Jeroen Hopster

Philosophers of technology have identified various mechanisms through which technology can change moral norms, values, beliefs and practices. Danaher and Sætra (2023) offer a useful systematization of these mechanisms, with no claim to being exhaustive. We contribute to their work by analyzing how the mediating role of moral concepts fits into this scheme. First, we point out that concepts mediate the moral effects of technological changes, a process we call conceptual mediation. We illustrate this with the concepts of ‘brain death’ and ‘reproductive autonomy’, whose moral implications crystallized in the interplay with new medical technologies. Subsequently, we argue that conceptual mediation is best understood as a type of second-order mediation, which channels the moral implications of the first-order technological mediations identified by Danaher and Sætra (decisional, relational, perceptual). We conclude that second-order mediation plays a central and underappreciated role in processes of technomoral change.

This chapter provides a theoretical lens on conceptual disruption. It offers a typology of conceptual disruption, discusses its relation to conceptual engineering, and sketches a programmatic view of the implications of conceptual disruption for the ethics of technology. We begin by distinguishing between three different kinds of conceptual disruptions: conceptual gaps, conceptual overlaps, and conceptual misalignments. Subsequently, we distinguish between different mechanisms of conceptual disruption, and two modes of conceptual change. We point out that disruptions may be induced by technology, but can also be triggered by intercultural exchanges. Conceptual disruptions frequently yield conceptual uncertainty and may call for conceptual and ethical inquiry. We argue that a useful approach to address conceptual disruptions is to engage in conceptual engineering. We outline what conceptual engineering involves and argue that discussions on conceptual disruption and conceptual engineering can benefit from closer integration. In closing, we discuss the relevance of studying conceptual disruption for technology ethics, and point to the promise of this line of research to innovate practical philosophy at large.

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.

Critical reflection on the material, environmental, and social conditions underlying technology remains peripheral to the field of technology ethics. In this commentary, I underwrite the diagnosis by Vandemeulebroucke et al. (2025) that the field suffers from an “extractivist blindspot”, but propose a somewhat different cure. First, rather than focusing on the material ontogenesis of technical artefacts, a more radical turn away from artefacts is called for, towards layered socio-technical systems as the field’s core object of analysis. Second, notwithstanding the merits of their intercultural proposal, I argue that in overcoming extractivism the conceptual resources of more adjacent philosophical traditions should not be overlooked.

The ambition to decarbonize societies calls for a normative theory of just transitions. An important aspect of such a theory is to scrutinize the moral entitlements of stakeholders whose status quo expectations get frustrated in the course of sustainability transitions. The concept of legitimate expectations (LE) has been advanced as a core constituent of such a theory but has also been criticized for the conceptual confusion it attracts. In this article I address this criticism by elucidating the concept and its normative grounds. This yields two theoretical insights that are novel to the debate on LE. First, I argue that there are three different kinds of claims that go by the name of LE, whose normative grounding structures differ. Second, I argue that warranted appeals to having LE should have some degree of justificatory support, but that the degree of justification may weaken over time. Accordingly, while LE are morally weighty and give rise to pro tanto duties, they may be superseded if circumstances change. In closing, I show how this account can help to interpret and evaluate claims about transitional climate justice.

Considering public moral attitudes is a hallmark of the anticipatory governance of emerging biotechnologies, such as heritable human genome editing. However, such anticipatory governance often overlooks that future morality is open to change and that future generations may perform different moral assessments on the very biotechnologies we are trying to govern in the present. In this article, we identify an ’anticipatory gap’ that has not been sufficiently addressed in the discussion on the public governance of heritable genome editing, namely, uncertainty about the moral visions of future generations about the emerging applications that we are currently attempting to govern now. This paper motivates the relevance of this anticipatory gap, identifying the challenges it generates and offering various recommendations so that moral uncertainty does not lead to governance paralysis with regard to human germline genome editing.

Philosophers of technology have identified various mechanisms through which technology can change moral norms, values, beliefs and practices. Danaher and Sætra ( 2023 ) offer a useful systematization of these mechanisms, with no claim to being exhaustive. We contribute to their work by analyzing how the mediating role of moral concepts fits into this scheme. First, we point out that concepts mediate the moral effects of technological changes, a process we call conceptual mediation. We illustrate this with the concepts of ‘brain death’ and ‘reproductive autonomy’, whose moral implications crystallized in the interplay with new medical technologies. Subsequently, we argue that conceptual mediation is best understood as a type of second-order mediation, which channels the moral implications of the first-order technological mediations identified by Danaher and Sætra (decisional, relational, perceptual). We conclude that second-order mediation plays a central and underappreciated role in processes of technomoral change.

In this special issue, we focus on the connection between conceptual engineering and the philosophy of technology. Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of introducing, eliminating, or revising words and concepts. The philosophy of technology examines the nature and significance of technology. We investigate how technologies such as AI and genetic engineering (so-called “socially disruptive technologies”) disrupt our practices and concepts, and how conceptual engineering can address these disruptions. We also consider how conceptual engineering can enhance the practice of ethical design. The issue features seven articles that discuss a range of topics, including trust in blockchain applications and the evolving concept of nature. These articles highlight that as technology changes the world and our concepts, conceptual engineering provides invaluable tools and frameworks to reflect on these changes and adapt accordingly.

