“Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek

“Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking the Phenomenology of Human–Technology Relations” by Peter-Paul Verbeek first appeared in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences in 2008, published by Springer Science + Business Media. The article extends Don Ihde’s phenomenology of technology by exploring the concept of “cyborg intentionality,” distinguishing three main forms: mediated, hybrid, and composite intentionality (Verbeek, 2008). Mediated intentionality refers to the ways technologies shape and channel human perception, such as eyeglasses or thermometers; hybrid intentionality describes situations where humans and technologies merge into a new experiential entity, as with implants or pacemakers; and composite intentionality highlights the interplay between human intentionality and the directedness of technological artifacts themselves. This work is significant in literature and literary theory because it reframes the cyborg not merely as a metaphor but as a phenomenological reality, challenging humanist boundaries between subject and object and expanding the scope of posthumanist and technocultural studies (Haraway, 1991; Stiegler, 1998). By reconceptualizing intentionality as co-constituted by human and nonhuman agents, Verbeek advances debates central to critical theory, posthumanism, and cultural studies, underscoring how technology is not external to human existence but intrinsic to its very constitution.

Summary of “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek

🌐 Overview & Aim

Verbeek expands Don Ihde’s phenomenology to analyze how intentionality operates in human–technology relations, coining “cyborg intentionality.” He aims “to augment Don Ihde’s analysis” and examine cases “at the limits of Ihde’s analysis.” (Verbeek, 2008)
Core claim: intentionality—long treated as exclusively human—must be reconceptualized to include mediated, hybrid, and composite forms that blend human and technological agency. (Verbeek, 2008)

🧭 Intentionality in Phenomenology

In the phenomenological tradition, intentionality reveals our inextricable directedness toward the world: we never simply think or see, but always think/see something. (Verbeek, 2008)
Verbeek emphasizes that “the ‘world in itself’ is inaccessible,” becoming a “world for us” through our modes of encounter—now deeply technological. (Verbeek, 2008)

🔧 Mediated Intentionality (Ihde’s Four Relations)

Technologies shape and channel experience: glasses (embodiment), ATMs (alterity), thermometers (hermeneutic), air conditioners (background). (Verbeek, 2008)

Key insight: in all but alterity, “human intentionality is mediated by a technological device,” so experiences like “reading off a thermometer” involve “cyborg intentionality.” (Verbeek, 2008)
Quote: technologies “help to shape a specific relation between humans and world.” (Verbeek, 2008)

🧬 Hybrid Intentionality (Beyond Embodiment)

Adds a fifth relation: cyborg relation — (human/technology) → world, where human and artifact merge (e.g., implants, pacemakers, psychoactive drugs) to form a new experiencing entity. (Verbeek, 2008)

Distinction: unlike embodiment (where shares can be teased apart), in hybrids “there actually is no association…anymore. Rather, a new entity comes about.” (Verbeek, 2008)
Theoretical stakes: clarifies posthumanist (co-constitution) vs transhumanist (physical fusion) trajectories and their ethical implications (e.g., Sloterdijk’s “anthropotechnologies”). (Verbeek, 2008)

🧩 Composite Intentionality (Double Directedness)

Technologies possess specific directedness (their own “intentionality”), which, added to human intentionality, yields a composite form: human → (technology → world). (Verbeek, 2008)

Example (via Ihde): a recorder “has a different intentionality for sound,” amplifying background noise that humans ignore—showing nonhuman selectivity. (Verbeek, 2008)
Quote: composite intentionality “results from adding technological intentionality and human intentionality.” (Verbeek, 2008)

🧱 Augmenting Ihde: Opening the “Dashes” into Arrows

Verbeek argues Ihde’s diagrams black-box two links:
- the human–technology bond in embodiment, and
- the technology–world bond in hermeneutics.

By replacing the dash with an arrow (technology → world), Verbeek reveals nonhuman intentionality and the double intentionality of hermeneutic relations. (Verbeek, 2008)
Quote: “Drawing attention to these intentionalities makes it possible to substantially augment his analysis.” (Verbeek, 2008)

🎨 Artistic Probes of Composite Intentionality

Augmented intentionality: Wouter Hooijmans’s long-exposure night photography uses starlight and “sustained exposures” to render what “only things that last” reveal—an artificially expanded human vision. (Verbeek, 2008)

Constructive intentionality: De Realisten’s stereophotography constructs three-dimensional amalgams with no everyday counterpart; technological vision here generates reality rather than representing it. (Verbeek, 2008)
Quote: these works “aim to reveal a reality that can only be experienced by technologies.” (Verbeek, 2008)

