Jos de Mul, Keynote lecture at the conference  The Shape of Diversity to Come: Global Community, Global Archipelago, or a New Civility? Erasmus University Rotterdam, January 25, 2013. 

The nation state, imagined as a formation encompassing a culturally unified people, is now straining under the challenges of globalization and the revolution in communication technology. This conference will consider the dynamic changes that are currently taking place with respect to cultural and religious diversity as a result of the explosion in communication technologies, address the conflicts they give rise to, and discuss the ramifications for both law and politics.

Two views on the impact of communication and information technology dominate the scholarship: one in which communication leads to the emergence of a global community and an interconnected global culture; and a second in which it leads to an archipelago of communities that do not necessarily converge with the boundaries nation states, i.e. to a cultural Balkanization of the world across national borders.

This conference will also address a third alternative. Instead of presenting the implications of the networked information and communication infrastructure in the opposing metaphors of a global community or a global archipelago, one can also argue for a normative understanding of what is at stake. Instead of endorsing either utopian notions of global community or dystopian fears of an Internet with walled gardens, one can vouch for an internet that allows for interconnectivity without accepting the increased personalization that leads to unprecedented surveillance and social sorting in both the private and the public sphere.

We hope this conference will be a stimulating gathering of scholars from different disciplines and increase our understanding of the legal and political implications of globalization and communication technology for national and cultural identity.

Jos de Mul, Understanding nature. Dilthey, Plessner and biohermeneutics. In:G. D’Anna, H. Johach, E. S. Nelson, Dilthey, Anthropologie, und Geschichte. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013, 459-478. 

Wilhelm Dilthey, der Begründer der Philosophie der Geisteswissenschaften, starb am 1. Oktober 1911 in Seis am Schlern (Südtirol). Zum Gedenken an seinen 100. Todestag trafen sich Hauptvertreter der internationalen Dilthey-Forschung zu einem Symposion „Anthropologie und Geschichte“ in Meran vom 26. September bis zum 1. Oktober 2011. Mit der Titelgebung verband sich die Idee zu überprüfen, wie weit Diltheys Denken für heutige anthropologische Fragestellungen und die aus der gesellschaftlichen Globalisierung resultierenden Probleme von Diversität und Universalität fruchtbar zu machen ist. 
Die Herausgeber Giuseppe D´Anna ist Professor für Philosophie an der Università degli Studi di Foggia/Italien. Helmut Johach, Dr. phil., ist Mitherausgeber von Diltheys Gesammelten Schriften, Bd. XVIII und XIX. Eric S. Nelson ist Associate Professor am Departement of Philosophy der University of Massachusetts in Lowell/USA.

In Dilthey’s Lebensphilosopie, anthropology and history are closely connected. As Dilthey himself states in an often quoted remark: »Was der Mensch sei, sagt nur die Geschichte«.^[1] However, for Dilthey history exclusively means cultural history. In order to develop a proper understanding of the historical condition of man, we should take natural history into account as well. After all, as a psycho-physical unity, Homo sapiens sapiens is the historical product of a complex interplay between both natural and cultural developments. Moreover, in the age of the life sciences, natural and cultural history seem to breach into one each other with an ever increasing tendency. Biotechnologies such as genetic modification, pathway engineering and genome transplantation transform organisms into cultural artifacts; and in the attempts to create artificial life (arguably the holy grail of synthetic biology), cultural artifacts increasingly display qualities that used to be restricted to organic life.

In the following, I will argue that Dilthey’s hermeneutics, especially his analysis of the triad Erlebnis, Ausdruck, and Verstehen, still offers a fruitful starting point for the development of a biohermeneutics that not only deals with human understanding and interpretation of human beings, (inter)actions and artefacts, but which also includes the understanding and interpretation of and by non-human agents. However, the fact that Dilthey, in his later hermeneutical writings often makes a rather dogmatic distinction between nature and culture, at first sight seems to be a serious obstacle for the development of a Dilthey-inspired biohermeneutics. For example, Dilthey explicitly denies the possibility of a human understanding of plant life: »Bedeutung oder Wert kann etwas nicht haben, von dem es kein Verstehen gibt. Ein Baum kann niemals Bedeutung haben« (GS VII, 259). The possibility of understanding or interpretation by non-human agents is not even considered by Dilthey. Despite that, I will argue that Dilthey’s later hermeneutic writings do contain some clues for the development of a biohermeneutics. I will further develop these clues with the help of the biophilosophy of Plessner and with reference to some recent developments in systems biology and neuropsychology.^[2]

Jos de Mul. Redesigning Open Design. In Bas van Abel, Lucas Evers, Roel Klaassen, and Peter Troxler. Open Design Now. Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive. Amsterdam: Bis Publishers, 2011, 34-39.

