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44Mogelijkheid van een eiland: Houellebecqs heimwee naar de mensWijsgerig Perspectief 48 (1): 38. 2008.
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12Quantification Machines and Artificial Agents in Global Finance: Historical-Phenomenological Perspectives from Philosophy and Sociology of Technology and MoneyIn Ping Chen & Emiliano Ippoliti (eds.), Methods and Finance: A Unifying View on Finance, Mathematics and Philosophy, Springer. pp. 169-178. 2016.ABSTRACT: This paper raises questions regarding the societal, cultural and ethical significance of finance, mathematics, and financial-mathematical technologies, discussing in particular the phenomenon of quantification as mediated by contemporary electronic information and communication technologies (ICTS). It first relates the history of mathematics to the history of financial technologies, and argues, inspired by Simmel and Marcuse, that from ancient times to now there seems to be an evolutio…Read more
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Justifying Blame: Why Free Will Matters and Why it Does Not (review)Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 1. 2006.This book shows why we can justify blaming people for their wrong actions even if free will turns out not to exist. Contrary to most contemporary thinking, we do this by focusing on the ordinary, everyday wrongs each of us commits, not on the extra-ordinary, “morally monstrous-like” crimes and weak-willed actions of some.
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73With Hope and Imagination: Imaginative Moral Decision-Making in Neonatal Intensive Care UnitsEthical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (1): 3-21. 2007.Although the role of imagination in moral reasoning is often neglected, recent literature, mostly of pragmatist signature, points to imagination as one of its central elements. In this article we develop some of their arguments by looking at the moral role of imagination in practice, in particular the practice of neonatal intensive care. Drawing on empirical research, we analyze a decision-making process in various stages: delivery, staff meeting, and reflection afterwards. We show how imaginati…Read more
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10Whereas standard approaches to risk and vulnerability presuppose a strict separation between humans and their world, this book develops an existential-phenomenological approach according to which we are always already beings-at-risk. Moreover, it is argued that in our struggle against vulnerability, we create new vulnerabilities and thereby transform ourselves as much as we transform the world. Responding to the discussion about human enhancement and information technologies, the book then shows…Read more
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39The Public ThingTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 13 (3): 175-181. 2009.Is there a politics of artifacts, and if so, what does it mean? Defining the issue as a problem about the relation between the human and the non-human, I argue that our common philosophical concepts bar us from an adequate understanding of this problem. Using the work of Hannah Arendt and Bruno Latour, I explore an escape route that involves a radical redefinition of the social. But the cost of this solution is high: we would lose the metaphysical foundation for our belief in the absolute value …Read more
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526David J. Gunkel: The machine question: critical perspectives on AI, robots, and ethics: MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012, 272 pp, ISBN-10: 0-262-01743-1, ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01743-5 (review)Ethics and Information Technology 15 (3): 235-238. 2013.
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413Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral considerationEthics and Information Technology 12 (3): 209-221. 2010.Should we grant rights to artificially intelligent robots? Most current and near-future robots do not meet the hard criteria set by deontological and utilitarian theory. Virtue ethics can avoid this problem with its indirect approach. However, both direct and indirect arguments for moral consideration rest on ontological features of entities, an approach which incurs several problems. In response to these difficulties, this paper taps into a different conceptual resource in order to be able to g…Read more
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81Artificial Companions: Empathy and Vulnerability Mirroring in Human-Robot RelationsStudies in Ethics, Law, and Technology 4 (3). 2010.Under what conditions can robots become companions and what are the ethical issues that might arise in human-robot companionship relations? I argue that the possibility and future of robots as companions depends on the robot’s capacity to be a recipient of human empathy, and that one necessary condition for this to happen is that the robot mirrors human vulnerabilities. For the purpose of these arguments, I make a distinction between empathy-as-cognition and empathy-as-feeling, connecting the la…Read more
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10Money as Medium and ToolTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (3): 358-380. 2015.This article explores the relevance of Georg Simmel’s phenomenology of money and interpretation of modernity for understanding and evaluating contemporary financial information and communication technologies (ICTs). It reads Simmel as a philosopher of technology and phenomenologist whose view of money as a medium, a “pure” tool, and a social institution can help us to think about contemporary financial media and technologies. The analysis focuses on the social-spatial implications of financial I…Read more
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39Responsibility and the Moral Phenomenology of Using Self-Driving CarsApplied Artificial Intelligence 30 (8): 748-757. 2016.This paper explores how the phenomenology of using self-driving cars influences conditions for exercising and ascribing responsibility. First, a working account of responsibility is presented, which identifies two classic Aristotelian conditions for responsibility and adds a relational one, and which makes a distinction between responsibility for (what one does) and responsibility to (others). Then, this account is applied to a phenomenological analysis of what happens when we use a self-driving…Read more
