Are you interested in exploring systemic solutions to the challenges posed by the attention economy? Do you have a scholarly interest in Buddhist ethics? Are you enthusiastic about engaging in collaborative research within a large network of philosophers of technology as part of the ESDiT project?
In this postdoctoral position:
- You will apply Buddhist ethics to critically examine and reinterpret the concept of attention, viewing it as a systemic, embedded, and political phenomenon.
- You will actively participate in ongoing societal and political debates surrounding the attention economy, both to contribute meaningfully to these discussions and potentially to gather empirical insights for your research.
- You will leverage your reconceptualization of attention to generate broader insights into how concepts related to disruptive technologies can be reimagined more generally.
InformationThere is an exponential growth of critiques to the attention economy (
the socio-technical system - combining users, organisations such as tech-companies and governments, devices and AI-systems, laws, regulations and business models, and more - that uses attention of individuals and groups to produce outputs - such as interactive software, profit, and influence).
This project starts from the hypothesis that many current critiques of the attention economy are insightful, but lack transformative strength because they frame attention as an individual, neutral and a-political technical concept with an isolated cognitive function, detached from ethics and neutral to political structures.
This project will reinterpret attention as a systemic concept in relation to socially disruptive technologies. It will develop a more ecology-focussed approach by developing an “ecology of attending” as a moral, political and social orientation leading towards action committed to the alleviation of avoidable suffering rather than to personal gratification.
It will use Buddhist philosophy and ethics to do so. Attention in Buddhism is a practice that cannot be considered as neutral or in isolation, but needs to be seen as embedded. It is part of an 'ecology', a system of moral and epistemic meaning that emerges from its natural objects, individual beings, and collective constituents. To this end, Buddhist philosophies offer numerous valuable insights to grasp the ethical implications of attention economy. For example, the core teachings of the four noble truths and the eightfold path outline a practical path towards ending suffering. Several Sutta’s present attention and mindfulness (
manasikārā and
sati) to describe that it is impossible to conceive of right attention, let alone practice it, without referring to ethical and wisdom cultivation.
Studying how one can re-conceptualise the notion of attention, may also allow to draw insights into the broader question, how ethical concepts can and should be re-evaluated from a non-Western perspective. The project will therefore extrapolate insights to other ethical theories and other socially disruptive technologies (SDT) in the ESDiT project.
This research position will focus on the following two research questions:
- How can insights from Buddhist philosophies help us to reconceptualize attention as a systemic, embedded, and political mechanism in SDTs that fosters an ecology of attending?
- What can this one particular study of attention add to the general insights of systemic-focused reconceptualizations?
As a postdoctoral researcher, you will
- develop an ethical theory on attention using Buddhist intellectual resources;
- engage actively in societal discussion and reaching out to policy makers and companies; and
- contribute to two ESDiT research lines (intercultural philosophy and conceptual disruption).
You will achieve this goal in a team, together with Gunter Bombaerts, Wijnand IJsselsteijn, Andreas Spahn (TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands) and Elena Ziliotti (TU Delft, the Netherlands).