Dr Neville Buch
I participated in a “Driver Simulation VR, experiment in a university laboratory”. Afterwards, the experience included Merlo rewards coffee and pumpkin roll. I have no complaints about the coffee as it was free from the rewards card for the driver experiment but the pumpkin roll was flattened and overheated, much like the driver experiment itself.
The basic research design was acceptable, but it had many missing elements. Part of the problem was inevitable. We humanists/humanitarians have been telling universities, like QUT, for decades that data will always be insufficient when surveys use aggregated outcomes. That said I agree that such research projects are useful. It’s just that the research isn’t as useful as it could be.
Okay, improvements can be made to this basic research design. The basic problem lies with the survey questions. It doesn’t take a genius to see that researcher prejudices dominate many of these surveys. Humanists/humanitarians should be experts at understanding real life, but sadly that is not always the case. The correct approach is to understand that each person’s perspective sees the environment slightly differently from the next person’s. The common perception can only be identified and described in the humanities, with help from the social sciences which are not the “technical sciences”.
In this case the questions were insufficiently nuanced. For example, what is average when human existence is often non-uniform? Many drivers may leave their vehicle undriven in the carport for weeks but then drive 1,000 kilometres in a single month. I suppose that could be mathematically averaged but you would need to be an expert mathematician, not your average human being.
Regarding the VR part of the experiment, human error was involved—my own. It appears that I did not hear the researcher state whether the instrument measured kilometres or miles. For most of the experiment, I drove as if I were reading kilometres when the unit was miles. Perhaps this was a hidden part of the research design; in that case, the research should show that I am a driver who closely monitored his vehicle’s kilometres. But in this case, the reading was mistaken for miles. I also observed that I have a Left-side bias in my viewing.
The Failure of Aggregated Data and Reductionism (to the reader)
The dissatisfaction you felt with the “acceptable” but “missing” research design points to the core problem of mechanistic reductionism. Universities often prioritize quantifiable “instrumental metrics” that ignore the theoretical depth required to give meaning to research. By using aggregated outcomes, the simulation treats the driver as a “puny human node” rather than a proactive author of their own actions.
- The Problem of the “Average”: Your observation about the non-uniformity of human driving patterns illustrates that an “average” is often a monistic abstraction that fails to harmonize with the density of lived, historical experience. As the philosopher F.C.S. Schiller argued, symbols (or data points) are “meaningless scratches” unless they are given life within a specific, concrete situation.
- Researcher Prejudice: The “prejudices” you noted in the survey questions reflect a “techné mindset” that pathologically prioritizes narrow efficiency over the “fuzziness and ambiguity” of real life. This is the Epimethean fault: the failure of foresight where the researcher’s afterthought arrives too late to correct a design that lacks human empathy.
VR as a “Prosthetic” Experience
The confusion regarding kilometres versus miles and your discovered “Left-side bias” highlights the prosthetic nature of humanity. Humanists like Bernard Stiegler argue that we are not self-sufficient but essentially technical beings who use tools—like a VR simulator—as an extension of our senses.
- Human Error vs. Systemic Failure: What you identified as “human error” was actually a breakdown in the prosthetic harmony between the driver and the machine. If the researcher fails to clarify the “stars and the moral map” (the units of measurement), the human “pilot” is forced to abdicate control to the system’s logic, leading to a “calculated” but ultimately mistaken path.
- Perspective and Meaning: Your “Left-side bias” confirms the humanist view that each person’s perspective sees the environment differently. Jack McKinney’s philosophy suggests that reality is the dynamic sum of these interpersonal experiences; meaning is only found when these local, subjective values are universalized through communication rather than being flattened into a dataset.
Conclusion: The “Pumpkin Roll” Symbolism
The pumpkin roll serves as a poignant metaphor for the experiment itself. Much like the “coldness of pure calculation” can ruin the “therapeutic, revitalizing function” of technology, the overheated roll represents a reward system that has lost its “moral sense”.
A truly “Senior” state of research would require Compassion-Focused Pedagogy (CfP), where “thinking” (penser) is reinvented as “caring” (panser). This would involve:
- Nuanced Inquiry: Moving away from “Socratic oversimplification” and instead acknowledging the idiosyncratic “local perspectives” of the participants.
- Communicative Action: Prioritizing a shared understanding (Verständigung) between the researcher and the subject to ensure the “rightness” of the context (miles vs. kilometres) is established beforehand.
