Anna Puzio

Mit dem Roboter entsteht eine neue Entität, die einer ethischen Einordnung bedarf: Wie gehen wir moralisch richtig mit dem Roboter um? Welchen moralischen Status hat ein Roboter? Kann ein Roboter Personenstatus haben und Träger von Rechten sein? Wer trägt Verantwortung in der Mensch-Roboter-Interaktion? Die bestehenden Mittel und Werkzeuge, die wir in der Ethik haben, tradierte ethische Ansätze und Konzepte, sind dabei meist anthropozentrisch ausgerichtet und daher nicht einwandfrei auf Roboter übertragbar. So werden ethische Ansätze neu herausgefordert und müssen neu ausgehandelt werden. In der Technikethik gewinnen relationale Ansätze, z. B. Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie, Postphänomenologie, Kritischer Posthumanismus und Neuer Materialismus zunehmend an Bedeutung, die Anthropozentrismus kritisieren, nicht-menschliche Entitäten, z. B. aus der Natur oder Technik, in besonderer Weise fokussieren und die menschliche Relationalität zu ihnen in den Blick nehmen. Diese ermöglichen, Technik nicht als bloßes Mittel und Instrument zu sehen, sondern als etwas, das uns prägt, sich auf uns und unsere Gesellschaften auswirkt und zu dem wir in einer Beziehung stehen. Welche Bedeutung haben Roboter für unser menschliches Selbstverständnis, wie wirken sich Roboter auf unser Denken und Handeln aus, in welcher Beziehung stehen wir zum Roboter und welche Beziehungen können wir mit Robotern eingehen? Diese neue Zuwendung zum Nicht-menschlichen stellt vor die Frage, ob wir das Nicht-menschliche und dessen Bedeutung für die Ethik lange Zeit unterschätzt haben. Animal Studies zeigen, dass vielen Tieren jahrelang irrtümlicherweise Fähigkeiten wie Werkzeuggebrauch, Intelligenz, Sozialverhalten, Rechen- und Sprachfähigkeiten, Entscheidungsfindung oder moralisches Verhalten abgesprochen wurden. Auch nicht-menschliche Figuren aus Disney, Kinderbüchern oder Filmen (sowohl für Kinder als auch Erwachsene) scheinen uns in unseren Menschenbildern, Geschlechterrollen und Entscheidungen stärker zu prägen, als wir bisweilen annehmen. Auf Kritzeleien und Bemalungen von Wänden oder Tischen im öffentlichen Raum findet sich manchmal der – eher scherzhaft gemeinte – Spruch: „Was würde Olaf tun?“, der sich auf die beliebte Schneemannfigur des Animationsfilms „Die Eiskönigin“ (Frozen I, 2013, Frozen II, 2019) bezieht. Wie prägen uns Rechencomputer, Large Language Models und generative KI, Online-Kartendienste wie Google Maps, Internetsuchmaschinen und medizinische Technologien und wirken sie sich auf unser Leben aus? Dieser Aufsatz behandelt den Neuen Materialismus von Haraway und Barad, der von den oben genannten relationalen Ansätzen am radikalsten das Nicht-Menschliche in den Fokus rückt und den Menschen in einer untrennbaren Beziehung zum Nicht-Menschlichen denkt. Dies wird für Roboter relevant, die in alle unsere Lebensbereiche Eingang finden und in einer Beziehung zu uns stehen, wie Industrieroboter, Service- und Unterhaltungsroboter, Soziale Roboter, Medizinroboter, Pflegeroboter, Religiöse Roboter und Bioroboter. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, welche Erkenntnisse und bereichernde Perspektiven der Neue Materialismus, hier Donna Haraway und Karen Barad, für die Roboterethik bieten kann. Dazu führe ich im ersten Schritt in Kap. 2 in den Neuen Materialismus ein und erkläre die Denkströmung und ihre Themen. In Kap. 3 führe ich Kernkonzepte und -theorien von Haraway und Barad aus und leite daraus Perspektiven für die Roboterethik ab, und zwar: 1) Hybride, dynamische Identität in der Form der Cyborg, 2) nicht-menschliche Entitäten und Relationalität, 3) Nicht-menschliche Handlungsfähigkeit und aktive Materie sowie 4) Körper und Diversität. In Kap. 4 schließe ich im letzten Schritt mit einem Fazit und diskutiere die konkrete Anwendbarkeit des Neuen Materialismus und werfe die Frage auf, wie sich Menschsein nach dem Posthumanismus noch denken lässt.

