MIT. In all these cases it is irrelevant whether a reality is
copied or constructed by the letters I type in. It doesn't matter whether
I'm really smiling, really drinking a beer, really sitting on the desk, or
if I merely construct these actions. Rather what matters is that, by
writing these sentences on-line, I carry out actions, that is, modify the
conversational situation in the respective MUD or MOO through my actions.
The pragmatization of our sign usage which is taking place in the Internet
becomes even clearer when we turn to the hypertextual constitution of the
World Wide Web. 

Characteristic of hypertexts is the fact that they point to intertextual
references not merely in the mode of footnotes, but rather that by using
active links they make these references constituent parts of themselves.
The idea of a closed meaningful content, already suggested at the material
level by the closed unit of a manuscript bound between two book covers, is
made problematic by the hypertextual constitution of textual elements
presented and interconnected with one another in the Internet. The positive
side of this change consists of the explicit and technically manifest
opening of sign usage, linked with hypertextuality, to other signs and
virtual as well as real actions. 

In the hypertextual World Wide Web letters and graphical signs become
programmable as icons, that is a signifiers, which at the pragmatic level
with a mouse-click generate no longer a merely symbolic, but a real
connection to what they designate. So, for example, in a philosophical
hypertext, when programmed as a link, a mouse-click on the sequence of
words "Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations'" leads me directly to
Wittgenstein's text; or an image of Ludwig Wittgenstein programmed as a
link brings me via mouse-click directly to a Web page with information on
the philosopher's biography. The same applies in the commercial sphere, in
which the connection with real actions is usually produced more directly
still. So in the digital bookstore Amazon.com a click on the button with
the inscription "Buy 1 Now With 1 Click" suffices and - assuming that I am
registered with address and credit card number as a customer on the server
- I immediately receive the following answer: "Thank you for your 1-Click
order! (Yes, it was that easy.) One copy of the book you ordered will be
sent to you as soon as possible." 

Of course the fact that we can order books through the exchange of letters
is not a distinguished characteristic of the World Wide Web. We can also
carry out such an ordering process by post or fax. The particular feature
lies in that through the Web the pragmatic dimension of our use of writing
is made explicit and noticeable by the immediate answer which our order
experiences in an interactive system. This brings me to an important point,
which I might not have highlighted clearly enough until now: for almost all
of the properties distinguishing our sign usage in the Internet as
something special in relation to our everyday, non-digital sign usage it
can be said that these properties are in no way things radically new, but
that they simply make explicit and make us aware of things which happen
implicitly and unconsciously in everyday sign usage. This also applies to
the way in which we read hypertexts. 

Our reading is changing, hermeneutic sensitivity is being intensified, our
reception of texts is becoming more intertextual, more associative and more
open because we start to interpret the meaning of signs using their
internal referential functions - of which signs programmed as links
paradimatically make us aware - in general as a guide. We are increasingly
switching to reading every sign as a potential link and are simultaneously
beginning to differentiate intellectually the possible spectrum of links.
With regard to the manifold reading paths which can be opened up by a good
hypertext, one should speak in more concrete terms of poly-linearity
instead of non-linearity. For every reading path, as a route factually
trodden by a reader, is a linear sequence. In contrast to the printed book,
with which linearities other than that preordained by the pagination must
laboriously be inferred from tables of contents and indexes, the hypertext
is structured such that already through its mediatic presentation it offers
the reader a multitude of possible linearities for individual selection or
independent construction. With this it approaches qualities reminiscent of
Nietzsche's and Wittgenstein's aphoristic networks of ideas. In these a
subject is not hierarchically structured and systematically worked out
point for point, but is demonstrated in its pragmatic intertwinement with a
multitude of other subjects and problem fields. 

Wittgenstein described the task of selection and interconnection underlying
the composition of his Philosophical Investigations as follows: "The same
or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from
different directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were badly
drawn or uncharacteristic, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman.
And when they were rejected a number of tolerable ones were left, which now
had to be arranged and sometimes cut down, so that if you looked at them
you could get a picture of the landscape."(75) And Wittgenstein concludes:
"Thus this book is really only an album."(76) With Wittgenstein, of course,
the elaborate project of a complex dramaturgy of ideas, one in which
nothing is left to chance, is hidden behind this gesture of modesty. The
author of the Philosophical Investigations was concerned to write several
books in one book by employing intelligent interconnection of
thought-scenes which are well composed and in themselves sound; that is, he
was concerned to make the plural linearities, multiple paths and complex
branches that advance our thinking realizable in writing too. 

