In this paper, we examine the qualitative moral impact of machine learning-based clinical decision support systems in the process of medical diagnosis. To date, discussions about machine learning in this context have focused on problems that can be measured and assessed quantitatively, such as by estimating the extent of potential harm or calculating incurred risks. We maintain that such discussions neglect the qualitative moral impact of these technologies. Drawing on the philosophical approaches of technomoral change and technological mediation theory, which (...) explore the interplay between technologies and morality, we present an analysis of concerns related to the adoption of machine learning-aided medical diagnosis. We analyze anticipated moral issues that machine learning systems pose for different stakeholders, such as bias and opacity in the way that models are trained to produce diagnoses, changes to how health care providers, patients, and developers understand their roles and professions, and challenges to existing forms of medical legislation. Albeit preliminary in nature, the insights offered by the technomoral change and the technological mediation approaches expand and enrich the current discussion about machine learning in diagnostic practices, bringing distinct and currently underexplored areas of concern to the forefront. These insights can contribute to a more encompassing and better informed decision-making process when adapting machine learning techniques to medical diagnosis, while acknowledging the interests of multiple stakeholders and the active role that technologies play in generating, perpetuating, and modifying ethical concerns in health care. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

During the Corona pandemic, it became clear that people are vulnerable to potentially harmful nonhuman agents, as well as that our own biological existence potentially poses a threat to others, and vice versa. This suggests a certain reciprocity in our relations with both humans and nonhumans. In his The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty introduces the notion of the flesh to capture this reciprocity. Building on this idea, he proposes to understand our relationships with other humans, as well as those (...) with nonhuman beings as having a chiasmic structure: to sense, or perceive another entity in a particular way simultaneously implies to be sensed or perceived in a particular way by this other entity. In this paper, we show how a postphenomenological perspective expands on Merleau-Ponty: first, it more radically interprets Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh by not only considering it to be a medium that is the condition of possibility for vision but as pointing to the constitution of an intercorporeal field in which entities—both human and nonhuman—mutually sense one another. Second, it augments Merleau-Ponty’s thought by drawing attention to how technologies mediate chiasmic relations. This is clarified through the example of the facemask, which reveals the chiasmic structure of our relation with nonhuman entities, and shows that technologies co-constitute interpersonal relationships by making humans present to one another in a particular way. We suggest that these aspects are not unique to the facemask, but point to a general technologically mediated chiasmic structure of human-world relations. (shrink)

In current phenomenology of medicine, health is often understood as a state of transparency in which our body refrains from being an object of explicit attention. In this paper, I argue that such an understanding of health unnecessarily presupposes an overly harmonious alignment between subjective and objective body, resulting in the idea that our health remains phenomenologically inaccessible. Alternatively, I suggest that there are many occasions in which one’s body in health does become an object of attention, and that technologies (...) mediate how a relation with one’s body is formed. First, I show prominent accounts in current phenomenology of medicine understand health in terms of a harmonious alignment between objective and subjective body. Second, I argue that there are many occasions in which there is a disharmony between objective and subjective body, and suggest that also in health, we cannot escape being an object that we often relate to. Then, I draw on postphenomenology to show how technologies such as digital self-tracking applications and digital twins can be understood as mediating the relationship with one’s own body in a specific way. In conclusion, I argue that both technologies make present the objective body as a site for hermeneutic inquiry such that it can be interacted with in terms of health parameters. Furthermore, I point to some relevant differences in how different technologies make aspects of our own body phenomenologically present. (shrink)

In this commentary, I scrutinize Coeckelbergh’s criticism of postphenomenology, and question whether postphenomenology indeed tends to neglect the social dimension of technology use (ontic), and must necessarily be conceived as being in opposition to transcendental philosophy (ontological). Second, I suggest that the Wittgensteinian concepts that Coeckelbergh introduces are interesting additions to the concepts used in postphenomenology, but that his use of the term “transcendental” seems up to now primarily to be a rhetorical means enabling him to distance himself from postphenomenology.

