Key words: technology, ethics, postphenomenology, fundamental grammar
Abstract. The ethics of technology deals with the moral grounds of creating and using devices and technological systems. This paper deals with the ethics of technology from the point of view of postphenomenology – by analysing multistability, mediation and technological intentionality – and of Wittgenstein’s fundamental grammar – by analysing technology as a rule-governed practice. Using these theoretical frameworks, this paper is able to offer a description of the way ethical values are embedded in technology and to present the foundation for a normative ethics of technology.
Using tools is one of the specific characteristics of humans. In order to discuss in moral terms about technology, one must ontologically analyse what creating and using an artefact or a technological device amounts to. Using technology is a complex phenomenon that cannot be properly analysed through the subject-object dichotomy in which an active autonomous subject employs an inert isolate material object to realize his purpose. Such an analysis presents the outcomes of actions as independent of the artefacts used, as if the same relations between subjects exist in a technological society as in a pre-technological society. In addition, designing an artefact does not mean only assembling material pieces according to certain spatial dispositions but also prescribing standard uses which imply moral, social, political, and economic values. The post-phenomenological analysis of Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek emphasize three main properties of artefacts that characterize the human-technology interactions: the multistability, the mediating role and the intentionality of artefacts. These features of artefacts take into account the role of technological devices in shaping the outcomes of human actions. An artefact can be used in more than one way and it can have more than one function (multistability). In addition, the use of an artefact modifies human action according to its design (mediation). In the process of using, the artefact orients and shapes human actions and decisions (intentionality of artefacts). Furthermore, as actor-network theory shows, technology is not a matter of private human-technology interactions, of individual usages, but of technological practices in socio-technological networks. In consequence, I propose to analyse technology as a rule-governed practice in the framework of Wittgenstein's fundamental grammar. Based on these two theoretical frameworks, post-phenomenology and grammatical analysis, we are able to assess the moral agency of artefacts, how technological practices are morally embedded, and to propose a normative ethics of technology that takes into account artefactual agency.
1. The Multistability of Technology
When a certain device is used, there are some particular actions that can be taken, some specific functions that this device have. For example, the earliest cellular telephones were devices designed only to call a certain other telephone for having a conversation. It was not intended to be used for any other purpose. When these devices became widely available, its users developed a new and unforeseen function, namely the transmission of written short text messages. There are of course some preconditions for doing that. First, the medium of transmission has to be digital so that the text encoding to be possible. In older normal telephones, the transmission of sound is analogical and that makes text encoding almost impossible. Second, the transmission of text messages is possible only between two such digital devices, because an analogical phone cannot receive nor display texts. The moral of this example is that a certain device with well-established functions can be employed for new uses. That is what makes a device multistable: the cellular telephone is, at one moment in time, an artefact with the well-established function of calling another phone, and, at another moment, it is an artefact with a totally different but stable function of transmitting text messages.
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2. Technological Mediation
The other important characteristic of technological devices is the mediating role that they play in human-world interactions. What instrument one uses determines what actions that person does. The instrument is not just an inert, indifferent and transparent medium of our intentions. “The central idea in this approach is that technologies play an actively mediating role in the relations between human beings and reality.” (Verbeek, 2006: 119)
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4. The Grammar of Technology
The three characteristics of technological devices analysed – multistability, mediation, and intentionality – show that artefacts are multistable objects that shape human actions and decisions according to proper technological possibilities. This post-phenomenological description of technology explains the possible forms of technological interactions. The possibilities revealed by the phenomenological description are constrained in the actual use by specific rules of using, functioning and development of technological devices. The technological mediated perception and practice take place in an intersubjective normative world. The technological practices, similar with language and experience, are neither isolate nor private facts but are subject to intersubjective rules (Mulhall, 2007). The intersubjective world is not composed only of humans and their interactions but also by artefacts and the interactions with them and the rules that norm these practices. According to Latour (2005), the intersubjective world is a collective of humans and non-humans organized in accord with internal rules of interactions. Post-phenomenology can accurately describe technological uses, technological interactions at individual level. Nevertheless, in order to give an account of the technological practices, uses employed over and over again, the analysis should be supplemented by taking into consideration the intersubjective rules of practice, the basic structure of use, that constrain individual uses. Consequently, technology will be analysed as a set of rule-governed practices. The rules of technological practices constitute a fundamental grammar of technology. “Fundamental grammar as Wittgenstein analyse it does not concern only word use but also the basic structures of use, practice, and the role of (not only linguistic) entities in a language game.” (Glock, 1996: 154)
Technology is a 'form of life' subjected to the rules of practice. The importance of these rules is that they prescribe at a certain moment of time what aspects can be seen, how devices can be used. The grammatical rules are the background that make certain aspects available and forbid certain uses4. A grammatical analysis of technology constrains multistability, mediation and technological intentionality but also corroborate them into rule-governed practices.