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65The Blockchain as a Narrative Technology: Investigating the Social Ontology and Normative Configurations of CryptocurrenciesPhilosophy and Technology 1-28. 2016.In this paper, we engage in a philosophical investigation of how blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies can mediate our social world. Emerging blockchain-based decentralised applications have the potential to transform our financial system, our bureaucracies and models of governance. We construct an ontological framework of “narrative technologies” that allows us to show how these technologies, like texts, can configure our social reality. Drawing from the work of Ricoeur and respondin…Read more
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13Hacking Technological Practices and the Vulnerability of the Modern HeroFoundations of Science 1-6. 2015.This reply to Gunkel and Zwart further reflects on, and responds to, the following main points: the Heideggerian character of my view and the potential link to Kafka, the suggestion that we should become hackers, the interpretation of my approach in terms of the Hegelian Master–Slave dialectic, the lack of an empirical dimension, and the claim that I think that modern heroism entails overcoming vulnerability. I acknowledge Heideggerian influence, reflect on what it could mean to think about livi…Read more
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11Vulnerable Cyborgs: Learning to Live with our DragonsJournal of Evolution and Technology 22 (1): 1-9. 2011.Transhumanist visions appear to aim at invulnerability. We are invited to fight the dragon of death and disease, to shed our old, human bodies, and to live on as invulnerable minds or cyborgs. This paper argues that even if we managed to enhance humans in one of these ways, we would remain highly vulnerable entities given the fundamentally relational and dependent nature of posthuman existence. After discussing the need for minds to be embodied, the issue of disease and death in the infosphere, …Read more
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143Facing Animals: A Relational, Other-Oriented Approach to Moral StandingJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27 (5): 715-733. 2014.In this essay we reflect critically on how animal ethics, and in particular thinking about moral standing, is currently configured. Starting from the work of two influential “analytic” thinkers in this field, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, we examine some basic assumptions shared by these positions and demonstrate their conceptual failings—ones that have, despite efforts to the contrary, the general effect of marginalizing and excluding others. Inspired by the so-called “continental” philosophical …Read more
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3Too close to kill, too far to talk: Interpretation and narrative in drone fighting and surveillance in public placesLeenes, R., Kosta E. (Eds.) Bridging Distances in Technology and Regulation, Oisterwijk, Wolf Legal Publishers (WLP) 125-133. 2013.Like other teletechnological practices, drone fighting as remote fighting gives rise to a paradox with regard to the relation between ethics and distance: on the one hand, it bridges physical distance in the sense that it enables spying on people and killing people in other parts of the world. On the other hand, it seems to increase moral distance: if you are far away from your target, it becomes easier to kill. However, based on interviews with drone crew as published in the media, I show that …Read more
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255Can we trust robots?Ethics and Information Technology 14 (1): 53-60. 2012.Can we trust robots? Responding to the literature on trust and e-trust, this paper asks if the question of trust is applicable to robots, discusses different approaches to trust, and analyses some preconditions for trust. In the course of the paper a phenomenological-social approach to trust is articulated, which provides a way of thinking about trust that puts less emphasis on individual choice and control than the contractarian-individualist approach. In addition, the argument is made that whi…Read more
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75Principles or imagination? Two approaches to global justiceJournal of Global Ethics 3 (2). 2007.What does it mean to introduce the notion of imagination in the discussion about global justice? What is gained by studying the role of imagination in thinking about global justice? Does a focus on imagination imply that we must replace existing influential principle-centred approaches such as that of John Rawls and his critics? We can distinguish between two approaches to global justice. One approach is Rawlsian and Kantian in inspiration. Discussions within this tradition typically focus on th…Read more
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983The art, poetics, and grammar of technological innovation as practice, process, and performanceAI and Society 33 (4): 501-510. 2018.Usually technological innovation and artistic work are seen as very distinctive practices, and innovation of technologies is understood in terms of design and human intention. Moreover, thinking about technological innovation is usually categorized as “technical” and disconnected from thinking about culture and the social. Drawing on work by Dewey, Heidegger, Latour, and Wittgenstein and responding to academic discourses about craft and design, ethics and responsible innovation, transdisciplinar…Read more
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62Language and technology: maps, bridges, and pathwaysAI and Society 32 (2). 2017.Contemporary philosophy of technology after the empirical turn has surprisingly little to say on the relation between language and technology. This essay describes this gap, offers a preliminary discussion of how language and technology may be related to show that there is a rich conceptual space to be gained, and begins to explore some ways in which the gap could be bridged by starting from within specific philosophical subfields and traditions. One route starts from philosophy of language (bot…Read more
