VERBEEK ON THE MORAL AGENCY OF ARTEFACTS

• Authors: Arzroomchilar Ehsan , Novotný Daniel
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral significance of artefacts in human life. While many philosophers agree that artefacts do have moral significance attached to them, opinions vary as to how it is to be construed. In this paper we deal with the approach of the influential Dutch philosopher of technology Peter Paul Verbeek. He criticizes traditional ethical theories for assuming that whatever relevancy artefacts have for morality is entirely dependent on human beings, since artefacts are mere passive instruments of human agency. In contrast, he develops a view of moral agency that includes artefacts and that ascribes moral agency to human-technology hybrids rather than to humans as such. The goal of this paper is to elucidate Verbeek’s account of moral agency and evaluate it. We also deal with his views on post phenomenology and mediation underlying this account. Although the general gist of our paper is expository, we point out to several problems for Verbeek’s account.

Keywords

EN

ARTEFACTS; MEDIATION; MORAL AGENCY; VERBEEK PETER PAUL; POST PHENOMENOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 517 – 538

Contributors

author

Arzroomchilar Ehsan

• Faculty of Theology, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Kněžská 8, 370 01 České Budějovice, Czech Republic

author

Novotný Daniel