De moraliteit van de dingen. Autonomie versus gedragsbeïnvloeding

Abstract : The Morality of Things. Autonomy versus Influencing Behaviour? Traditional ethics, e.g. personalist morals, presuppose that technology or ‘things’do not have a moral dimension although human beings pose many questions with regard to technologies (e.g. Do we have to seek for alternatives with regard to nuclear energy? Is it morally responsible to produce genetically modified food?). In a traditional viewpoint, technology is considered to be a means while morality belongs to the realm of ends. And often is said, in confrontation with the Heideggerian techno-scientific complex, that in order to becoming human again, we have to reaffirm the sovereignty of human ends by radically opposing a dominating instrumentality. Against this traditional viewpoint, Peter-Paul Verbeek’s second monograph Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (2011) (recently translated and revised as Op de vleugels van Icarus. Hoe techniek en moraal met elkaar meebewegen – 2014), which is the sequel to his first book What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (2005), proposes an alternative thesis. From a phenomenological viewpoint he describes how the human being’s knowing and perceiving of the world and others is deeply influenced by technological mediation. Technical artifacts possess a morally relevant form of intentionality. As a consequence, he proposes a posthumanist ethics in which moral agency is ascribed to hybrid entities, consisting of human subjectivity and technical objects. Influenced by Bruno Latour and Hans Achterhuis, his analysis of the impact of technology on moral reasoning offers new possibilities for moral action.status: publishe