Destaques

Rui Alexandre Grácio [2024]

Um artigo que vale a pena ler. Defende uma tese própria que é, por um lado, perceber os efeitos e as vantagens da computação na cultura e no conhecimento e, ao mesmo tempo, utilizar a filosofia para compreender e explorar o lado ôntico e ontológico do código enquanto elemento decisivo na computação.
Como escreve na página 2,

«The key point is that without the possibility of discrete encoding there is no object for the computational device to process. However, in cutting up the world in this manner, information about the world necessarily has to be discarded in order to store a representation within the computer. In other words, a computer requires that everything is transformed from the continuous flow of our everyday reality into a grid of numbers that can be stored as a representation of reality which can then be manipulated using algorithms. These subtractive methods of understanding reality (episteme) produce new knowledges and methods for the control of reality (techne). They do so through a digital mediation, which the digital humanities are starting to take seriously as their problematic.».

Ora, se num primeiro momento, a abordagem da computação foi essencialmente vista como auxiliar e instrumental, o facto é que progressivamente ela se mostrou como uma parte das próprias humanidades. Não um recurso, mas um elemento constitutivo que abre múltiplas possibilidades e obriga a redesenhar a própria ecologia dos saberes. Com efeito, a mediação provoca mudanças epistémicas.
O código revela-se como fundamental na softwerização da cultura e lança-nos numa era pós-moderna que colide com a universidade tradicional. No entanto, se esta estava associada a uma «formação» (Bildung) entendida como formação integral do indivíduo, o mesmo não deixa de acontecer nas humanidades digitais.
É referida no texto a diferença entre «close reading» e «distant reading» (que é importante como tendência e possibilidade pela mediação computacional) e é referida que a ideia de «formação» (Bildung) permanece:

«In short, Bildung is still a key idea in the digital university, not as a subject trained in a vocational fashion to perform instrumental labour, nor as a subject skilled in a national literary culture, but rather as a subject which can unify the information that society is now producing at increasing rates, and which understands new methods and practices of critical reading (code, data visualisation, patterns, narrative) and is open to new methods of pedagogy to facilitate it.» p. 15

Depois fala-nos o autor das transformações e no surgimento de novas ontologias:

«As the advantages of the computational approach to research (and teaching) become persuasive to the positive sciences, whether history, biology, literature or any other discipline, the ontological notion of the entities they study begins to be transformed. These disciplines thus become focused on the computationality of the entities in their work. 11 Here, following Heidegger, I want to argue that there remains a location for the possibility of philosophy to explicitly question the ontological understanding of what the computational is in regard to these positive sciences. Computationality might then be understood as an ontotheology, creating a new ontological ‘epoch’ as a new historical constellation of intelligibility. The digital humanists could therefore orient themselves to questions raised when computationality is itself problematized in this way (see Liu 2011).» p. 16

Esta é sem dúvida uma parte imteressante e importante, mas não é fácil de compreender. De qualquer forma, talvez esta parte final do texto ajude a esclarecer:

«If code and software are to become objects of research for the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, we will need to grasp both the ontic and ontological dimensions of computer code. Broadly speaking, then, this paper suggests that we take a philosophical approach to the subject of computer code, paying attention to the wider aspects of code and software, and connecting them to the materiality of this growing digital world. With this in mind, the question of code becomes central to understanding in the digital humanities, and serves as a condition of possibility for the many computational forms that mediate out experience of contemporary culture and society.» p. 17

Eis mais algumas passagens:

«That is, I propose to look at the digital component of the digital humanities in the light of its medium specificity, as a way of thinking about how medial changes produce epistemic changes.» p. 4

«To look into this issue, I want to start with an examination of the complex field of understanding culture through digital technology. Indeed, I argue that to understand the contemporary born-digital culture and the everyday practices that populate it – the focus of a digital humanities second wave – we need a corresponding focus on the computer code that is entangled with all aspects of our lives, including reflexivity about how much code is infiltrating the academy itself.» p. 4

«To use the distinction introduced by Hofstadter (1963), this is to call for the development of a digital intellect -- as opposed to a digital intelligence. Hofstadter writes:

Intellect… is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it.
Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole… Intellect [is] a unique manifestation of human dignity. (Hofstadter, 1963: 25)» p. 8

«The importance of understanding computational approaches is increasingly reflected across a number of disciplines, including the arts, humanities and social sciences, which use technologies to shift the critical ground of their concepts and theories – something that can be termed a computational turn.» p. 11

«These ontotheologies establish “the truth concerning entities as such and as a whole”, in other words, they tell us both what and how entities are – establishing both their essence and their existence’ (Thomson, 2009: 149-150). Metaphysics, grasped ontotheologically, ‘temporarily secures the intelligible order’ by understanding it ‘ontologically’, from the inside out, and ‘theologically’, from the outside in, which allows the formation of an epoch, a ‘historical constellation of intelligibility which is unified around its ontotheological understanding of the being of entities’ (Thomson, 2009: 150). As Thomson argues:

The positive sciences all study classes of entities… Heidegger… [therefore] refers to the positive sciences as ‘ontic sciences’. Philosophy, on the other hand, studies the being of those classes of entities, making philosophy an ‘ontological science’ or, more grandly, a ‘science of being’ (Thomson 2003: 529).» p. 16