STS | SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

LESSON 5: HUMAN FLOURISHING IN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Technology as a Mode of Revealing

• The Question of Technology by Martin Heidegger

o The essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is.
o Technology is a means to an end.
o Technology is a human activity.
o The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, and the needs and
ends they serve.
o Contrivance (scheme - instrumentum.
o Correct, but not necessarily true.
• Experience and understanding of what is correct can lead us to what is true.
• Heidegger – technology as a mode of revealing.
o Shows much more about the human person and the world.
o The truth is then brought forth.
• Greek concepts:
o Aletheia – unhideness or disclosure
o Poiesis – bringing forth
▪ Aristotle – making or producing something for a purpose
o Techne – skill, art, or craft
▪ Means of bringing forth something
• Technology as poetry
o More reflective and sensitive way of looking at the world.
o Not an easy perspective to take in this era.
▪ Instant knowledge is demanded and split-second updates are a norm
▪ Pursuit of fame and fortune us unceasingly bannered in social media

Technology as Poiesis

• Modern technology is very aggressive in its activity

• Modern technology demands resources from nature that are forcibly extracted for human
consumption and storage
• With modern technology, revealing never comes to an end
• We no longer need to work with the rhythms of nature since we have learned to control it
o Order, extract, process, make ready for consumption, and store what we have forced it to
reveal
• Modern technology – age of switches, standing reserve, and stockpiling for its own sake

Questioning as the Piety of Thought

• Piety means obedience and submission

o Submission to our thoughts and reflections.
o It is when we start questioning that we submit ourselves to our thoughts.
• Questioning leads one to search for his/her place in the universe and in the grand-scale of
things.

Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

• Enframing that challenges forth and sets upon nature is a way of looking at reality.
• Nature put in a box so that it can be better understood and controlled according to people’s
desires.
• Poiesis – concealed in enframing as nature is viewed as an orderable and calculable system
of information.
• Calculative thinking – one orders and puts a system to nature so it can be understood better
and controlled.
 o People want control and are afraid of unpredictability, so calculative thinking is more often
used.
• Meditative thinking – one lets nature reveal itself to him/her without forcing it.
• Enframing is done because people want security
o Even if the ordering is violent

Human Person Swallowed by Technology

• If we allow ourselves to get swallow by modern technology, we lose essence of who we are
as beings in this world.
• If we cannot let go of the conveniences and profits brought about by processes and industries
that pollute the environment and cause climate change, then technology has consumed our
humanity.
• “Where danger is, grows the saving power also.”
o Expressed by Holderlin, a poet.
o Saving power – essence of technology as technology.
o Essence – the way in which things are, as that which endures.
• “Essence of technology is nothing technological.”
o Heidegger, 1977
• Problems brought about by human’s dependence on technology cannot be simply resolved
by refusing technology altogether.

Art as a Way of Enframing

• Enframing tends to block poiesis

• In modern technology, the way of revealing has become challenging.
• Heidegger proposes art as a way out of enframing.
• Art allows us to see the poetic in nature in reality.
o From calculative thinking to meditative thinking.
• Nature is the most poetic.
• In the nuclear age, we view nature as a problem to be solved.
• Meditative thinking provides a way for us to remain rooted in the essence of who we are.
o Ground us so as to not let our technological devices affect our real core and warp our
nature.
• Aristotle’s conception of the causes as explained by Heidegger:
o Causa materials – the material
o Causa formalis – the form
o Causa finalis – the end
o Causa efficiens – brings about the effect

LESSON 6: HUMAN FLOURISHING AS REFLECTED IN PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT

• Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries

o Jason Hickel
• Eradicated poverty by 2030
o Main objective of the UN’s SDG
o Through growth
• Our planet only has enough resources for each of us to consume1.8 “global hectares” annually
o Standardized unit that measures resource use and waste
o Roughly what the average person in Ghana or Guatemala consumes
o US and Canada – 8 hectares per person
o Europeans – 4.7 hectares per person
o Cuba – 1.9 hectares
• Instead of pushing poorer countries to “catch up” with rich ones, we should be thinking of ways
to get rich countries to “catch down” to more appropriate levels of development.
• Life expectancy and literacy – two indicators of the quality of life.
• Overconsumption puts the society and planet at risk
• Whether we slow down or climate change will slow down for us.
• Rethinking our theory of progress is an ecological imperative and development one.

