STS Course

S&T and the Human Condition

(Week 7-8) PART 2

To understand more about the lesson,students are advised to watch the

suggested videos before the synchronous session
‘https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb9giqDnSCG0inLiQcLyJOhG2_y8cHseP
 STS Course
S&T and the Human Condition: (Week 7-8) PART 2)
(Human Flourishing as Reflected in Progress and Development

Learning Outcomes:
1. Discuss the importance of upholding human rights in science, technology and
development
2. Identify key documents and their principles that ensure the well-being of human
rights in the midst of scientific progress and technological development
3. Examine shared concerns that make up the good life in order to come up with
informed decisions on contemporary issues guided by ethical standards.
4. Analyze the human condition in order to deeply reflect and express philosophical
implications that are meaningful to you as a part of society
 STS Course
S&T and the Human Condition:

❑ B. Human Person Flourishing in terms of S&T

● Martin Heidegger
● C.S. Lewis
● Jason Hickel
❖ When Technology and Humanity Cross
➢ Why the future does not need us - Bill Joy

Bill Joy

Jason Hickel

C.S. Lewis
Martin Heidegger
STS Course
S&T and the Human Condition:
(B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology)

❑ a German Philosopher
❑ “Father of Existential Phenomenology”
❑ Author of “Sein Und Zeit” or “Being and Time”

Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976)
STS Course
S&T and the Human Condition:
(B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology)

Heidegger begins the question by noting that

“We ask the question concerning technology
when we ask what it is”. This stems from
following an ancient doctrine to which “the
essence of a thing is considered to be what
the thing is”
Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976)
STS Course
S&T and the Human Condition:
(B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology)

Flow of discussion

•Technology as a Mode of Revealing

•Technology as Poeisis: Applicable to Modern Technology?
•Questioning as the Piety of Thought
•Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology
Martin Heidegger •Human Person Swallowed by Technology
(1889-1976)
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Technology as a Mode of Revealing

Common Understanding of Technology

• Means to an end
• Product of human activity
• Practical application of science

Do you agree with these definitions of technology?

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Technology is instrumental and anthropological:

Correct but not true. We pursue the true

through the correct.

experience and understanding of what is correct

leads us to what is true.
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Technology as Poeisis: Applicable to Modern Technology?
Technology is a way of bringing forth, making
something.
Ancient Greek concepts:
• Poiesis – bringing forth
• Aletheia – truth, disclosure, unconcealedness
• Techne – skill, art, or craft

Technology is a poiesis that discloses or

reveals the truth.
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Questioning as the Piety of Thought

A process of knowing the truth of who we are as beings

in this world.

-Martin Heidegger in Question Concerning Technology

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Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

Is this idea of technology applicable to

modern technology?
STS Course
Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

Modern Technology
❑Challenges forth
❑Very aggressive in its activity
❑Sets or brings about a setting upon
❑Expedites unconcealment of nature
❑Stores that which is extracted from nature
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Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

Enframing
❑Way of revealing in modern technology
❑Earth as gas station
❑Conceals poeisis (bringing forth)
❑Better understood and controlled

Meditative thinking – let nature reveal itself without forcing it.

Calculative thinking -views nature as calculable and orderable
system of information
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Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

Modern technology views

Earth as a huge gas
station, a representative
of the extraction, drilling
and rape of Mother
nature.
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Human Person Swallowed by Technology

The human person swallowed by

technology
STS Course
Human Person Swallowed by Technology

If we allow ourselves to be
swallowed by technology

we lose the essence

of who we are as
beings in this world
STS Course
Human Person Swallowed by Technology

https://hackernoon.com/technology-will-eat-us-whole-208e87a93dfd
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(CS Lewis: The Magician Twin’s: Science, Scientism, and Society)

THE MAGICIAN’S TWIN is a must-see trilogy

of short programs by the Discovery Institute
applying some brilliant insights and arguments from
C.S. Lewis to expose the fallacies of scientism
and evolution and to promote the
reasonableness of Intelligent Design.
Based on a book of essays, THE MAGICIAN’S TWIN is
C.S. Lewis a very good series, done on a small budget that
1898-1963 shows real science points to the God of
the Universe.
https://www.movieguide.org/reviews/the-magicians-twin.html
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(CS Lewis: The Magician Twin’s: Science, Scientism, and Society)

C.S. Lewis and the Case

Against Scientism, explores
Lewis’s prophetic concerns
about the misuse of science
to “abolish” man and to
undermine personal
freedoms and human dignity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeyJvXU68k
Courtesy: C.S. Lewis Youtube Channel
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(CS Lewis: The Magician Twin’s: Science, Scientism, and Society)

The Magician’s Twin Guide Questions:

1. What is scientism and scientocracy?
2. How is science comparable to magic?
3. Why is science more dangerous than magic?
4. What is the presented essence of modernity
and its consequence?
5. What do we need for the sciences to be good?
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(CS Lewis: The Magician Twin’s: Science, Scientism, and Society)

Scientism
❑The belief or ideology that science is the best or only test for truth of any kind.
❑Science as power where science becomes the dictator of the culture.
religion
science magic credulity
power
Scientocracy
-The practice of basing public policies on science.
-A government of the people, but informed by scientists.
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Forget ‘developing’ poor countries,

It’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich
countries
-Jason Hickel

Jason Hickel
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

How do we know that we are

progressing?

What are the indicators of

development?
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Main strategy for eradicating poverty

❑ Growth
❑ More growth – according to Orthodox
economists

Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past

planetary boundaries at breakneck speed.
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Main strategy for eradicating poverty

❑ Growth
❑ More growth – according to Orthodox
economists

Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past

planetary boundaries at breakneck speed.
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Economist Peter Edward argues that 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.
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Higher life
Rich countries Excess income
and consumption
expectancies?