Wittgenstein's philosophical grammar is not an analysis of true and false sentences but an analysis of meaningful practices and their rules. As such, a grammar of technology has to analyse the rules that norm technological practice. The grammar of technology is not a set of everlasting logical laws, but an open set of arbitrary rules that apply to technological practices. The rules are arbitrary in the sense that they cannot be justified. In addition, they are arbitrary in the sense that they can be changed, as in the case of the dawning of new aspects. Otherwise, these rules are necessary and provide a deterministic background against which technological practice take place. In his Wittgenstein on the arbitrariness of grammar, Forster synthesizes the functioning of grammatical rules:
(1) Grammatical principles always have alternatives (the “diversity thesis”). (2) There is never any possibility of justifying or refuting grammatical principles (in their competition with alternatives). (3) Grammatical principles are neither correct nor incorrect, neither true nor false. (4) The factual claims that are made possible by one grammar never outdo those that are made possible by another, alternative grammar in virtue of being able to capture reality as the latter cannot, or being able to capture it more accurately than the latter. (65) … According to Wittgenstein, one is normally constrained to a particular range of grammars, or even to a particular grammar, in exclusion of possible alternatives, either by one’s very human nature or by one’s upbringing within specific social practices and traditions, so that adopting the particular range of grammars, or grammar, in question is not a matter of choice or decision for one in any usual sense of these words. (Forster, 2004: 67)
The main aspect that I want to emphasize is the possibility of grammatical change, the change in our technological practices that is driven by grammatical rules that are in certain aspects vague or fluid. The rule of practising an artefact prescribes how an artefact must be used. Nevertheless, rules are subject to interpretation. There are possible variations on how to apply the rule. Both rule-following and rule-change are based on the familiarity of use, on the “tacit knowledge” (Gill, 2008) one employs in using an artefact. The fact that one is familiar with the use of some object creates the possibility of aspect variation. These variations are the basis for the creation of new rules. Seeing the mobile phone as having yet another function requires new rules for using its new function. Seeing the cellular telephone as text messages sending device created an entire set of rules that governed the practice of sending short text messages. Being familiar within a grammar means also that certain unfamiliar features can be seen. A grammatical approach to technology also shows that while a new aspect, a new function of an artefact becomes apparent it does not necessarily become a technological practice because this would require a community of users that usually use that function. Employing a grammatical approach to technology allow us to a form of mild holism in the sense that one practice and its rules influence adjacent practices and their rules. The practice of sending text messages on cellular telephones modifies the practice of marketing and demanded the reshape of advertising content. Another important characteristic of grammatical rules is that they are embedded with ethical prescriptions of use. If a person does not respond to calls on a cellular telephone, there are some limits to the number of consecutive unanswered calls one may make because there is a record of them. For an analogical telephone, there were no such constraints because it was not possible to know whose call one missed.
