Philipp Dorstewitz

Central to pragmatist naturalism is understanding experience as an embodied engagement within an environment. Also, social and participative relationships are embodied in locally shared experience and imaginaries. As notions of embodiment become mainstream, we are facing a trend that could render them obsolete. Humans begin to inhabit regions of the metaverse as disembodied avatars. They leave their physical identities behind to become tokenized actants in crypto worlds. Participative relationships suffer the same fate: public-key cryptography offers instruments that compete with analogue governance institutions, such as fiat money, personal identity, and intellectual property. This paper turns to science and technology studies and actor-network theory to translate classical pragmatist ideas to these new digital lifeworlds. Not only does this reveal the residual connection of digital worlds with physically embodied experience, it also invites the search for new participative relationships that may include human and non-human actants on a more equal footing.

Der Pragmatismus ist als intellektuelle Strömung dafür bekannt geworden, philosophische Grundbegriffe neu zu bestimmen, indem er sie in Bezug zum menschlichen Handeln setzt. Für Pragmatisten erschließt sich die Bedeutung und Relevanz von philosophischen Begriffen erst im Hinblick auf praktische Konsequenzen und deren Einbettung in erfahrende, planende und kommunizierende Handlungsprozesse. Viele philosophische Grundprobleme suchen Pragmatisten als Scheinprobleme zu entlarven, die sich dadurch umgehen lassen, dass hypostasierte Begriffe und Gegensätze wie ›Leib und Seele‹, ›Subjekt und Objekt‹, ›Tatsachen und Werte‹ oder ›Individuum und Gesellschaft‹ als dynamische Abstraktionen in komplexen Handlungs- oder Transaktionsprozessen begriffen werden. Diese philosophische Herangehensweise legt im Umkehrschluss nahe, dass der Begriff der menschlichen Handlung selber stark vom Pragmatismus beeinflusst wird. Eine plausible Lesart könnte sogar hervorheben, dass die pragmatistische Philosophie immer auch auf eine Rekonstruktion des Handlungsbegriffs abzielt.

presenting my response to j. vink’s “Designing for Plurality in Democracy by building reflexivity”, I feel the urge to divert from the conventional format of a commentary. In place of analyzing and recontextualizing her ideas or linking them with further relevant literature, I would like to use this opportunity to embark on a self-reflective inquiry into effects that Dr Vink’s impulses had on my own thoughts and interactions. I would like to interpret her paper as one step in a design process that is continuing as we are holding this meeting. At present, we are largely oblivious as to what the product will be, how its material and “invisible” aspects will be experienced, or what it...

This theoretical paper takes an agency-theoretic approach to questions of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A comparison of various extant frameworks focusses on how CSR agency emerges in complex multi-agent and multi-sector stakeholder networks. The discussion considers the respective capabilities and relevance of these frameworks – culminating in an integrative CSR practice model. A short literature review of the evolution of CSR since the 1950’s provides the backdrop for understanding multi-agent cross-sectoral stakeholder coalitions as a strategic determinant of today’s organizational behavior. The paper turns to Werhane’s coupling of moral imagination and systems thinking and forging stakeholder coalitions in problem contexts that were traditionally deemed intractable by for-profit organizations. However, it identifies the problem that the systems approach treats macro-agents (organizations, stakeholders) as given (“black-boxed”) and shies away from more radically re-imagining the possibilities of reassembling agency from the bottom up. Actor Network Theory (ANT) provides such a method, which strictly commits to treating organizational behavior as a product of technological, human and environmental micro-processes. ANT, however, is lacking a genuine moral deliberative stance in designing complex CSR coalitions. In an attempt to capitalize on the respective strengths of these frameworks (Systems thinking and ANT) the paper tends to a recent iterative series of “situational transactive” models that are rooted in the US pragmatist tradition and seek to capture intelligent planning processes in complex problematic contexts. The contribution proposes a new CSR practice model, which assigns specific roles to the theoretical contributions of ANT, system thinking and pragmatism in complex deliberation processes. This model can be industry-tested in a future study.