Conference Agenda

A central problem in technology development is that technologies require valuable resources from the environment, such as energy and raw materials, whose extraction and production negatively affects ecosystem health. While there have long been demands and approaches in ethics to design technologies in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way, the approach of regenerative design has recently gained attention (Pedersen Zari 2018, Hecht et al. 2023). Regenerative design seeks to move beyond net-zero sustainability by designing technologies and infrastructures that actively contribute to restoring the capacity of ecosystems to function at optimal health (Reed 2007, Wahl 2016). The promise of regenerative design is to overcome anthropocentric relations and practices by supporting both human and non-human thriving.

In our paper, we explore this promise by examining the concept of agency in the context of regenerative design. Whereas traditional approaches argue that only humans possess agency, more relational approaches – such as postphenomenology, actor-network theory, and new materialism – attribute a form of agency to non-human entities such as technology and nature. We propose the thesis that human agency often acts as a disruptive force within nature, and that acknowledging the agency of non-human entities may provoke a shift towards less anthropocentric ways of being. Thus, our paper aims to bridge environmental philosophy and the philosophy of technology and design. Philosophy of technology has only recently started to take more seriously the material preconditions of technologies, and more research is needed to fill this gap (Kaplan 2017, Thompson 2020). Regenerative design presents an ideal case study by bringing together design practices and care for nature.

By adopting relational and more-than-human perspectives, we examine how regenerative design transforms these relationships and challenges anthropocentric frameworks. We argue that regenerative design prompts a rethinking of human-non-human relationships, emphasizing the entangled position of humans as part of an ecosystem. Key questions we address include: How should we understand human-non-human relationships within regenerative design? How are these relationships transformed in practice? What does it mean to design for relationships, and how can this be implemented effectively? To what extent does regenerative design risk recreating paternalistic forms of relation towards nature? Through this discussion, we aim to demonstrate how regenerative design fosters new relational paradigms that integrate humans, technology, and the environment in mutually beneficial ways.

References

Hecht, K., et al. (2023). Buildings as Living Systems—Towards a Tangible Framework for Ecosystem Services Design. Design for Climate Adaptation, Cham, Springer International Publishing.

Kaplan, D. M. (2017). Philosophy, technology, and the environment. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.

Pedersen Zari, M. (2018). Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry, Routledge.

Reed, B. (2007). "Shifting from ‘sustainability’ to regeneration." Building Research & Information 35(6): 674-680.

Thompson, P. B. (2020). Food and Agricultural Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective, Springer.

Wahl, D. C. (2016). Designing regenerative cultures. Axminster, England, Triarchy Press.

Taking opportunities to engage with materials, to make something, is an important aspect of human becoming and an important part of general education in many countries. Considering this aspect of human activity, Ihde and Malafouris (2018) revisited the notion of 'homo faber'. They suggest that human becoming involves both technical mediation and creative material engagement.

Given the dominant use of computer-aided design and manufacturing, the opportunities for human creativity through the direct manipulation of materials in education and the workplace has become reduced. At the same time, however, there is increased interest in leisure time craft activities, along with the development of maker spaces that allow individuals to work with materials and realise three-dimensional artifacts of their own. Such opportunities to engage with materials appears to allow individuals to work autonomously and with a degree of agency, but is this really the case?

This paper reports on an autoethnographic study aimed at exploring the agency and autonomy of an individual maker during the different stages of making a technological artifact (wooden stool) from original intention, through design and modelling, realisation in three dimensions, and eventual use. This example was selected as it was likely to involve the use of hand tools, machine tools and the use of the internet to research and source materials. Being a one-off, individually made, artifact it was also anticipated that a good deal of tacit knowledge would be used.

During the study data was collected in the form of sketches, photographs and reflective notes to capture the decision-making processes and the use of tacit and embodied knowledge at all stages. In addition to the reporting of step-by-step processes, the study also captured the personal experience of the maker and their feelings as they emerged.

In reporting and discussing the findings, links are made with both postphenomenology and material engagement theory. In doing so they raise questions about the extent to which these, and other philosophical perspectives, help in understanding the personal experience of those engaged with materials, tools and other forms of technology on a practical basis.

References

Ihde, D., Malafouris, L. (2019) Homo faber Revisited: Postphenomenology and Material Engagement Theory. Philos. Technol. 32, 195–214.

In traditional research on the relationship between human and technology, agency has always been a concept that has attracted much attention. Starting from Aristotle, agency is considered as an agent’s initiative in action. Since Giddens defined agency as the power of change, material agency has emerged. The emphasis on material agency emphasizes the positive role of matter in action, whether it is the material symmetry by Latour , or functionally co-substantial components emphasized by Malafouris, both actually emphasize the undeniable value of matter in the process of interaction with the agent and environment. The focus on material agency has been an considerable topic in the philosophy of technology for a long time, especially with the rise of topics such as information philosophy, artificial intelligence, and data ethics. Artificial agency, even artificial moral agency, has become an significant topic that cannot be avoided in the field of artificial intelligence philosophy. However, the causal agency that material agency relies on when discussing agency has been challenged by enactive approach, which propose to replace causal agency with organizational agency to understand its connotation. Because causal agency is still based on the hydrodynamic model of human action, while organizational agency emphasizes not the material encountered, but the world within itself.

Based on this, enactivitists propose enactive agency to re-understand the relationship between humans and the world. Enactive agency involves three conditions: self-individualization, interactive asymmetry, and normativity, which respectively point to the dimensions of organic, sensorimotor, and sociomaterial. A detailed analysis of enactive agency will help further contemplate the contemporary turn in the relationship between humans and technology. This turn contains at least four parts: a. The center of human-technology relationship is “relationship” rather than the entity of human or technology, and enactive agency, as a relational concept, recognizes the ontology of the relation, which provides a prerequisite for the understanding of “relationship” in human-technology relationship. b. The “relationship” in the human-technology relationship is the process of emergence, and the relationship is the coupling with the environment in the process of human-technology interaction, in which the enactive relationship and encative agency emerge. c. The “relationship” in the human-technology relationship is also a kind of “entanglement”, where the entanglement is not only limited to the human body (sensorimotor) and technological materials, but also includes social, cultural, linguistic and other environmental factors, and the entanglement itself is also a process of intertwining. The “relationship” of human-technology relationship is a continuous process of generation and opening, which is always in an unfinished state, and therefore has many possibilities.

However, there are some limitations in understanding the human-technology relationship with enactive agency, which are mainly reflected in the following: a. the understanding of the relationship originates from the biological basis, and therefore has a strong dependence on the body, and it is difficult to establish the organizational relationship apart from the context of the body, which cannot be applied to some virtual forms of technology and their human-technology relationship; b. there is insufficient clarification of the emergence mode of agency. Enactivism terms such as “bring forth”, “emerging”, etc. are easy to fall into the trap of anthropomorphism when explaining the human-technology relationship, which then only manifests itself as a metaphorical appropriation; c. Lack of value analysis of agency, the discussion on enactive agency, such as sensorimotor and meaning generation, does not further explain the value orientation that may be embedded in it and how to optimize the human-technology interactions through value guidance. As a continuous production and openness, there is a possibility of social-morphing, and this is precisely the way in which ethics of technology can intervene and be guided. Therefore, the understanding of the human-technology relationship also needs to provide a more inclusive and practical interpretative framework, which will be continuously discussed in the future.