Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6

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Technology in Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc

Human nature, the means-ends relationship, and alienation:

Themes for potential EasteWest collaboration
Bocong Li*
College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.19 A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, PR China

a b s t r a c t

Keywords: This essay identifies two basic themes, human nature and the means-ends relationship,
Human nature that can both advance philosophical reflection on technology and potentially serve as a
Means-ends relationship basis for EasteWest collaboration in philosophy. What is central to the philosophy of
Means-ends imbalance
technology and engineering are questions of how technical activity is related to human
Alienation
nature, both as founded in human nature and contributing to its realization. In the history
of human thought, there have been a number of theses about human nature d the human
being is a rational animal, a tool making and using animal, and a symbol making and using
animal d that can have different implications for such questions. There are nevertheless
possibilities for synthesis of different theories that point toward the importance of
thinking about technology in terms of the means-ends relationship and the experience of a
disharmony in the relationship that has been called alienation. From the perspective of the
means-ends relationship, some suggestions are considered for dealing with different forms
of alienation. A final suggestion is that some traditions of Chinese philosophy may
contribute to advancing efforts to understand human nature and to deal with dishar-
monies in the means-ends relationship.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the philosophy and engineering professions. Workshop

In 1995 the American Philosophical Association hosted
at its annual Eastern Division meeting in New York a So-
ciety for Philosophy and Technology shadow symposium
on “Philosophy of Technology after Twenty Years.” Sur-
prisingly to some, when commenting on the situation of
the philosophy of technology at that time, three leading
philosophers of technology d Don Ihde, Joseph C. Pitt, and
Friedrich Rapp d all described the field as marginal [1].
There is little doubt that since then philosophy of
technology has moved to a less marginal if still not central
position on the map of philosophy. For instance, in 1998 a
workshop on “The Empirical Turn in the Philosophy of
Technology” was organized at Delft University of Technol-
ogy in the Netherlands, with participants came from both
* Tel./fax: þ86 10 88256360.
E-mail address: libocong@ucas.ac.cn.
organizers Peter Kroes and Anthonie Meijers argued that,
to advance philosophical engagement with technology,
“The philosophy of technology should be based on empir-
ically adequate descriptions of technology and the engi-
neering practices” [2, p. xxxiii].
The “empirical turn in the philosophy of technology”
can to a considerable extent be interpreted as a turn to
engineering. This is because concretely and empirically
speaking technological acting is engineering practice. As for
the topic of engineering, Carl Mitcham's Thinking through
Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy
(1994) had pointed out that philosophers must think about
technology in a way that does not exclude engineering
discourse in order to advance their philosophical work [3,
p. 267]. However, it was not until the early 2000s that a
significant number of philosophers of technology gave
engineering any sustained attention.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2015.03.005
0160-791X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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2 B. Li / Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6
At the beginning of the 21st century, as a younger sibling
of the philosophy of technology, there emerged the phi-
losophy of engineering [4]. It is obvious that philosophy of
technology and philosophy of engineering are two over-
lapping subjects, distinctive but interdependent and
interactive. However, this essay will not differentiate the
two and focus only on their common points.
From my perspective, technology and engineering differ
from science, which focuses on the pursuit of truth, by
being deeply involved with theories of human nature. Such
an involvement will in the future help move the philosophy
of technology to an ever more central position in philo-
sophical reflection. Insofar as the philosophy of technology
and engineering deal with questions of human nature they
also deal with essential problems in philosophy as a whole.
This essay will consider briefly two such topics d human
nature and the means-ends relationship d that can also
provide opportunities for collaboration between western
and Chinese philosophical work.
