Divorce

Of all the technological inventions of the nineteenth century, divorce is one of the most subtle. The power it grants is that of reneging on a promise, and that in itself is quite a capacity to want to invent, let alone implement in law, as the British parliament did in 1857. Of course, divorces did happen prior to this point, but only a few hundred between Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’ (the dissolution of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon) and the Matrimonial Causes Act. It may be noted that earlier cultures had divorces – the Romans frequently rearranged their political marriages – but these marriages were not founded upon an exchange of vows, as because the custom within Christianity. It was precisely because the Christian conception of marriage was based on oath-taking that it was necessary to develop new (legal) technology to permit open access to divorce.

I have to take care arguing against the cybervirtue of divorce… I should not want to be misconstrued as claiming we would be better without divorce law. It seems readily apparent that a great many disastrous situations were terminated by a divorce and that it would be cruel to suggest that, say, a wife being physically abused by her husband should not have the opportunity to end their disastrous marriage. But the question of cybervirtue is always about the cybernetic effects of a technological network – and in the case of divorce, there are some serious debilities to take into account.

Perhaps the greatest concern that I have in this regard is that too many people today don’t take seriously the implications of marriage vows precisely because in the back of their minds is the thought ‘if it goes wrong, I can just get a divorce’. But while the ongoing legal union is terminated by divorce proceedings, it would be a complete misunderstanding of both marriage and divorce to think that the possibility of divorce removed the need to take care in committing to marriage. The fact of the matter is, when two people enter into marriage, they’re lives are irrevocably changed by those events and divorce cannot undo that – it cannot magically unravel the emotional impact of trying to form a life together, and even less so can it simply hand-wave away any children.

Although none of my families have been involved in divorce, I have witnessed some ugly ones amongst my friends, and my country is currently engaged in a nasty ‘divorce’ from the commitments it made to the European Union, and quite possibly with Scotland too. In so much as the possibility of divorce may encourage people to take less care in committing to a vows in the first place, divorce could be accused of cyber-trivialising matrimony or (more generally) oath-taking. This is not to suggest that ‘divorce is wrong’, but it is to acknowledge that divorce is seldom good. It is typically awful. And this is also true when nations get ‘divorced’.

A Hundred Cyborgs, #13

Comments

[Mordechai Buxner]

I don't understand how divorce is a "technology" any more than other behaviors like, say, saying hello to people, or naming kids "Minerva". If we stretch the definition of "technology" far enough to include divorce, I don't understand what utility it has to think about things in terms of their being technology at all.

My impression is that if you replace each instance of the phrases "technology", "technological invention" and "technological network" with the phrase "cultural practices", and entirely removed the word "cybernetic" and all instances of the prefix "cyber-", it wouldn't be changing the meaning of the post at all, and if I'm right about that, then what is it adding to bring the concept of technological virtue into the discussion of divorce?

[Chris]

Hi Mordechai,
Your challenge is understandable: we have come to take 'technology' as meaning devices created through the practical application of scientific knowledge. But despite this, we still extend the term 'technology' unthinkingly to inventions like lateen-rigged sails, movable type, irrigation, metalworking, and crop rotation that preceded the 17th and 18th century when the notion of 'science' this kind of definition depends upon gained ground. In other words, if we were to take technology in this narrow sense we would be claiming there was no technology prior to the seventeenth century - yet we routinely back project a particular image of 'technology' throughout history... there's a bigger 'foul' implied in this than in the line-blurring I'm doing here.

What I am taking as technology is every kind of tool. This approach eliminates the bizarre consequences of involving a recent concept like 'science' in defining technology, and what's more there is a long history of analysing technology in this way - although most people who do it default to talking about techne, the Greek term from which 'technology' is derived. I assume they do this to avoid the kind of mental wall that you hit with this piece. I feel these pieces would be very off-putting if I used techne and not technology... and I'm willing to take the flak for any mental friction it might cause.

Let me address your specific challenges.

I don't understand how divorce is a "technology" any more than other behaviors like, say, saying hello to people, or naming kids "Minerva".

Saying hello could be a tool, in that it serves a social role, but it isn't terribly tool-like in any substantive sense, and certainly wasn't developed for any kind of purpose, per se. Naming kids 'Minerva' isn't tool-like at all. I suppose a case could be made for naming as a tool, though... I think we underestimate the cybernetic effects that systems of names have. So 'naming kids Minerva' is not technology, but naming could be seen as a technology in the broad sense I'm applying here. It had to be developed.

My impression is that if you replace each instance of the phrases "technology", "technological invention" and "technological network" with the phrase "cultural practices", and entirely removed the word "cybernetic" and all instances of the prefix "cyber-", it wouldn't be changing the meaning of the post at all, and if I'm right about that, then what is it adding to bring the concept of technological virtue into the discussion of divorce?

The main thing that would be lost would be the relationship with the philosophical system outlined in The Virtuous Cyborg that these posts are exploring. (And you've been a player of the Game for long enough, that I imagine you read a lot of the raw material that went into that book anyway.) Here's the key point in this post that defends against your accusation:

But the question of cybervirtue is always about the cybernetic effects of a technological network – and in the case of divorce, there are some serious debilities to take into account.