Higher literacy
rates?
Higher
happiness
indicators?

Image retrieved from: http://cdn2.insidermonkey.com/blog/wp-

content/uploads/2015/05/featured2.jpg
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Is it possible to ‘de-develop’
rich countries?
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Theory of progress
❑ Buen vivir
❑ How much is enough?
▪ Robert and Edward Skidelsky

Requires reaching a higher level of understanding and

consciousness about what we’re doing here and why.
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Can you think of a rapidly developing forms of

“Science & Technology” in 21st century? Name
the big 3…….

What are the issues associated with it?

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What are the issues associated with it?

● Machines and robots -approach

human-like nature and humans may
also have the tendency to be machine-
like
● Easy access to information, with one
touch and swipe of fingertips, human
begin to function more like
automatons
● Internet -instant go-to tool for answers Is google making us stupid? Nicholas Carr:
and questions, as internet gets more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W86P_FX6PdI

intelligent, humans are in danger of Sofia the Robot Youtube channel:

becoming less https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbfUG_hpdA8
STS Course
Examine closely these issues, critique on them
 STS Course
When Technology and Humanity Cross: More to think about

Chief Scientist and Corporate Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems, Bill

Joy wrote a controversial essay, Why the future does not Need us?
● In his work, he contended that our most powerful 21st century
technologies -genetics, nanotech, and robotics (GNR) are
threatening to make humans an endangered species

❑ Downloadable Article: https://tinyurl.com/mr43yrf2

❑ Essay Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN2shXeJNz8
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UIntold Promise

● Each of these technologies also offers untold promise:

○ The vision of near immortality that Kurzweil sees in his robot
dreams drives us forward; genetic engineering may soon provide
treatments, if not outright cures, for most diseases;
○ and nanotechnology and nanomedicine can address yet more ills
 STS Course
What was different in the 20th century?

● Certainly, the technologies ● But building nuclear weapons

underlying the weapons of required, at least for a time,
mass destruction (WMD) - access to both rare - indeed,
nuclear, biological, and effectively unavailable - raw
materials and highly protected
chemical (NBC) - were
information; biological and
powerful, and the chemical weapons programs also
weapons an enormous tended to require large-scale
threat. activities.
 STS Course
What about the 21th century-GNR?

The 21st-century technologies - genetics, nanotechnology, and

robotics (GNR)
- are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of
accidents and abuses.
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What is scary about the 21th century -GNR?

Most dangerously,
● Accessible to individuals or small groups.
● Does not require funding and large facilities or rare raw materials.
● knowledge alone will enable the use of them
■ making GNR more scary, more prone to accidents, and abuses
■ may self-replicate and spin out of control
○ A bomb is blown up once - but one bot can become many and
can quickly get out of control
STS Course
B. Human Flourishing in terms of Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Human should have learned the lesson in the atomic bombings of

Japanese Cities, 1945 that killed over a hundred thousand
people (Brilliant phsyicists, led by J. Robert Openheimer, brought
into existence a deadly nuclear weapon.
- A definite testament to the success of S & T, but was a fatal
reminder of its destructive power.
STS Course
Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

Science and Technology, may be the highest

expression of human rationality
STS Course
Science and Technology
(Human Flourishing as reflected in progress and development)

We
Shape or destroy
the world
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Let us rethink
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How to ensure well being?

living in a just
and progressive
good life entails society were we
are free to
flourish
What protects the human beings in scientific and technological
advancements?
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HUMAN person has the autonomy to make choices

UDHR - a
global
standard
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UDHR Preamble

“ Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity

and of the equal and inalienable rights of all
members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world …”
Video on UDHR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew993Wdc0zo
 STS Course
UDHR Preamble

“Human to become fully

dignity is an human - more free,
ultimate core more rational, and
more loving
of our
existence”
 STS Course
How can we become fully human?

● Human beings can become more free when we

to become fully are empowered to make choices.
● We become more rational when we are able to
human - more free, value and apply the principles of logic and
more rational, and science in our lives
● We become more loving when we ensure that
more loving
human dignity lies at the foundation or
our endeavors (scientific or technological)
 STS Course
We have to keep this in mind

“Human dignity to become fully

is an ultimate human - more free,
more rational, and
core of our more loving
existence”
 STS Course
This means

Building of a just this maybe exhibited

in exceptional -
& progressive scientific
society entails a methodologies,
constant practice personal virtue,
of doing good social responsibility
& global concern
STS Course
Respond to the following questions

Is it important to uphold human rights amidst the

progress in science, technology? Why? and How?
 STS Course
References

1. Dr. Edward Younkins is a Professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at Wheeling Jesuit University in West
Virginia.
2. Date Retrieved: October 6, 2020
3. Martin Heidegger: The Questions of Technology:
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil394/he%20Question%20Concerning%20Technology.pdf Date
Retrieved:October 5, 2020
4. Jason Hickel’s Forget 'developing' poor countries, it's time to 'de-develop
'rich countries: https://www.theguardian.com/global- development-professionals-network/2015/sep/23/developing-poor-
countries- de-develop-rich-countries-sdgs
5. About CS Lewis https://www.cslewis.com/us/about-cs-lewis
6. CS Lewis: The Magician’s Twin:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPeyJvXU68k
7. Village of the Watermills by Akira Kurosawa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK4mtPQ_THM Date retrieved;
October 10, 2020
8. Human flourishing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0 cGi72MnVM
9. The nature of Science and Technology and Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idu6-cF42NA
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4--OcOMaWZU
11. https://iep.utm.edu/heidegge/ retrieved October 5, 2020
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Course

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