Questions tagged [philosophy-of-technology]
The philosophy-of-technology tag has no usage guidance.
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Is there any proof on whether technological development never ends?
I’ve grappled with this question for many years. There is no way humans can possibly know if technological progression ever hits an endpoint. Some say yes, others say no. Even truly brilliant ...
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Are we at the end of scientific paradigm shifts?
Thomas Kuhn’s theory of Paradigm shifts state that a paradigm shift is a massive change in scientific belief and understanding in a specific field e.g. the switch from the geocentric universe to ...
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Does technology erode the subject or inflate the subject, and , are there good refutations of David Skrbinas philosophy of technology?
My question largely revolves around the work of one Chad Haag, he is a philosophy undergrad with a masters in comparative literature, he fled to India to avoid paying student loans and is a pretty ...
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I read this quote in the book A Cyborg Manifesto. Could someone explain it in layperson terms
Ambivalence towards the disrupted unities mediated by high-tech culture requires not
sorting consciousness into categories of ‘clear-sighted critique grounding a
solid political epistemology’ versus ‘...
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Information surplus as a limit upon knowledge: do we 'know' too much to know enough?
I'm not quite sure how to begin looking for information about this question, which may have something to say about the question itself, but it essentially comes down to:
Has the availability of ...
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Did Malthus influence Fritz Haber?
Malthus wrote of an impending descent to subsistence lifestyles. Fritz Haber invented the Haber process, which created fertilizer, and heralded a continuous stream of agricultural innovations that ...
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If all work is automated, what will humans be able to do? [closed]
It seems possible that sooner or later AIs will obsolete all human work and labor. This will happen at latest when AIs superior to human brain in all aspect become generally available.
If or when this ...
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What are the ethical and moral limits of surveillance vs privacy in contemporary (high tech) capitalist states?
What are the ethical and moral limits of surveillance vs privacy in contemporary (high tech) capitalist states? I remember google glasses and the backlash, a momentary blowback against the advertising ...
user64361
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What are some of the best rebuttals or alternatives to Ted Kaczynski's (aka the Unabomber) philosophy of technology?
In his manifesto* "Industrial Society and its Future", the mathematician, philosopher, and terrorist Ted Kaczynski espouses a deeply pessimistic view of the effects of technology on society. ...
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How can we form normative value judgement about technology without knowing all the use cases of technology?
It makes sense to define a normative value system for "axiomatic" values. For example that all humans should have the same rights.
However when it comes to technology I fail to see how it is ...
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Are there moral dilemmas that can not be solved just by unbounded resources, that require something other to solve them?
Are there moral dilemmas that can not be solved just by unbounded resources, that require something other to solve them?
By solving the moral dilemma I mean either one of the following:
Identify, ...
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Interpreting Sevcenko quote about technology
(...) let's divide the experience (rollercoaster ride) into three
parts. The first is continuous, methodical and persistent ascent
(...). This phase represents the period from the 16th century to the
...
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Book or source recommendations on philosophy and the web
I am looking for a philosophical take on the Internet and so far find surprisingly little of what I was hoping for. While I am also interested in information theory, digital culture, social critique, ...
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Can we say that human beings are behaving more and more like machines?
In all societies people complied to some behavioral expectation. In the middle age for instance people felt that they were assigned by God their position in society, and they would comply to the ...
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What did Bernard Stiegler say about technology always progressing?
My uncle was reading Stiegler right before he died and he was saying something that Stiegler said technological advancement never ends. As a budding futurist; I find this very intriguing and would ...
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Is Heidegger's concept of poiēsis different from Aristotle's?
First of all, sorry if this question's pretty naive. I am new to Philosophy and I would like to know whether there is a distinction between Aristotle's concept of poiesis and Martin Heidegger's.
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Moral issues in cyber technology [closed]
Is anyone of deontology or utilitarianism adequate to handle moral issues in cyber technology? Or do we need some other theory?
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Does phenomenology reject causality, in that there are natural laws to be understood and utilised? What is the stance on technological progress/devel?
I have been diving into phenomenology for my research and it seems very interesting. But coming back to the "practical" world I still don't can't really describe its stance on various ...
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Why does poverty still exist in the world that discovered advanced technologies? [closed]
For example some individuals may say 'a poor life of an individual is because that he doesn't work enough'.
The world advanced as much as inventing many advanced technologies such as gun, calculator, ...
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What should we consider the evolution of the human species?
Nowadays we are living in a world that is emphasizing, in various ways, the concept that technological progress brings to our species welfare.
There are a lot of technological tools that help us to ...
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Are there any philosophical works on the social meta hierarchies created by technology(the emergence of the internet)?
Since the 1990s many people have been able to interact in ways that were not accessible to them before due to the internet.
Since the online interactions differ in many respects from those in real ...
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Is Turing test still serving as criterion of machine intelligence?
During the first half of the last century Alan Turing proposed his 'Turing test' as means by which to answer whether machines have intelligence. To recall: the test amounts to a conversation between ...
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Philosophy and ontology of tools (instruments), their design and creation (as part of philosophy of action and agency)? Meta-actions?
I am designing self-evolving and self-learning cognitive architecture (that is how the Artificial General intelligence is being implemented) with the seed intelligence approach, that is why I am using ...
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Importance of technology in Western thought
Ours is a world which is full of promises that advanced technology, such as autonomous cars, cloud computing, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence will somehow bring forth a future worth ...
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What is the argument posed by Katherine Hayles in "The Condition of Virtuality" as to the relation between matter and virtuality and why?
