Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Digital Humanities

Advisor

Matthew K. Gold

Subject Categories

Digital Humanities | Ethics and Political Philosophy | Other Philosophy | Philosophy

Keywords

Automated anxiety, Code’s-eye view, Datafication, Digital agency, Interpretant-driven epistemology, Representationalism

Abstract

This thesis examines the epistemological and ethical foundations of digital technologies, particularly code and algorithmic systems, by considering their entanglement with representationalism. Arguing that code now functions as a dominant social agent and epistemic subject, through the concept of the Code’s-eye view, I explore how automated datafication reduces human experience to quantifiable inputs, reinforcing epistemic closure and social fragmentation. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy, including Peirce’s semiotics, Dewey’s democratic ethics, and Rorty’s conversational inquiry, I propose an interpretant-driven epistemology grounded in communal inquiry and interpretive openness. This alternative framework resists the binary logic of algorithmic rationality by emphasizing conflict and the shared process of meaning-making. By comparing two digital mapping projects, I aim to illustrate how code can either intensify or resist these epistemic tendencies, and to demonstrate the possibility of communal agency as a comprehensive process. In this respect, I argue for reclaiming digital agency as a participatory, ethical, and socio-political process – one that reopens the public/political spheres and recovers the communal ‘We’ in an age of automated anxiety.

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