🧠 Posthuman Condition & Stakes

Verbeek aligns with thinkers (Haraway, Stiegler, Latour) in claiming we have “become such entities” where technology is constitutive of humanity (e.g., writing transforming cultural interpretation). (Verbeek, 2008)

Ethical and metaphysical implication: re-articulating intentionality helps us understand “the ‘posthuman’ or perhaps even ‘transhuman’ beings we are becoming”—and the limits of humanity. (Verbeek, 2008)
Quote: “Intentionality… needs to be extended to the realm of technology – and to the realm of human–technology amalgams.” (Verbeek, 2008)

📚 Significance for Literary/Critical Theory

For literary/posthumanist theory, Verbeek reframes the cyborg not merely as metaphor but as phenomenological structure that co-constitutes perception, agency, and meaning-making—opening new readings of mediation, embodiment, and authorship. (Verbeek, 2008)

Bridges Haraway’s cyborg politics and Hayles’s posthuman embodiment by specifying how technologies mediate, merge, and co-direct intentionality—grounding cultural analysis in phenomenological micro-structures of technicity. (Verbeek, 2008)

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek

Term/Concept	Reference (Verbeek, 2008)	Explanation
🌐 Cyborg Intentionality	“The article distinguishes and analyzes three types of ‘cyborg intentionality’…” (p. 387)	Umbrella concept describing how human intentionality is blended with technological agency in mediated, hybrid, and composite forms.
🔧 Mediated Intentionality	“Human intentionality is mediated by a technological device.” (p. 389)	Technologies (e.g., glasses, thermometer, ATM) shape and channel perception, meaning intentionality occurs through them.
🧬 Hybrid Intentionality	“Rather, a new entity comes about… this fifth human–technology relation is the basis for what can be called hybrid intentionality.” (p. 390)	Human and technology merge into a single experiencing entity (e.g., implants, pacemakers, drugs). Goes “beyond the human.”
🧩 Composite Intentionality	“Composite intentionality comes about: a form of intentionality which results from adding technological intentionality and human intentionality.” (p. 392)	The double directedness of humans and technologies together; humans are directed at the way technology is directed at the world.
🎯 Technological Intentionality	“The specific ways in which specific technologies can be directed at specific aspects of reality.” (p. 392)	Devices have their own directedness (e.g., recorders capture background noise differently than human hearing).
🧭 Originary Technicity (Stiegler)	“Humanity is an invention of technology, rather than the other way round.” (p. 388)	Claim that technology is constitutive of humanity; humans realize themselves technologically.
📡 Hermeneutic Relation	“Technologies provide representations of reality, which need interpretation…” (p. 389)	Technologies mediate by representing reality (e.g., thermometer values), requiring interpretation to make sense.
👓 Embodiment Relation	“When looking through a pair of glasses, the glasses are not noticed explicitly but are ‘incorporated’.” (p. 389)	A technology becomes an extension of the body, shaping perception without being explicitly noticed.
🔊 Alterity Relation	“In this ‘alterity relation,’ human beings interact with a device, as is the case when taking money from an ATM.” (p. 389)	Technology is encountered as a quasi-other to interact with.
🌬️ Background Relation	“Where technologies are not experienced directly, but rather create a context for our perceptions, like the humming of the air conditioning.” (p. 389)	Technology frames experience passively in the background.
🖼️ Augmented Intentionality	“Hooijmans’s photographs embody… an artificially expanded form of human intentionality.” (p. 393)	Art (long-exposure photos) shows how tech expands human perception beyond natural limits.
🏗️ Constructive Intentionality	“The intentionality involved here can be called constructive intentionality.” (p. 394)	Technologies don’t just represent but construct new realities (e.g., stereophotography creating non-existent objects).
📐 From Dashes to Arrows	“The dash… should be replaced with an arrow.” (p. 392)	Verbeek’s methodological move: making technology’s own intentionality explicit in diagrams of relations.
📚 Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism	“A ‘posthumanist’ approach… a ‘transhumanist’ approach…” (pp. 390–391)	Posthumanism: humans/tech co-constitute each other. Transhumanism: physical fusion creates new beings beyond Homo sapiens.
🧵 Co-constitution	“Technologies used… help to constitute us as different human beings.” (p. 391)	Humans and technologies are mutually shaping, altering what counts as human experience.

Contribution of “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek to Literary Theory/Theories

🌐 Posthumanism & Cyborg Theory

Verbeek builds on Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto, extending it phenomenologically by showing that the cyborg is not only a cultural metaphor but a lived ontological condition of human–technology relations (Haraway, 1991; Verbeek, 2008, p. 388).
Contribution to literary theory: Offers a phenomenological grounding for posthumanist literary readings where subjectivity is hybrid, distributed, and co-constituted with technologies.

