Science, Technology, Society and

the Human Condition

PREPARED BY: MRS. IRISH M. SEQUIHOD – UDTOHAN, MS BIO
Objectives:

Discusswhat technology reveals;

Examine modern technology and its role in
human flourishing; and
Explain the role of art in a technological
world.
 Technology as a Mode of Revealing

 The progress of human civilizations throughout history mirrors the

development of science and technology.
 The human person, as both the bearer and beneficiary of science and
technology, flourishes and finds meaning in the world that he/she
builds.
 In the pursuit of a good life, he/she may unconsciously acquire,
consume, or destroy what the world has to offer.
What is a GOOD LIFE?

We have our own Philosophy and

therefore have our own meaning of a
good life.
The GOOD LIFE according to Aristotle

 The most important moral virtues or habits are

moderation, courage, and justice.
 Moderation keeps us from overindulging in pleasure or
seeking too much of limiting goods.
 Courage is having the disposition to do what it takes to
live a good life.
 Justice is the virtue of cooperation.
St. Augustine and Human Freedom

 Freedom is the capacity of choosing what is good and of performing food deeds,
because freedom is fixated on the good things, to choose the good things and to
reject those which are bad.
 Our freedom should make us recognize what appropriate material things that we
have to use with freedom and thanksgiving and what we have to love as a final
goal.
 All material things are to be used but we have to be free enough to recognize that
the only person for whom we have to be slaves is God, in whom we find our rest
and our final goal.
What is Technology then?
 Different school of thoughts – Philosophy
 Is about the use and knowledge of techniques and processes for producing goods and
services. – general concept
 Technicism - "reflects a fundamental attitude which seeks to control reality, to resolve
all problems with the use of scientific–technological methods and tools.“
 Optimism -  transhumanism and singularitarianism
- Transhumanists generally believe that the point of technology is to
overcome barriers, and that what we commonly refer to as the human condition is just
another barrier to be surpassed.
Singularitarians believe in some sort of "accelerating change"; that the rate of
technological progress accelerates as we obtain more technology, and that this will
culminate in a "Singularity" after artificial general intelligence is invented in which
progress is nearly infinite; hence the term. 
What is Technology then?
 Different school of thoughts – Philosophy
 Skepticism and Critics –
 On the somewhat skeptical side are certain philosophers like Herbert
Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently
flawed. They suggest that the inevitable result of such a society is to become evermore
technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.
 Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious,
although not entirely, deterministic reservations about technology (see "The Question
Concerning Technology’).
What is Technology then?
 Different school of thoughts – Philosophy
 Skepticism and Critics –
 According to Heidegger scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger
does not oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way
that 'in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with
technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it.' Indeed, he
promises that 'when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we
find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim.'What this entails is a more
complex relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists
tend to allow."
 Martin Heidegger

 Martin Heidegger, (born September 26, 1889, Messkirch, Schwarzwald,

Germany—died May 26, 1976, Messkirch, West Germany), German philosopher,
counted among the main exponents of existentialism. His groundbreaking work in
ontology (the philosophical study of being, or existence) and
metaphysics determined the course of 20th-century philosophy on the European
continent and exerted an enormous influence on virtually every other humanistic
discipline, including literary criticism, hermeneutics, psychology and theology.
Technology as a Mode of Revealing

The Question of Technology

Urges us to question technology and see
beyond people’s common understanding of it.
“What is correct is not necessarily true and
the ‘true’ so much more meaning and
significance”.
Technology as a Mode of Revealing

The ‘true’ can be pursued through the correct.

In other words, the experience and
understanding of what is correct lead us to
what is ‘true’.
Technology as a Mode of Revealing

Heidegger urged people to envision technology as a

model of revealing as it shows so much more about
the human person and the world.
Technology is bringing forth (poises), a making
something.
By considering that technology as mode of
revealing then truth (aletheia –unhiddenness or
disclosure) is brought forth.
Questioning as a piety of thought

 Peity for Heidegger means obedience and submission. In

addressing what technology has brought forth, one cannot
help but be submissive to what his/her thoughts and
reflections elicit.
 Thinking brings forth insights that the mind has not yet
fully understood or developed or may bring eureka
moments.
 Technology as Poeisis:
Applicable to Modern Technology?
 Does the idea that technology is poeisis apply to modern technology?

For Heidegger, presently, we tend to be chained to technology.

Heidegger characterizes modern technology as a challenging forth since it is a very
aggressive in its activity.
There is a pervasive instrumentalist interpretation of technology as a human activity that
provides the means to our ends.
But this interpretation opens up to a deeper question, namely, what is technology
essentially? And if it is instrumental then what is its end?
 Technology as Poeisis:
Applicable to Modern Technology?
Martin Heidegger and Technology

 Heidegger considers that technology involves the bringing-forth (poiesis) and

suggests that with technology comes a distinctive mode of disclosiveness, or
revealedness, that is a kind of ontological truth (aletheia)

 Our activities, the things we encounter and deal with, and even we ourselves all
seem to happen together in a “world” where everything is set up and “enframed” as
part of a stockpile of available materials and personnel –”standing-reserve”
(Bestand), always ready for technologically determined purposes.
 Technology as Poeisis:
Applicable to Modern Technology?
Martin Heidegger and Technology

 For Heidegger, presently, we tend to be chained to technology.

