Praxis and Contemporary Philosophy of Technology
In order to develop a hermeneutic technology ethics, we need a narrative theory of technology and a normative theory, an ethics. This chapter does groundwork for both parts. Firstly, it identifies central gaps in contemporary philosophy of technology (in
- PDF / 278,412 Bytes
- 24 Pages / 419.528 x 595.276 pts Page_size
- 24 Downloads / 191 Views
Today, philosophy and ethics of technologies is a burgeoning field of study. It has emerged from the far away, dark corners of dusty philosophy departments into the light of interdisciplinary research groups, “philosophy labs” and even commercial “ethics officers” for big Tech firms. This of course reflects the current of our time, especially in the wake of Covid19, in which each global problem at least in part seems attributable to technological innovation and its impacts. It has become more relevant than ever, and partly in response to this relevance, the field—at least in the English-speaking world—has largely made an “empirical turn”; turning away from heavy-duty theorising towards pragmatic analysis of the actual technological “things” that arise all over the place. This turn has been highly effective and produces a lot of valuable research. It has made us attentive to the manifold of technologies, their multistability, the many ways in which they are understood and used. As such, it has helped to build bridges between philosophy departments and science, technology, and society studies (STS), as well as media studies. Yet, the empirical turn has also, we believe, concealed some of the complexities of technical practice; the focal point of technology ethics. Turning it into an object of
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. Reijers, M. Coeckelbergh, Narrative and Technology Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60272-7_2
25
26
W. Reijers and M. Coeckelbergh
empirical analysis, technical practice has lost some of its ontological meaning (Zwier et al. 2016). Placed in the context of the shortcomings of the empirical turn, this chapter revisits the notion of technical practice as focal point of philosophy of technology. As explained in the introductory chapter, we aim to develop a hermeneutic ethics of technology. For this purpose, we need a number of building blocks, including narrative theory, virtue ethics, and responsible innovation. Now, for preparing this work, we need at least the following two steps. To start, we need to argue why we need a hermeneutic ethics of technology at all in contemporary philosophy of technology: what are the problems or gaps in contemporary philosophy of technology to which we aim to offer a response? Consequently, in response to these problems and in order to prepare work on the (virtue) ethics part of our account, we need a philosophical understanding of technical practice, which starts with getting a better idea about what a “practice” is. In what follows, we first identify central gaps in contemporary philosophy of technology: lack of attention to linguistic, social, and temporal dimension of technological mediation and absence of a theory of practice. We then review central theories of practice, with a focus on Alasdair MacIntyre’s theory of practice in After Virtue. We interpret this theory, highlight the link with virtue and the narrative embeddedness of practice, and identify some problems in MacIntyre’s account of prac
Data Loading...
