Technology in the Age of Innovation: Responsible Innovation as a New Subdomain Within the Philosophy of Technology

von Schomberg, L., Blok, V. 

Philos. Technol. 34, 309–323 (2021). 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-019-00386-3

Abstract

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.

The Conclusion

Hence, even though RI provides a critical analysis of innovation at the ontic level (i.e., concerning the introduction and usage of particular innovations), it still lacks a critical analysis at the ontological level (i.e., concerning the techno-economic paradigm of innovation). Therefore, RI is in need of a fundamental reflection that not only exposes the techno-economic paradigm of innovation—which we did in this paper—but that also explores an alternative concept of innovation which addresses the public good beyond the current privatization wave. The political origins of innovation that we encountered in Section 2, along with the political ends that the RI literature explicitly prioritizes, suggest that we should inquire into a political orientation of innovation. A crucial task of this inquiry would be to account for what such a political orientation of innovation precisely entails at the ontic level, and how it relates to the current techno-economic paradigm of innovation at the ontological level.

The info is here.

Epistemology, Communication and Divine Command Theory

By John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions
Originally posted July 21, 2015

I have written about the epistemological objection to divine command theory (DCT) on a previous occasion. It goes a little something like this: According to proponents of the DCT, at least some moral statuses (like the fact that X is forbidden, or that X is bad) depend for their existence on God’s commands. In other words, without God’s commands those moral statuses would not exist. It would seem to follow that in order for anyone to know whether X is forbidden/bad (or whatever), they would need to have epistemic access to God’s commands. That is to say, they would need to know that God has commanded X to be forbidden/bad. The problem is that there is a certain class of non-believers — so-called ‘reasonable non-believers’ — who don’t violate any epistemic duties in their non-belief. Consequently, they lack epistemic access to God’s commands without being blameworthy for lacking this access. For them, X cannot be forbidden or bad.

This has been termed the ‘epistemological objection’ to DCT, and I will stick with that name throughout, but it may be a bit of a misnomer. This objection is not just about moral epistemology; it is also about moral ontology. It highlights the fact that at least some DCTs include a (seemingly) epistemic condition in their account of moral ontology. Consequently, if that condition is violated it implies that certain moral facts cease to exist (for at least some people). This is a subtle but important point: the epistemological objection does have ontological implications.

The blog post is here.

Three Types of Moral Supervenience

By John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions
Originally published November 7, 2014

Here are two excerpts:

As you know, metaethics is about the ontology and epistemology of morality. Take a moral claim like “torturing innocent children for fun is wrong”. A metaethicist wants to know what, if anything, entitles us to make such a claim. On the ontological side, they want to know what is it that makes the torturing of innocent children wrong (what grounds or explains the ascription of that moral property to that event?). On the epistemological side, they wonder how it is that we come to know that the torturing of innocent children is wrong (how to we acquire moral knowledge?). Both questions are interesting — and vital to ask if you wish to develop a sensible worldview — but in discussing moral supervenience we are focused primarily on the ontological one.

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The supervenience of the moral on the non-moral is generally thought to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. JL Mackie famously argued that the if the moral truly did supervene on the non-moral, then this was metaphysically “queer”. We were owed some plausible account of why this happens. He didn’t think we had such an account, which is one reason why he was an moral error theorist. Others are less pessimistic. They think there are ways in which to account for moral supervenience.

The blog post is here.