I am learning in class of the influence new media have on old-aged dichotomies such as matter-mind, subject-object and their like. Our new-media teacher asked us to read the paper "The condition ...
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What are some of the problems involved in privileging efficiency and objectivity as values, over and against moral virtues? [closed]
I am wondering, for example, why do we think that maximum efficiency is a
social good?
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Are some technologies intrinsically dangerous, or is it all neutral?
I was wondering if e.g. Bostrom's simulation argument, or the Fermi Paradox, could be resolved by saying that ancestral simulations, or intergalactic travel, are just too dangerous for a future ...
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What do Marxists make of contemporary technophobia?
What would Marxists make of contemporary luddism, technophobia, etc.?
In 1867, Karl Marx wrote that it would be some time before workers
were able to distinguish between the machines and "the ...
user38026
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Is the internet a commodity in the Marxist sense?
Is the internet a commodity in the Marxist sense?
It may help to know if it's made, bought and sold. Can people own more or less of the internet, and in what ways?
user38026
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What is the strongest link made in the philosophical literature between privacy and civil liberties?
What is the strongest link made in the philosophical literature between privacy and civil liberties? In particular, an analysis which eschews 'democracy', or separates out democracy from 'civil ...
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Enhancements in type- and property-perfecting sports
Roduit et. al. [1] talk about property- and type-perfecting driving forces in sports. Many sports such as most (all?) olympic sports are by most people considered to be type-perfecting i.e. they look ...
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Has the philosophy of technology's impact on human life so far been studied?
There is no doubt that technology has influenced human life، Has the impact of technology on human life been examined from a philosophical point of view?
(Particularly the impact of technological ...
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Authors on Transhumanism ending humanity as we know it
Humans are defined by plenty of animal instincts and impulses given by nature which affect our behaviour and existence in every way.
Tribalism, social rules, the need for a leader or an alpha male ...
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Have we become less happy in this age of technology? [closed]
With the growing emergence of technology and our busy routine, everyone is busy on their own; people are considering their lives so busy! Are we becoming less happy in this modern era of technology?
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Does Heidegger ever develop his distinction between modern and traditional technology in detail?
Mark Blitz's article Understanding Heidegger on Technology (The New Atlantis, 2014) describes Heidegger's distinction between modern and traditional technology in the following way:
Everything ...
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Is the following considered an argument or just a set of statements? If it is an argument what would be the premises and conclusion?
In every age, philosophers have compared the human mind to the latest technological gizmo. Currently we use computers as models of our minds. Seventy-five years ago, our minds were compared to ...
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Is it possible to over-complicate the rules for a complex system so that it has a detrimental effect on the system?
The specific example I am thinking of is that of Google and the web: It seems as if, in an effort to stamp out content farms, Google has to add complexity to its algorithm. Now, does that added ...
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Is it possible that technological progress actually degraded humanity? [closed]
I hear all the time that human only use ~10% of their brain, what if its because we don't need to use more?
There are examples of people who manage to get superhuman strength in moment of danger etc.
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Ethics of Bitcoin
People do hard work (physical activity) that benefit the world and they earn money. Today, I can buy a set of GPUs and let it run without me investing a lot of time on it (apart from initial setup) ...
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What important contemporary philosophers are engaged in a critique of technology, and how?
What important contemporary philosophers are engaged in a critique of technology, and how? I'm interested in reading the best of these, and an outline would help me decide who to read.
I'm asking ...
user28660
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Have more lives been sacrificed or saved by science and technology? [closed]
Let us broadly define "science" as:
The systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
and "technology" as:
Machinery and ...
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What are the ethical implications of speculating on Bitcoin? [closed]
It seems as if one of the primary attractions of Bitcoin is its usefulness for nefarious purposes. I'm not sure how much of its value is underpinned by these activities, but I get the feeling it is ...
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Philosophers who wrote about limits of knowledge?
What if "the truth" about any concept (consciousness, reality, religion,physics, etc.), turns out to be a complex idea such that our brains can't simply process it in a single lifespan.
For example, ...
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Any recommendations on commentaries / rebuttals of Heidegger's Question Concerning Technology?
I'm looking for recommendations of commentaries, rebuttals or relevant papers on a Heideggerian approach to examining the essence of technology (famously in 'The Question Concerning Technology' but ...
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Are beings in a simulation actually "beings" at all? [duplicate]
Suppose I was able to create a simulation of the universe (I can't, but suppose I could). And in said universe, intelligent and sentient life evolved.
What would happen if I "unplugged" this ...
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Like newspaper and television, how internet can become a massive tool of information manipulation and control over the people? [closed]
As per the trend we see, any type of system in this world, ultimately gets corrupted. Leading to a final particular state, where power remains on top and rest on the bottom. No matter it's religious ...
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Industrial Society and its Future [closed]
Ted Kaczynski, also known as the “Unabomber,” was born on May 22, 1942, in Illinois. A mathematics prodigy, Kaczynski taught at the University of California at Berkeley before retreating to a ...
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Does human progress ultimately reduce individuals to Nietzsche's last men?
Human progress – technological, scientific, social, etc. – seeks to reduce, and ultimately totally eliminate, the aspects of life we perceive as unpleasant – loss, tragedy, suffering ... However, an ...
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Can Humans Maintain a Free Relationship With Technology?
Heidegger argues in the “The Question Concerning Technology” that the essence of technology is a mode of disclosure or revealing, aletheia. However, modern technology has a special character which ...
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How does technology makes us better humans?
I am wondering if technology makes us better humans. Technology undoubtably has its advantages, but technology also brings with it automation, uniformity and anonymity. Because there are more ...
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