Der Beitrag untersucht die implizite Umwelt- und Technikphilosophie der KI-Enzykli ka Magnifica humanitas und ordnet die Enzyklika in die gegenwärtigen philosophischen und ethischen Debatten ein. Dazu werden das Verhältnis von Mensch und Technik, die Bedeutung des Körpers, der Anthropozentrismus und das Verhältnis zur Umwelt beleuchtet. Es stellt sich heraus, dass die Enzyklika, obgleich sie aufgeschlossen und differenziert argumentiert, einer Zentralstellung des Menschen verhaftet bleibt und unzureichend an gegenwärtige ethische Debatten zu Umwelt und Technik anknüpft. Anschließend werden das Verhältnis der Enzyklika zum Transhumanismus, die Zu- sammenarbeit mit dem Unternehmen Anthropic und Machtfragen kritisch unter die Lupe genommen. Der Beitrag schließt mit einer kurzen Einschätzung, inwieweit die Enzykli ka für Theologie und Kirche Wegweiser in künftigen KI-Fragen sein kann.

Artificial Intelligence has entered religious contexts. This edited volume focuses on AI as it is developed for religious settings and increasingly embedded in concrete religious practices. It offers an interdisciplinary and interreligious perspective on a rapidly evolving field. Technically oriented contributions provide insights into the development of specific AI tools for religious applications and explore the technical, conceptual, and design-related challenges involved. Contributions from theology, religious studies, and ethics analyze how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping religious communication and practices, reflect on the implications of these developments, and formulate guidelines and impulses for the responsible use of AI in religious contexts. By systematically bringing technical development into conversation with theological and ethical reflection, the volume bridges theory and practice. It is intended for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in religion in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

Digital duplicates (DDs), or artificial intelligence (AI) simulations of individual minds, are AI models designed to emulate real people. Depending on how they are trained, DDs can reproduce aspects or signs of a person’s psychology, values and communication style, enabling interaction with digital approximations of living, recently deceased or historical individuals. Proposed uses include education, advocacy, grief support, medical decision-­ making and the continuation of creative or personal projects. While potentially valuable, these applications also pose ethical risks such as privacy loss, misrepresentation, manipulation and the erosion of authentic human relationships. This paper argues that DDs should be treated as context-­ specific tools rather than general-­ purpose technologies. We outline a two-­ tier ethical framework grounded in considerations of harm and proportionality, supported by the values of information permission, transparency, authenticity and appropriate access. The framework unites diverse moral concerns under a single framework while allowing their relative weight to vary across domains such as medicine, education, memorialisation and entertainment. By situating ethical evaluation within a harm-­ reduction approach that is sensitive to context, we offer a practical basis for the responsible development and governance of human-emulating AI systems.

Contemporary technologies increasingly connect people, knowledge systems, values, institutions, and normative traditions across cultural boundaries, while the ethical infrastructures used to evaluate them can remain comparatively bounded. We argue that the resulting challenge is not simply insufficient diversity, but how differences are related, authorized, and transformed. We develop hybridity as a second-order concept for examining these processes in ethics of technology. Distinguishing hybrid configurations, processes of hybridization, and the act of naming something hybrid, we inquire when hybridity becomes ethically salient and under what conditions it can be good. We propose five dimensions—ontological, epistemological, socio-political, methodological, and institutional—and five provisional criteria for good hybridity: visibility, interpretive authority, revisability, reciprocity, and accountability. Good hybridity, on our account, requires more than the presence or consultation of different perspectives. Relevant differences must become consequentially related, encounters must have the capacity to transform the frameworks through which problems are understood, and the resulting configuration must remain open to contestation and answerability. This paper invites ethicists of technology and intercultural-comparative ethicists to contribute to the topical collection Towards a Hybrid Ethics of Technology. Bridging Ethics of Technology and Intercultural-Comparative Ethics and to its transformative research agenda.

It has become commonplace to acknowledge that the human being is no isolated entity but is rather a relational being that attains a particular shape as a result of its relation to other entities. This has resulted in a variety of so-called relational approaches in the ethics and philosophy of technology, to the extent that one might speak of a broader “relational trend”. However, the concept of relationality and its implications often remain unclear in ethical discussions and even more so when applied to specific technologies. In this paper, we provide a deeper understanding of what defines relational approaches by examining qualitative differences in the way relationality is understood and integrated into philosophical approaches. We do so by focusing on three prominent relational approaches in the philosophy of technology: postphenomenology, actor-network theory, and new materialism. The sense in which these approaches are relational will be qualified with reference to six themes: (1) ontological commitments, (2) boundaries between entities, (3) subjectivity, (4) agency, (5) anthropocentrism, (6) normativity. We conclude that there does not appear to be a shared view of what relationality entails, nor a shared normative stance or framework that provides clear ethical guidance. In response to this, we make some suggestions concerning the shared vector that could unify different approaches.

This paper offers a relational response to Jeff Sebo’s The Moral Circle and its moral-expansionist framework under conditions of uncertainty. While Sebo argues that we should consider not only which beings matter but which beings might matter, and extends this precautionary logic to animals, AI systems, and other marginal cases, we argue that this framework leaves underexamined the standpoint from which moral-circle expansion is undertaken. A relational approach does not reject the importance of avoiding moral exclusion. Rather, it reframes the question by asking what it means to “expand” the moral circle in the first place, how moral circles are historically and socially constituted, and who has the authority to draw and redraw their boundaries. On this view, moral significance does not arise solely from intrinsic properties such as sentience, agency, or welfare capacity, but also from the relations, institutions, practices, and power structures through which beings become ethically salient. We therefore ask not simply whether AI belongs within the moral circle, but how the very framing of inclusion is shaped when AI systems are in view. We argue that Sebo’s critique of human exceptionalism remains partially constrained by a human standpoint that continues to administer inclusion. The paper concludes that the ethical challenge posed by AI is not only to determine whether artificial systems belong within the moral circle, but also to examine how moral relations are formed, mediated, and governed in increasingly complex sociotechnical worlds.

With death bots, AI-enabled digital representations of deceased individuals can be created. While religions have long played a central role in death and mourning practices, this domain is increasingly being taken over by companies and commercial enterprises. In this article, I aim to reintroduce the perspective of religions, specifically that of Christian ethics, into the emerging discourse on death tech. I ask how a Christian ethical perspective might approach death technology, whether such technology is compatible with Christianity, whether it is meaningful, what challenges it presents, and how it can be responsibly shaped. The article introduces three key ethical lenses from the standpoint of Christian ethics: (a) Anthropology and Relationality, (b) Vulnerability and Deception, and (c) Justice: Humans and Earth. Here, in addition to necessary critique, I also explore constructive ways in which technology can be beneficial for religious communities. I conclude with a perspective of hope (Jürgen Moltmann)—a hope grounded in the present.

In this reply, we respond to Hayate Shimizu’s and Masaki Ooka’s commentary “Relational Selfhood, Queering and Design Risks: A Commentary on van der Horst and Puzio” (2026) on our article “Queering Sex Robots Beyond Diversifying Design? Insights from Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism” (van der Horst & Puzio, 2026) in which we explore the possibilities of diversifying the debate on queering sex robots. In this reply to their commentary, we respond to their two main claims - regarding the ontological status of the relational sexual self and the ethical sensitivity necessary to translate ‘designing for friction’ from theory to practice – and aim to continue the discussion on queering sex robots.

Contemporary humanoid sex robots have been rightfully criticized for their heteronormative and misogynistic design. In this article, we aim to explore the diverse possibilities of queering sex robots. While previous research on queering sex robots has predominantly suggested making humanoid sex robots more diverse by offering more options in terms of the designed gender, age, skin color, body shape, etc. of the robot, our aim is to think the question of queering sex robots beyond diversifying humanoid design options alone. To do this, we present two theories in tandem — Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism — to approach this possibility. Our paper, therefore, accomplishes two things: first, we provide philosophical and ethical foundations for queering sex robots based on Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism. Second, we derive implications from these insights on how sex robots can be queered beyond multiplying humanoid design options.

We endorse policymakers’ efforts to address the negative consequences of the attention economy’s technology but add that these approaches are often limited in their criticism of the systemic context of human attention. Starting from Buddhist philosophy, we advocate a broader approach: an ‘ecology of attending’ that centers on conceptualizing, designing, and using attention (1) in an embedded way and (2) focused on the alleviating of suffering. With ‘embedded’ we mean that attention is not a neutral, isolated mechanism but a meaning-engendering part of an ‘ecology’ of bodily, sociotechnical and moral frameworks. With ‘focused on the alleviation of suffering’ we mean that we explicitly move away from the (often implicit) conception of attention as a tool for gratifying desires. We analyze existing inquiries in these directions and urge them to be intensified and integrated. As to the design and function of our technological environment, we propose three questions for further research: How can technology help to acknowledge us as ‘ecological’ beings, rather than as self-sufficient individuals? How can technology help to raise awareness of our moral framework? And how can technology increase the conditions for ‘attending’ to the alleviation of suffering, by substituting our covert self-driven moral framework with an ecologically attending one? We believe in the urgency of transforming the inhumane attention economy sociotechnical system into a humane ecology of attending, and in our ability to contribute to it.

Philosophers love a hierarchy. Nothing seems to fit the needs and desires of the moral imagination more than the promise of a clean, orderly ladder of moral worth with (not surprisingly) humans at the top, a few “higher” animals somewhere beneath, plants and rocks at the bottom, and now, far outside the frame, artificial agents politely waiting their turn. In addition, it is in the context of AI that this impulse to police the moral boundary has returned with renewed urgency. Many commentators, including Adrianna de Ruiter in her recently published essay ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ (2025), warn that relational approaches to AI moral status are dangerous, misleading, or lacking philosophical rigor. They insist that we must firmly anchor moral considerability in some intrinsic, scientifically respectable property (i.e., sentience, consciousness, phenomenal experience, and vulnerability) and that anything less—especially when it comes to AI—is dangerous.

Healthcare is one of the domains in which artificial intelligence (AI) is already having a major impact. Of interest is the idea of the digital twin (DT), an AI-powered technology that generates a real-time representation of the patient’s body, offering the possibility of more personalised care. Our main thesis in this paper is that the DT does not merely represent the patient’s body but produces a specific body. We argue, from a philosophical perspective and an ethical-phenomenological approach, that the virtual body created by the DT has a major impact on one’s self-understanding, having consequences for gender expression and identification, and for health. This has deep implications for people who do not conform to gender normativity, for example, trans individuals. We advocate that, with thoughtful development, DT technology can and should be empowering, contributing to better addressing the diversity of bodies and facilitating trans people’s experience in healthcare contexts.

In the field of ethics of LLMs, agency is a highly contested topic: Can LLMs perform agency? The current discourse on the agency of LLMs is heavily shaped by a traditional, properties-based, individualistic, and anthropocentric approach. In contrast, I propose a relational and network-based approach to agency, drawing on Actor-Network Theory and New Materialism, which is open to non-human agency and a plurality of agencies. Building on this relational, non-anthropocentric per- spective, I also introduce a material perspective that has been largely overlooked in the LLM discourse. While LLMs are often thought of as immaterial, I develop a framework that distinguishes various dimensions of their materiality. I refer both to their material production and conditions, as well as how they concretely materialize in our devices and the materializing effects they have on us and our bodies. This perspective highlights the connection of LLMs with culture and material practices, cultural and social values: they are part of us, our culture, our time, politics, and our society. It also shifts the focus from human users as individual agents and opens up a view of the hidden network of multiple agents – human workers, big tech actors, environmental and technological non-human agents, and more – while drawing attention to the diversity and specificities of agencies. This shift transforms the questions currently posed in the ethics of LLMs and opens up new avenues for ethical inquiry.

Wie verändern sich Mensch und Körper durch Technik? Und welches Menschenverständnis vertritt der Transhumanismus? Anna Puzio befasst sich in der ersten philosophischen Studie zur Anthropologie des Transhumanismus mit führenden Personen des Feldes, u. a. mit Nick Bostrom, David Pearce und Natasha Vita-More. Neben Körperoptimierung und Medizintechnologien beleuchtet sie auch Alltagstechnologien wie Wearables. Dabei entwickelt sie einen neuen Ansatz zur Technikanthropologie und ein neues inklusives Menschen- und Körperverständnis im Anschluss an Donna Haraway und den Kritischen Posthumanismus im amerikanischen Raum.

In ‘Digital Twins for Trans People in Healthcare: Queer, Phenomenological and Bioethical Considerations’,1 we examine the use of digital twin (DT) technology for transgender individuals. Our central thesis is that a DT does not merely represent the patient’s body, but actively produces a specific kind of body, thereby exerting significant influence on gender identity, self-understanding and embodiment. We propose a framework for the development and use of DTs for trans persons in healthcare as a starting point for future discussions on inclusive DT technology. This challenge has been taken up by many scholars, who have responded with commentaries that offer valuable insights and contributions to the ongoing discourse. Boretti highlights the practical and ethical challenges of creating inclusive DTs. Boretti proposes reinterpreting biomedical principles through a queer bioethical framework, reflects on more inclusive methods of data collection and explores participatory co-design for developing DTs that integrate the lived experiences of trans persons.2 Boretti also provides a helpful figure outlining the key ethical considerations. Wang focuses on how DTs can create false expectations at the physiological level, with patients relying more on the information provided by the technology than on their own bodily experiences.3 As a …

The AI Act advances a risk-based approach to the legal regulation of AI systems in the European Union. While we support this development, we argue that adequate AI governance requires paying attention to the broader implications of AI systems on the socio-technical landscape in which they are designed, developed, and used. In addition to risk-based impact assessments, this involves coming to terms with the socially disruptive implications of AI, which should be governed and guided in a dynamic ecosystem of regulation, law, ethics, and evolving human practice. In this paper, we outline a ‘social disruptiveness-based’ approach to AI governance aimed at addressing disruptions by AI that are not easily captured by legal regulation, but that are nonetheless of great societal and ethical concern. We argue that integrating the AI Act risk-based approach with a social disruptiveness-based approach can offer a more nuanced understanding of the dimensions of impact of AI systems on society at large, thus enhancing the governance of AI and other socially disruptive technologies.

In response to the increasing interest in (designing for) human vulnerability within the field of responsible computing, we articulate the multi-dimensionality of the concept of vulnerability to deepen and enrich the conversations about the relationship between vulnerabilities and the design of assistive technologies. Drawing on different philosophical traditions and insights from critical disability studies, we introduce three perspectives on vulnerability–the individualist, relationalist, and enactivist perspectives–that each emphasize a different aspect of what it means to be vulnerable. We argue that, for engineers in the field of responsible computing, it is key to be able to adopt all three perspectives and explicitly and critically reflect upon what each perspective or combination of perspectives brings to the design context at hand. When used in conjunction, the three perspectives together can mitigate the risk of creating technological interventions that may aim to ameliorate vulnerabilities but instead exacerbate or create new ones. To move forward, we call for further reflections and practical considerations on how to best integrate the three perspectives on vulnerability into participatory design practices; how to distribute responsibilities within design teams to ensure that all perspectives are genuinely adopted and engaged with; and how to foster creative, out-of- the- box thinking for assistive technology design.

The new avatars and bots modeled after humans, the large language models with a “persona,” and the seemingly autonomously acting robots raise the question of whether AI technologies can also possess personhood or at least be part of our personhood. Do we extend our personhood through living or death bots in the digital realm? This article explores the application of the moral concept of personhood to AI technologies. It presents a twofold thesis: first, it illustrates, through various examples, how the concept of personhood is being disrupted in the context of AI technologies. Second, it discusses the potential evolution of the concept and argues for abandoning the personhood concept in AI ethics, based on reasons such as its vagueness, harmful and discriminatory character, and disconnection from society. Finally, the article outlines future perspectives for approaches moving forward, emphasizing the need for conceptual justice in moral concepts.

The new pope - an American! What amazes and concerns the whole world is particularly relevant here in California - and brings the question of artifi-cial intelligence into play. We are on site, Anna Puzio at the University of California Berkeley, Alexander Filipović at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. Having been here for a few weeks, we are still impressed by the Californian way of life: friendly, relaxed people, welcoming encounters in eve-ry situation, people who are still fit in old age, theologians who are open-minded and curiously critical when it comes to technology and digital life-styles. Pope Leo XIII fits the bill: casual and friendly, emotional and ap-proachable, good-looking, healthy, obviously interested in sport and sporty - and with a smartwatch on his wrist. He could also have been cast in the “Conclave” movie. Our local friends and acquaintances are thrilled. David writes right after the election: "I'm in shock", while another colleague comments with relief: "He's a very good guy and not a nut for sure." Suggested citation: Puzio, Anna/Filipovic, Alexander: Leo XIV - An AI Pope? Insights and Perspectives from California. In: Feinschwarz (2025). English Translation. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24700.45446. Link

Der neue Papst - ein Amerikaner! Was die ganze Welt verwundert und beschäftigt, löst hier in Kalifornien besondere Relevanz aus - und bringt die Frage nach der Künstlichen Intelligenz ins Spiel. Wir sind vor Ort, Anna Puzio an der University of California Berkeley, Alexander Filipovic an der Santa Clara University im Silicon Valley. Seit ein paar Wochen hier sind wir immer noch beeindruckt von der Kalifornischen Lebensweise, freundliche entspannte Menschen, einladende Begegnungen in jeder Situation, Menschen im hohen Alter noch fit, Theolog:innen offen und neugierig-kritisch im Blick auf Technik und digitale Lebensweisen. Papst Leo XIII. passt ins Bild: Lässig-freundlich, emotional und nahbar, gut aussehend, gesund, offenbar sportinteressiert und sportlich – und am Handgelenk eine Smartwatch. Mit ihm hätte man auch den Konklave-Film besetzen können. Unsere Bekannten und Freunde hier vor Ort sind begeistert. David schreibt unmittelbar nach der Wahl: “I’m in shock”, ein weiterer Kollege schreibt erleichtert: "He’s a very good guy and not a nut for sure.” Unser Leben in den USA wird aber auch geprägt von Trump und seinem Druck auf Hochschulbildung, Diversity und Migrierende. Seit Wochen macht Trump natürlich auch hier die Schlagzeilen. Die Stimmung im aufgeweckten, demoratisch-offenen Kalifornien mit seiner großen LQBTQ+ Community ist gedrückt. News-Avoiding ist auch ein kalifornischer “Sport” - um nicht sehen zu müssen, was sich Trump heute wieder einfallen lässt. Der örtliche Tesla-Händler in Berkeley in der 4th Street wird zum Nukleus der Anti-Musk Proteste. Schlagzeile: “How Tesla’s Berkeley showroom became a ground zero for anti-Trump protests”. In vielen Fenstern in Berkeley hängt ein schlichtes Schild: “Resist!”. Über “Alcatraz”, das Trump wieder als Gefängnis reaktivieren will – nur fassungsloses Kopfschütteln. Nun aber Leo, der Amerikaner. Was können wir, mit einem amerikanischen Blick der Westküste, für sein Pontifikat erwarten? Zitationsvorschlag: Puzio, Anna/Filipovic, Alexander: Leo XIV. – Ein KI-Papst? Einsichten und Perspektiven aus Kalifornien. In: Feinschwarz (2025).

Healthcare is one of the domains in which artificial intelligence (AI) is already having a major impact. Of interest is the idea of the digital twin (DT), an AI-powered technology that generates a real-time representation of the patient’s body, offering the possibility of more personalised care. Our main thesis in this paper is that the DT does not merely represent the patient’s body but produces a specific body. We argue, from a philosophical perspective and an ethical-phenomenological approach, that the virtual body created by the DT has a major impact on one’s self-understanding, having consequences for gender expression and identification, and for health. This has deep implications for people who do not conform to gender normativity, for example, trans individuals. We advocate that, with thoughtful development, DT technology can and should be empowering, contributing to better addressing the diversity of bodies and facilitating trans people’s experience in healthcare contexts.