If one applies philosophical measures to the modern writing technology of
hypertext, then the efficiency of digital writing space is to be measured
not least according to the standards set by Wittgenstein. It is obvious
that in precisely this respect the HTML mark up language employed on the
Net leaves much to be desired. If one compares the HTML-hypertexts of the
World Wide Web with more refined possibilities for interconnection offered
for stand-alone systems by hypertext programs such as Storyspace, HyperCard
or Toolbook, then there remains much to be done here. The same applies for
training of media competence in hypertextual writing, as well as for the
urgently necessary development of a not only determining, but also
reflective, faculty of judgement, which is an essential prerequisite on the
users' side for skilled reception of hypertextual creations.(77) 

Translation by Andrew Inkpin. 



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----

Footnotes 


Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press 1979), p. 149. 
On the opposition of representationalism and anti-representationalism see
Richard Rorty, "Introduction: Antirepresentationalism, Ethnocentrism, and
Liberalism", in: Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Philosophical
Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press 1991), pp.
1-17; Rorty, "Representation, Social Practice, and Truth", in: Rorty,
Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, pp. 151-161. 
Michael Dummett, "Realism", in: Dummett., Truth and Other Enigmas (London:
Duchworth 1978) S. 145-165. 
Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, p. 2. 
Heidegger had already highlighted with the utmost clarity that "through the
Copernican Revolution, the 'old' concept of truth in the sense of the
'correspondence' (adaequatio) of knowledge to the being is so little shaken
that it [the Copernican Revolution] actually presupposes it [the old
concept of truth], indeed even grounds it for the first time" (Martin
Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics [Bloomington/Indiana:
Indiana University Press 1990] p. 8). His reconstruction of Kant's argument
reads: Ontic knowledge can only correspond to beings ('objects') if this
being as being is already first apparent [offenbar], i.e., is already first
known in the constitution of its Being. Apparentness of beings (ontic
truth) revolves around the unveiledness of the constitution of the Being of
beings (ontological truth) [...]" (Heidegger, 8f.). 
Richard Rorty, Relativism: Finding and Making, Typescript, 1997, p. 19. 
Cf. Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge/New York:
Cambridge University Press 1989). In the first section Wittgenstein,
Nietzsche and Dewey are dealt with as philosophers who have developed the
contingency of language, selfhood and community which is central to
pragmatism: the "Wittgensteinian attitude" (ibid., p. 15) stands for the
"Contingency of Language" (Chapter 1), "Nietzschean pragmatism" (ibid., p.
33) for the "Contingency of Selfhood" (Chapter 2), and Dewey's pragmatic
liberalism for the "Contingency of Community" (Chapter 3). On Heidegger and
Wittgenstein see: Richard Rorty, "Wittgenstein, Heidegger and the
reification of language ", in: Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others,
Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press
1991), pp. 50-65. On Nietzsche see also Rorty's introduction "Pragmatism
and post-Nietzschean philosophy" to this edition (ibid., pp. 1-6). 
Richard Rorty, Hoffnung statt Erkenntnis. Eine Einführung in die
pragmatische Philosophie (Vienna: Passagen-Verlag 1994), p. 15f. 
Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism. An Open Question (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell
1995), p. 52. 
James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, The Works of
William James, vol. 1, eds Fredson Bowers and Ignas K. Skrupskelis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1975). The original edition
first appeared in 1907 in Longmans, Green & Co. in New York. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 37. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 37. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 28. 
Charles Sanders Peirce, "How To Make Our Ideas Clear", in: The Collected
Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 5, eds Charles Hartshorne and Paul
Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 248-271. (First
published in: Popular Science Monthly, vol. 12, January 1878, pp. 286-302).