The title of my talk today is “Redesigning (open) design” and the subtitle reads “Applying database ontology”. Let me start explaining this title, the question I want to address this afternoon and the answer I’m going to defend. One of the themes of Picnic 2010 is Redesigning design, of which (Un)limited Words and the (Un)limited Design Awards Ceremony are also part. In the program of Picnic 2010 the theme Redesigning Design is introduced as follows: “The design industry is going through fundamental changes. Open design, downloadable design and distributed design democratize the design industry, and imply that anyone can be a designer or a producer”. The subtext of this message seems to be that open design - for reasons of brevity I will use this term as an umbrella for the aforementioned developments, thus including downloadable design and distributed design – is something intrinsically good, so that we should promote it. Though my general attitude towards open design is a positive one, I think we should keep an open eye for the obstacles and pitfalls, in order to avoid that we will throw out the (designer) baby along with the bath water.

My talk consists of three parts. First I will present a short sketch of open design. I realize that most of you will be familiar with open design, probably even more familiar than I am, but as this concept has quite some different connotations and for that reason is prone to conceptual confusion, it might be useful to illuminate this tag cloud of connotations. In this first part, I will also summarize the main objections that can be (and has been) directed against open design.

Just like the other members of the ‘open movement’, such as open source software, open science, and open technology (as we will see, especially the open biology movement is an interesting example within this context), open design is strongly connected with the development of the computer and the internet. For that reason, in order to gain a deeper insight in both the chances and the pitfalls of open design, we should study the fundamental characteristics of the digital domain. In the second part of my talk I will give a sketch of the database ontology, the ABCD of computing, that underlies the digital domain. And finally, in the third part of my talk I will investigate some of the implications of this database ontology for the world of design. I will argue that in order to develop the positive aspects of open design without falling into the pitfalls, the designer should not so much give up his activities as a designer, but rather should redesign these activities. The designer of the future has to become a database designer, a meta-designer, who does not design objects, but rather a design space in which unskilled users are able to design their objects in a user-friendly way.

约斯·德·穆尔 里斯贝思·努尔德格拉芙 《主权债务危机还是苏菲的抉择：论欧洲的悲剧、罪恶与责任》《社会科学战线》2012年第4期 [Jos de Mul and Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens. The sovereign debt crisis or Sophie’s choice. On European tragedies, guilt and responsibility, Social Science Front, no.4 2012, 1-5]

主权债务危机还是苏菲的抉择: 论欧洲的悲剧、罪恶与责任

[荷] 约斯·德·穆尔 1  摇里斯贝思·努尔德格拉芙 2

(1作者简介: 约斯·德·穆尔( Jos de Mul), 荷兰伊拉斯谟大学哲学系教授, 研究方向: 哲学人类学; 里斯贝思·努尔德格拉芙(Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens), 伊拉斯谟大学经济系副教授, 研究方向: 哲学、经济学。郾伊拉斯谟大学哲学系, 荷兰鹿特丹3000 DR; 2郾伊拉斯谟大学经济学系, 荷兰鹿特丹3000 DR)

摇摇摘要: 2011 年, 针对金融危机, 欧洲峰会叠起, 但效果不佳。 我们应该开始在金融领域之外进行深入 思考。 文章将以希腊神话中俄狄浦斯的故事及《苏菲的选择》 为例, 阐释悲剧的意义, 从而透视欧洲危机 的深层问题。 解决欧洲危机的关键在于唤起人的责任感。 新自由主义弊端开始在欧洲显现, 当前, 迫切需 要将政治与经济联系起来, 在政治和文化的意义上定义欧洲, 而不是纠结于金融政策的改革。

关键词: 欧洲; 主权债务危机; 悲剧; 责任
中图分类号: G02摇文献标识码: A摇文章编号: 0257-0246 (2012) 04-0229-05

Jos de Mul. Zeitenwende. Wie die digitale Revolution unsere Wahrnehmung von Geschichte verändert. Kulturaustausch. Zeitschrift für internationale Perspektiven. 59. Jahrgang, no. 3 (2009), 76

Der Computer ist eine Zeitmaschine. Er verwandelt unsere Wahrnehmung und er verändert unser Verständnis von Zeit. Mehr noch: Er untergräbt unser historisches Bewusstsein. Die digitale Welt revolutioniert unsere Zeiterfahrung.

In der westlichen Kultur ist das aus dem Altertum stammende zyklische Geschichtsverständnis unter Einfluss der christlichen Heilsgeschichte zunehmend der Überzeugung gewichen, dass sich Geschichte in einer unumkehrbaren, geradlinigen Bewegung vollzieht. Dieses historische Bewusstsein, das seinen Ursprung im 19. Jahrhundert hat, begreift die Wirklichkeit nur in ihrer chronologischen Entwicklung. In den Geisteswissenschaften interpretierte man Sprache, Moral oder Kunst aus ihrer Geschichte heraus. 