Example: In literary criticism, this allows for reading narratives of embodiment, prosthesis, and digital culture as reflecting cyborg intentionality rather than merely symbolic cyborg identity.

🧭 Phenomenology & Postphenomenology

Verbeek reworks phenomenology of intentionality (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) by arguing that intentionality is always mediated, hybridized, or composite in technological cultures (Verbeek, 2008, pp. 389–392).
Contribution to literary theory: Expands phenomenological approaches to literature (reader-response, phenomenology of perception in narrative) by showing that reading itself can be seen as technologically mediated intentionality (e.g., through writing systems, digital texts).

Theorists like Don Ihde are repositioned in literary studies as tools for analyzing media and textuality beyond humanist subjectivity.

📚 Posthumanist Literary Theory (Hayles)

Verbeek echoes N. Katherine Hayles’s thesis in How We Became Posthuman that human subjectivity is inseparable from informational and technological frameworks (Hayles, 1999; Verbeek, 2008, p. 388).
Contribution: Strengthens media theory and literary posthumanism by giving a phenomenological account of how technologies co-constitute human perception and meaning-making.

In literary analysis, this can enrich readings of science fiction, digital literature, and techno-cultural texts by grounding them in embodied technological phenomenology rather than abstraction.

🧩 Actor–Network Theory & Material Agency

Verbeek aligns with Latour’s claim that nonhumans have agency by articulating technological intentionality (Latour, 1993; Verbeek, 2008, p. 392).
Contribution: Bridges ANT with literary theory by enabling readings where objects and technologies in texts are not passive symbols but active mediators of meaning.

This shift supports materialist literary criticism: novels, poems, and plays can be read as networks of human and nonhuman actants, redistributing agency in narrative analysis.

🧬 Transhumanism & Speculative Literature

Verbeek distinguishes between posthumanist co-constitution and transhumanist physical fusion (Bostrom, 2004; Verbeek, 2008, pp. 390–391).
Contribution: Gives literary theory a nuanced vocabulary to analyze speculative fiction and utopian/dystopian narratives about human enhancement, AI, and bionics.

For transhumanist literature, hybrid intentionality provides a way to see fictional cyborgs not only as symbols but as experiencing entities with distinct intentionalities.

🎨 Aesthetics, Representation, and Mediation

Verbeek’s examples of augmented and constructive intentionality in art (Hooijmans’s photography, De Realisten’s stereography) show that technologies construct realities and expand perception (Verbeek, 2008, pp. 393–394).
Contribution: Extends aesthetic theory in literature by providing a framework for analyzing representation and mediation not as transparent but as technologically co-produced.

In literary studies, this helps analyze how texts mediate alternative realities, much like technologies mediate perception.

🧵 Co-Constitution & Literary Subjectivity

Verbeek emphasizes that “technologies used… help to constitute us as different human beings” (Verbeek, 2008, p. 391).
Contribution: Influences literary subjectivity theory by showing how characters, narrators, and readers can be analyzed as co-constituted with technologies, shifting away from humanist autonomy.

Example: In narrative theory, characters who use prosthetics, digital devices, or writing systems can be seen as cyborg subjects whose intentionality is distributed.

Examples of Critiques Through “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek

Work	Critique through Cyborg Intentionality	Link to Verbeek’s Framework
🤖 *Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein* (1818)**	Victor’s creation is a hybrid intentionality: the monster is not merely a human or a machine but a new experiential entity (like Verbeek’s implanted chip or pacemaker). The novel illustrates the anxiety of a “new entity” whose intentionality cannot be divided between creator and creation.	Verbeek: “Rather, a new entity comes about… this fifth human–technology relation is the basis for what can be called hybrid intentionality.” (p. 390)
🛰️ *Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?* (1968)**	The androids embody composite intentionality: their perception blends human intentionality with technological intentionality (artificial beings experiencing the world). Readers must confront the double intentionality where machines appear to “see” reality differently.	Verbeek: “Composite intentionality… results from adding technological intentionality and human intentionality.” (p. 392)
📱 *Dave Eggers’s The Circle* (2013)**	Technologies like SeeChange cameras and social media platforms enact mediated intentionality, altering how characters perceive and interact with the world. The novel critiques how mediated intentionality collapses privacy, shaping human–world relations through surveillance devices.	Verbeek: “Humans do not experience the world directly here, but always via a mediating artifact which helps to shape a specific relation between humans and world.” (p. 389)
🧬 *Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake* (2003)**	Genetic engineering and biotech humans (the “Crakers”) illustrate transhumanist hybrid intentionality: beings that are not simply humans enhanced by technology but posthuman hybrids created as “successors” to Homo sapiens. The novel probes ethical issues similar to Verbeek’s reference to Sloterdijk’s “anthropotechnologies.”	Verbeek: “Humans and technologies merge into a new entity, which is sometimes even considered to be the successor of Homo sapiens.” (pp. 390–391)

Criticism Against “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek

⚖️ Overextension of Intentionality

Critics may argue Verbeek stretches the concept of intentionality too far by attributing it to technologies. Traditional phenomenology sees intentionality as exclusively human consciousness, and extending it to artifacts risks conceptual dilution (Verbeek, 2008, p. 392).