James, Pragmatism, p. 28. 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §394, p. 252. 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §402, p. 258. 
Peirce calls himself "someone who learned philosophy through Kant" (Peirce,
"What Pragmatism Is?", in: The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,
vol. 5, pp. 272-292, §412, here p. 274; first published in: The Monist,
vol. 15, 1905, pp. 161-181). 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §400, p. 256. 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §400, p. 257. 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §400, p. 257. 
William James, "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results", in:
University of California Chronicle, vol. 1, September 1898, pp. 287-310
(reprinted in: The Works of William James, vol. 1, pp. 257-270). An
abridged and revised version appeared under the title "The Pragmatic
Method" in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method,
vol. 1, December 1904, pp. 673-687 (reprinted in: Essays in Philosophy. The
Works of William James, vol. 5, eds Fredson Bowers and Ignas K.
Skrupskelis, Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press 1978, pp.
123-139). 
James, "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results", in: The Works of
William James, vol. 1, p. 259. See also James, "The Pragmatic Method", in:
The Works of William James, vol. 5, p. 124. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 33. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 106. Cf. Putnam, Pragmatism. An Open Question, pp.
5-26. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 34 f. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 34. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 97. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 34. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 108. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 97. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 125. 
Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam, "William James's Ideas", in: Hilary
Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard
University Press 1990), p. 217-231, here: p. 217. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 141 f. 
James, "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life", in: James, The Will to
Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, The Works of William
James, vol. 6 (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press 1979), pp.
141-162. (Originally published 1897.) 
James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, p. 155. Cf. also Putnam,
Realism with a Human Face, p. 218. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 135. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 137. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 139. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 138. 
James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, p. 156. 
James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, p. 156. 
James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, p. 157. 
Cf. Putnam: "There is not
 one single line in James's writing that takes general validity' to mean
general validity in a particular culture. (...) I take it, rather, that the
we' in James's writing is supposed to include the great majority of all
human beings; and in fact, there is no evidence that he is restricting it
(and some evidence that he is not restricting it) to human beings. His
famous images of cosmic struggle between good and evil, which will go on
until the last man' and which may involve supernatural beings (...) suggest
that the relevant community is at least as inclusive as (and potentially
more inclusive than) the entire human species" (Putnam, 1992, p. 239 and
footnote 5, pp. 333f). 
Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett 1978). 
In this context Rorty speaks of "the power of the rich European and
American democracies to disseminate their customs to other parts of the
world" as being "a power which was enlarged by certain past contingencies
and has been diminished by certain more recent contingencies" (Rorty,
Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, p. 93). 
For the distinction between media of dissemination, communication and
perception see: Mike Sandbothe, "Interactivity, Hypertextuality,
Transversality. A media-philosophical analysis of the Internet", 1996,
on-line pre-publication:
http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/~iphi/ms/tele/e_top.html (revised and extended
version forthcoming in New Media and Society). 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §398, p. 255. 
Peirce, How To Make Our Ideas Clear, §399, p. 256. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 31. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 32. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 124. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 32. 
James, Pragmatism, p. 32. See also James's application of the pragmatic
concept of media to the perceptive media of space and time: "Space and time
are thus vehicles of continuity by which the world's parts hang together."
(James, Pragmatism, p. 66). 
Cf. here The Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition, vol. IX, (Oxford:
Clarendon Press 1989), p. 554; The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
(Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966), p. 566; Etymologie. Herkunftwörterbuch der
deutschen Sprache, in: Der Duden in 10 Bänden. Das Standardwerk der
deutschen Sprache, eds Wissenschaftlicher Rat der Dudenredaktion, vol. 7
(Mannheim/Vienna/Zurich: Bibliographisches Institut 1963), p. 431. 
Cf. the articles on 'Media' and 'Mass Medium' in: The Oxford English
Dictionary, p. 542, p. 439 and the article on 'Media' in: The Barnhart
Dictionary of Etymology, ed. Robert K. Barnhart (New York: Wilson 1988), p.
646. For the English heritage of the German words 'Massenmedien' and
'Medium' see: Anglizismen-Wörterbuch. Der Einfluß des Englischen auf den
deutschen Wortschatz nach 1945, eds Broder Carstensen and Ulrich Busse
(Berlin: de Gruyter 1994), pp. 884f., 892f. 
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell 1958),
p. 5 [§7]. 
For concrete examples, see the list Wittgenstein provides in the
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,
p. 11 f. [§23]). 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 46 [§108]. 
"To understand a language means to be the master of a technique."
(Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 81 [§199].) 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 6 [§11]. 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 6 [§11]. 
Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1885-1887, §1[98], in: Nietzsche,
Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, eds Giorgio Colli and Mazzino
Montinari (Munich/Berlin: dtv and de Gruyter 1980), vol. 12, p. 34. 
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Vintage 1974), p. 300 [§354]. 
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage 1989), p. 26 [First Essay, §2]. 
Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1882-1884, 8[20] in: Nietzsche,
Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 10, p. 341. 
Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Utility and Liability of History for Life", in:
Unfashionable Observations, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol.
2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995), trans. Richard T. Grey, pp.
85-167, here p. 121. 
Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1882-1884, 3[1] 168 in: Nietzsche,
Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 10, p. 73. 
Quote amended, Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 201 [§257]. 
Quoted from the preface to: Nietzsche, "Über die Zukunft unserer
Bildungsanstalten", in: Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 1, p.
649. 
Nietzsche, Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten, p. 650. 
Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1875-1879, End 1876 - Summer 1877, 23
[122], Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 8, p. 446. 
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R.J. Hollingdale
(London: Penguin 1990), p. 114 [§51]. - Cf. also Nietzsche's comment in a
fragment from 1885: "In aphoristic books like mine there stand between and
beneath short aphorisms long, utterly forbidden, things and chains of
thought; and some among them might be worthy enough of question for Oedipus
and his Sphinx. I don't write essays: they are for oafs and magazine
readers" (Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1884-1885, Juni-Juli 1885, 37
[5], Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 11, p. 579). 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Preface, p. v. 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Preface, p. V. 
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Preface, p. V. 
Mike Sandbothe, Das Internet als Massenmedium. Neue Anforderungen an
Medienethik und Medienkompetenz, in: Rassismus im virtuellen Raum, eds
Christian Flatz, Sylvia Riedmann and Michael Kroell, Argument-Sonderband
259, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg, 1998 (forthcoming). 

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