5. Morality of Technological Practices
Using artefacts is a familiar activity, based on grammatical rules of practice, in which the artefacts are not mere objects but mediators and co-creators of human action. The modern ontology rejects the above-mentioned agency of artefacts. The reduction of artefacts to mere inert objects is analysed by Axel Honneth as the process of reification in which agency and morality is an exclusive property of subjects: “modern philosophy is doomed to run constantly into irresolvable antinomies, because it is rooted in reified everyday culture and thus remains entrapped within the subject-object opposition.” (Honneth, 2008: 29) The reification of artefacts, their reduction to inert instruments, is a structural mistake. “If reification constitutes neither a mere epistemic category mistake nor a form of moral misconduct, the only remaining possibility is that it be conceived as a form of praxis that is structurally false.” (Honneth, 2008: 26) This structural mistake is the fact that the mediating role of artefacts, which, as we see, shape human actions and decision, is considered morally neutral. This is one of the Heideggerian criticisms to the understating of modern technology. Heidegger, as well as contemporary philosophy of technology, shows that technology is not morally neutral. The artefacts are embedded with values and norms. The rules of practice of artefacts contain the moral standards that apply to that practice. An ethical approach to technology should recognize that using technological devices is morally embedded. The fact that technology mediates and shapes human actions and decisions means that technology has an important ethical impact on these actions and decisions. Therefore, a new form of ethics has to be created, one that considers not only the autonomous human subjects as relevant to ethical debates, but also the technological mediations and the technological rules of practice that shape ethical actions and decisions. Based on technological intentionality, on the fact that human-technology interactions give raise to decisions and actions not reducible to the human agent, the moral agency of these technological mediated situations cannot be reduced to human morality. Consequently, one should take into consideration, in formulating an ethics of technology, the ethical implications of technological mediations, the active role that artefacts play in decision-making and acting.
Ethics appears to be at the eve of a new Copernican revolution. A few centuries ago, the Enlightenment, with Kant as its major representative, brought about a turnover hitherto unequaled by moving the source of morality from God to humans. But currently there seem to be good reasons to move the source of morality one place further. It increasingly becomes clear that we should not consider morality as a solely human affair, but also as a matter of things. Just like human beings, material objects appear to be able to provide answers to moral questions. The artifacts we deal with in our daily lives help to determine our actions and decisions in myriad ways. And answering the question how to act is the ethical activity par excellence. (Vebeek, 2006: 117)
On the one hand, the artefacts' morality arises from the multistable mediation by which technology shapes actions and decisions. On the other hand, the ethical dimension of designing and using artefacts is subject to the rules of practice that establish what is a standard use and that contain ethical prescriptions of using an artefact.
The morality of artefacts is embedded in their specific rules of use and these ethical norms are transmitted as tacit knowledge together with the skill of using that artefact. As we show, these rules change in unforeseen ways according to grammatical patterns that cannot be controlled. The grammatical rules do not seem to be subjected to rational control. That means that a grammatical approach to the ethics of technology seems to be no more than a descriptive theory that expose the rules of practices and show how they work. There are even strong claims against a normative ethical approach to grammatical rules because there are no external-to-grammar standards (ethical, epistemic, etc.) to justify, judge or regulate technological practices and grammatical rules.
In sum, it seems that none of the available strategies for justifying grammatical principles (over against alternatives) can work—not justification in terms of truth-in-virtue-of-meaning, nor justification by the facts, nor justification in terms of success in realizing purposes, nor justification by deduction from more fundamental grammatical principles. (Forster, 2004: 46)
In the same manner, post-phenomenology restricts itself to a descriptive theory of technological mediations and their moral impact. The rationale for this restriction is the fact that during human-technological interactions technology mediates in unforeseen ways actions and decisions such that one cannot a priori asses the consequences of technological mediations.
Despite these internal restrictions for justifying, judging or regulating technological mediations and rules of technological practice, a normative ethical approach to technology is possible. If there are multiple paths of technological development, some of them can be promoted and the mediating role of future possible developments can be analysed.
