RE: [xmca] latour

Food for thought indeed. I'll spend next week in Paris digesting it :)

As far as I understand what it's going on in this thread, it is the idea
that agents need not be persons. Or, to put it in the analytic flavour I've
been savouring in the last few years, being person is a sufficient, thought
not necessary, condition for being an agent. If that is the point, I must
say I am inclined to agree.

As a contribution to the discussion, I attach a recent paper by the analytic
philosopher Peter Ludlow (who also happens to be a cyber buff), in which he
defends a "contextualist" view of what counts as real. Basically, the idea
is that what counts as real depends on the context, so there is no absolute,
view-from-nowhere distinction between reality and fiction.

Cheers,
Luiz

**********
"The brain is a wonderful thing. Everybody should have one."
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Kevin Rocap
Sent: sábado, 8 de Março de 2008 19:47
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] latour

Dear Martin,

Hm. Definite food for thought.

At some level since Greimas's usage is targeted at fictional characters
as "actors" and, I guess, the deep narrative grammatical/semantic
features of those characters (???) as "actants", isn't this, in a way,
parallel to the roles of motivations, influences and, dare I say,
objects for a live person/live people? Although I'm not oblivious to
the possibility of treating live folks as actors and these things we
commonly refer to as motivations, objects, etc. as "actants", perhaps
you see what I'm grappling with?

And of course the "characters" in online games are a kind of hybrid,
being caught in a narrative determined, significantly, by the parameters
and affordances of the game, but being avatars of living persons (some
of them anyway) as well as having potentially scripted interactions or
mixed scripted and "live" interactions (e.g., Luiz's passive or scripted
character, in his absence, could be dealt a blow by an avatar controlled
by a living person). But even the "objects" for the living person are
forged significantly by the parameters and affordances of the underlying
game narrative, no?

Part of me wants to pull this out of online gaming too. Since online
gaming, being story-like, does, indeed, resemble aspects of novels,
etc. And how do we know what characters in a novel are doing while the
book is on the shelf anyway? Even if they do re-assemble themselves
into predictable roles and actions when we re-open the book? (they may
simply not be interested in our interference in their affairs -
fictional autonomy as it were)

But I think what we are discussing could be described as well with
regard to things like "smart agents". We, live folks, (and I swear to
you I am one ;-), do you believe me?) - anyway, we, live folks "educate"
smart agents to troll the info-verse for websites, newsgroups, news
items, that may, presumably, be of interest to us, and they do that
while we're absent. So a kind of "real world" of smart agents, a la
your delibrations, Luiz?

Thanks all.

In Peace,
K. (Kevin Rocap's avatar - Kevin's busy today packing, by the way)

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca