•  13
    What are we doing? Microblogging, the ordinary private, and the primacy of the present
    Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 9 (2): 127-136. 2011.
    Purpose – This paper aims to better understand the cultural-philosophical significance of microblogging. In this way it seeks to inform evaluations of this new medium and of the culture and society it co-shapes and in which it is rooted. Design/methodology/approach – Engaging in philosophical reflection inspired by philosophy of technology, political philosophy, and cultural history, this paper identifies and discusses some structural features of microblogging such as Twitter. Findings – This pa…Read more
  •  50
    Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction - The Problem of Moral Status -- PART I: MORAL ONTOLOGIES: FROM INDIVIDUAL TO RELATIONAL DOGMAS -- Individual Properties -- Appearance and Virtue -- Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical -- Relations: Natural and Social -- Relations: Hybrid and Environmental -- Conclusion Part I: Diogenes's Challenge -- PART II: MORAL STATUS ASCRIPTION AND ITS CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY: A TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT -- Words and Sentences: Form…Read more
  •  117
    Should we give moral standing to machines? In this paper, I explore the implications of a relational approach to moral standing for thinking about machines, in particular autonomous, intelligent robots. I show how my version of this approach, which focuses on moral relations and on the conditions of possibility of moral status ascription, provides a way to take critical distance from what I call the “standard” approach to thinking about moral status and moral standing, which is based on properti…Read more
  •  110
    Various arguments have been provided for drawing non-humans such as animals and artificial agents into the sphere of moral consideration. In this paper, I argue for a shift from an ontological to a social-philosophical approach: instead of asking what an entity is, we should try to conceptually grasp the quasi-social dimension of relations between non-humans and humans. This allows me to reconsider the problem of justice, in particular distributive justice . Engaging with the work of Rawls, I sh…Read more
  •  12
    Review of: Justifying blame: why free will matters and why it does not/Maureen Sie.-Amsterdam, Rodopi: 2005 (review)
    Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 98 (1). 2006.
  •  53
    Artificial agents, good care, and modernity
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 36 (4): 265-277. 2015.
    When is it ethically acceptable to use artificial agents in health care? This article articulates some criteria for good care and then discusses whether machines as artificial agents that take over care tasks meet these criteria. Particular attention is paid to intuitions about the meaning of ‘care’, ‘agency’, and ‘taking over’, but also to the care process as a labour process in a modern organizational and financial-economic context. It is argued that while there is in principle no objection to…Read more
  •  45
    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
  •  15
    Robot Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism Disorders
    with Andreea Peca, Ramona Simut, Cristina Costescu, Sebastian Pintea, Daniel David, and Bram Vanderborght
    IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 35 (2): 54-66
    Children with autism spectrum disorders have persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction, as well as restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities [1]. The prevalence of autism is estimated at 1-2 per 1000, and close to 6 per 1000 for ASD [23]. ASD is a lifelong disorder, and many individuals need high levels of support throughout their lives [28]. Even though no cure has been found, early intervention is critical for a positive long-term outcome. T…Read more
  •  9
    Hacking Feenberg
    Symploke 20 (1-2): 327-330. 2012.
  •  150
    Violent computer games, empathy, and cosmopolitanism
    Ethics and Information Technology 9 (3): 219-231. 2007.
    Many philosophical and public discussions of the ethical aspects of violent computer games typically centre on the relation between playing violent videogames and its supposed direct consequences on violent behaviour. But such an approach rests on a controversial empirical claim, is often one-sided in the range of moral theories used, and remains on a general level with its focus on content alone. In response to these problems, I pick up Matt McCormick’s thesis that potential harm from playing c…Read more
  •  44
    Environmental Virtue
    Environmental Philosophy 8 (2): 141-169. 2011.
    Environmental virtue ethics faces the problem of motivation: there is a gap between knowledge and action. This paper first analyzes the roots of this problem and discusses possible solutions that require the use of imagination and information technology. Then it reformulates the problem of motivation and the question concerning environmental virtue by using the notion of skill. It sketches the contours of a non-Romantic and non-Stoic virtue ethics that attempts to move beyond dualist assumptions…Read more
  •  80
    Technology as Skill and Activity
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 16 (3): 208-230. 2012.
    Can we conceive of a philosophy of technology that is not technophobic, yet takes seriously the problem of alienation and human meaning-giving? This paperretrieves the concern with alienation, but brings it into dialogue with more recent philosophy of technology. It defines and responds to the problem of alienation in a way that avoids both old-style human-centered approaches and contemporary thingcentered or hybridity approaches. In contrast to the latter, it proposes to reconcile subject and o…Read more
  •  125
    The discussion about robots in elderly care is populated by doom scenarios about a totally dehumanized care system in which elderly people are taken care of by machines. Such scenarios are helpful as they attend us to what we think is important with regard to the quality elderly care. However, this article argues that they are misleading in so far as they (1) assume that deception in care is always morally unacceptable, (2) suggest that robots and other information technologies necessarily decei…Read more
  •  7
    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
  •  40
    Mogelijkheid van een eiland: Houellebecqs heimwee naar de mens
    Wijsgerig Perspectief 48 (1): 38. 2008.
  • 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.
  •  68
    With Hope and Imagination: Imaginative Moral Decision-Making in Neonatal Intensive Care Units
    with Jessica Mesman
    Ethical 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
  •  8
    Whereas 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
  •  39
    The Public Thing
    Techné: 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
  •  264
    Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration
    Ethics 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
  •  75
    Artificial Companions: Empathy and Vulnerability Mirroring in Human-Robot Relations
    Studies 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
  •  35
    Responsibility and the Moral Phenomenology of Using Self-Driving Cars
    Applied 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
  •  10
    Money as Medium and Tool
    Techné: 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
  •  60
    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
  •  13
    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
  •  11
    Vulnerable Cyborgs: Learning to Live with our Dragons
    Journal 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
  •  137
    Facing Animals: A Relational, Other-Oriented Approach to Moral Standing
    Journal 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
  •  3
    Too close to kill, too far to talk: Interpretation and narrative in drone fighting and surveillance in public places
    Leenes, 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
  •  243
    Can 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