2. Human nature
There are many theories of human nature. Debates
about what it means to be human have occupied philoso-
phy from its beginnings, with pre-philosophical reflection
taking place in myths. One early attempt in the West to
bring mythological thinking about human nature into
philosophy occurs in Plato's Protagoras, in a passage that
deserves to be quoted at length. The old Protagoras, in
order to persuade a younger Socrates that virtue is teach-
able, tells the following fable (as adapted from Jowett):
Once there were only gods and no animals. When the
time came for the creation of mortal animals, the gods
molded them in the earth as mixtures of fire and earth
and other elements. When they were about to enter the
light of day, the gods ordered Prometheus and Epi-
metheus to distribute appropriate capabilities to each.
Epimetheus proposed to Prometheus: “Let me distribute
and you inspect.” This agreed, Epimetheus went about
his task. To some he gave strength without swiftness,
while weaker animals were given swiftness; some he
armed, and others he left unarmed but devised other
means of preservation: making some large, with size as
a protection, and others small, who could fly in the air or
burrow in the ground. Thus did he give to each species
some means for self-preservation … .
But not being as wise as he might have been, Epi-
metheus distributed among the non-human animals all
the qualities he had to give, so that when he came to
humans, who had yet to be provided for, he did not
know what to do. Now while he was thus perplexed,
Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he
found that although all other animals were suitably
equipped, humans alone were naked and unshod, un-
covered, and unarmed d and already time had come
when humans and the other animals were to go forth
into the light of day.
Then Prometheus, not knowing what to do, stole from
Hephaestus and Athene wisdom in their arts along with
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fire d since these arts could not have been acquired or
used without fire d and quickly gave them to humans.
Thus human beings acquired the wisdom necessary to
support life, but not political wisdom, since this was in
the possession of Zeus …. But Prometheus entered un-
observed into the workshop shared by Athena and He-
phaestus, in which they pursued their arts, and carried
off Hephaestus' art of working by fire, and also the arts
of Athena, and gave them to humans. And in this way
humans acquired the means of livelihood. But Prome-
theus is said afterward to have been prosecuted for
theft, owing to the blunder of Epimetheus. (Protagoras,
320c-322a)
Obviously and interestingly, we can interpret the Greek
myth philosophically as follows. According to the story, the
nature of an animal species is associated with its ability to
survive. While all animals obtained from Epimetheus their
own such natural abilities, only humans did not obtain
something, which means that humans did not from the
beginning have a nature of their own. But Prometheus stole
the arts d the Greek word is “technai”, the root of the
English “technology” d from Hephaestus and Athena and
along with them fire, giving them to humans so as to enable
human beings to survive.
The word “to steal” is another key to interpreting human
nature. As another element in the story, “stealing” further
suggests that humans do not have their own nature but
instead have a “stolen” nature by way of Prometheus. So
while the nature of all other animals rests in their own
bodies d for example, the nature of tigers or the nature of
moles is to be found in their anatomies and physiologies d
the nature of humans exists outside their bodies. Human
nature is outside the body in an ability to use the arts and
fire. Considering that Hephaestus was the god of black-
smiths and artisans, with his symbols being the tools of axe
and tongs, and that Athena was the goddess of the city,
handicrafts, and agriculture, modern philosophers have
gone a step further and interpreted the human as a tool-
making and tool-using animal.
In ancient Greece, because tool-making and tool-using
activity was mainly carried out by slaves, slave owners
disdained tool-making and tool-using. Slave owners such
as Plato and Aristotle would resist defining humans as a
tool-making species. Instead, according to Plato, Aristotle,
and their followers, the human being is not a tool-making
and tool-using animal but a rational animal. This can be
called the Plato-Aristotle thesis. The majority of philoso-
phers for two thousand years in the West accepted this
view. Something similar was the case in China, although
servitude was not quite the same as in the West. In China,
for instance, peasant agricultural life was ranked above that
of traders.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin proposed a
counter thesis, that the human being is a tool-making an-
imal. Strangely, this thesis was not stated by Franklin
himself but was attributed to him by Samuel Johnson. A
later commentator summarized Franklin's view as follows:
Inventiveness was the indispensable condition for the
survival of the human species. Without fur or feather,
carapace or scale, ancestral man naked to the elements;
 B. Li / Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6
and without fang or claw or tusk to fight his predators;
without speed to elude them, without camouflage to
deceive them or the ability to take to the trees like his
cousin, the ape, he was physically at a hopeless disad-
vantage. What he developed to deal with his de-
ficiencies was [technology]. [Quoted from 3, pp. 137-
138]
Franklin thesis recalls the Prometheus myth. A further
adaptation in Thomas Carlyle presents the human being as
a “tool-using animal.” This statement easily complements
Franklin's and the two can readily be integrated into the
idea that the human being is a tool-making and tool-using
animal.
