Guest author: Donovan van der Haak (PhD candidate at TILT, Tilburg University & Young Scholar of AlgoSoc)
Reimagining Technology in Technomoral Change
What if we reimagine technology, not just as technological artifacts, but in a way the classical philosophers of technology did? This was the central idea I explored at the 4TU.Ethics / ESDiT conference: Rethinking Ethics â Reimagining Technology. Drawing on the works of classical philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, and Jacques Ellul, I argue that embracing their transcendental perspectives could offer new insights to technology ethics, particularly when studying how technology drives moral change.
Transcendentalism: From Plato to Kant
Today, the philosophy and ethics of technology have much attention for particular technological artifacts: a philosophy of the smart doll, contraceptives, bicycles or AI (Keymolen, 2019; Nickel, Kudina & van de Poel, 2022; Bijker, 1995). Between the 1920s and 1970s, classical philosophers of technology approached technology much differently than we do nowadays, namely, from a transcendental perspective. But what does that mean? Going back to ancient Greek philosophy, thinkers like Plato considered transcendentals to be the qualities that are true, beautiful or good, of all that exists.
Transcendentalism, however, became mostly popularized under Immanuel Kant (1781), who describes it himself as follows in Critique of Pure Reason:
âI understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not as things in themselvesâ.
Kant argues that humans do not have access to things in themselves (the noumenal world), but only to how they appear to us (the phenomenal world) after our mind has actively shaped and structured our experience.
Post-Kantian Transcendentalism
In the following centuries, post-Kantian transcendental thought developed in different directions, inspiring (amongst others) German idealists such as Hegel, Husserlâs phenomenology and classical philosophers of technology.
Heideggerâs provides a transcendental vision of the essence of Technology (with a capital âTâ) as conditioning our understanding of the world. Marcuse took inspiration from Heideggerâs transcendental thought, and moves concretely to exploring socio-political conditions such as capitalism and the dominance of technological rationality that limit human emancipation and critical thought. And Ellul discusses, in his own way, a variety of conditions of possibility such as the self-reinforcing mechanisms of technique that shape all aspects of human life.
The Empirical and Ethical Turn
In the 1970s, scholars began to criticize classical philosophers for overlooking the (morally) relevant differences between technological artifacts, and argued against their ostensible pessimism and determinism. The subsequent empirical turn, in contrast, expanded the philosophy of technological artifacts and its relation to society, the first-person perspective and related engineering practices.
According to Peter-Paul Verbeek (2010), the empirical turn was followed by a much-needed ethical turn. Technology ethics developed, exploring from a descriptive point of view how technological artifacts co-shape our moral judgments, values and actions. Technology ethics also provides normative guidance for the ethical design and use of technology, as seen in applied technology ethics, subfields of ethics dedicated to specific technologies, value-by-design and other approaches.
Rethinking Ethics: Transcendental Technology Ethics
Reimagining technology as Technology with a capital T would be of great value to technology ethics and helps technology ethics develop beyond the empirical turn (Brey, 2010). Take the transcendental forms of technomoral change already described by classical philosophers of technology:
For Heidegger, it are not technological things, but it is the transcendental essence of Technology, a distinct approach to reality that reduces the world to a collection of resources to be exploited and controlled, that fundamentally changes our (moral) perspectives, actions and judgments. Marcuse describes how technological rationalities could frame our values by manipulating human needs through techniques such as advertising, marketing, and mass media, and demonstrates how values become increasingly defined in materialized and quantified ways. And Ellul argues that, in The Technological Society, ethics becomes all too easily discarded when it overly encumbers technical progress.
So far, the transcendental perspective has received only little attention in technology ethics. By introducing the transcendental perspective to technology ethics, we gain new insights into fundamental concepts such as technomoral change. In future work, I will explore what the transcendental perspective can do for a normative, transcendental technology ethics.
I would like to thank the conference organizers, and the participants for their insightful and stimulating comments.
References
Bijker, W. E. (1995). Of bicycles, bakelites, and bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnical change.
Brey, P. (2010). Beyond the empirical turn. In H. Achterhuis (Ed.), American philosophy of technology: The empirical turn (pp. 229â260).
Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society.
Heidegger, M. (1954). The question concerning Technology.
Kant, I. (1781). Critique of pure reason.
Keymolen, E. (2019). Can I still trust you, my dear doll? A philosophical and legal exploration of trust between people and technology.
Marcuse, M. (1964). One-dimensional man
Nickel, P. J., & Kudina, O. van der Poel, I. (2022). Moral uncertainty in technomoral change: Bridging the deliberation divide. Perspectives on Science, 30(2), 260â280.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2021). The empirical turn: From technology assessment to new materialism. In J. van den Hoven & I. van de Poel (Eds.), Handbook of ethics, values, and technological design: Sources, theory, values and application domains (pp. 333â348).