Postphenomenology and posthermeneutics as initiated by Ihde have made important contributions to conceptualizing understanding human–technology relations. However, their focus on individual perception, artifacts, and static embodiment has its limitations when it comes to understanding the embodied use of technology as involving bodily movement, social, and taking place within, and configuring, a temporal horizon. To account for these dimensions of experience, action, and existence with technology, this paper proposes to use a conceptual framework based on performance metaphors. Drawing on metaphors from (...) three performance arts—dance, theatre, and music—and giving examples from social media and other technologies, it is shown that we can helpfully describe technology use and experience as performance involving movement, sociality, and temporality. Moreover, it is argued that these metaphors can also be used to reformulate the idea that in such uses and experiences, now understood as “technoperformances”, technology is not merely a tool but also takes on a stronger, often non-intended role: not so much as “mediator” but as choreographer, director, and conductor of what we experience and do. Performance metaphors thus allow us to recast the phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use as moving, social, and temporal—indeed historical—affair in which technologies take on the role of organizer and structurer of our performances, and in which humans are not necessarily the ones who are fully in control of the meanings, experiences, and actions that emerge from our engagement with the world, with technology, and with each other. This promises to give us a more comprehensive view of what it means to live with technology and how our lives are increasingly organized by technology—especially by smart technologies. Finally, it is argued that this has normative implications for an ethics and politics of technology, now understood as an ethics and politics of technoperformances. (shrink)

Can a technological culture accommodate spiritual experience and spiritual thinking? If so, what kind of spirituality? I explore the relation between technology and spirituality by constructing and discussing several models for spirituality in a technological culture. I show that although gnostic and animistic interpretations and responses to technology are popular challenges to secularization and disenchantment claims, both the Christian tradition and contemporary posthumanist theory provide interesting alternatives to guide our spiritual experiences and thinking in a technological culture. I analyze how (...) creational, network, and cyborg metaphors defy suggestions of (individual) animation or alienation and instead offer different ways of conceptualizing and experiencing communion between the material and the spiritual. (shrink)

This essay shows that a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics is unfruitful for thinking about how to live well with technologies, and in particular for understanding and evaluating how we cope with human existential vulnerability, which is crucially mediated by the development and use of technologies such as electronic ICTs. It is argued that vulnerability coping is a matter of ethics and art: it requires developing a kind of art and techne in the sense that it always involves technologies (...) and specific styles of experiencing and dealing with vulnerability, which depend on social and cultural context. It is suggested that we try to find better, perhaps less modern styles of coping with our vulnerability, recognize limits to our attempts to “design” our new forms, and explore what kinds of technologies we need for this project. (shrink)

This essay shows that a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics is unfruitful for thinking about how to live well with technologies, and in particular for understanding and evaluating how we cope with human existential vulnerability, which is crucially mediated by the development and use of technologies such as electronic ICTs. It is argued that vulnerability coping is a matter of ethics and art: it requires developing a kind of art and techne in the sense that it always involves technologies (...) and specific styles of experiencing and dealing with vulnerability, which depend on social and cultural context. It is suggested that we try to find better, perhaps less modern styles of coping with our vulnerability, recognize limits to our attempts to “design” our new forms, and explore what kinds of technologies we need for this project. (shrink)

This special issue introduces the study of financial technologies and finance to the field of philosophy of technology, bringing together two different fields that have not traditionally been in dialogue. The included articles are: Digital Art as ‘Monetised Graphics’: Enforcing Intellectual Property on the Blockchain, by Martin Zeilinger; Fundamentals of Algorithmic Markets: Liquidity, Contingency, and the Incomputability of Exchange, by Laura Lotti; ‘Crises of Modernity’ Discourses and the Rise of Financial Technologies in a Contested Mechanized World, by Marinus Ossewaarde; Two (...) Technical Images: Blockchain and High-Frequency Trading, by Diego Viana; and The Blockchain as a Narrative Technology: Investigating the Social Ontology and Normative Configurations of Cryptocurrencies, by Wessel Reijers and Mark Coeckelbergh. (shrink)

