Valena Reich

Analysis of student engagement with technology has mainly focused on physical and mental health, predominantly overlooking deeper philosophical issues. Through the analysis of four focus groups (children aged 12–14, n = 13) using Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology (1977), this study expands existing research by providing empirical insight into children’s relationships with nature, others, and themselves. Framed by the question, “Do computers make the world a better place?”, student responses were revisited after philosophical group discussion. Initially optimistic, students became more neutral after reflecting on how technology mediates their relationships with nature and human beings. From the content of the discussions, we observed that half of the groups’ position towards nature aligned with Heidegger’s concept of ‘enframing’ (Ge-stell), defining the world and all its objects as mere resources to their designed ends. Analysis of children’s relationships with others and themselves indicate that they would agree with Heidegger’s philosophy that it is not the right way of perceiving the world, with technology not being helpful or even hindering building authentic relationships with people and themselves. In response, we suggest that teaching philosophy of technology and encouraging engagement with art and critical lenses can help children develop an understanding of being beyond technology, fostering deeper relationships with themselves, others, and nature. Whilst small in scale, this study contributes to ongoing debates in the philosophy of technology by offering empirical evidence of how children’s technological environments shape their ontological self-understanding—an area that remains underexplored in both philosophical and educational research.

Questioning the ethical reasoning behind ways of attributing value to lives impacts philosophical dilemmas encountered in policy making and innovation in AI. For instance, this sort of reasoning requires us to determine how self-driving cars should behave when encountering real-life dilemmas such as inevitably crashing into one person as opposed to a group of people. This issue will be examined with the Rocks Case, a case of conflict of interest where all the relevant parties are strangers, and we can either save one person or a group of five. The two courses of action which will be discussed in this paper are: 1) “Ought to Save the Many” (OSM) and 2) “Permitted to Save the Few” (PSF). The position of PSF using a weighted lottery will be argued for, rather than acting according to utilitarian or contractualist OSM reasoning, on the grounds that it would give all persons involved a fair opportunity of survival. This is judged to be a more important criterion than merely maximising the number of people to rescue.