Geert Mul en Jos de Mul. God's browswer: the biotechnological sublime. Performance at the Next Nature Powershow. Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg, 5 November 2011.

Philosopher and professor Jos de Mul and media artist Geert Mul set out to visualize God's Browser in a unique art-science collaboration. The result is a conceptual poem of words  and an excess of images. Welcome in the technological sublime.

The Next Nature Power Show is an intellectual spectacle where artists, scientists, designers, filmmakers, politicians and philosophers present their radical ideas, visionary statements and powerful images on how to design, build and live in Next Nature: the nature caused by people.

More about the NextNature Powershow at NextNature.net

Jos de Mul, Popular culture in the age of digital recombination. Keynote lecture at the conference  Aesthetics of popular culture. Organized by the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava, and the Aalto University, Finland. Bratislava, 29. November – 1. December, 2012.

Jos de Mul, New humanism. Invited lecture at the International Academic Conference “Bahuangtongshen—New Humanism · Lu Yushun” Beijing, September 9, 2012.

Lu Yushun, a notable Chinese contemporary artist of mountains-and-waters paintings, a professor and a PH.D supervisor, is the vice minister of China National Academy of Painting and the vice president of Harbin Normal University. As one of the leading characters in the field of Chinese contemporary mountains-and-waters paintings, he still keeps the tradition of attaching Chinese poems with calligraphy art and stamping his own seal to his works and, on the other hand, tries to make modernized transfer about his works. His influential series of thematically created works include "Bahuangtongshen", "The Spirit Home", "The Beautiful Landscape", "The Splendid Mountains and Waters" and "The Dream on the Other Side of the River". All these works fully elaborate the spirits of Chinese culture with a unique vision of Chinese fine art, and vividly reflect the aesthetic feature of Chinese art. Meanwhile, he combines foreign factors into his own works and creates a profound, fresh, colorful and diversified art style—Yushun style. Carrying forward the tradition and harmonizing with the modern style, Mr. Lu Yushun depicts the beautiful nature and strong affection of modern human beings with his humanistic feelings. He reveals the aesthetic features of Oriental and reflects the mysterious and profound spirits and qualities of Chinese art.

Bibi van den Berg and Jos de Mul. Remote control. Human autonomy in the age of computer-mediated agency. In: Mireille Hildebrandt and Antoinette Rouvroy (eds.) Autonomic Computing and Transformations of Human Agency. Philosophers of Law meeting Philosophers of Technology. London: Routledge, 2011, 46-63.

Jos de Mul and Bibi van den Berg contend that to a considerable extent, human action has always been ‘remote controlled’ by internal and external factors which are beyond individuals’ control. They argue that it is the reflection on such remote control a posteriori that allows for a ‘reflexive appropriation’ of these factors as our own motivators. The question they thus raise is what difference autonomic computing makes at this point and under what circumstances it will either strengthen or hinder human agency, defined in terms of ‘reflexive appropriation’. 

Jos de Mul, The (Bio)technological Sublime. After Hours Conversation lecture. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, October 2, 2012.

In our (post)modern world it is no longer the superior forces of nature that calls forth the experience of the sublime, but rather, the superior forces of technology. However, with the transfer of power from divine nature to human technology, the ambiguous experience of the sublime also nests in the latter. In the era of converging technologies – information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and the neurosciences – it is technology itself that gains an ungeheuer character in its battle with nature. Without doubt these technologies have increased our power over nature enourmously.

However, this does not mean that we have become gods in the sense that we have gained control over our own destiny. Rather, our relation with nature is changing:

Where technology and nature are traditionally seen as opposed to each other, they now appear to merge or even trade places. While old nature, in the sense of trees, plants, animals, atoms, or climate, is increasingly controlled and governed by man – it is turned into a cultural category –, our technological environment becomes so complex and uncontrollable, that we start to relate to it as a nature of its own.

While technology is an expression of the grandeur of the human intellect, we also increasingly experience it as a force that controls and threatens us. Technologies such as atomic power station and genetic modification, to mention just two paradigmatic examples, are Janus-faced: they reflect, at once, our hope for the benefits they may bring as well as our fear of their uncontrollable, destructive potentials.

At first sight it seems that in these cases technology completely controls and conquers nature. However, in the fast growing domain of the biotechnologies (which will probably become as important in the twenty-first century as the physical sciences were in the twentieth century), we witness a remarkable revenge of nature within technology. After all, technologies like genetic modification and synthetic biology create entities that are no longer passive manipulatable innate elements, but have, and will increasingly have, their ‘own agenda’.

A full version of this lecture will be published in the Spring 2013 issue of the Institute Letter of the IAS.