Although some scholars, including Karl Marx, adopted
the Franklin thesis, others have contested it. In the 20th
century, Ernst Cassirer in the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
(1923e1929) and Essay on Man (1944) [5] argued that the
human being is essential a symbol creating and using ani-
mal; this could be called the Cassirer thesis. Lewis Mumford
advanced a similar view. According to Mumford,
For more than a century man has habitually been
defined as a tool-using animal. This definition would
have seemed strange to Plato, who attributed man's rise
from a primitive state as much to Marsyas and Orpheus
as to Prometheus and Hephaestos, the blacksmith-god.”
In opposition to the idea of humans as defined by tool
making and using, Mumford argues the human “is
preeminently a mind-using, symbol-making, and self-
mastering animal; and the primary locus of all his ac-
tivities lies in his own organism. [6, p.77-78]
Although there are differences in the Plato-Aristotle,
Franklin, and Cassirier theses, this does not mean that
they necessarily exclude or contradict each other. Indeed, a
proposal for their synthesis follows in section four.
3. The paradigm of technology
The term “paradigm” has been especially popular since
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(1962) [7] used it to indicate a governing framework for the
pursuit of what he called normal science, and to describe
scientific revolutions in terms of changes in paradigms. The
term has subsequently been extended from the history and
philosophy of science to many other fields, from general
epistemology to literature and communications. However,
it is not a term has not been used much in the field of
philosophy of technology. An exception is found in the
work of the contemporary American philosopher Albert
Borgmann.
In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A
Philosophical Inquiry (1984), Borgmann argued for under-
standing modern technology in terms of what he called the
device paradigm [8]. As with Kuhn, Borgmann's usage is
vague but expressive and powerful d and as such his
philosophy has attracted the attention of many scholars, as
witnessed by the publication of a collection of studies titled
Technology and the Good Life. [9].
For Borgmann, natural processes and technological ac-
tivities are fundamentally different. While natural proce-
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3
sses are aimless, the technological activity is purposeful. As
for the purpose or end of modern technology, Borgmann
argues that technology “promises to bring the forces of
nature and culture under control, to liberate us from misery
and toil, and to enrich our lives” [8, p. 41]. Because of this
some scholars see the philosophy of technology as a kind of
teleology or analysis of its possible uses and ends.
But Borgmann goes on immediately to write, “To
speak of technology making promises suggests a sub-
stantive view of technology and is misleading” [8, p. 41].
The essence of technology should not be simplified in
terms of teleology. His view is that what distinguishes
modern technology is its distinctive character as means
in the form of the device paradigm. The device paradigm
as a means seeks to deliver a commodity, any commodity,
in a way that hides or does not expose the mechanism of
its creation. It thus disburdens any consumer of an
appreciation of or engagement with the means. In
contrast with the devices of modern technology such as
automatic HVAC systems and digital watches Borgmann
contrasts focal things and their associated practices such
as wood burning stoves and time pieces that call forth
regular manual physical engagement. In technological
devices ends become increasingly independent of and
separate from means.
In this sense, as Borgmann notes, modern technology is
a little like magic. As Borgmann says, “Only in magic are
ends literally independent of means. The inevitable explicit
concern with the machinery takes place in labor” [8, p. 48].
