Abstract
In this paper, I argue for the impossible possibility of an ethical dwelling with technology. In arguing for an ethical comportment in our dealing with technology, I am not only arguing for the consideration of the ethical implications of technology (which we already do) but also, and more importantly, for an ethics of technological artefacts qua technology. Thus, I attempt to argue for a decentering (or rather overcoming) of anthropocentric ethics, urging us to move beyond any centre, whatever it may be—anthropological, biological, etc. I argue that if we take ethics seriously we must admit that our measure cannot be that of man. To develop the argument, I use an episode in Star Trek where the fate of the highly sophisticated android Commander Data is to be decided. I show how the moral reasoning about Data remains anthropocentric but hints to other possibilities. I proceed to use the work of Derrida and Levinas (with some help from Heidegger) to suggest a possible way to think (and do) an ethos beyond traditional ethics—an ethics of hospitality in which we dwell in a community of those that have nothing in common.
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Notes
This paper is based on an early transcript of the episode located at http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/nextgeneration/season2/tng-209.txt.
Also refer to Irwin (2006) for a similar argument.
Nathan Brown (2007) in his essay “The inorganic Open: Nanotechnology and physical being” proposes the notion of ‘nothing-other than-object’ to name this infinite physical being, “this immanent otherness of that which is never nothing and yet not something” (41). Also refer to Benso (2000) and Davy (2007) for arguments to extend Levinas’ ethics for the no-human domain.
I use the term ‘aporia’ as Derrida does to indicate the double meaning of something that is both an expression of doubt and a perplexing difficulty.
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Introna, L.D. The ‘measure of a man’ and the ethos of hospitality: towards an ethical dwelling with technology. AI & Soc 25, 93–102 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0242-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0242-1