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INTRODUCTION:
Eco-phenomenology is a new field in philosophy that advances awareness for all that occurs in the interface between a living ecology and human experiences of it. Through eco-phenomenological studies, we can explore the world as infinitely more subtle, complex, and dynamic than any that could be manmade. We can also recognize that its wellbeing is presently in the hands of human beings all too dimly conscious of it.
In a wireless age, a number of potent, eco-phenomenological questions immediately come to the fore. As we use personalized, wireless technologies—cell phones, laptops, iPods—what is happening to our attention? How aware are we of skating along the surfaces of others' voices, photos, and texts, and responding to them in kind with surfaces of our own? How aware are we of interactions stripped down, bereft of the sensory cues that occur in the presence of one another? What does this mean to our feelings for another person and to our feelings of self? Do other persons' needs—and, indeed, whole ecologies'—grow less perceptible to us and our responses to them more arbitrary? What does this mean in a world that is already fiercely competitive and privileges the human over the other-than-human?
Is a robust ethical life tied to the full repertoire of being in a sensing, feeling body that locates itself in a place among other sensing, feeling bodies? Does the horizon of ethical potential open before us as we learn to dwell in a living world?
How is personal choice—freedom of choice—tied to our lived bodies and lived experiences in ways that are made observable for the first time through uses of wireless technologies?
By studying such experiences in a wireless age, it is possible to advance eco-phenomenological insights that would not have occurred to us otherwise. It becomes possible to leave inquiries and return to people, places, nightskies and sunrises, with new eyes, ears, whole-bodied and alert, with a deepened understanding of how and why such encounters matter.
Read: "Going Wireless: Disengaging the Ethical Life?"
Related: Soundscapes; Public Trust Doctrine; EMF Research and Politics.
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"Going Wireless: Disengaging the Ethical Life?"
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EDWARD S. CASEY, PhD. is Distinguished Professor at SUNY, Stony Brook, known for its focus on continental philosophy. He is also co-director of a new master's program in Manhattan, entitled Philosophy and the Arts. And, a Fellow in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB. His books include Imagining, Remembering, Spirit and Soul: Essays in Philosophical Psychology, Getting Back into Place, The Fate of Place, Representing Place in Landscape Painting and Maps, and Earth-Mapping. The World at a Glance is forthcoming. He is currently engaged in a study of edges as they figure into geographical, linguistic, political, and aesthetic contexts. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Inquiry.
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