Philosophers of technology have identified various mechanisms through which technology can change moral norms, values, beliefs and practices. Danaher and Sætra ( 2023 ) offer a useful systematization of these mechanisms, with no claim to being exhaustive. We contribute to their work by analyzing how the mediating role of moral concepts fits into this scheme. First, we point out that concepts mediate the moral effects of technological changes, a process we call conceptual mediation. We illustrate this with the concepts of (...) ‘brain death’ and ‘reproductive autonomy’, whose moral implications crystallized in the interplay with new medical technologies. Subsequently, we argue that conceptual mediation is best understood as a type of second-order mediation, which channels the moral implications of the first-order technological mediations identified by Danaher and Sætra (decisional, relational, perceptual). We conclude that second-order mediation plays a central and underappreciated role in processes of technomoral change. (shrink)

Social punishments– the informal penalties imposed by private individuals, rather than formal authorities– like the practice of online public shaming have attracted attention from philosophers, other academics, and journalists. Several have emphasized the harmful nature of social punishments, and the tendency of practices like public shaming to be disrespectful and disproportionate. So, what (if anything) justifies practices of social punishment like public shaming? Some authors have pointed out the important role social punishments play in enforcing morally valuable and authoritative norms, (...) like norms against racist or sexist behaviour. In this paper, I argue that while these authors are correct in claiming that social punishments help to enforce valuable norms, their accounts fall short of explaining why private individuals are justified in imposing harm on others. Some obvious and intuitive explanations– like the claim that wrongdoers forfeit their rights against being harmed– fail to show that private individuals are permitted to harm others. As a result, more work needs to be done to develop our accounts of how and why social punishments can be justified. (shrink)