Dreyfus’s work is widely known for its critique of artificial intelligence and still stands as an example of how to do excellent philosophical work that is at the same time relevant to contemporary technological and scientific developments. But for philosophers of technology, especially for those sympathetic to using Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein as sources of inspiration, it has much more to offer. This paper outlines Dreyfus’s account of skillful coping and critically evaluates its potential for thinking about technology. First, it (...) is argued that his account of skillful coping can be developed into a general view about handling technology which gives due attention to know-how/implicit knowledge and embodiment. Then a number of outstanding challenges are identified that are difficult to cope with if one remains entirely within the world of Dreyfus’s writings. They concern questions regarding other conceptualizations of technology and human–technology relations, issues concerning how to conceptualize the social and the relation between skill, meaning, and practices, and the question about the ethical and political implications of his view, including how virtue and skill are related. Acknowledging some known discussions about Dreyfus’s work, but also drawing on other material and on the author’s previous writings, the paper suggests that to address these challenges and develop the account of skillful coping into a wider scoped, Dreyfus-inspired philosophy of technology, it could take more distance from Heidegger’s conceptions of technology and benefit from engagement with work in postphenomenology, pragmatism, the later Wittgenstein, and virtue ethics. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 9, Page 55-57, September 2012.

It is a truism that the design and deployment of information and communication technologies is vital to everyday life, the conduct of work and to social order. But how are individual, organisational and societal choices made? What might it mean to invoke a politics and an ethics of information technology design and use? This editorial paper situates these questions within the trajectory of preoccupations and approaches to the design and deployment of information technology since computerisation began in the 1940s. Focusing (...) upon the dominant concerns over the last three decades, the paper delineates an interest in design and use in relation to socio-technical theories, situated practices and actor-network theory. It is argued that each of these approaches is concerned with a particular form of politics that does not explicitly engage with ethics. In order to introduce ethics into contemporary debates about information technology, and to frame the papers in the special issue, it is argued that Levinas’ ethics is particularly valuable in problematising the relationship between politics and ethics. Levinas provides a critique of modernity’s emphasis on politics and the egocentric self. It is from a Levinasian concern with the Other and the primacy of the ethical that a general rethinking of the relationship between politics, ethics and justice in relation to information and communication technologies can be invoked. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, we will explore (...) how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

Although it is now generally acknowledged that new biomedical technologies often produce new definitions and sometimes even new concepts of disease, this observation is rarely used in research that anticipates potential ethical issues in emerging technologies. This article argues that it is useful to start with an analysis of implied concepts of disease when anticipating ethical issues of biomedical technologies. It shows, moreover, that it is possible to do so at an early stage, i.e. when a technology is only just (...) emerging. The specific case analysed here is that of ‘molecular medicine’. This group of emerging technologies combines a ‘cascade model’ of disease processes with a ‘personal pattern’ model of bodily functioning. Whereas the ethical implications of the first are partly familiar from earlier—albeit controversial—forms of preventive and predictive medicine, those of the second are quite novel and potentially far-reaching. (shrink)

Health technology assessment (HTA) was developed in the 1970s and 1980s to facilitate decision making on the desirability of new biomedical technologies. Since then, many of the standard tools and methods of HTA have been criticized for their implicit normativity. At the same time research into the character of technology in practice has motivated philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists to criticize the traditional view of technology as a neutral instrument designed to perform a specific function. Such research suggests that the tools (...) and methods of more traditional forms of HTA are often inspired by an ‘instrumentalist’ conception of technology that does not fit the way technology actually works. This paper explores this hypothesis for a specific case: the assessments and deliberations leading to the introduction of breast cancer screening in the Netherlands. After reconstructing this history of HTA ‘in the making’ the stepwise model of HTA that emerged during the process is discussed. This model was rooted indeed in an instrumentalist conception of technology. However, a more detailed reconstruction of several episodes from this history reveals how the actors already experienced the inadequacy of some of the instrumentalist presuppositions. The historical case thus shows how an instrumentalist conception of technology may result in implicit normative effects. The paper concludes that an instrumentalist view of technology is not a good starting point for HTA and briefly suggests how the fit between HTA methods and the actual character of technology in practice might be improved. (shrink)