[A] way to augment the ethics of technology with the approach of technological mediation is to assess mediations, and to try to help shape them. Rather than working from an external standpoint vis-à-vis technology, aiming at rejecting or accepting new technologies, the ethics of technology should aim to accompany technological developments (Hottois), experimenting with mediations and finding ways to discuss and assess how one might deal with these mediations, and what kinds of living-with-technology are to be preferred. (Verbeek, 2008: 101)
In addition, the immanent morality of the rules of technological practice and the impact of rule-changes on other practices can be evaluated and the practices can be shaped. If some rules of a grammar amount to self-destruction, to bad practices, then we have to reject those rules as structurally inadequate. This kind of normative ethics will not determine what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, and what is true or false, but what is structurally adequate or not in a certain technological practice. In the light of the conceptual framework employed above – multistability, mediation, technological intentionality and rule-governed practice –, there are possible ethical prescriptions for the design and practice of technological artefacts.
An important consequence of this grammatical and post-phenomenological approach is that a normative ethics of technology cannot be an a priori ethics. The ethical expertise should take and internal standpoint by a continuous evaluation of technological practices and mediations and a continuous promotions of adequate practices and mediations. In addition, the standards on which the mediations and practices are evaluated and promoted are to be internal to the technological practice and to consider the entire technological context. As Albert Borgmann (1984) shows, to promote a technological practice only on the basis that it facilitate an easiest and more pleasant life seems to be inadequate. He exemplifies this with microwave oven that, while make the meal preparation easiest, it promotes junk food consumption and conduces to a bad health and standardized meals. This mild holistic approach requires designing meaningful artefacts and to meaningfully appropriate the technological practices into everyday life such that different practices do not contradict each other.
A grammatical ethics of technology aims at promoting a sustainable technological practice and the design of meaningful technological devices. The grammatical ethics of technology is not the application of classical ethics to a new domain but the creation of a new ethics that take the acts of artefacts into consideration. Accordingly, this ethics is mainly an a posteriori endeavour that “accompany technological developments” and “experiment with mediations”, evaluating possible developments.
If the mediating role of technology is acknowledged, then the ethics of technology should involve in designing the material environment for moral action, i.e. the moral philosopher should became a technological designer:
When artifacts have moral relevance and embody a specific form of moral agency, ethics cannot only occupy itself with developing conceptual frameworks for moral reflection, but should also engage in the development of the material environments that helps to form moral action and decision-making. (Verbeek, 2008: 101)
This engagement in developing material environments for moral actions means that the technological design should enhance user's responsibility for its technological practices. The orientation towards practice means that technological practices become focal points of ethical discourse and the user of technology should be responsible for his practice. This responsibility enhancement means that artefacts should make apparent the consequences of one's technological practices as well as the possible implications for related practices. The device should be transparent in its functioning, to make apparent what it does and how it does. This transparency is not similar with Heideggerian technological transparency that meant that during practice the artefact disappeared from user's attention. On the contrary, the device should always make the user aware of its functioning and its consequences.
Along with responsibility towards technological practices, the design should also enhance multistable practices, i.e. the device should facilitate creative uses and various paths of action. Another requirement for a sustainable design is the enhancement of mediation possibilities by designing devices that can be easily integrated into human practices, devices that can be easily embodied by its users. In addition, the intentionality of artefacts, their ability to shape one's actions may be enhanced by designing not opaque material objects but partners for human actions.
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1Don Ihde builds on the results of gestalt theory, psychology of perception and phenomenological analyses of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. What makes his analysis post-phenomenological is the claim that the different aspects, stabilities, are not variations of the same object but totally different objects occasioned by the same multistable configuration. The other strong claim of post-phenomenology is the rejection of transcendental ego. “Multistability, in effect, replaces the notion of 'essences' in classical phenomenology, just as embodiment replaces the notion of 'subjectivity' in classical phenomenology.” (Ihde, 2006: 288).
2For an extensive analysis of the Background, see Searle, 1995, pp. 132-137.
3Wittgenstein speaks in this context of aspect-blindness, the incapacity to see aspects. Severin Schroeder affirms that a complete aspect-blindness is in fact impossible and the incapacity to see aspects is the lack of the appropriate emotional response in certain situations.
4Some uses, while technologically available, will never become practices, like, for example, complete facial hair removal for men, although majority of them shave daily all their life.
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