 There is also a pervasive instrumentalist interpretation of technology as
human activity that provides the means to our ends.
 But this interpretation opens up to a deeper question, namely, what is
technology essentially? And if it is instrumental then what is its end?
Enframing: Way of Revealing in Modern
Technology
 The way of revealing in modern technology is an enframing. This
enframing that challenges forth and sets upon nature is a way of
looking at reality. In simpler terms, it is as if nature is put in a box or
in a frame so that it can be better understood and controlled according
to people’s desires. Poises is concealed in enframing as nature is
viewed as an orderable and calculable system of information.
 Calculative mind vs. Meditative mind

 Calculative thinking is seemed to favored in the modern world because of its efficiency and exact or
definite answers to questions.
 Meditative thinking, on the other hand, is a very important type of thinking, for Heidegger than the
calculative; it helps us to understand our life’s meaning, placing significance on the individual rather
than the collective.
 Calculative thinking makes our individual lives less important. It implies that there is a way to
categorize everyone and everything in the world, taking away any real free will.
 Calculative thinking, then – if taken as the entire truth – makes us entirely mechanistic. It suggests that
there is complete, objective truth and order in the world. There would be no free will, because action
would fit into a greater structure.
 Human Person Swallowed by
Technology
Though it is true that the individual takes part in the
revealing of nature, limits must still be reorganized.
Humans do not really call the shots on this Earth. If
we allow ourselves to get swallowed by modern
technology, we lose the essence of who we are as
beings in this world.
Freidrich Wilhelm Nietzshe on Art

 Aside from the use of reason, arts unveils the truth.

 We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.
 Artis not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a
metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside
thereof for its conquest.
 Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us
from striving to possess it.
 Immanuel Kant on Disinterested
Pleasure and Aesthetics
 Therefore, a true judgment of beauty is
disinterested; it is not based on any known
concept, simply a sensation of unconstrained,
completely detached pleasure. Along these same
lines, a beautiful object is purposive, containing
the property or quality of purposefulness, without
actually having a concrete purpose.
 Disinterested Appreciation and
Technology
 The spontaneity in doing arts should not be taken for granted, arts reveal the
truth.
 The appreciation for what is aesthetically delightful also reminds inventors
and those people who are in the pursuit of making new things, that being
creative and making new things out of what are those available must not be
out personal interest but more in the delight of just beholding what is
beautiful and what is good for all.
The Use of Art as a Way out of the
Enframing of Modern Technology

The “pattern” followed by art is not the rigid

pattern that follows much the calculative thinking.
Art is spontaneously expressed and is open.
Technology and the Environment
The Old Perspective of the Rhine River The Modern Perspective of the Rhine River
A river of beauty and source of national Supplier of hydraulic energy.
pride and inspiration.
Allowing the river to flow and to just be a Appears to be something of human
river. command and for human service.
An object on call for inspection by a tour
group ordered there by the vacation
industry.
 Technology and the Environment
 How the Rhine River is seen in the modern day perspective is reflective of how man
sees the environment.
 Everything is just a standing reserve waiting to be developed and used for technology
to advance but in a very calculative way.
 However, it is right to rejoice on the advances of technology. These advances in
science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity.
 Man conquers the tension that impels overcome material limitations to conquer
countless evils that limit man to suffer and let fate do its part.
 Technology and the Environment
 Yet it must also recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology , information
technology, knowledge of our DNA, and many other abilities which we have
acquired, have given us tremendous power.
 Those who have advanced knowledge to these technologies can have dominance over
the whole of humanity and the entire world.
 Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that these will be
used wisely, particularly when we consider how they are currently being used.
 Technology and the Environment
 There is tendency to believe that every increase in power means an increase in
progress itself, an advance in security, usefulness, welfare and vigor.
 But the contemporary man has not been trained to use power well.
 The immense technological development has not been accompanied by a
development in human responsibility, values and kindness.
 Power has been always associated as to respond from alleged utility and security.
The Globalization of the Technocratic
Paradigm
 Man now is seen as the master of all and can manipulate all
things through his creative capacity.
 Everythingelse is there to be possessed, mastered, and
manipulated.
 What makes this problem more alarming is that man may
even see other men as possessions and things that can be
manipulated and controlled.
Ethics and Technology
 The role of ethics comes in the issue of the globalization and spread of
the technocratic paradigm.
 Aristotle upheld moderation to avoid apathy and greed; courage to
choose to live a good life over bad; and justice to consider others in
order not to cause them pain and suffering.
 St.Augustine upheld to exercise freedom and creativity to help in the
continued existence of the good that the Creator made.
 Pope Francis upholds each man’s sense of responsibility for all of
hhumankind and the common home, which is the earth.