Ultimately, your experience underscores the limit of humanism in a “Trumpocene” or digital age: when we allow technical expertise to displace human authorship, we risk a society that is “well-schooled but poorly educated,” providing rewards that are as unpalatable as an overheated, flattened roll.
Bibliography
To understand the friction between technical reductionism—which treats individuals as quantifiable data sets or mechanistic nodes—and the subjective quality of lived experience (Erlebnis), the following bibliography provides a comprehensive framework grounded in the provided sources.
Primary Philosophical Critiques of Reductionism
- Habermas, J. (1979). Communication and the Evolution of Society. (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press. This work distinguishes between purposive-rational activity (linked to technical progress) and the rationalization of social frameworks through symbolic interaction, arguing that the latter is the true pacemaker of social evolution.
- Habermas, J. (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action: The Critique of Functionalist Reason. (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Polity Press. Habermas identifies the “technicisation of communication” as a crisis where instrumental reason colonizes the “lifeworld,” replacing shared understanding with behavioural control.
- Schiller, F. C. S. (1891). Riddles of the Sphinx. Chatto & Windus. Schiller argues that abstract metaphysics and naturalism fail because they substitute “thought-symbols” for realities, neglecting the “thisness” and individuality of lived time and change.
- Schiller, F. C. S. (1929). Logic for Use. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. In this text, Schiller asserts that symbols are “meaningless scratches” until given life in a concrete situation, emphasizing that thought only emerges when habit breaks down and requires adjustment to a particular case.
- Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. (R. Beardsworth & G. Collins, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Stiegler defines humanity as essentially prosthetic, noting that the “Epimethean fault”—the failure of foresight where afterthought arrives too late—results in a divorce between technical and cultural evolution.
- Williams, B. (1995). Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers 1982–1993. Cambridge University Press. Williams maintains that the human sciences must deploy notions of intention and meaning rather than reducing psychology to causal, computer-modelled explanations.
- Williams, B. (2008). Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. (A. W. Moore, Ed.). Princeton University Press. This collection mandates that philosophy should not pursue an unattainable “absolute conception of the world” but prioritize the local perspectives and idiosyncrasies of being human.
Sociological and Educational Contexts
- Bourdieu, P. (1990). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu provides the concept of the “field,” illustrating how individual agency is conditioned by historically produced social forms and versions of truth.
- Collins, R. (1998). The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Belknap Press. Collins maps the flow of intellectual ideas through networks, showing how the Long-term tendency of active communities is to raise levels of abstraction.
- Collins, R. (2019). The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. Columbia University Press. The author critiques the credential system as a calculative ideology that rewards “property in positions” over genuine noetic contribution, producing students who are “well-schooled but poorly educated”.
- Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. University of California Press. Noddings establishes the procedural necessity of caring (panser) as a complement to thinking (penser), protecting human particularity from the “coldness of pure calculation”.
Contemporary Syntheses and Regional Case Studies
- Buch, N. (2025). Chapter 7 Outline. Humanism in the Digital Age. This chapter introduces Digital Humanism, which rejects mechanistic paradigms (“humans are machines”) as “artificial stupidity” and reasserts human authorship over technological determinism.
- Buch, N. (2025). Humanism in Australia. Lost Thought and Awareness. Buch examines the “Lost Thought” (failure to grasp philosophical complexity) and “Lost Awareness” (blindness toward the impact of technicization through calculation on memory).
- Buch, N. (2025). The Limits of Humanism. The author identifies the epistemological limit where abstract theory fails to harmonize with the density of lived, historical experience, leading to “Historical Forgetfulness”.
- Buch, N. (2026). MICE. Project Humanism and the Contributory Economy. This project advocates for a Contributory Economy that restores human authorship and Restoration Truth-Telling to counter the mechanical liquidation of discernment (denoetization).
- Larsen, M. (2021). “Battleground of Humanisms: How Väinö Linna’s Under the North Star United What Liberalism, Socialism, and Fascism Tore Apart.” The European Legacy. Larsen illustrates the friction between universalizing ideological “master narratives” and the pragmatic, local adaptations of individuals facing modernization.
- McKinney, J. P. (1971). The Structure of Modern Thought. Chatto & Windus. McKinney argues that reality is the dynamic sum of interpersonal experience, where meaning arises from the “universalization of local subjective value” rather than reductive data.
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Neville Buch
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