🔧 Technology as Neutral Tool vs. Agent

Some would contend that Verbeek overstates technological agency. While he emphasizes technological intentionality, critics may argue that technologies only reflect human design choices, not autonomous intentionality.

🌀 Blurring Posthumanism and Transhumanism

By integrating both posthumanist co-constitution and transhumanist fusion, Verbeek risks conceptual ambiguity. His dual framing may be seen as collapsing critical distinctions that literary/cultural theorists like Haraway or Bostrom keep separate (Verbeek, 2008, pp. 390–391).

📚 Limited Engagement with Literary/Cultural Discourse

Although Verbeek references Haraway, Hayles, Latour, Stiegler, his article is largely philosophical-phenomenological, not literary or cultural. Critics might see this as a missed opportunity to more deeply engage with cyborg narratives and cultural texts.

🔍 Reduction of Power and Politics

Verbeek’s focus is phenomenological rather than political. Critics may argue his framework underplays issues of power, ideology, and inequality embedded in technological systems—central concerns for posthumanist and critical theory (e.g., feminist, postcolonial critiques).

🧩 Ambiguity in “Composite Intentionality”

The idea of composite intentionality (human → [technology → world]) could be criticized as philosophically vague. Is it metaphorical, or does it imply literal technological “experience”? Skeptics may argue that Verbeek conflates functional directedness with genuine intentionality (Verbeek, 2008, p. 392).

🧭 Dependence on Ihde’s Framework

Verbeek’s contribution builds on Don Ihde’s four human–technology relations, but some may argue his work is too dependent on Ihde, offering refinements rather than a truly radical rethinking.

🧬 Ethical Blind Spots

While Verbeek references Sloterdijk’s “anthropotechnologies,” critics could argue his approach does not fully address ethical risks of hybrid/transhuman intentionalities, leaving unanswered questions about responsibility, governance, and moral limits.

Representative Quotations from “Cyborg Intentionality: Rethinking The Phenomenology Of Human–Technology Relations” By Peter-Paul Verbeek with Explanation

Quotation	Explanation
🌐 “A cyborg is a border-blurring entity, uniting both human and nonhuman elements.” (p. 388)	Verbeek draws on Haraway and Latour to show that cyborgs collapse the traditional divide between humans (intentional agents) and objects (passive tools).
🔧 “Human intentionality is mediated by a technological device.” (p. 389)	Technologies are not neutral—they actively shape how humans perceive and engage with the world, exemplifying mediated intentionality.
👓 “When looking through a pair of glasses, the glasses are not noticed explicitly but are ‘incorporated.’” (p. 389)	Technologies can become extensions of the body, showing how embodiment relations produce new forms of perception.
🧬 “Rather, a new entity comes about… this fifth human–technology relation is the basis for what can be called hybrid intentionality.” (p. 390)	Hybrid intentionality arises when human and technology merge (e.g., implants, pacemakers), forming a new experiential being.
📚 “Humans and technologies merge into a new entity, which is sometimes even considered to be the successor of Homo sapiens.” (pp. 390–391)	Verbeek connects hybrid intentionality with transhumanist thought, raising questions about posthuman futures.
🧩 “Composite intentionality comes about: a form of intentionality which results from adding technological intentionality and human intentionality.” (p. 392)	Composite intentionality emphasizes the double directedness of humans and technologies interacting together.
🎯 “Technological intentionality… needs to be understood as the specific ways in which specific technologies can be directed at specific aspects of reality.” (p. 392)	Verbeek argues that technologies themselves have directedness, shaping perception independently of humans.
🖼️ “Hooijmans’s photographs embody… an artificially expanded form of human intentionality.” (p. 393)	Art demonstrates augmented intentionality, where technology expands human perceptual capacity beyond natural limits.
🏗️ “The intentionality involved here can be called constructive intentionality.” (p. 394)	Technologies don’t just represent reality—they construct new realities that humans can only access through machines.
🧭 “Intentionality used to be one of these concepts which belonged to the realm of the exclusively human, but by now it has become clear that it needs to be extended to the realm of technology.” (p. 394)	Verbeek’s central claim: intentionality must be rethought as co-constituted by humans and technologies, reshaping phenomenology itself.

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