Disruptive technologies can be conceptualized in different ways. Depending on how they are conceptualized, different ethical issues come into play. This article contributes to a general framework to navigate the ethics of disruptive technologies. It proposes three basic distinctions to be included in such a framework. First, emerging technologies may instigate localized “first-order” disruptions, or systemic “second-order” disruptions. The ethical significance of these disruptions differs: first-order disruptions tend to be of modest ethical significance, whereas second-order disruptions are highly significant. Secondly, technologies may be classified as disruptive based on their technological features or based on their societal impact. Depending on which of these classifications one adopts and takes as the starting point of ethical inquiry, different ethical questions are foregrounded. Thirdly, the ethics of disruptive technology raises concerns at four different levels of technology assessment: the technology level, the artifact level, the application level, and the society level. The respective suitability of approaches in technology ethics to address concerns about disruptive technologies co-varies with the respective level of analysis. The article clarifies these distinctions, thereby laying some of the groundwork for an ethical framework tailored for assessing disruptive technologies.

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform.

Recent scholarship on technology-induced ‘conceptual disruption’ has spotlighted the notion of a conceptual gap. Conceptual gaps have also been discussed in scholarship on epistemic injustice, yet up until now these bodies of work have remained disconnected. This article shows that ‘gaps’ of interest to both bodies of literature are closely related, and argues that a joint examination of conceptual disruption and epistemic injustice is fruitful for both fields. I argue that hermeneutical marginalization—a skewed division of hermeneutical resources, which serves to diminish the experiences of marginalized folk—does not only transpire because of conceptual gaps, but also because of two other kinds of conceptual disruption: conceptual overlaps and conceptual misalignments. Hence, there are multiple kinds of conceptual disruption that can be usefully studied through the normative lens of epistemic injustice. Technology can play different roles vis-a-vis epistemic injustices, both as a causal trigger of conceptual disruption, but also as a mediator of hermeneutical resources. Its role is normatively significant, in particular because socially disruptive technologies can have different epistemic implications for different groups: they may amplify the epistemic resources of some groups, while diminishing those of others.

Emerging technologies can have profound conceptual implications. Their emergence frequently calls for the articulation of new concepts, or for modifications and novel applications of concepts that are already entrenched in communication and thought. In this paper, we introduce the notion of “conceptual appropriation” to capture the dynamics between concepts and emerging technologies. By conceptual appropriation, we mean the novel application of a value-laden concept to lay a contestable claim on an underdetermined phenomenon. We illustrate the dynamics of conceptual appropriation by analyzing the concept NATURE and its uptake in three discourses of emerging technology: cellular agriculture, solar geo-engineering, and biomimicry. We argue that NATURE and its cognate NATURALNESS are strongly valanced concepts upon which different stakeholders lay a claim. In doing so, stakeholders advance distinct conceptions of nature, typically to suit their own interests. Our case-studies illustrate how in discourses on emerging technology, the application of value-concepts is entangled with ideological stakes and power dynamics.

While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent, and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics, and climate economics. The chapter discusses the IPCC’s preferred way of representing uncertainties and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses from a risk management perspective. Three general strategies for decision-makers to cope with climate uncertainty are outlined, the usefulness of which largely depends on whether decision-makers find themselves in a context of “deep uncertainty.” The chapter concludes that various uncertainties engrained in climate discourse cannot be overcome. It offers two recommendations to ease the work of policymakers, given this predicament.

Conceptual Engineering (CE) is thought to be generally aimed at ameliorating deficient concepts. In this paper, we challenge this assumption: we argue that CE is frequently undertaken with the orthogonal aim of _conceptual adaptation_. We develop this thesis with reference to the interplay between technology and concepts. Emerging technologies can exert significant pressure on conceptual systems and spark ‘conceptual disruption’. For example, advances in Artificial Intelligence raise the question of whether AIs are agents or mere objects, which can be construed as a CE question regarding the concepts AGENT and OBJECT. We distinguish between three types of conceptual disruption (conceptual gaps, conceptual overlaps, and conceptual misalignments) and argue that when CE occurs to address these disruptions, its primary aim is not to improve concepts, but to retain their functional quality, or to prevent them from degrading. This is the characteristic aim of CE when undertaken in philosophy of technology: to _preserve_ the functional role of a concept or conceptual scheme, rather than _improving_ how a concept fulfills its respective function.

A challenge faced by defenders of the precautionary principle is to clarify when the evidence that a harmful event might occur suffices to regard this prospect as a real possibility. Plausible versions of the principle must articulate some epistemic threshold, or de minimis requirement, which specifies when precautionary measures are justified. Critics have argued that formulating such a threshold is problematic in the context of the precautionary principle. First, this is because the precautionary principle appears to be ambiguous about the distinction between risk and uncertainty: should the principle merely be invoked when evidential probabilities are absent, or also when probabilities have low epistemic credentials? Secondly, defenders of the precautionary principle face an aggregation puzzle: in judging whether or not the de minimis requirement has been met, how should first-order evidential probabilities and their second-order epistemic standing be aggregated? This article argues that the ambiguity can be resolved, and the epistemological puzzle can be solved. Focusing on decisions in the context of climate uncertainty, I advance a version of the precautionary principle that serves as a plausible decision rule, to be adopted in situations where its main alternative—cost–benefit analysis—does not deliver.