One of the pressing issues in philosophy of technology is the role of human creativity in human-technology relations. We first observe that a techno-centric orientation of philosophy of technology leaves open the role and contribution of human creativity in technological evolution, while an anthropocentric orientation leaves open the role of the technical milieu in technological evolution. Subsequently, we develop a concept of creation as deviation and responsiveness in response to affordances in the environment, inspired by the affordance theory by James (...) Gibson. With this concept of creation as deviative responsiveness, we articulate the human contribution to human-technology creation, namely, our intentional deviation of the inhibiting forces of the currently dominant niche or meaningful world of human-technology relations, in order to become responsive to new affordances in human-technology creation that constitute a new niche or world of human-technology relations. (shrink)

Because climate change can be seen as the blind spot of contemporary philosophy of technology, while the destructive side effects of technological progress are no longer deniable, this article reflects on the role of technologies in the constitution of the (post)Anthropocene world. Our first hypothesis is that humanity is not the primary agent involved in world-production, but concrete technologies. Our second hypothesis is that technological inventions at an ontic level have an ontological impact and constitutes world. As we object to (...) classical philosophers of technology like Ihde and Heidegger, we will sketch the progressive contribution of our conceptuality to understand the role of technology in the Anthropocene world. Our third hypothesis is that technology has emancipatory potential and in this respect, can inaugurate a post-Anthropocene World. We consider these three hypotheses to develop a philosophical account of the ontology of technology beyond an abstract and deterministic understanding. This concept enables us to philosophically reflect on the role of technology in the Anthropocene World in general, and its contribution to the transition to the post-Anthropocene World in particular. (shrink)

During the second half of the twentieth century, several philosophers of technology argued that their predecessors had reflected too abstractly and pessimistically on technology. In the view of these critics, one should study technologies empirically in order to fully understand them. They developed several strategies to empirically inform the philosophy of technology and called their new approach the empirical turn. However, they provide insufficient indications of what exactly is meant by empirical study in their work. This leads to the critical (...) question of what counts as an empirically informed philosophy of technology in the empirical turn. In order to answer this question, we first elaborate on the problems that the empirical turn philosophers tried to address; secondly, we sketch their solutions, and, thirdly, we critically discuss their conceptions of empirical study. Our critical analysis of the empirical turn contributes to new efforts to engage in an empirically informed philosophy of technology. (shrink)

In my comments, I address two issues that are important but not central to the paper under review here. First, I present a reading of the postphenomenological concept of multistability by going back to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the primacy of perception. I conclude that assertions affirming the multistability of technologies should not be seen as merely empirical. Second, I address the adequacy of using the language of ‘empirical’ and ‘transcendental’ as a means to categorize exclusionary approaches in philosophy of technology.

In this paper, I seek to contribute to post-phenomenological descriptions of human-technological relations and the intentionalities exhibited in them by focusingon the intentionality exhibited in the use of a cochlear implant. To do so, I will use concepts developed by Don Ihde and further extended by Peter-Paul Verbeek to show that while post-phenomenological categories illuminate the intentional relationship of a cochlear implant wearer to her world, this relationship defies easy categorization. An examination of successful functioning with a cochlear implant will (...) reveal a distinct form of technological embodiment and intentionality that confirms and extends previous post-phenomenological analyses. (shrink)

This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions—that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. When an (...) experiment is presented as scientific evidence which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the character and significance of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project. (shrink)

The aim of this inquiry is to investigate Heidegger's ontology of technology. We will show that this ontology is aporetic. In Heidegger's key technical essays, ?The question concerning technology? and its earlier versions ?Enframing? and ?The danger?, enframing is described as the ontological basis of modern life. But the account of enframing is ambiguous. Sometimes it is described as totally binding and at other times it appears to allow for exceptions. This oscillation between, what we will call total enframing and (...) partial enframing, is underscored in the work of two influential scholars of Heidegger's later thought, Hubert Dreyfus and Iain Thomson. We will show that like Heidegger, Dreyfus and Thomson unwittingly perpetuate this dilemma that ultimately covers up the aporetic structure of enframing. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to a discussion in philosophy of technology by focusing on the epistemological status of the example. Of the various developments in the emerging, inchoate field of philosophy of technology, the “empirical turn” stands out as having left the most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes. From a historical point of view, the empirical turn can best be understood as a corrective to the overly “transcendentalizing” tendencies of “classical” philosophers of technology, such as Heidegger. (...) Empirically oriented philosophy of technology emphasizes actual technologies through case-study research into the formation of technical objects and systems (constructivist studies) and how they, for example, transform our perceptions and conceptions (the phenomenological tradition) or pass on and propagate relations of power (critical theory). This paper explores the point of convergence of classical and contemporary approaches by means of the notion of the “example” or “paradigm.” It starts with a discussion of the quintessential modern philosopher of technology, Martin Heidegger, and his thinking about technology in terms of the ontological difference. Heidegger’s framing of technology in terms of this difference places the weight of intelligibility entirely on the side of being, to such an extent that his examples become heuristic rather than constitutive. The second part of the paper discusses the methodological and epistemological import of the “example” and the form of intelligibility it affords. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein (standard metre), Foucault (panopticism), and Agamben (paradigm), we argue that the example offers an alternative way of understanding the study of technologies from that of empirical case studies. (shrink)