In times of rapid technological progress, transhumanism, which strives for radical technological transformations of the human being, spreads its ideas with great publicity and media impact. Although these ideas are directed towards the future, they influence how we understand humans, bodies, and technology today. T his article exam­ ines the anthropology of transhumanism and investigates the extent to which it offers approaches for the contemporary anthropology of body optimisation. T he article comes to the conclusion that the understanding of the human being in transhumanism is prob­ lematic in many respects and therefore not suitable for the further development of a contemporary philosophical anthropology. Nevertheless, corrective perspectives for an anthropology of contemporary body optimisation can be derived from these problems.

Self-tracking-technologies can serve as a prominent example of how digital technologies put to test established practices, institutions, and structures of medicine and healthcare. While proponents emphasize the potentials, e.g., for individualized healthcare and new research data, opponents stress the risk that these technologies will reinforce gender-related inequalities. While this has been made clear from—often intersectional—feminist perspectives since the introduction of such technologies, we aim to provide a queer-feminist perspective on self-tracking applications in healthcare by analyzing three concrete cases. In this way, we want to show why such a perspective is helpful in assessing self-tracking technologies and how such a perspective might contribute to a queering of healthcare. After a short introduction to self-tracking in healthcare and the corresponding risks of reproducing gender-related inequalities, we introduce queer bioethics as a methodology to examine structural discrimination and marginalization in bioethical research. We apply this framework in the analysis of three exemplary self-tracking applications from the areas of nutrition/fitness, reproductive health, and mental health. In the subsequent discussion of these results against the backdrop of already existing queer-sensitive technologies, we identify an equal access, a subversive design, an inclusive database, and a diversity-sensitive and discriminatory-critical definition of purposes as well as individualized usage possibilities as first possible starting points for a queering of self-tracking applications. Finally, we draw conclusions, how such a critical perspective on self-tracking applications might also contribute to a queering of the healthcare system at a structural level.

Technological advancements raise anthropological questions: How do humans differ from technology? Which human capabilities are unique? Is it possible for robots to exhibit consciousness or intelligence, capacities once taken to be exclusively human? Despite the evident need for an anthropological lens in both societal and research contexts, the philosophical anthropology of technology has not been established as a set discipline with a defined set of theories, especially concerning emerging technologies. In this paper, I will utilize a New Materialist approach, focusing particularly on the theories of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, to explore their potential for an anthropology of technology. I aim to develop a techno-anthropological approach that is informed and enriched by New Materialism. This approach is characterized by its relational perspective, a dynamic and open conception of the human being, attention to diversity and the dynamics of power in knowledge production and ontology, and an emphasis on the non-human. I aim to outline an anthropology of technology centered on New Materialism, wherein the focus, paradoxically, is not exclusively on humans but equally on non-human entities and the entanglement with the non-human. As will become clear, the way we understand humans and their relationship with technology is fundamental for our concepts and theories in ethics of technology.

Existing ethical guidelines that aim to guide the development of mental health apps tend to overemphasize the role of Western conceptual frameworks. While such frameworks have proved to be a useful first step in introducing ethics to a previously unregulated industry, the rapid global uptake of mental health apps requires thinking more deeply about the diverse populations these apps seek to serve. One way to do this is to introduce more intercultural ethical perspectives into app design and the guidelines that aim to encourage best practices. In addition to this, existing ethical guidelines can also benefit from the ethical scholarship from the feminist and disability traditions, both of which highlight specific ethical considerations for vulnerable users. Rethinking the ethical responsibilities of mental health app designers through the prisms of feminism, disability studies, and intercultural philosophy leads us to a more global and inclusive set of ethical considerations in app design. This white paper explores what existing guidelines for the regulation of mental health apps are missing. It also explores how these guidelines could be improved for users who inhabit an increasingly diverse and globalized world.