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84Who needs empathy? A response to Goldie's arguments against empathy and suggestions for an account of mutual perspective-shifting in contexts of help and careEthics and Education 2 (1): 61-72. 2007.According to an influential view, empathy has, and should have, a role in ethics, but it is by no means clear what is meant by 'empathy', and why exactly it is supposed to be morally good. Recently, Peter Goldie has challenged that view. He shows how problematic empathy is, and argues that taking an external perspective is morally superior: we should focus on the other, rather than ourselves. But this argument is misguided in several ways. If we consider conversation, there is no need to see an …Read more
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146Health Care, Capabilities, and AI Assistive TechnologiesEthical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (2): 181-190. 2010.Scenarios involving the introduction of artificially intelligent (AI) assistive technologies in health care practices raise several ethical issues. In this paper, I discuss four objections to introducing AI assistive technologies in health care practices as replacements of human care. I analyse them as demands for felt care, good care, private care, and real care. I argue that although these objections cannot stand as good reasons for a general and a priori rejection of AI assistive technologie…Read more
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95The spirit in the network: Models for spirituality in a technological cultureZygon 45 (4): 957-978. 2010.Can a technological culture accommodate spiritual experience and spiritual thinking? If so, what kind of spirituality? I explore the relation between technology and spirituality by constructing and discussing several models for spirituality in a technological culture. I show that although gnostic and animistic interpretations and responses to technology are popular challenges to secularization and disenchantment claims, both the Christian tradition and contemporary posthumanist theory provide in…Read more
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4Enhancement and the vulnerable bodyLucivero, F., Vedder, A. (Eds.) Beyond Therapy V. Enhancement? 15-26. 2013.The volume consists of nine essays distributed in three groups. The first group of essays engages in an exploration and understanding of the philosophical debate on human enhancement by eliciting the philosophical assumptions and metaphors that characterise this literature. In his essay “Enhancement and the Vulnerable Body: Questioning some Philosophical Assumptions” (chapter 1), Mark Coeckelbergh explores the current debate on human enhancement polarized between ‘bioconservatives’ and ‘transhum…Read more
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45Response to “The Problem of the Question About Animal Ethics” by Michal PiekarskiJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (4): 717-721. 2016.In this brief article we reply to Michal Piekarski’s response to our article ‘Facing Animals’ published previously in this journal. In our article we criticized the properties approach to defining the moral standing of animals, and in its place proposed a relational and other-oriented concept that is based on a transcendental and phenomenological perspective, mainly inspired by Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. In this reply we question and problematize Piekarski’s interpretation of our essay and…Read more
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99A Survey of Expectations About the Role of Robots in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Children with ASD: Ethical Acceptability, Trust, Sociability, Appearance, and AttachmentScience and Engineering Ethics 22 (1): 47-65. 2016.The use of robots in therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder raises issues concerning the ethical and social acceptability of this technology and, more generally, about human–robot interaction. However, usually philosophical papers on the ethics of human–robot-interaction do not take into account stakeholders’ views; yet it is important to involve stakeholders in order to render the research responsive to concerns within the autism and autism therapy community. To support responsible …Read more
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29Mireille Hildebrandt & Antoinette Rouvroy (eds.), Law, Human Agency, and Autonomic ComputingNetherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 41 (1): 1. 2012.
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26Technology and the good society: A polemical essay on social ontology, political principles, and responsibility for technologyTechnology in Society 1-6. 2016.How can we best theorize technology and the good society? This essay responds to this issue by showing how our assumptions about the meaning of the social and the political influence our evaluations of the impact of new technologies on society, and how, conversely, new technologies also shape the concepts we use to evaluate them. In the course of the analysis, the essay offers a polemic that questions individualist approaches to the good society and individualist assumptions about the social, es…Read more
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41Imagination and principles: an essay on the role of imagination in moral reasoningPalgrave-Macmillan. 2007.What does it mean to say that imagination plays a role in moral reasoning, and what are the theoretical and practical implications? Engaging with three traditions in moral theory and confronting them with three contexts of moral practice, this book offers a more comprehensive framework to think about these questions. The author develops an argument about the relation between imagination and principles that moves beyond competition metaphors and center-periphery schemas. He shows that both cooper…Read more
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317Virtual moral agency, virtual moral responsibility: on the moral significance of the appearance, perception, and performance of artificial agents (review)AI and Society 24 (2): 181-189. 2009.