This essay raises the question of material hermeneutics in Heelan’s philosophy of techno-science. For Heelan, a continental philosophy of technoscience, referring to Husserl and Heidegger and especially to Merleau-Ponty, features hermeneutic contexts of mathematics and measurement as well as laboratory observation, including what the later Heelan spoke of as “portable laboratories,” for the sake of objectivity and “meaning making.” For Paul Feyerabend, this material practice corresponded to the use of both techniques of observation and instrumentation, and not less “propaganda” in (...) the case of Galileo which practice for Heelan included the ontological status of measures and numbers as well as apprenticeship in what Heelan called “contingent local practical cultural milieus.” The essay includes a discussion of Heidegger on mathematics and Bruno Latour on pasteurization. (shrink)

After several technological revolutions in which technologies became ever more present in our daily lives, the digital technologies that are currently being developed are actually fading away from sight. Information and Communication Technologies are not only embedded in devices that we explicitly “use” but increasingly become an intrinsic part of the material environment in which we live. How to conceptualize the role of these new technological environments in human existence? And how to anticipate the ways in which these technologies will (...) mediate our everyday lives? In order to answer these questions, we draw on two approaches that each offers a framework to conceptualize these new technological environments: Postphenomenology and Material Engagement Theory. As we will show, each on their own, these approaches fail to do justice to the new environmental role of technology and its implications for human existence. But by bringing together Postphenomenology’s account of technological mediation and Material Engagement Theory’s account of engaging with environments, it becomes possible to sufficiently account for the new environmental workings of technology. To do justice to these new workings of environmental technologies, we introduce and develop the concept of “Technological Environmentality.”. (shrink)

Brain imaging technologies are increasingly used to find networks and brain regions that are specific to the functional realization of particular aspects of the self. In this paper, we aim to show how neuroscientific research and techniques could be used in the context of self-formation without treating them as representations of an inner realm. To do so, we show first how a Cartesian framework underlies the interpretation and usage of brain imaging technologies as functional evidence. To illustrate how material-technological inventions (...) and developments can have a significant and lasting impact on views of the self, we show how this framework was influenced by another technology: the camera obscura. Subsequently, we show that brain imaging technologies challenge the idea that privileged access to the self can be obtained merely through introspection, indicating a strong discontinuity between the Cartesian and the current neuroscientific framework. Building on these insights, we reframe the self in terms of self-formation. This view neither regards the brain as an independent realizer of aspects of the self, nor assumes that self-knowledge can be obtained through introspection. From this perspective, self-formation is realized throughcritical self-identification: instead of offering representational knowledge of an ‘inner self,’ the potential use of brain imaging technologies within this framework lies in their capacity to offer what we call ‘extrospective knowledge’ that pragmatically can contribute to self-formation. Brain imaging technologies contribute to this process because they foreground our neurophysiology, which helps to critically integrate biological aspects into self-formation. (shrink)

