Tools for a Forward-Looking Responsibility

Abstract

In this chapter, we arrive at the final question of this study: what would enable and support practitioners exercising a forward-looking responsibility for future social roles of technologies? Chapters 4 and 5 discussed the first two challenges formulated in Sect. 3.5. The first challenge was to show how people can accept a forward-looking responsibility for our actions while also rejecting the autonomous and atomist subject of the deontological and utilitarian theories. To take on this challenge, Chap. 4 explained how ANT can be morally enriched by recognizing that moral practices are part of the human-technology networks. Furthermore, it explores how people can make their actions their own in the networks and practices, even though these actions are biologically, socially and technologically embedded. The second challenge was to understand mediation theory in a manner that made it feasible to appreciate the different forms of causation. To meet this challenge, Chap. 5, reformulated mediation theory with Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on practices, reasons and reasoning to show that technologies alter our actions by mediating the reasons for action—the perceptions, options for actions and moral beliefs.