How uncanny is the «Uncanny valley»? Experience of deconstructing a discourse

Abstract

After the Japanese scientist Masahiro Mori first described the phenomenon that he called the «Uncanny Valley», numerous attempts were made to explain it. However, the uncanny valley still remains a problem not only for people who encounter it in technical production (robotics engineers, programmers, and designers of anthropomorphic robots) but also for philosophy, in particular, for philosophical anthropology and ontology. This article attempts not so much to explain this phenomenon — this work primarily remains with psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers who study the human mentality — but demonstrate a program to increase this problem into the schemas of some contemporary ontologies. We will follow Timothy Morton who explores the uncanny valley in his books Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Being Ecological, and in a number of articles. We will attempt to demonstrate the insufficiency of both the «classical» (Modern) approaches to the analysis of the technical and the tool analysis proposed by M. Heidegger in Being and Time. Then we will try to show that the problem of the uncanny valley is only an example of the ontological gap the foundation for which was laid by the Modern, and, therefore, its solution is only possible by diffusion it in broader problems of the philosophy of technology. The implementation of such «diffusion» both in the theoretical aspect of ontology and in the aspect of transformation of our practices — everyday, mental, and industrial — can become one of the cornerstones in the foundation of the future ecological coexistence of the human and non-human entities.