Postphenomenology Meets Conceptual Engineering: A Study in the Ethics of Technology
Piotr Machura1 ✉️ 1University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
Cite as: Machura, P. (2025, May). Postphenomenology Meets Conceptual Engineering: A Study in the Ethics of Technology. In SCS 2025, 2nd International Conference on Social Contexts of Science (p. 57). Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland.
Abstract
With the new developments in technologization of life, the question of the kind of normative framework capable of grasping the challenges of augmented moral life becomes apparent. For with the standard apparatus of established ethical theories, focused either on technology broadly taken and thematised in terms of tool/agent debate, on regulation, or on the concept of responsibility, the possibilities of other normative solutions seem to gather little attention. The area which seems of to demand special importance is the everyday engagement of human agents with their accompanying technologies and, hence, the emergence of hybrid, mediated forms of experience and acting. However, so far, the research here has been conducted with an eye on addressing the ontology of the relationships with little focus given the language used. In the presentation, I shall argue that the development of a comprehensive account in the ethics of technology demands not only facing the normative challenge that is going from depicting the human-technology relations to framing them as forms of moral extensions, but also – and primarily – addressing the language used in such analyses. For this, I propose combining the tools of posphenomenology with those of conceptual engineering. On the example of an attempt to delimit the concepts of extended self, a cyborg, and a hybrid, I shall indicate how an analysis of different forms of agent’s presence demands engineered vocabulary, which allows one to determine the scope of moral standards and (prospected) excellences of this new kind of agent.
Keywords
Ethics of technology, Postphenomenology, Conceptual engineering, Cuborgization, Extended self
Current status of the research is: Work-in-progress