Colloqium #42
May 13, 2026 at 7:30 pm CEST
Description
Since the cognitive turn of the 1990s, we have been taught to see ourselves as cognitive machines. Inner selves, hosted by brains. Minds that decide for themselves and act upon a world from which they remain detached.
Cognitivism is the central self-image of late modernity. For three decades, psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence have been teaching us to understand ourselves by looking inside our own heads.
But cognition is a mirage. The concept is the wrong frame, and the wrong frame leads, predictably, to wrong conclusions — about the self, about life, about the human condition. It also leads, as we are now witnessing, to fascist ideology and AI-psychosis.
In this talk I outline an alternative. I call it the dividual perspective: a relational-materialist account of human reasoning that places thought not behind the eyes, but within the topology of relations a situated body navigates — paths it did not author in a landscape it cannot fully see and that itself is politically and historically produced.
The talk sketches the framework, names its key concepts, and traces the political stakes of describing ourselves from there instead of from inside our own heads.
I want to propose an outline of a post-cognitive model of human reasoning. I call it the “dividual Perspective” and it leverages an relational materialistic approach, by situating it within a network model of the world.
Speakers
Michael Seemann: Michael Seemann studied Applied Cultural Studies and holds a PhD in Media Studies. He is the author of Das neue Spiel and Die Macht der Plattformen, and publishes a newsletter, podcast, and blog at mspr0.de.