Conference Agenda

Postphenomenology’s recognition that technological artifacts play an active role in our lives by mediating our experiences and actions in the world has proven a powerful perspective for analyzing what things do. However, the relational ontology (and subject-object co-constitutionality) that undergirds this perspective has important implications for the way in which we consider ourselves and our relation to our environment. One of the more pertinent implications concerns our (notion of) freedom: from a postphenomenological perspective, there is no escape from technological mediation. Even if Ihde describes some rare situations as unmediated I-World relations (see his example of sitting on the beach (Ihde, 1990 p. 45)), notions of sedimentation (Aagaard, 2021; Rosenberger, 2012) and the technological gaze (Lewis, 2020) put such a characterization as unmediated into question. In sum, we may never ‘be free’ from mediation’s influence.

As such, a notion of freedom that builds on a modern, autonomous subject will no longer do. This has not, however, led postphenomenologists to disavow the notion of freedom but to transform it through a Foucaultian lens, a freedom always within and in relation to the things that shape us: a freedom without escape. This rehabilitation of freedom without escape in turn prompted some (e.g., Dorrestijn, 2012; Verbeek, 2011) to propose a Foucaultian ethics of technologically mediated subjectivation wherein such a mediated freedom is central. However, this presupposes 1) that there is indeed no escape, and 2) that given the former, ethics must be grounded within mediation. This paper will contest 1) by exploring two possible escape routes or ‘outsides’ of mediation in which we may find forms of freedom ánd some possible ethical grounds. Interestingly, those two escape routes point us in radically different directions.

The first is characterized by transcendence, by an orientation outward towards height: it is the encounter with the Other as it appears in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. The Other presents itself, breaks through my Being-at-home-with-myself and calls me to responsibility “from beyond Being” (Levinas, 1998 p. 11). While my experience of the other may be technologically mediated, the Other’s infinity is what (or better put, who) escapes mediation. This encounter is what grants me a paradoxical freedom by constituting self-consciousness: it is the possibility to turn my back the very Other that needs me.

Where Levinas finds escape ‘towards God’, our second escape route proclaims God is dead. That is, we may find a form of escape that is oriented inwards, to a freedom in becoming rather than being. Specifically, we mean a fundamental engagement in embodied movement inspired by the role(s) that dancing (Tanz) play(s) in Nietzsche, from pedagogically valuable to achieving a self-sufficient freedom in ‘joyous creation’. To dance is to engage the wisdom and values of one’s body and to engage in a most fundamental process of bodily becoming, of self-creation on a level that may sometimes escape mediation.

If these escape routes prove successful, we may yet find some freedom and ethics for our technological lives outside of mediation.

References:

Dorrestijn, S. (2012). The design of our own lives: Technical mediation and subjectivation after Foucault [University of Twente].

Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the Lifeworld. Indiana University Press.

Levinas, E. (1998). Secularization and Hunger. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 20/21(2/1), 3–12.

Lewis, R. S. (2020). Technological Gaze: Understanding How Technologies Transform Perception. In A. Daly, F. Cummins, J. Jardine, & D. Moran (Eds.), Perception and the Inhuman Gaze (pp. 128–142). Routledge.

Rosenberger, R. (2012). Embodied technology and the dangers of using the phone while driving. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11(1), 79–94.

Verbeek, P.-P. (2011). Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. The University of Chicago Press.

As the world we live in is increasingly shaped by our own technological creations, notions of ecosystem integrity and ‘nature’ fall short to describe the quality of contemporary human-environment relations. While humans have always altered their surroundings, the current trends in domestication, management, and digitalization of the environment by technological means represent a significant shift in our relationship with the world around us. The biosphere itself, at levels from the genetic to the landscape, is increasingly a human product.

The aim of this paper is to propose the notion of a Technological Environmentality Compass to guide discussions towards desirable technological mediations across humans, technologies, and the environment. For doing so, I will first analyze how technologies shape our possibilities for action in the environment and our possibilities of experiencing the environment. To achieve this, I will recur to Postphenomenology (Ihde 1990; Verbeek 2006) to illuminate the non-neutral role of everyday tools, digital media, infrastructure, and technological systems. Specifically, the concept of Technological Mediation will be used to explain both the existential dimension (how humans exist and behave in the world) and the hermeneutic dimension (how humans perceive and interpret the world) of human-technology-environment relations. Furthermore, I will build on the notion of ‘value-ladenness’ in technological design (van de Poel 2021) to claim that the non-neutral role of technologies translates into them having empowering and limiting roles. On the basis of their enabling and disabling characters, I will utilize the Capability Approach (Nussbaum 2011; Oosterlaken 2013) to sketch a compass for desirable technological mediations based on a naturalized understanding of homo faber as understood by Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris 2013), the Skilled Intentionality Framework (Rietveld 2014, 2021), and Niche Construction Theory (Laland 2016).

