突破边界——评彼得-保罗·维贝克的《将技术道德化:物之道德的理解与设计》

Pushing Some Boundaries:Peter-Paul Verbeek's Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things

彼得-保罗·维贝克的著作《将技术道德化》,是现代技术哲学史上伦理转向的开端。该书揭示了存在于道德和技术人工物相互作用领域中的两个维度:新技术的应用带来了新的伦理问题,以及用经过专门设计的技术来改变人的道德行为。维贝克借此所提出的是一种物质化的伦理学观点。在与行动主体相互结合、相互构成的意义上,各种技术产品对道德抉择及行动也具有影响力,进而技术设计者可以被认为是"实践的伦理学家"。同时,对维贝克为实现技术民主而提出的"建构性的技术评价"进行了商榷。《将技术道德化》为技术哲学中经验转向和伦理转向的融合,做出了有益的尝试。

Verbeek’ s Moralizing Technology is the beginning of the ethical turn on the history of modern phi-losophy of technology.In that book, he reveals two main dimensions in which the realms of morality and of techno-logical artefacts interact.One is that technologies could bring new ethical issues and the other is technologies could be specifically designed to change people’ s moral behavior.Accordingly, Verbeek suggests his materialized view on ethics that means the artifacts keep their influence on the moral decisions and actions since the artifacts and the agents are constitutive of each other, and furthermore, the Designers are in fact practical ethicists .In addition,the method, Constructive Technology Assessment （ CTA） , for the realization of democracy of technology , is discussed also.Moralizing Tech nology is a helpful attempt to converging the empirical turn and ethical turn in modern philoso-phy of technology.