Through traditional labor a worker comes to recognize how
means implicate ends: how work on the farm yields the
food we eat or how the artisan's work produces goods such
as clothes and shelter. In such work it is possible to see the
inner connection between means and ends, how the means
produce end products. In magic, however, there is no inner
connection between means and end products; a magician
simply recites a spell or waves a wand and the product
appears.
For the consumer of technologically produced goods,
technology has a similar magical character. Contemporary
consumers do not know how their digital watches or
computer programed automobiles really work, and
workers on the technological assembly line have no view
of the whole of the production process as a means. To
consumers technological products operate in magical
ways and to technological workers it is almost magical
how products appear as a result of their increasingly
specialized labor.
Yet technological activity is really material and radically
different from magic. Technological production takes place
through means that are truly effective whereas the dreams
of magic are just that, dreams. In addition, the technolog-
ical device is different from the elixir allegedly produced by
means of some magic spell; the technological device truly
delivers a good, be it pharmaceutical therapy or a digital
clock. Magic carpets fail to transport people, but automo-
biles and airplanes succeed in doing so. All people are able
to appreciate this difference. No more than a little reflection
is necessary to recognize that a end truly alienated from
means is not possible, even if the means is difficult to
identify or understand.
4 B. Li / Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6
Thus Borgmann's concept of the device paradigm may
seem at first to question the means-end connection in
modern technology but in fact it calls attention to its
importance. The connection today is less obvious than in
premodern technology and in focal things and practices,
but nevertheless is there in some form and requires ex-
amination. For this reason, in contrast to Borgmann, I
would argue for understanding technology not in terms of a
device paradigm but in terms of a broader means-ends
relationship.
4. Human nature and the means-ends relationship
Human nature and the means-ends relationship are two
key issues in the philosophy of technology and inseparable
from one another. With regard to human nature, it is
necessary to distinguish human beings from animals. As
argued above in section two, there are at least three theses
concerning this distinction: humans are rational animals,
humans are tool-making and tool-using animals, and
humans are symbol-making and symbol-using animals. Yet
it is possible to synthesize these three views in a way that
points toward the need to analyze technology in terms of
the means-ends relationship.
Because the aim of tool-making is tool-using, and the
tools are means human use, the Franklin thesis easily im-
plies the importance of the means-ends relationship for
understanding technology. In addition, the symbol can be
regarded as a kind of means that human beings create and
use, so that the Cassirer thesis also implies the importance
of the means-ends relationship. As for the Plato-Aristotle
thesis, the connection with the technological means-ends
relationship requires more elaboration.
The inorganic world is a world without aims, but all
animals have their own aims or ends. Although humans
and other animals have aims, which is something they have
in common point, humans also differ from other animals.
Here the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus provides
further inspiration when it describes how other animals
make contact with the outside world directly and struggle
against difficulties with their bodies, including claws, teeth,
limbs, and so on. By contrast, humans make contact with
the outside world indirectly or by some means, because
humans make contact with the world by making tools and
using tools. The human relationship to the world is medi-
ated through tools and technology.
In classical western philosophy, Plato and Aristotle
nevertheless regarded reason as something beyond tool
making and tools, as a form of contemplation rather than
action. This view was deeply challenged by G.W.F Hegel
and his followers. In opposition to philosophers who saw
reason as contemplation and a way for detaching oneself
from the world, Hegel's “cunning of reason” sees reason as
an activity in the world that transforms it. It has its own
tools with which it works to achieve certain (often hidden)
ends. In Hegel's words,
Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning
consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by
causing objects to act and re-act on each other in
accordance with their own nature, in this way, without
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any direct interference in the process, carries out rea-
son's intentions. (Logic, sec. 382)
Karl Marx cited Hegel's remarks in Capital where he
points out that “The elementary factors of the labor-process
are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself; 2, the
subject of the work; and 3, its instrument.” In addition,
Marx associates his theory with the Franklin thesis: “The
use and fabrication of instruments of labor, although
existing in the germ among some species of animals, is
specifically characteristic of the human labor-process, and
Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal”
(Capital I, ch. 7, sec. 1). Thus in the new concept of reason
found in Hegel and Marx the Platonic-Aristotelian thesis of
the human as a rational animal is transformed into or be-
comes one with the Franklin thesis of the human as a tool-
making and using animal. And in this way it too implies the
importance of understanding technology through the
paradigm of the means-ends relationship.