Students often multitask with technologies such as computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones during class. Unfortunately, numerous empirical studies firmly establish a significant drop in academic performance caused by this media multitasking. In this paper it is argued that cognitive studies may have clarified the negative consequences of this activity, yet they struggle to address the processes involved in it. A cognitive characterization of attention as a mental phenomenon neglects the interaction between bodies and technologies, and it is suggested that a (...) postphenomenological understanding is necessary to account for the materiality of practice. Notions of embodied habits and technical mediation are introduced, and an example of a postphenomenological account of media multitasking is introduced. It is argued that this approach enables researchers to investigate media multitasking as it occurs in everyday educational practice. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation (RI) focus (...) on how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks of Responsible Innovation focus on (...) how to enable outcomes of innovation processes to become societally desirable and ethically acceptable. However, questions with regard to the technological nature of these innovation processes are rarely raised. For this reason, this paper raises the following research question: To what extent is RI possible in the current age, where the concept of innovation is predominantly presupposed as technological innovation? On the one hand, we depart from a post-phenomenological perspective to evaluate the possibility of RI in relation to the particular technological innovations discussed in the RI literature. On the other hand, we emphasize the central role innovation plays in the current age, and suggest that the presupposed concept of innovation projects a techno-economic paradigm. In doing so, we ultimately argue that in the attempt to steer innovation, frameworks of RI are in fact steered by the techno-economic paradigm inherent in the presupposed concept of innovation. Finally, we account for what implications this has for the societal purpose of RI. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, (...) which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger’s questioning of technology as belonging to “classical philosophy of technology,” postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

This commentary attempts to contribute to a further elucidation of Dominic Smith’s call for a rehabilitation of the transcendental in philosophy of technology. On the one hand, it focuses on why such a rehabilitation is deemed necessary, particularly in light of Smith’s diagnosis of a contemporary tendency towards reification and presentism. Postphenomenology is discussed as a challenge and invitation to further clarify the stakes. On the other hand, this commentary inquires into how Smith envisages the achievement of a rehabilitation of (...) the transcendental. Further attention is given to Smith’s idea of a renewed sense of the transcendental. Following his own cues and situating this renewal in the philosophical tradition, the question whether the involved philosophical praxis should be primarily understood as political is brought to the fore. In so doing, Smith’s reading and extension of Luciano Floridi’s attempts to move beyond Kant receive special attention, since the transcendental is here understood in terms of conditions of feasibility. The challenge put to Smith is to contrast this approach with social-constructivist approaches on the one hand, and Stiegler’s thought regarding technics and the transcendental on the other. Finally, Smith’s commitment to taking exception is analyzed to ask how and which logic is at play there. (shrink)

Fitness apps on mobile devices are gaining popularity, as more people are engaging in self-tracking activities to record their status of fitness and exercise routines. These technologies also evolved from simply recording steps and offering exercise suggestions to an integrated lifestyle guide for physical wellbeing, thus exemplify a new era of "quantified self" in the context of health as individual responsibility. There is a considerable amount of literature in science, technology and society (STS) studies looking at this phenomenon from different (...) perspectives, linking it with the sociology of self-surveillance and neoliberal regimes of health. However, the human-technology interface, through which the micro- (behavioral) and macro- (social) aspects converge, still calls for extensive examination. This paper approaches this topic from the postphenomenological perspective, in combination with empirical studies of design analysis and interviews of fitness apps, to reveal the human-technology link between the design elements and people's perception through the direct experiences and interpretations of technology. It argues that the intentionality of self-tracking fitness app designs mediates the human-technology relations by "guiding" people into a quantified knowledge regime. It shapes the perceptions of fitness and health with representations of meanings about a "good life" of individual success and management. This paper also gives a critique of current individual, performance-oriented fitness app designs and offers the possibility of seeking alternatives through the multistable nature of human-technology relations—how altering interpretation and meaning of the design with a cultural or social context could change the form of technological embodiment. (shrink)

Scholars refute the dichotomy of subject and object in the study of technology. Basing on relational ontology and revised empirical study, namely the social historical phenomenology of technology, inspired by post-phenomenology and actor-network theory, this study adopts an approach informed by the genetic phenomenological sociology (Zhang 2017; 2020) of technology, and examines the formation of Apple’s technology in the process of its emergence and diffusion. Unlike post-phenomenology and actor-network theory, which mainly examine the role of technology in the relation of (...) human-technology-world after technology was formed, this study examines technology in the process of its formation. The relationship between the intentionality of humanity and the potentiality of technology is explored empirically and ontologically, thus transcending the dichotomy of subject and object in the examination of technology through the relational ontology indicated in potentiality, intentionality, embodiment, and genealogy, and simultaneously building a foundation for the critique, ethics, and normative theory of media and technology. (shrink)

