Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales

ISSN 1012-1587/ ISSNe: 2477-9385

Depósito legal pp. 198402ZU45

Portada: Nos Miramos

Artista: Rodrigo Pirela

Medidas: 150 x 100 cm

Técnica: Acrílico sobre tela

Año: 2014

Año 38, Especial No.28 (2022): 14-19

ISSN 1012-1587/ISSNe: 2477-9385

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7487165

Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. FEC-LUZ

EDITORIAL

Critique of digital rationality. New frontiers for ethics and philosophy

One of the myths of this unfinished Modernity through which the

current techno- scientific civilization is passing is the idea that we openly find

ourselves in an information society. Ours is an era of civilization

characterized by the overwhelming emergence of interconnection systems,

whereby, mediated by "digital devices", we have, in addition, the firm

conviction of possessing the control of knowledge and with it the control of

our own freedom, or of our sense of freedom. Thus, we link freedom of

information and freedom of action, with that of the sense of mastery of our

living space. However, all the detected signs of this informational society

allow us to conclude that we are rather in a world in which we are dominated

by means of a "digital rationality".

According to the above, the reason that prevails in the digital world is

rather disdained, not to say clearly "hidden", in the light of the technological

dazzle. Our era is the era of the digital society in which communicative

reason is evidently overwhelmed by digital rationality. Let us see briefly how

communicative rationality operates, as opposed to digital rationality, in this

era of hyperinformation; in it we can clearly see that communicative reason

and digital reason are opposed to each other.

Certainly, the characteristics shown by this New World made real by

technology, makes us think about the reasons why our society is absorbed in

a kind of reality that does not necessarily correspond to the real one. I think

that the Hegelian expression found in this idea can now be seen more clearly,

since not everything that we "see" as empirical evidence of our experience,

corresponds to the real world of lived life. And this play on words is as

disconcerting as is the very idea of "virtual reality". In this virtual world not

everything real is rational, just as not everything rational is real. The Hegelian

expression places us, in this century that is almost a quarter of an hour old, at

the gates of a reality that overflows us because of the unrealness of its forms.

The relationship between the real and the unreal becomes insecure,

through territories marked by blurred lines, in light of the strategies that the

virtual context itself places as a path to be traversed. And it is precisely there

where we find the problems and details of the advances of information and

communication technologies. In the so-called "digital society",

communicative reason loses substance in the face of the questions of

commitment introduced by the digital agent. This, the agent, is the one who

dominates in this indelible space; and it is the one who imposes a sense of

life, by possessing, he himself, all the personal and social information of each

of the subjects that make it up. What we are saying is that the communicative

reason is diluted in these spaces of interaction of the digital world, from

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three perspectives: in an ontological sense, in an ethical sense and, finally, but

not exclusively, in a political sense.

In an ontological sense, the question of digital being is centered on

the fluidity of information: being is an invisible flow that only materializes

through the control of will and power by whoever controls the interstellar

space into which the interconnected world has been transformed, precisely

through technological intercommunication devices. Being is literally a

"flowing substance," as Heraclitus would say; and, therefore, its materiality is

only detectable if we can measure the flow of its existence through the

algorithm. Being- with (Heidegger's mit-sein), is a being that is materialized

by its existence through a bit; that is, by being a digital flow that can only be

read, not felt; it can neither be understood nor much less "embraced".

Being in the digital society is an immaterial materiality, because its

substance consists in non-being: this is what the digital network consists in,

in stripping the digital citizen (illusory citizen), by stripping him of everything

that belongs to him as a subjective being; the being is empty of identity. The

more immaterial the subject is, the more subject properties it possesses in

this digital world. The real presence gets in the way. The unreal has become

real. This, of course, makes a new rationality emerge.

From this emerging rationality, the nature of being vanishes to

reinsert itself as part of a total, vertiginous and incessant flow of life in the

digital world. There is no pause of being; the digital being is tireless, because

this digital society is an insatiable society of presence, demanding eternal

presence through interconnection by means of the device: Byung Chul Han

calls it "digital rationality", which he places in the framework of the "society

of tiredness", which is the same as saying, "digital society". The ontos of

digital society is its fluidity of existence: this ontos is a fluidity of information

uncontrolled by the overwhelmingness of itself (it is not fluidity in Bauman's

sense of liquidity; it is an impalpable but at the same time material liquidity).

