Today’s seminar featured, in addition to the originally scheduled report by Zhe Ran, another report volunteered by Jing Qi, who commented on Wu Ningning’s “Hansen’s Mirror.” Since I had also, in my Lushan Conference Travelogue, offered some elaborations on Wu Ningning’s research, I brought my own elaborations into the seminar as well for discussion.
Jing Qi’s presentations have been improving more and more. I used to criticize him all the time for using too much jargon, but that has gradually changed quite a bit. This time I criticized him for presenting “Hansen’s Mirror” in an overly mystical way; that was aimed at the specific point being made. Overall, as for the style of the piece, it was much smoother than before~
Wu Ningning’s position was more conservative than I had imagined. She still emphasized the specialness of the mirror as a concrete technology. For example, mirror-image experiments do indeed show that children’s responses to mirrors pass through many distinctive developmental stages, and some studies indicate that people who were not exposed to mirrors in childhood (for instance, African tribes) and Westerners who grew up with mirrors differ significantly in many concepts.
Of course, I also acknowledge that the mirror is a special technology, just as any technology has its own specialness: writing, printing, clocks, and so on are all very special. And people who grow up in a cultural environment that possesses a certain technology will naturally differ in one way or another from those who have never encountered that technology. But I think that if we want to emphasize the mirror as a “primitive technology,” that does not mean merely lingering on the mirror’s peculiar features as a technology. Rather, it means its status as a “prototype”: that is to say, all technologies are, in a certain sense, some kind of mirror.
Professor Wu put it well. In fact, it is better to say that the essence of technology lies in the body, rather than necessarily in the mirror. When one looks at one’s own hand, or when the left hand touches the right hand, a process of “mirrorization” also occurs—namely, a synthesis of selfhood and otherness. This interactive activity of “mirrorization,” rather than the specific technological activity of “looking into a mirror,” is the prototype of technology. Bodily technology is the most primordial technology, and the mirror merely most typically embodies the characteristics of this mirrorizing activity.
In addition, I pointed out that the privileged status of the “mirror” is probably constructed by the laboratory; more precisely, behind this lies the Western modern culture of visual centrism. For example, some of the rather controversial results of the mirror test mentioned by Wu Ningning are that pigeons also pass the mirror test (that is, they can understand that the image in the mirror is themselves), whereas dogs, animals so attuned to human ways, do not pass the test. What does this show? That pigeons have a higher level of self-awareness than dogs? I doubt it. This conclusion is precisely produced by the privileged status of the mirror. My guess is that, and in fact someone has already raised this objection: the mirror test is related not only to the subject’s degree of self-awareness, but also to the status of vision for that subject. Obviously, a blind person cannot pass the mirror test, because he simply cannot look into a mirror; but of course he does have self-awareness. Animals such as cats and dogs have highly developed senses of smell, and touch and hearing are also more important in their worlds; relatively speaking, in the world of birds, vision occupies a much larger share.
Blind people, as well as cats and dogs, can all establish some form and some degree of self-awareness, and the construction of the self depends on technological activity (acquired later in life, through learning), on the separation of self and world established through “mirrorization.” But this mirrorization need not be achieved through the specific technology of the mirror.
In the seminar I also semi-improvised the notion of “toy” as “primitive technology.” I think technology philosophers have paid comparatively little attention to “toys.” In the activity of playing with toys, the relationship between person and toy is neither the objectified state of readiness-to-hand, nor the concealed and transparent state of ready-to-hand of a technical object. Playing with toys does not point toward some definite object or goal; rather, it is an unceasing exploration, probing and manipulating the possibilities of things. The self is often extended or projected into the toy, while the toy simultaneously presents itself as an external object. A child looking into a mirror is therefore also in a kind of toy-state: I make a face, and “the other side” makes a face too, and in this process of probing I discover my own projection.
Wu Ningning mentioned that mirror experiments reveal that children’s responses to mirrors go through different stages: at first curiosity, then the construction of the self, and finally boredom and rejection. This seems to show that the mirror has some special status. But in fact we can also study children’s different responses to any other kind of toy; it too will certainly have different stages. The way a child who has awakened to self-awareness manipulates a doll and the form of communication that occurs when an infant encounters a doll are certainly different. I think a child’s self-awareness, or awareness of the external world, is constructed through playing with toys, not merely through looking into a mirror.
Wu Ningning questioned the theoretical status of the concept of “toy,” pointing out that for children there probably are no toys as such. This is true: for children, starting from their own bodies, everything that can be manipulated is a toy. The distinction between toy and “utensil” is something adults establish, but the key question is: where do the original roots of “utensils” and “art,” and so on, lie? From where do they emerge, only to be distinguished later? I think the root of technology lies in toys. In groping toward toys, one meaningful space after another is opened up; only then does the concept of “utensil” come into being.
That is why it is not enough merely to discuss bodily phenomenology; one must also discuss technology, because the lifeworld opened up by technology is multiple and plural. Each technology opens up a space of meaning, a living environment, and these worlds interweave and nest within one another, constituting the whole rich lifeworld. The body can be said to be the primordial technology; it unfolds the first interface between human beings and the world.
I plan to write an article along the lines of “Toys, Mirrors, and Art” to discuss this topic again. This title comes from one of Levinson’s early articles, but he only discussed these three stages rather superficially from the perspective of the history of technological development, whereas I am trying to elaborate on it from a philosophical angle.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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