A deep structure

The question of ethical depth arises out of the deep structure that’s distributed, embodied and temporal, and is rooted in the typicality of situations. We speak face to face, in general. The manner in which our memories work is part of what embodiment accomplishes. One can see how this typicality of situations makes the deep context essentially metaphoric. That is to say, it is not objects to which meanings are attached – they are there already, sometimes taken advantage of, sometimes not. Take, for example, an extended idea of a bedroom. It would have a bed, a side table, a window, a cupboard and possibly a way of getting to the toilet. Whereas, if one steps back, one realises, as novelists, poets, artists do, that it involves sleeping, dreaming, motifs of death, illness, sexuality or rebirth, and that one is automatically implicated in a deep thematic context

How does a city hold memories?

Agora in Athens. Photo by Foto-Migawki MD.

The manner in which a city holds memories is interesting. There’s been a lot of discussion about monuments recently and whether or not they commemorate oppression. Does Trafalgar Square celebrate Empire at the expense of the people it suppressed in order to be an Empire? What is the difference between something like Trafalgar Square and, say, the Greek Agora, which recognises that the debate, the agon, is where the truth lies, not in one person’s argument? The way in which a stage remembers place in general, allowing itself to be occupied by particular places as the drama requires, is very different from the monument.

We have ways of inhabiting that are both personal and general. We have ways in which we can welcome others into our houses, ways in which we meet on streets. This is a kind of memory that is waiting for these typical situations to happen.

Joyce’s Dublin

One of the things that Joyce captures so well is the degree to which people are both saints and sinners, the way they are both helpful and unhelpful, the way they take one’s deepest beliefs and use them in humour, the way one uses humour to understand one’s own deepest beliefs. The capacity for deceit, for violence was always operating in that kind of broader social spectrum. And similarly, there is a spectrum of conflict that goes from conflict through negotiation to accommodation to collaboration. That is to say, it’s within those kinds of spectra that something like memory percolates as a set of possibilities, as a set of likelihoods.

A culture's more deeply held beliefs can be commemorated in what archeolologists and art historians regularly call monument, even if that term doesn’t arise until what many people see as the anxiety of history of the 18th century Enlightenment; namely, the idea that we don’t have a deep temporality to which we can refer, that all we have is constant change. Joyce has many little 'monuments' - such as a knife which reminds Dedalus of the Roman Empire - and Dublin's major monuments are demoted in importance. In any event, a monument's capacity to signify anything depends much less upon the object than upon the existing topography and praxis of memory.

We are immigrants in our cities

Young urban girl standing in a crowd on a city street. Photo by creativemarc.

The question of how immigrants contribute to an urban context is an important one, because almost every significant city is now, in some sense, global. And I think the term global tends to overgeneralise what takes place much more concretely, ranging from the level of aggression for people who dislike Irish Catholics or Jews or Blacks to the kind of situation that you see in Joyce, where people’s cultures resonate with one another. The differences are creative. My view is that we are all immigrants in our cities. The cities will well outlast us. Notions of ownership are always provisional.

Sustainability

What is currently called sustainability has a long background. If one looks at most ancient cosmologies, for example, one sees that the fundamental order is natural and human history is secondary to that. We’re rediscovering our obligations to nature, and I would distinguish between morals and ethics. To me, ethics pertains to understanding the larger whole of which we’re part, to the deepest obligation to the fundamental natural conditions. Morals pertain to our practical life. They’re made up of particular judgements by particular people, in particular circumstances in history. There will never be a match between morals and ethics: morals is always an interpretive phenomenon.

Smart cities

Machine learning analysis helps identify individual technology in a smart city. Photo by Zapp2Photo.

The term “smart city” has generally meant wired. I’ve been arguing that this is simply another layer of a context that’s always already intelligent, because of the deep matrix of claims and affordances with which we’re involved. The degree to which the city is wired is an opportunity, if anybody figures out how to make big data fruitful. At the moment, cities are reluctant to measure their waste production with respect to their energy purchases, let alone figure out how to measure quality of life with respect to energy expenditure and waste production.

The kinds of intelligence that AI is currently working with are wholly unmetaphoric. It’s mostly logical constructs qualified by probabilistic functions, and it’s mostly pattern matching, which is very useful in certain contexts. People are dazzled by being able to win at go, but that doesn’t get you dinner, as Demis Hassabis recognised long ago. Being able to register the equipment of our freedom with respect to the fundamental natural conditions is only just beginning. And I think that is going to be what constitutes intelligence more than what is currently meant by smart cities.

The city as a matrix

We find ourselves implicated in a matrix of affordances and claims, whose metaphoric involvements mean that our moral judgements are always interpretations of our ethical understanding. Understanding a city as a matrix for practical judgements is recognising that our practical judgements are always an indirect and partial interpretation of our ethical understanding.

Discover more about

city memory and its ethical depth

Carl, P. (2015). Convivimus Ergo Sumus. In H. Steiner & M. Sternberg (Eds.), Phenomenologies of the City: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Architecture. Routledge.

Carl, P. (2001). The Grid and the Block. Architectural Research Quarterly, 5(2), 101–103.

Carl, P. (2000). Urban Density and Block Metabolism. In K. Steemers & S. Yannas (Eds.), Architecture, City, Environment: Proceedings of Plea 2000 (pp. 343–347). James & James Ltd.

How a city holds memory and ethical depth