It is not controlled by the subject, although it is controlled by the agents of

the neural network thus shaped as a digital world.

The digital society that justifies this form of rationality is

characterized precisely by a structure designed in such a way that each digital

citizen (we have called him "deluded citizen"), is absorbed by this context of

digital neural networks in which his personal data, and everything that

conforms it, flows through the channels of the network most of the time

without his consent; although when he agrees to it, he almost never verifies

its contents; it is the most subliminal way of operating that has found this

world of uncontrolled manipulations with which the digital society is clad.

Thus, the subject of communicative reason, an ancient subject in the

light of the demolishing digital devices that constitute it, is a fluid in this

digital society, which is why its validity as reason, which in turn is much

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more instrumental than the communicative reason itself that serves as a

counter-argumen, is under discussion. The more invisible it is, the more

legitimacy there will be in this digital world. The world of digital society

demands a non-existent subject. It requires it for its domination. Being-there

is diluted in being-with, and from there, in being-nothing; being is

transformed into nothing in this digital world. Communicative reason is

diluted in digital reason, which inaugurates a new way of mastery, not of

communication, however contradictory this may seem. This is precisely a

core issue to discuss.

On the other hand, it refers to the ethical sense in this context, which

communicative rationality raises as its standard, but which digital rationality

in itself ignores. And this is what leads current philosophy to think that

communicative rationality, being empty of ethical referents, will no longer be

such a "reason". This is explained precisely by the ontological questions

raised in the previous paragraphs. The ontos in which the digital society

consists has instability in its foundations, since it is impossible to speak of

centers of information generation, as occurs in the "real society". The fluid in

which this society consists, is constituted as the ocean in which there are

islands interconnected by its aquiferous condition. They are islands of

materiality that are only connected if they are able to navigate through the

turbulent and fluid waters of hyperreality.

Therefore, the communicative processes that are traditionally

constituted through evident truths, this time become evident through

messages collected in the hyperconnected channels generated by each of

these islands of reality: each Internet user is a node of the network, whose

directionality is neither determined nor determinable, as an indisputable sign

of the oxymoron that constitutes it; that is, its immaterial materiality. The

subject is blurred, diluted, in this immaterial relation, like a bit of the

neuronal network. The subject is message and messenger, creating conflicts

in the fundamental questions of human rationality, that is, in the

communicative perspective that founds all ethics, given the conflictive nature

of this world with respect to truth, which is called into question as the north

of all ethical relations.

In this way, ethics is blurred by communicative anti-values, given that

the digital world, made up of neuronal networks, whose nodes are found in

each Internet user, as the subjective fluids that make it up are called, is a

world structured by a network of nodes and channels, each one acting as a

generator and receiver of information, which is directed towards the center

of power that is not one, but one in a multiplicity (Heraclitus dixit), returning

such information in real time, contradictorily as information of interest (for

the agents of the network, but also for the illusive citizen).

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Ethics, which is defined as the good habit of the subject, since there

is no subject in this digital world as we know it, as expressed in the previous

lines, but rather a fluidity of subjects, is characterized in another dimension,

whose ontic frameworks also remain to be defined. Some philosophers, such

as the aforementioned Han (2022), prefer to say that it disappears: in the

digital society there is no communicative reason. On the contrary, a digital

rationality is imposed. Let us leave the political aspects for another

opportunity.

These ideas serve to introduce us to the subject that concerns us in

this editorial. The question of whether or not communicative rationality

prevails in the digital world or whether it is bypassed by the so-called digital

rationality, as Byung Cul Han calls it. To ask about this communicative

rationality could be considered a meaningless question. It would not be

possible to think that human beings, that species that prevails in the world

precisely because it is endowed with speech, and thus with a communicative

power through reason, do not possess precisely this power of

communication derived from reason, since our sense of being is not only

shaped by logos, which, in the words of Heraclitus, and which is later taken

by Aristotle, makes being as such a rational being; that is, as a being endowed

with communicative power through logos that makes us human.

Communicative rationality, precisely because of the ontic and ethical

characteristics described above, is based on the idea of communication

(Habermas, 1999). This principle of identity present in reason points to the

idea of argumentation; that is, the question of convincing the participant in

the communicative dialogue that is engaged in, that the reasons, put forward

with good arguments, indeed, with the pretension that they are the best, can

be accepted as valid in order, consequently, to make the decisions that derive

from the statements that conform it. For this same reason, communicative

rationality demands ethical rules during the very process of arguing, from

which all communicative ethical theories (the aforementioned Habermas,

1999 and 1998; Cortina, 2010, etc.) are derived.