This piece makes two claims that I would suggest require the concept of cybervirtue to be understood. Firstly, that divorce can be understood as instituting a technological network, and secondly that this network has behavioural effects. You can and do challenge the first point, but if you accept the first point the second becomes undeniable. And I suppose my key defence against your argument here is that if you don't rethink technology and technological networks then the kind of behavioural effects this pieces are interested in become largely invisible. Cybervirtue is a means of foregrounding things that we normally don't think about.

So in answer to your final challenge:

...and if I'm right about that, then what is it adding to bring the concept of technological virtue into the discussion of divorce?

What is added is a sensitivity to the effects of tools upon behaviour, effects that are impossible to think about when we think about tools as 'inanimate objects' - especially since some of our tools are not even objects, as these piece explores. But I am, in this piece, suggesting that some 'cultural practices' (as you put it) are technologies. I don't think this is anywhere near as controversial as you do, but either way, you don't have to follow me down this line if it offends you.

I find the case for divorce as technology quite compelling, personally. The fact that it had to be invented, and was created for a specific purpose, is what compels me in this regard. We created a tool for oath-breaking... I find that fascinating! And I don't think it's entirely coincidental that we did so during the period when the changes to thought that I outlined at the beginning of my comment were in full swing.

Ultimately, if you don't want to follow me in seeing divorce as a technology, that's fine. But the cybervirtue concept is a means of analysing networks for behavioural effects that is not reducible to 'virtue', which adheres solely in an individual. In that sense alone, I think your challenge cannot entirely go through. But perhaps in order to come along for the ride, you need to be really on board with 'cybervirtue' as a concept. And for this, you probably need to read the book. (Shameless plug!)

I'm curious as to how the 100Cyborgs: Chlorophyll post sat with you, since that was another line-blurring piece like this one, and in that case I really did colour outside the lines because in any conventional perspective on plants, they are not in a position to 'invent' anything. But I personally found that a satisfying digression, and one understandable in terms of applying 'technology' by analogy - which is, after all, how both the 19th century and the 21st century interprets evolutionary features, even though neither would admit it. As I explored in The Mythology of Evolution, the remarkable thing about much discussion of evolved features is that the way they are 'explained' remained the same between those two centuries, and the sole change was that 'God' was replaced with 'evolution' as the force being invoked. This point is definitely not widely understood.

Many thanks for your challenge here! In some of these pieces I am intentionally blurring lines... but as usual, this also seems to have a greater chance of provoking comment. For taking the time to engage with me in this way, I thank you.

All the best,

Chris.

[Pat]

Hi Chris, have to say I am with Mordechai in wanting
to press you a bit on this one! However my issue is not with whether we can regard divorce as a technology (though I
think this is also something which merits further discussion!) but with whether technology and ‘cyber’ are synonymous, or whether any network/human interaction generates a cyborg. In your book you explicitly define cyber virtue as ‘the desirable qualities of a cyborg, both in terms of the robot’s relationship with its human.... or the human-robot cyborg’s relationship with other humans or cyborgs..’ But here you talk about the cybervirtue concept [as] a means of analysing networks for behavioural effects not reducible to ‘virtue’ which adheres solely in an individual’ In other words you seem to have suddenly expanded the definition of cyber/cyborg ...and I’m not sure that’s a legitimate move - at least not without a bit more in the way of explanation or reworking of your key definitions!

[Mordechai Buxner]

Pat: After your comment, I was curious about the word "cybernetics", so I quickly looked it up. The Oxford dictionary defines it as "The science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things.", which surprises me because I was only familiar with the computer/internet meaning, but definitely fits with how Chris is using it.

Chris: It's always a little hard to gauge tone in text, but my comment was coming from a place of confusion and curiosity rather than being offended. I appreciate that you're taking my question seriously, though. The chlorophyll post didn't confuse me because you said up front that you were stretching definitions, and explained why.

Your response here clears up a few things, but still leaves me a little confused as to the purpose of the exercise. I thought the idea of cybervirtue existed to make us think about the effects of technology in the same socially conscious way that we would already think of social constructs like divorce. The idea reminded me of what little I passingly know about the writing of Bruno Latour (I am not well-read - my wife had a course on him in university), in that it encourages critical analysis of these sorts of tools that we might take for granted. But, again, we already think this way when we're talking about cultural practices, especially invented ones that split the culture between the structures from before and the hopes and experiences from after.

And now that I'm think about that, I wonder whether "cybervirtue" is just "virtue" in general, and whether it's even meaningful or useful to make distinctions in the first place of what constitutes a "tool" or "technology", or to treat questions about technologies as different from some more general category of ethics or sociology. Anecdotally, I've heard the same or similar arguments about divorce that you're putting forward here, many times, in casual conversations. But equally, whenever a new technology is invented, there are endless conversations in the general culture and in the media about whether they are socially good or bad. And when you start moving beyond that... when a child is named something strange (whether or not what you consider strange includes "Minerva"), many people's immediate gut reaction is to ask questions about the social context that name is going to be placed in. When I go to see a play, I'm often thinking afterwards about what effect the play might have on people watching it. I'm not sure any of these social effects need to be talked about or considered differently than the others - everything has effects, and the effects of each "thing" of whatever sort are infinitely complex but an intellectually curious person will find some angle to examine some of them from.