LESSON 7: THE GOOD LIFE

Nichomacean Ethics and Modern Concepts

• Aristotle – an important ancient Greek philosopher

o Work spans from natural philosophy to logical and political theory.
• “The good has been rightly declares as that at which all things aim.”
• The good life – characterized by happiness that springs from living and doing well.
• Human flourishing – an effort to achieve self-actualization and fulfillment within the context if
a larger community of individuals, each with the right to pursue his or her own such efforts.
• Eudaimonia – concepts of living and doing well
▪ Eu – good
▪ Daimon – spirit
o Happiness is a central aim of stoic (enduring) philosophy
o Achieving full potential
• Happiness – ultimate end of human action
o People pursue for its own sake
o Defines a good life
o Comes from living a life of virtue, a life of excellence
o Example: Being healthy and taking care of the environment adds to one’s wellbeing and
happiness.
o For Aristotle, ultimate happiness would be contemplation
• Virtue – practice of doing good no matter how difficult circumstance may be
o Two kinds of virtue:
▪ Intellectual – through teaching (requires experience and time)
▪ Moral – through habit
o Virtue we must practice to achieve happiness:
▪ Intelligence and scientific (or certain) knowledge
▪ Practical wisdom: the ability to “deliberate well about what is good and advantageous
for oneself.”
▪ Temperance: restraint, usually with regard to pleasurable activities
▪ Generosity and friendship
▪ Courage: the tendency to act in order to achieve some good even facing the risk of
physical harm
▪ Contemplation: reflection on eternal truths
• Hedonia
o To seek pleasure, comfort, satisfaction
o To avoid pain and discomfort
o Focus on the self, the present moment, and the tangible
o Focus on taking and consuming what one needs and wants
o Happiness is of hedonic kind (Bentham and Hobbes)
• Progress of science and technology - movements towards a good life.
o Highest expressions of human faculties
o Allow us to thrive and flourish in life
Happiness & Life Satisfaction in Various Countries

• Variables used to explain happiness differences among countries though time:

o Income
o Healthy life expectancy
o Social support
o Life events
o Freedom
o Trust (absence of corruption in business and government)
 LESSON 7: WHEN TECHNOLOGY AND HUMANITY CROSS

• Human Dignity – ultimate core value of our existence.

• Human beings become freer when we are empowered to make choices for our flourishing.
• We become rational when we are able to value and apply the principles of logic and science
in our lives.
• We become loving when we ensure that human dignity lies in the foundation of our
endeavors

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

• Proclaimed by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
o Global standard of fundamental human rights for universal recognition and protection.
• Consists of 30 articles that outlines the inalienable human rights that are vital and necessary
in the pursuit of the good life.
o Freedom everyone is entitled to just by being human.
• The first seven articles encapsulate the spirit of “milestone document in the history of human
rights.”
o Article 1 - All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.
o Article 2 - Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration,
without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
o Article 3 - Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
o Article 4 - No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall
be prohibited in all their forms.
o Article 5 - No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
o Article 6 - Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
o Article 7 - All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to
equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination
in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Humans VS. Robots
• Rise of machinery may render humans useless.
• Manual labor is gradually being replaced by
machinery
• With the development of AI, robots may also act
and decide like humans.
• To Filipinos, artificial intelligence seems like stuff
seen on sci-fi movies.
• Unemployment is the only one of the many ethical
considerations in the widespread use of AI.
• Humans begin to function more like automatons.
• As the internet becomes more intelligent, we are in
danger of becoming less so.
• The development of society along with science and
technology gives rise to more and more complex
issues.
• At the very least, we are able to protect and
exercise human rights for everyone in our pursuit of
the good life.
• Building a just and progressive society entails the
constant practice of the good.
o Exhibited in exceptional scientific
methodologies, personal virtue, social
responsibility, and global concern.
Why the Future Does Not Need Us
• Written by Bill Joy in 200
o Chief scientist and corporate executive officer
of Sun Microsystems.
• Genetics, nanotech, and robotics (GNR) are
threatening to make humans an endangered
species.
• May largely come about due to unreflective and
unquestioning acceptance of new technologies.
• Science and technology may be the highest
expression of human rationality.
o People are able to shape or destroy the world.
• Human nature may be corrupted when the powers
of our mind, our rationality, and out science and
technology become manifest.
• If we are not able to rein in the vanity and
arrogance that such powers unleash, then we are
on our way to destroying the world.
• “The wasteland grows; woe unto him who harbors
the wasteland within.”
o Friedrich Nietzsche