This is what Byung Chul Han (2022) points to. Communicative ethics

loses strength as a normative entity in the context of digital rationality. The

former demands arguments, while the latter imposes itself as a totality. And

this is the crux of the matter, as my teacher of Theory of Legal

Argumentation, the excellent professor José Ignacio Beltrán, would say,

almost forty years ago; or that other great of philosophical dissertation, who

was another great teacher and friend, Álvaro Márquez-Fernández. Digital

rationality finds itself in an environment in which ethics can be conspicuous

by its absence, if we lose the state of alertness that we must maintain in this

context of dilution of the entity; or of disappearance, in the traditional sense

of the term.

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Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. FEC-LUZ

This is the conclusion reached by Byun Chul Han, since

communicative reason is, in the present circumstances, blurred in the midst

of the unbridled avalanche of information circulating through the neural

networks of digital society. This is precisely the product of the

transformation suffered due to the onslaught of information and

communication technologies, which have raised their stakes to the maximum

benefits, especially in terms of employability of their interaction spaces.

Digital rationality operates in this environment overshadowing

communicative rationality, since, in addition, it reigns with a totalitarian

character. It is not based on arguments; it is based on the total knowledge of

the digital world, thanks to its devices.

Digital rationality, which demands knowledge of reality in order to

dilute it into unreality (the product of manipulated truth and converted into

post-truth), is based on the capture of voluntary information from the

deluded subject, who gives it voluntarily, precisely in the exercise of his "full

freedom", as we argued at the beginning, which is then returned to his space

of privacy as "merchandise" whose good price must be taken advantage of;

as Shoshana Zuboff (2021) would say: "reality is sold at two for one". This

infallible determination of the digital society makes rationality, which is

properly digital, an instrument of the new totalitarianism in which the current

capitalist society consists: it is an economic system that founds reason on the

business of emotions captured for free through timelessly connected devices.

Criticism of the totalitarian communist regime goes in another direction,

since it also dominates with other control devices.

Thus, it can be said that digital rationality is framed in a new project

of Modernity; or, better said, in a new device of social control, as was the

disciplinary society, controlling the corporeality of the subject of industrial

capitalism, which characterized the Third Modernity. The rationality of

digital capitalism is that which controls as the disciplinary society of post-

industrial capitalism, in which communicative rationality is its center. This,

moreover, is the foundation of the democratic system of law, as has been

affirmed on other occasions. However, the resemblance between one and the

other is only apparent. The social control of the new economic order thus

formed is open and interpreted by the deluded subject as an exercise of his

freedom. While the other capitalist system controls by means of bodily

control devices, constraining the subject. While the former leaves the subject

with the sensation of freedom, the latter leaves him constricting his freedom.

In the middle of both, digital rationality emerges, controlling emotions and

founding a new market.

Paraphrasing Masters Ortega and Gasset, digital rationality "is the

theme of our time".

Dr. José Vicente Villalobos Antúnez / Editor-in-Chief

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REFERENCES

CORTINA, Adela (2010). Ética sin moral. Editorial Tecnos, Madrid

(España).

HAN, Byung Chul (2022). Infocracia. La digitalización y la crisis de la

democracia. Editorial Taurus, Uruguay.

HABERMAS, Jürgen (1998). Facticidad y validez. Sobre el derecho y el

Estado democrático de derecho, en términos de Teoría del

discurso. Editorial Trotta, Madrid (España).

HABERMAS, Jürgen (1999). Teoría de la acción comunicativa.

Racionalidad de la acción y racionalización social. Editorial

Taurus, Santa Fe de Bogotá (Colombia).

ZUBOFF, Shoshana (2021). La era del capitalismo de la vigilancia. La

lucha por un futuro humano frente a las nuevas fronteras del

poder. Editorial Paidos, Santa fe de Bogotá (Colombia).

UNIVERSIDAD

DEL ZULIA

Revista de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales

Año 38, Especial N° 28 (2022)

Esta revista fue editada en formato digital por el personal de la Oficina de

Publicaciones Científicas de la Facultad Experimental de Ciencias, Universidad del

Zulia. Maracaibo - Venezuela

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