Selin Gerlek

The rise of ChatGPT affords a fundamental transformation of the dynamics in human-technology interaction, as Large Language Model (LLM) applications increasingly emulate our social habits in digital communication. This poses a challenge to Don Ihde’s explicit focus on material technics and their affordances: ChatGPT did not introduce new material technics. Rather, it is a new digital app that runs on the same physical devices we have used for years. This paper undertakes a re-evaluation of some postphenomenological concepts, introducing the notion of quasi-materiality to better understand the role that user interfaces (UIs) play in affording different stabilities in technological mediation. We propose the term “active User Interface” (aUI) to denote the specifics of how ChatGPT makes use of LLMs within its UI design to afford seamless, intuitive conversations with a quasi-other in what Ihde termed “alterity relations”. Drawing inspiration from Peter-Paul Verbeek’s work on the intelligification of our material world through (AI) technologies, our analysis leads to the formulation of a novel stability afforded through aUIs: “machinic embodiment stability”. This concept sheds light on how ChatGPT’s aUI integrates with our established habits of digitally mediated social communication. As the use of LLMs is expected to become increasingly prevalent, this provides a new perspective on the current evolution of the technological landscape.

In the contemporary theory of practice, there is an increased awareness about the necessity of focusing on corporeality as a fundamental feature of practice. In this respect, there is a discussion about reflections on the phenomenology of the body, in particular as it is developed in the work of Merleau-Ponty. In the present study, we would like to broaden the discussion and answer some of the criticisms expressed by the theory of practice, such as an exaggerated focus on the first-person‘s perspective, or a too strong concept of consciousness, supposedly marking the,classical‘ theory of the lived body in Merleau-Ponty. We consider here the later period of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, in particular after he became a professor at the Collége de France in 1952 onto his death in 1961. In this period, he deepens consistently his understanding of the notion of,body schema‘, which clearly becomes the key to his approach to practice, affectivity, and to the phenomenon of sociality. His focus thereby was to depart from a traditional philosophy of perception and move on to a philosophy of,expression‘, which would uncover the ambiguity of corporeal practice as the difference between institution and sedimentation of sense. The unconscious in the sense of a social phenomenon surprisingly becomes a field of encounter between the later philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and the schizoanalysis of Guattari and Deleuze.

Maurice Merleau-Pontys Werk zeichnet sich durch eine vielschichtige Thematisierung des Korpers aus. Vorliegende Untersuchung entfaltet den hierfur zentralen Begriff der Korporalitat. In seinen Schriften richtet Merleau-Ponty seine besondere Aufmerksamkeit auf die leibkorperliche Natur unseres Zur-Welt-Seins. Dieser Fokus auf die leibliche Erfahrung geht al lerdings mit einem Problem einher: Leib bleibt Medium unserer Erfahrung und ist daher durch ein notwendiges Entzugsmoment gekennzeichnet. Merleau-Pontys Antwort auf die Beschrankung leibtheoretischer Forschung ist die Offnung zu einem systematischen Zusammenhang von Korporalitat und Praxis. Vor diesem Hintergrund unterzieht die vorliegende Studie die Leib-Korper-Differenz einer Revision und schlagt infolgedessen die "korporale Differenz" zur Kennzeichnung der Ambiguitat in der Erfahrung vor und fuhrt zugleich Merleau-Pontys Philosophie der Korporalitat ein, mit welcher insbesondere Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften wichtige Impulse erhalten durften.