Feminist technoscience and feminist phenomenology have seldom been brought into dialogue with each other, despite them sharing concerns with subjectivity and normativity, and despite both of them moving away from sharp subject-object distinctions. This is unfortunate. This article argues that, while differences between these strands need to be acknowledged, such differences should be put to productive use. The article discusses a case of school bullying, and suggests that bringing these analytic perspectives together enables and sharpens examinations of the role of (...) subjectification and subject positions for subjectivity in the phenomenological sense; affectivity within material-discursive entanglements and constellations of humans and things, and as connecting the body, things and the world in specific ways; and normativity as enacted, lived and embedded in perception. (shrink)

Digital technologies are frequently considered as lacking material aspects. Today, it is evident that behind digital technologies lies a huge and complex material infrastructure in the form of fiber optic cables, servers, satellites, and screens. Postphenomenology has theorized the relations to material things as embodiment relations. Taking into account that technologies can also have hermeneutic aspects, this theory defines hermeneutic relations as those in which we read the world through technologies. The article opens with a review of some theoretical developments (...) to hermeneutic relations with a special focus on digital technologies. The article suggests that in the digital world, material hermeneutics needs to be updated as it shifts from a scientific to an everyday technological context. Now, technologies not only “give voice” to things, they also produce new meanings to informational structures and direct users to certain meanings. When it comes to digital technologies, especially those involving artificial intelligence (AI), the technology actively mediates the world. In postphenomenological terms, it possesses a technological intentionality. The postphenomenological formula should be updated to reflect this type of technological intentionality, by reversing the arrow of intentionality so that it points to the user, rather than from the user. (shrink)

This article defends three interconnected premises that together demand for a new way of dealing with moral responsibility in developing and using technological artifacts. The first premise is that humans increasingly make use of dissociated technological delegation. Second, because technologies do not simply fulfill our actions, but rather mediate them, the initial aims alter and outcomes are often different from those intended. Third, since the outcomes are often unforeseen and unintended, we can no longer simply apply the traditional (modernist) models (...) for discussing moral responsibility. We need to reinterpret moral responsibility. A schematic layout of a model on Social Role-Responsibility that incorporates these three premises is presented to allow discussion of a new way of interpreting moral responsibility. (shrink)

In proposing a next step in loosening the restriction of action to humans, this paper explores what we call the agency of attitudes and especially the ethical and practical questions that such recognition should entail. In line with Actor-Network Theory, we suggest that attitudes, passions and emotions can be seen to have agency in a similar vein as tangible agents (e.g., technological devices, texts, machines). We illustrate this suggestion using an example of socialization towards pain experienced during sports. Finally, we (...) propose that the awareness of attitude's agency extends rather than reduces the ownership of choice of people, as it facilitates making "true decisions.". (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In this (...) paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation of the design stance in (...) Dennett’s approach, but propose to replace Dennett’s original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett’s approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts. (shrink)

During the past decade, the “script” concept, indicating how technologies prescribe human actions, has acquired a central place in STS. Until now, the concept has mainly functioned in descriptive settings. This article will deploy it in a normative setting. When technologies coshape human actions, they give material answers to the ethical question of how to act. This implies that engineers are doing “ethics by other means”: they materialize morality. The article will explore the implications of this insight for engineering ethics. (...) It first augments the script concept by developing the notion of technological mediation. After this, it investigates how the concept of mediation could be made fruitful for design ethics. It discusses how the ambition to design behaviorinfluencing technologies raises moral questions itself and elaborates two methods for anticipating technological mediation in the design process: performing mediation analyses and using an augmented version of constructive technology assessment. (shrink)

