技术物能够作为道德行动者吗——基于现象学路径的考察

Can Technical Artifacts Be Moral Agents?——Investigation Based on the Phenomenological Approach

技术作为人类生存的基本方式,人类无时无刻不与技术物相互缠绕、亲密纠缠。技术物作为道德行动者的内涵主要体现为:我们可以将某种具体的道德理念或规范“植入”技术物之中,使其能够即时地规范用户的行为;技术物能够构建人类原来所没有的某种道德选择情境,并进而影响或参与着人之道德的构成。传统伦理学基于主客二分的“实体—属性”进路并不能为理解技术物作为道德行动者的内涵提供恰当的思路。现象学的关系存在论思想既非观念论的也非实在论的,对于主体与客体、人与物的理解必须基于两者的关系才能真正得到把握。从这种理论视角出发,纯然的道德主体是不存在的,毋宁说技术物也参与着人作为道德主体的构成,正是在这个意义上,技术物能够作为道德行动者,并影响着人的道德认知、选择与行为。现象学的关系存在论思想为分析技术物能否以及在何种程度上能够作为道德行动者的问题提供了重要的研究方向和理解路径。

Human beings are constantly intertwined with technical artefacts,and they are getting more close entanglement with each other today.Technical artefacts as the moral agents mainly has two kinds of meanings:first,we can“implant”a specific moral idea or norm into the technical artifacts so that they can immediately regulate the behavior of the user;second,the technical artifacts can construct a new kind of certain contexts which may influence human being’s moral choices and behaviors.The substance-attributes approach of the traditional ethics based on the subject-object dichotomy cannot provide a proper understanding towards the moral status of technical artefacts.The relational-ontology of phenomenology is neither idealism nor realism,but holds that the understanding of subject and object,human beings and non-human beings must be based on the relationship between them.From this point of view,pure human moral agents does not exist,instead,the technical artefacts are also involved in the composition of them.Rightly in this sense,we can consider technical artifacts as the moral agents.The relational-ontology of phenomenology provides an essential understanding and research direction for whether and to what extent the technical artefacts can be as moral agents,and it makes sense.