Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

216631

Data science as machinic neoplatonism

Dan McQuillan

pp. 253-272

Abstract

Data science is not simply a method but an organising idea. Commitment to the new paradigm overrides concerns caused by collateral damage, and only a counterculture can constitute an effective critique. Understanding data science requires an appreciation of what algorithms actually do; in particular, how machine learning learns. The resulting "insight through opacity" drives the observable problems of algorithmic discrimination and the evasion of due process. But attempts to stem the tide have not grasped the nature of data science as both metaphysical and machinic. Data science strongly echoes the neoplatonism that informed the early science of Copernicus and Galileo. It appears to reveal a hidden mathematical order in the world that is superior to our direct experience. The new symmetry of these orderings is more compelling than the actual results. Data science does not only make possible a new way of knowing but acts directly on it; by converting predictions to pre-emptions, it becomes a machinic metaphysics. The people enrolled in this apparatus risk an abstraction of accountability and the production of "thoughtlessness". Susceptibility to data science can be contested through critiques of science, especially standpoint theory, which opposes the "view from nowhere" without abandoning the empirical methods. But a counterculture of data science must be material as well as discursive. Karen Barad's idea of agential realism can reconfigure data science to produce both non-dualistic philosophy and participatory agency. An example of relevant praxis points to the real possibility of "machine learning for the people".

Publication details

Published in:

Hoffmann Anna Lauren (2018) Countercultures of data. Philosophy & Technology 31 (2).

Pages: 253-272

DOI: 10.1007/s13347-017-0273-3

Full citation:

McQuillan Dan (2018) „Data science as machinic neoplatonism“. Philosophy & Technology 31 (2), 253–272.