Subsequent to Marx, Max Weber's understanding of
reason as instrumental rationality only deepened the need
for this approach. As a result of Weber's work, post-World
War I many scholars d from economists and sociologists
to philosophers d frequently replaced the term “reason”
with “rationality” and sometimes distinguished different
types of rationalities: substantive, instrumental, proce-
dural, and more. Others pointed out the dependency of all
forms of rationality on language and symbols. From the
perspective of such developments, the Platonic-
Aristotelian can be reinterpreted as compatible with the
Franklin thesis and justifies an understanding of the
means-ends relationship as fundamental to both human
nature and technology.
5. The means-ends relationship and alienation
Historically not only has the means-ends relationship
been central to the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, but it has
occasioned discussion of the concept of alienation, in which
there is some form of break between means and ends. In a
sense it is alienation that Borgmann is concerned with
when he criticizes technology as manifesting the device
paradigm and its imbalance of means and ends [8, p. 57].
Other discussions of alienation, although not always using
this exact word, can be found in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
(1818), Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensions Man (1964),
Holmes Rolston's environmental ethics, and Andrew
Feenberg's ten paradoxes [10]. Once it has been identified
as such, the issue of alienation can be interpreted as present
in some premodern philosophical texts. For instance, it is
possible to read the ancient Chinese Daoist philosopher
Zhuangzi, from the 4th century BCE, as having considered
the problem of alienation, when he presented social orders
and culture as confusing humans about reality.
Central to any discussion of alienation are such ques-
tions as the following: What causes alienation to emerge in
society? What are the social results of alienation? How
might the problem of alienation best be addressed? All will
involve some reflection on the means-ends relationship. As
part of this reflection, I would suggest that alienation
comes in at least three forms: (1) A means-ends imbalance
 B. Li / Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6
in which the ends break away from the means to an
extreme degree; (2) a means-ends imbalance in which the
means overwhelm and ultimately betray the ends; and (3)
symbol alienation, a relatively new form of alienation.
The causes and effects of alienation are deeply related to
the means-ends relationship in technology. Borgmann's
paradigm of technology, in which a consumer commodity
is delivered while hiding the machinery of its production,
creates a kind of means-ends imbalance or alienation. (This
is in contrast to Kuhn's scientific paradigm, where different
elements cohere in a harmonious unity.)
The first kind of means-ends alienation is that in which
the ends break away from the means to an absurd extreme,
even to the extent that an isolated end exists independent
of any obvious means. We can name this type of alienation
“magic alienation”. According to Borgmann,
The peculiar presence of the end and the device is made
possible by means of the device and its concealment.
Everyone understands that the former rests on the
latter, and everyone understands as well that the
enjoyment of ends requires some kind of attention to
the means. [8, p. 48]
Yet not everyone understands that the enjoyment of the
ends requires some kind of attention to or appreciation of
the means. Many people, perhaps even some philosophers,
cherish illusions that ends can be independent of means or
be enjoyed without attention to means. Why else would
magic be so attractive?
The second type of imbalanced means-ends relationship
is in some sense opposed to the first. In this case, the means
overwhelm the ends rather than serve them. Charlie
Chaplin's film Modern Times (1936) so vividly depicts this
type of alienation in satirical style that we could call it a
“modern times alienation”. There is a Chinese proverb
about lifting a rock only to drop it on your own toes that
could also apply here. Marx severely criticized this type of
alienation insofar as the capitalist employment of ma-
chinery heightens the intensity of labor rather than light-
ening it, enslaving workers rather than liberating them.