To envision such a Technological Environmentality Compass, I will:

1. Firstly explain that capabilities, namely real, substantive freedoms, or opportunities to choose to act, in a specific area of life deemed valuable, are fundamentally shaped by specific bio-cultural environments, which imply not only ‘natural goods and ecological services’, but also the enabling or disabling relations –both voluntary and involuntary– mediated by everyday tools, digital media, infrastructure, and technological systems;

2. After laying out the co-constitutional relationship between humans, technologies, and the environment, my main goal is to highlight the importance of adopting a critical perspective towards the technologies we aspire to develop, as well as to critically examine the recursive effect that human-made environments have on us. For this purpose I will build-on Nussbaum’s (2001) ‘Control Over One’s Environment’ capability to include ‘Technological Environmentality’ (Aydin, González Woge, and Verbeek 2019) as a crucial dimension of our contemporary life-world;

3. Finally, I will expand on Holland’s (2008) work on ‘Sustainable Ecological Capacity’ as a Meta-Capability and highlight that the accumulation of altered environmental characteristics, whether deliberate or accidental, significantly impacts anthropogenic practices over time and causes biological adaptations to emerge from the reciprocal interactions between humans and the technological environments. Furthermore, this dynamic relationship also shapes future generations of humans, their cultural activities, and other organisms.

To conclude, the Technological Environmentality Compass will be based on the Capability Approach as a non-essentialist, dynamic framework that allows for the analysis of co-evolutionary relations between humans, technologies and the environment. My ultimate objective is to enrich the discourse on identifying and prioritizing the human capabilities that we should aim to preserve, sustain, modify, design, and create as we continue to advance and engineer both our environment and ourselves.

References

- Aydin, C., González Woge, M., and Verbeek, P-P. (2019): “Technological Environmentality: Conceptualizing Technology as a Mediating Milieu”. Philosophy & Technology, 32(2), 321-338.

- Holland, B. (2008): “Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach: Why Sustainable Ecological Capacity Is a Meta-Capability” in Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 319-332.

- Ihde, D. (1990): Technology and the Lifeworld: from Garden to Earth. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology.

- Laland, K., Matthews, B., and Feldman, MW. (2016). “An introduction to niche construction theory” in Evolutionary Ecology 30:191-202.

- Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. MIT Press.

- Oosterlaken, I. (2013): Taking a Capability Approach to Technology and its Design: A Philosophical Exploration. Netherlands, Simon Stevin Series in the Ethics of Technology, 3TU.

- Nussbaum, M. (2011): Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

- Van Dijk, L., and Rietveld, E. (2017). “Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework” in Frontiers in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Volume 7 - 2016. ● Van de Poel, I. (2021). “Design for value change” in Ethics Information Technology 23, 27–31.

- Verbeek, P-P. (2006). “Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation” in Science, Technology, & Human Values, 31: 36.

The environmental crisis demands a comprehensive reevaluation of strategies to promote moral behavior, transcending traditional education and embracing innovative technological solutions. Internalist models, which emphasize interventions like neural stimulants and psychotropic enhancements to foster empathy and cooperation, have gained prominence in recent discourse. However, while *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement* (Persson & Savulescu, 2012) compellingly argues for the necessity of moral enhancement, its proposed internalist methods often struggle to bridge the persistent "knowing-doing gap," where moral understanding does not translate into action.

This paper proposes an "externalist approach" to moral enhancement, building on Peter-Paul Verbeek’s theory of technological mediation (Verbeek, 2011) and B.F. Skinner’s behavioral reinforcement principles (Skinner, 1974). Verbeek highlights the role of technology in shaping human perception and action, while Skinner’s work demonstrates how environmental factors influence behavior without requiring cognitive intermediaries. Together, these insights support the development of external, low-tech interventions that directly and visibly modify behavior.

The externalist approach prioritizes the tangible and visible elements of the environment as key factors in shaping moral behavior. Unlike internalist methods that depend on bioengineering or pharmacological means, this approach uses technologies and designs that interact with individuals in their everyday surroundings. For instance, simple architectural adjustments, such as making stairs more accessible than elevators, can subtly guide behavior without imposing on individual autonomy. Such interventions are grounded in behavioral economics, which highlights the importance of external triggers in shaping habitual actions (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). This paper's externalist approach echoes these principles, providing complementary theoretical support for designing environments that nudge individuals toward morally desirable behaviors.

Furthermore, this paper integrates perspectives from contemporary discussions on moral enhancement, emphasizing the ethical implications of external interventions. Unlike invasive internalist methods, external approaches uphold transparency and maintain individual agency, offering scalable solutions to complex moral challenges. By aligning human behavior with ethical objectives through environmental design, this approach not only bridges the knowing-doing gap but also fosters a culture of collective responsibility and sustainable moral practices.

This framework demonstrates that externalist strategies can redefine how societies address pressing global issues, such as the environmental crisis, by leveraging everyday technologies and designs to achieve significant behavioral transformations. Ultimately, this approach highlights the potential for low-tech, scalable, and ethically sound solutions to foster meaningful change in moral behavior.

References:

Persson, I., & Savulescu, J. (2012). *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Skinner, B.F. (1974). *About Behaviorism*. New York: Knopf.

Verbeek, P.P. (2011). *Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thaler, R.H., & Sunstein, C.R. (2008). *Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness*. New Haven: Yale University Press.