Klenk Michael
Delft University of Technology, 2628BX Delft, The Netherlands.
Philos Technol. 2021;34(3):525-544. doi: 10.1007/s13347-020-00401-y. Epub 2020 May 15.
According to some philosophers of technology, technology embodies moral values in virtue of its functional properties and the intentions of its designers. But this paper shows that such an account makes the values supposedly embedded in technology epistemically opaque and that it does not allow for values to change. Therefore, to overcome these shortcomings, the paper introduces the novel Affordance Account of Value Embedding as a superior alternative. Accordingly, artefacts bear affordances, that is, artefacts make certain actions likelier given the circumstances. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective that invokes recent moral anthropology, I conceptualize affordances as response-dependent properties. That is, they depend on intrinsic as well as extrinsic properties of the artefact. We have reason to value these properties. Therefore, artefacts embody values and are not value-neutral, which has practical implications for the design of new technologies.
根据一些技术哲学家的观点，技术凭借其功能特性和设计者的意图体现道德价值。但本文表明，这样一种解释使得据称嵌入技术中的价值在认知上变得模糊，并且不允许价值发生变化。因此，为了克服这些缺点，本文引入了新颖的价值嵌入可供性解释作为一种更优的替代方案。相应地，人工制品具有可供性，也就是说，在特定情况下，人工制品会使某些行动更有可能发生。基于一种跨学科的视角，该视角援引了近期的道德人类学，我将可供性概念化为依赖反应的属性。也就是说，它们取决于人工制品的内在和外在属性。我们有理由重视这些属性。因此，人工制品体现价值且并非价值中立，这对新技术的设计具有实际意义。
