I argue here that consciousness can be engineered. The claim that functional consciousness can be engineered has been persuasively put forth in regards to first-person functional consciousness; robots, for instance, can recognize colors, though there is still much debate about details of this sort of consciousness. Such consciousness has now become one of the meanings of the term phenomenal consciousness (e.g., as used by Franklin and Baars). Yet, we extend the argument beyond the tradition of behaviorist or functional reductive views on consciousness that still predominate within cognitive science. If Nagel-Chalmers-Block-style non-reductive naturalism about first-person consciousness (h-consciousness) holds true, then, eventually we should be able to understand how such consciousness operates and how it gets produced (this is not the same as bridging the explanatory gap or solving Chalmers’s hard problem of consciousness). If so, the consciousness it involves can in principle be engineered.

In his book Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism Larry Hickman argues that Classical Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead) shares common features withpostmodern philosophies and provides a viable alternative to those philosophies. I agree with Hickman’s argument, and this paper argues that there are further connections between pragmatism and postmodernism in light of Hickman’s philosophy of technology. The paper explores the connections between postmodernism and technology, demonstrates how postmodern philosophy can be used to interpret contemporary postmodern technologies, and concludes by arguing that these interpretations fit well with Hickman’s work on technology through analyzing technologies like the iPod.

James Rachels has argued on Utilitarian grounds that since removing life-sustaining treatment and physician-assisted suicide both aim at the very same end,hastening death to limit suffering, there are no morally significant moral distinctions between them. Others have argued for maintaining this distinction based on various forms of deontological and rights-based ethical theories that maintain that all acts of killing are inherently wrong. I argue that the enduring controversy over physician-assisted suicide might not be caused by such fundamental differences of opinion about moral theory, such as that which exists between Utilitarianism and Deontology, so much as by a commonly held misunderstanding of technology. In particular, the conclusion that there are no relevant ethical distinctions between killing and letting die can only be drawn by a Utilitarian, such as Rachels, by ignoring the recent work of philosophers of technology on the non-neutrality thesis.

In this paper, I seek to contribute to post-phenomenological descriptions of human-technological relations and the intentionalities exhibited in them by focusingon the intentionality exhibited in the use of a cochlear implant. To do so, I will use concepts developed by Don Ihde and further extended by Peter-Paul Verbeek to show that while post-phenomenological categories illuminate the intentional relationship of a cochlear implant wearer to her world, this relationship defies easy categorization. An examination of successful functioning with a cochlear implant will reveal a distinct form of technological embodiment and intentionality that confirms and extends previous post-phenomenological analyses.

Against a thinker like Martin Heidegger who takes restraints on individual freedom and the promotion of authoritarianism as implicit features in the ongoing development of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues for a “democratic rationalization” of modern technology whereby people effectively choose their own futures, not in spite of their tools, but increasingly because of them. Acknowledging the Web’s democratic potential, I believe that a new threat—far different from authoritarian regimes or structures—has emerged: a rampant and multifarious narcissism that threatens to drown democratic ideals in a wave of self-obsession and self-promotion.

Can we conceive of a philosophy of technology that is not technophobic, yet takes seriously the problem of alienation and human meaning-giving? This paperretrieves the concern with alienation, but brings it into dialogue with more recent philosophy of technology. It defines and responds to the problem of alienation in a way that avoids both old-style human-centered approaches and contemporary thingcentered or hybridity approaches. In contrast to the latter, it proposes to reconcile subject and object not at the ontic level but at the ontological, transcendental level and at the level of skilled activity. Taking inspiration from Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger and engaging critically with the work of Borgmann and Arendt, it explores a phenomenology and ethics of skill. It is concluded that new and emerging technologies must be evaluated not only as artifacts and their consequences, but also in terms of the skills and activities they involve and require. Do they promote engagement with the world and with others, thus making us into better persons?

This paper tells the story of a recent laboratory medicine controversy in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. During the controversy, a DAKOAutostainer machine was blamed for inaccurate breast cancer test results that led to the suboptimal treatment of many patients. In truth, the machine was not at fault. Using concepts developed by Bruno Latour and Pierre Bourdieu, we document the changing nature of the DAKO machine’s agency before, during, and after the controversy, and we make the ethical argument that treating the machine as a scapegoat was harmful to patients. The mistreatment of patients was directly tied to a misrepresentation of the DAKO machine. The way to avoid both forms of mistreatment would have been to include all humans and nonhumans affected by the controversy in the network of decision-making.

In response to the Royal Society report’s claim that “the acceptability of geo­engineering will be determined as much by social, legal, and political issues as by scientific and technical factors” (Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty [London: Royal Society, 2009], ix), a number of authors have suggested the key to this challenge is to engage the public in geoengineering decision-making. In effect, some have argued that inclusion of the public in geoengineering decision-making is necessary for any geoengineering project to be morally permissible. Yet, while public engagement on geoengineering comes in various forms, the discussion in geoengineering governance and the ethics of geoengineering have too often conceptualized it exclusively in terms of public participation in decision-making, and supported it by various liberal democratic values. However, if the predominant understanding of public engagement on—or, the role of the public in—geoengineering decision-making is indeed only grounded on liberal democratic values, then its normative relevance could be challenged by and in other ethical-political traditions that do not share those values. In this paper, I shall explore these questions from a Confucian perspective. I argue that the liberal democratic values invoked in support of the normative importance of public participation are, at least, foreign to Confucian political philosophy. This presents a prima facie challenge to view public participation in geoengineering decision-making as a universal moral requirement, and invites us to reconsider the normative significance of this form of public engagement in Confucian societies. Yet, I contend that the role of the public remains normatively significant in geoengineering governance and the ethics of geoengineering from a Confucian perspective. Drawing from recent work on Confucian political philosophy, I illustrate the potential normative foundation for public engagement on geoengineering decision-making.

