THE DIGITALIZATION OF EMOTIONAL BONDS: GHOSTING, A MODEL FOR NEW WAYS OF RELATING, AND PHILOSOPHY AS A TOOL FOR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze “ghosting” as a phenomenon that delves into the collapse of reason and human emotions. Through a transdisciplinary review integrating neuroscience and philosophy, it is argued that the digitization of emotional bonds has given reality a new meaning and existence by transforming our understanding of otherness, reducing it to a disposable commodity known as “infomercommodity.” Research on the brain has revealed that, in its role as an interpreter, it has the capacity to construct fictions in response to the information vacuum created by the silence of the digital world, thereby establishing forms of understanding that generate experiences in human subjects within the context of emotional relationships formed in the digital realm. Ghosting represents the end of the communication model established in Shannon-Weaver theory. It also signifies a decisive break with communicative ethics and the responsibilities they entail—namely, the recognition of the other as an autonomous, existing, and conscious subject who possesses a face. Philosophy is proposed as a tool for emotional literacy, through which the human subject can be reclaimed, in the terms of Cortina (2007), who refers to “cordial reason”—a concept that offers perspectives on caring for oneself and others and establishes ways to restore dialogue and moral autonomy, thereby serving as checks and barriers against algorithmic designs and their loss of meaning and sensitivity, in this postmodern world.