Now, if you want to restrict your discussion of ethics here to things which are tools, that's as fair a line to draw as any other - you have to limit your area of discussion somehow, of course. But I guess I'm wondering if it matters at all that we're cyborgs, or if the observation that we are changes anything about the way we think about life and the things we encounter in it.

(None of this is intended as an attack, much less an emotionally motivated one. I'm just asking questions for the sake of asking questions.)

[Chris]

Hi Pat and Mordechai,
These clarifications of 'cybervirtue' are useful and I thank you both for giving me the opportunity to expand this point!

In the book, The Virtuous Cyborg, the cyborgs I am mostly looking at are human-robot cyborgs. But in this serial, I am looking at cyborg in the broadest possible terms. But I allow for this in the book, as you can see from this (long - sorry!) quote:

What I mean by ‘cybervirtue’ is nothing more than the desirable qualities that a cyborg might possess, and what I mean by ‘cyborg’ is a combination of living being and inanimate thing that acts with a greater range of possibilities than either being or thing can achieve alone. Of particular interest to me at this time is the cyborg each of us forms with a robot such as a laptop, a smartphone, or a desktop computer. If you are reading these words, you are a cyborg in the relevant sense, since you could not have encountered what I am writing here without participating (directly or indirectly) in a network of humans and robots. The qualities of these networks, whether with just a single human and a single robot or with a vast plurality of beings and things, is precisely what is at test when we think about cybervirtues.

Now some specifics...

Pat: I don't believe I have changed my terms. It's just that the book is looking at robot-human cyborgs and this serial is looking wider. I don't even think I'm misusing 'cyber' - for reasons Mordechai already hinted at. From the book:

The simple example of the moral dimension of smartphone games illustrates the complexity of human inter-relationships in the light of the cybernetic explosion of the last century. This is about more than just computers; cybernetics is a field concerned with communication and control systems, including such systems where they occur biologically – and radio is a clear example of a cybernetic system that did not require computers.

I know I'm pushing up against a couple of decades of narrow thinking here in rendering it this way... but I have precedent, and my position is coherent, so I'm running with it. :)

Mordechai: You are correct to bring in Latour here, and the book draws against Latour's work (among others, especially Isabelle Stengers - who was also an influence on Latour). Latour's Actor Network Theory, however, is a sociological research technique. Here I am extending it into a moral dimension. Latour and Stengers already paved the way for this - the book makes all this very clear.

An interesting challenge you raise is this one:

And now that I'm think about that, I wonder whether "cybervirtue" is just "virtue" in general, and whether it's even meaningful or useful to make distinctions in the first place of what constitutes a "tool" or "technology", or to treat questions about technologies as different from some more general category of ethics or sociology.

If there are designed objects entailed in the moral influence, it is a question of cybervirtue. If there are not, it is a question of virtue. If a woman beats her wife because of her temper issues, this is purely a matter of virtue and no question of cybervirtue arises. However, if she shoots her with a gun, this becomes a cybervirtue question in so much as the design of the gun has a role in that event. I hope that makes this clearer.

Your related challenge:

I guess I'm wondering if it matters at all that we're cyborgs, or if the observation that we are changes anything about the way we think about life and the things we encounter in it.

Aye, I don't think that the observation that we are cyborgs is the key point here. The key point is that as cyborgs our behaviour is affected by our tools/technology/methods... they interrelate. The 'cyborg' point is only a signpost pointing to the influence. This is very Latour, to be sure - I'm just more narrowly focussed on the ethical dimensions of these kinds of networks of influence.

But one of the things that this research project has impressed upon me, that I think was largely invisible (certainly to me) before I did so is that the extent to which our moral world is conditioned by cybervirtue rather than just virtue is astronomically larger than anyone has expressed previously, Stengers and Latour not withstanding. And so your challenge ("I wonder whether 'cybervirtue' is just 'virtue' in general") takes on an additional significance: if we want to understand virtue, we may be obligated to understand cybervirtue.

What I see as the value of the cybervirtue concept is it puts back onto the table the moral question of the design of objects and systems, which has for too long been dismissed as irrelevant because 'inanimate objects' have no moral dimension (a hangover from Descartes and Kant...). We discuss virtue because we want to understand what a good life might be like in terms of the qualities of agents. That discussion still has enormous value. Cybervirtue just expands that discussion by asking what the desirable qualities of inanimate objects and systems might be in virtue terms. This is certainly something foreshadowed by Latour - but I believe I have taken the discussion further. And I thank you for coming along for that ride, and for raising questions about it.
---
Thank you both for your discussions! It is greatly appreciated.

Chris.

[Mordechai Buxner]

As are your explanations! Fascinating stuff. :)