Social scientists have documented some recent, dramatic changes in the nature of our social lives. Many scholars have thought that our reliance on technology to communicate with others is in large part responsible for that loss. However, there is also data to support the opposite conclusion—it might be the case that social networking technologies have helped, rather than hindered our social interactions. What I would like to propose is a philosophical argument, which I hope will offer a different sort of answer to the questions about whether we know people in the same ways, or perhaps more or less well, than we once did, in the days before Facebook, email, and such. Whether or not technology has enhanced our social lives, it is worth considering whether coming to know another person is a different sort of exercise than it used to be, when face-to-face interactions with others were the preferred way to find out what was going on in someone else’s life. What is different in sharing my thoughts, beliefs, feelings, desires, and such with another over the Internet versus in person? Is there any kind of knowledge that is available only in a face-to-face context? If so, what is the nature of that knowledge? In philosophical terms, what I want to examine is how our knowledge of others’ minds changes with various technologies that we use to communicate the contents of our mental states.

Can artifacts be agents in the same sense as humans? This paper endorses a pragmatic stance to that issue. The crucial question is whether artifacts can have free will in the same pragmatic sense as we consider humans to have a free will when holding them responsible for their actions. The origin of actions is important. Can an action originate inside an artifact, considering that it is, at least today, programmed by a human? In this paper it is argued that autonomy with respect to norms is crucial for artificial agency.

In this paper I deal with Hubert Dreyfus’s phenomenological ethics regarding information technologies and the use of the Internet. From the 1990s on, Dreyfus elaborates a multi-faceted model of ethical expertise which may find a paradigmatic field of application in the ways in which information technologies transform our sense of personal identity, as well as our view of ethical integrity and commitment. In his 2001 On the Internet, Dreyfus investigates further several of the ideas already present in his groundbreaking 1997 Disclosing New Worlds. A phenomenological ethics of the virtual aims at going beyond both the objectivist ideal of moral universalism, which departs from the dominant Cartesianism both in epistemology and in ethics, as well as from the postmodernist, Nietzsche-inspired moral relativism. By referring back to existentialism, especially to Kierkegaard, and to phenomenology, especially to Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, Dreyfus sketches a model of ethical expertise which can be particularly useful for internet users and researchers, as it combines a phenomenological anthropology of the virtual with a theory of cultural innovation and change. In my view, Dreyfus’s model may help overcome the strict either determinist or relativist accounts of the ethical challenges posed by information technologies. By endorsing a strongly anti-intellectualist view of information technologies, Dreyfus poses the necessity of identity and ethical integrity not only as abstract principles that require rational justification, but also as context-bound everyday practices that are in conformity with the “style” of a culture and several disclosive activities within it.

In this paper, I pursue a postphenomenological analysis of navigating with GPS in an automobile. I argue that GPS use is essentially different from navigating with a map insofar as one need not establish nor maintain orientation and directionality. Also, GPS provides a disembodied, omniscient navigational perspective. These aspects stem from the fact that GPS relies on earth-orbiting satellites, thereby reinforcing the modern view of the space/place relation that privileges abstract space over concrete, lived places. Following a postphenomenological thesis that technologies are non-neutral mediators of human experience, I examine some important qualitative aspects of traveling with GPS.

In this paper I comment on the arguments put forth by Robert Rosenberger and Galit Wellner on the issue of using a mobile phone while driving a car, and I do this by way of a detour through the work of Kevin Kelly and Marshall McLuhan. While Rosenberger and Wellner focus first and foremost on the possibilities and impossibilities within the human organism, I seek to add to the debate the however experimental standpoint of the technologies “themselves.”

In this contribution to the philosophical debate over distracted driving, I defend the idea that talking on the cell phone while driving is an activity that ought neither to be regulated by public policy means nor addressed by means of automotive safety design features, such as the augmented-reality windshield. I arrive at this conclusion through taking a phenomenologically-influenced look at what an average driver pays attention to during the act of driving an automobile. More specifically, I suggest that if driving while “celling” is taken to involve a single act of attention within a single experience, or taken to involve a “weak” form of multi-attention, a way opens up to see driving while “celling” as being “good” driving.

The case is made here for stricter regulations on the use of cell phones (both handheld and hands-free) while driving. I review, contextualize, and expand on a phenomenological account of distracted driving that I have developed across a series of papers. This account remains consistent with the empirical literature on the driver distraction of cell phones, but it also offers an alternative theory on why the distraction of cell phone conversation poses such a considerable danger. My argument is that cell phone distraction results from learned perceptual habits, and that breaking these deeply engrained habits is no simple matter.

In my discussion of the articles in this special issue of Techné I will relate the multiple perspectives on the phenomenon of driving-celling to the core debate, which concerns how this dual activity may be related to the need to have a concentrated focus, on the one hand, or to the possibility of a form of multitasking, on the other. The contributors show multiple perspectives on this phenomenon and draw from a range of authors on the roles of attention, embodiment and perception.