This article is a reply to the three reviews of my book What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (Verbeek 2005 ) in this symposium. It discusses the remarks made by the reviewers along five lines. The first is methodological and concerns the question of how to develop a philosophical approach to technology. The second line discusses the philosophical orientation of the book, and the relations between analytic and continental approaches. Third, I will discuss the metaphysical aspects (...) of the book, in particular the nature and value of the non-modernist approach it aims to set out. Fourth, I will discuss the social and political relevance of the book. Fifth, this will bring me to some concluding remarks about how the postphenomenological perspective developed in the book relates to liberalism, focusing on its suggestions to deliberately design our material environment in terms of mediation. (shrink)

In his article In Between Us, Yoni van den Eede expands existing theories of mediation into the realm of the social and the political, focusing on the notions of opacity and transparency. His approach is rich and promising, but two pitfalls should be avoided. First, his concept of ‘in-between’ runs the risk to conceptualize mediation as a process ‘between’ pre-given entities. On the basis of current work in postphenomenology and actor-network theory, though, mediation should rather be seen as the origin (...) of entities, not as an intermediary between them. Second, Van den Eede’s separate discussion of transparency and opacity in ‘use’ and in ‘context’ runs the risk to make invisible the complementarity of the two dimensions. While transparency of use embodies an experiential form of the distinction between transparency and opacity, transparency of context embodies a more cognitive dimension of the distinction. Only by linking the two it becomes possible to take responsibility for the impact that technological mediations can have. Users and designers need a ‘double vision’ to simultaneously see the transparency of both use and context. (shrink)

This article investigates the types of intentionality involved in human–technology relations. It aims to augment Don Ihde’s analysis of the relations between human beings and technological artifacts, by analyzing a number of concrete examples at the limits of Ihde’s analysis. The article distinguishes and analyzes three types of “cyborg intentionality,” which all involve specific blends of the human and the technological. Technologically mediated intentionality occurs when human intentionality takes place “through” technological artifacts; hybrid intentionality occurs when the technological actually merges (...) with the human; and composite intentionality is the addition of human intentionality and the intentionality of technological artifacts. (shrink)

The currently developing fields of Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technology bring about a convergence of information technology and cognitive science. Smart environments that are able to respond intelligently to what we do and that even aim to influence our behaviour challenge the basic frameworks we commonly use for understanding the relations and role divisions between human beings and technological artifacts. After discussing the promises and threats of these technologies, this article develops alternative conceptions of agency, freedom, and responsibility that make (...) it possible to better understand and assess the social roles of Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technology. The central claim of the article is that these new technologies urge us to blur the boundaries between humans and technologies also at the level of our conceptual and moral frameworks. (shrink)

Public funding institutions are able to influence what aspects researchers take into account when they consider the future impacts of their research. On the basis of a description of the evaluation systems that public research funding institutes in the Netherlands (STW and SenterNovem) use to estimate the quality of engineering science, this article shows that researchers are now predominantly required to reflect on the intellectual merit of their research and on the usability and marketability of the technology it contributes to. (...) In addition, SenterNovem also mandates reflection on sustainability. Here it is argued that these requirements do not suffice. Funding institutions should also do more to enhance reflection during the research process on the “soft impacts” of technologies, which refer to the alterations that technologies may bring about in the quality of human life. To do this it is suggested that it is helpful to engage a specifically trained ethicist to monitor the research process and create a feedback loop from the ethicist to the funding institution. (shrink)

In a world that is becoming more ‘networked’ than ever, especially on the personal-everyday level—with for example digital media pervading our lives and the Internet of Things now being on the rise—we need to increasingly account for ‘networked realities’. But are we as human beings actually well-equipped enough, epistemologically speaking, to do so? Multiple approaches within the philosophy of technology suggest our usage of technologies to be in the first instance oriented towards efficiency and the achievement of goals. We thereby (...) neglect the actual systemic, networked nature of technology, or its wider impacts. With regard to the pressing issue of how to cross the ‘gap’ between these two ‘modes,’ the paper at hand engages with the work of Gregory Bateson, reading him as a philosopher of technology. Bateson’s notions of “conscious purpose” and “learning” offer excellent tools to understand our predicament of living in a networked world but being partly unable to sufficiently grasp and come to terms with this situation. Moreover, as the article endeavors to demonstrate, Bateson’s thought is to be cast as a crucial addition to the body of theory being developed in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)