Historically speaking, in the premodern world magic
alienation was more common than modern times alien-
ation. Primitive peoples often believed they could gain their
ends by means of incantations or imprecations. In the
contemporary world, modern times alienation has become
more common, insofar as humans have invented powerful
devices but neglected or lost sight of ends.
Borgmann has a remarkably keen insight into the ways
that the device paradigm can split means and ends into
mere means and mere ends. It is this separation that leads
to the loss of focus in contemporary life. But a third type of
alienation, symbol alienation, poses a new and further
challenge in the information age.
6. The information age and symbolic alienation
The invention of the computer in the mid-1940s and its
increasingly ubiquitous use from the 1970s on has made it
the technology most responsible for transforming an in-
dustrial into an information age. Along with this trans-
formation there has been a shift from the kind of
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5
mechanical modern times alienation Marx warned against
to a symbol alienation, insofar as computers and the Inte-
rnet facilitate symbol processing and symbol commun-
ication.
The Industrial Revolution with its powerful tools and
machines gave rise to the problem of modern times alien-
ation, which has been subject to extensive analysis by
Marxist philosophers and others. With the development of
science, technology, and the economy under the influence
of computers some of the most oppressive features of
modern times alienation have been reduced if not elimi-
nated. Workers in highly developed countries of western
Europe benefit much more from industrialization than a
hundred years ago. Even in China the Internet and social
media facilitate some melioration of the worst excesses of
industrialization.
On the one hand, however, there is much in common
between mechanical modern times alienation and symbol
alienation. Both involve an imbalance or split between
means and ends. On the other, symbol alienation is a
distinct form of alienation with its own unique set of
complex properties that deserve to be investigated from
historical, social, philosophical, political, and cultural
perspectives.
The dominant characteristic of symbol alienation is that
it blurs the line between true and false information. Mod-
ern times alienation was more of a social phenomenon, and
did not challenge the true-false distinction. Examples of
symbol alienation in the information age are false adver-
tising of one kind or another, Internet fraud, identity theft,
and more. In the information age, the notion of information
as “objective” is called into question. Information can be
manipulated or processed in such a way that it becomes
mentally or culturally oppressive. In an industrial society
actual workers are alienated via actual machinery and the
distinction between means and ends is therefore more
literal and direct. By contrast, symbol alienation applies
even to consumers and takes place at the level of under-
standing and meanings.
7. Addressing imbalances between means and ends
The preceding is no more than a sketch of some key
issues in the philosophy of technology the further pursuit
of which can contribute to making the philosophy of
technology more central to philosophy as a whole. The
pursuit of deeper and more comprehensive understandings
of human nature, analyses of means-ends relationships,
and efforts to identify and address various types of means-
ends imbalances are all important both to philosophy and
to societies. Work in these areas thus deserves to be
addressed from a variety of perspectives. To address the
problem of alienation in the form of seeking ways to
rebalance means and ends is a complex task which,
moreover, bridges East and West; it is one on which there
are opportunities for global collaboration.
Sometimes there are tendencies to propose overly
simple solutions that do little more than replace one type of
imbalance with another. For example, some romantic pro-
posals for overcoming alienation have simply called for a
return to pre-industrial ways of life or for the restriction of
6 B. Li / Technology in Society xxx (2015) 1e6
the use of information media. It is not clear that these are
realistic options. The negotiation of tensions among
romantic and realistic perspectives, pessimistic and opti-
mistic ones, or dystopian and utopian dreams is a constant
feature of contemporary philosophical reflection on
technology.
Nevertheless, the challenge remains of the need to
replace an imbalanced system with a balanced one, a sys-
tem lacking in harmony with a harmonious one. In this
regard it may be possible to be encouraged especially by
the Chinese traditions of Daoism and Buddhism, in which
the ideal of harmony plays a central role. More than in the
West, there is a tradition in China of taking harmony as an
ideal. Drawing on various understandings of the ideal of
harmony may contribute to new visions of means-ends
harmonies might take in the information age and how
they might be pursued.
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