Values and Technology: Religion and Public Life

Values and Technology: Religion and Public Life. Gabriel R. Ricci, ed. New Burnswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2011.

An Ingenious Juxtaposition

The essays contained in Values and Technology appear at first blush to be but a jumble, an assortment of pieces linked only by their sharing some connection to the multifaceted literature on the relationships between ethics, religion, politics, and technological science. Nothing in terms of disciplinary field, scholarly method, theoretical approach, political perspective, religious tradition, ethical framework, or topical focus unifies the book.

The somewhat miscellaneous quality of the book is, however, understandable given the nature of the publication, as the most recent addition to the approximately sesquiannual “Religion & Public Life” series from Transaction. It is the seventh entry in the series edited by Gabriel R. Ricci since 2000, each of which resembles expanded special issues of scholarly journals concentrating on broad themes of cultural relevance.

This review will critically assess the chapters of this book taken singly then make the case that despite the conspicuous diversity of the essays it contains, the volume as a whole reflects an ingenious design.

Being Kind to Our Machines

John Barker’s contribution opens the volume with a painstaking demolition of the idea advanced by Luciano Floridi as part of his theory of Information Ethics that “informational objects” (including computer programs and files) have “inherent worth,” rendering them “moral patients” (1-2). It is a subclaim of a much more expansive position, as Barker explains, that “everything in existence has some intrinsic moral worth . . . simply by existing” (3).

Floridi’s position, as described by Barker, sounds symptomatic of the condition that has befallen the humanities in the age of the industrial academy, in which queer ideas win greater attention than plausible ones. Commendably, Barker takes this intuitively preposterous idea and gives it a generous and patient reading in order to elucidate exactly why it is as senseless as it seems.

Along the way, Barker illustrates how Floridi’s position on this particular point represents a predictable upshot of extrapolating the kind of equalizing premises that undergird Peter Singer’s theory of animal rights. I reckon that Floridi’s “treating all of existence equally” (5) epitomizes the pantheistic tendency that Tocqueville foretold under conditions of an ever more imperious passion for equality.

It represents a moralistic inversion of the implications of nihilism, willfully insisting that everything must be treated as if it has inestimable significance for fear of discovering that nothing has any. Floridi’s imperative to “minimize” and “avoid entropy” (8) represents the furthermost consequence of the mad modern mandate to master fortune by controlling the whole of nature. Ironically, Floridi’s theory seeks to be “non-anthropomorphic” (9), but only human beings could contrive it and only we can contravene it.

Computer Kids Short of Character

Fani Zlatarova deserves credit for an essay that reports on her successes in teaching ethical behavior to undergraduates studying computer science. She indirectly indicates how sorely neglected ethical precepts are among precisely those who aspire to wield great power in our time, producing the potential for great irresponsibility. Zlatarova’s essay prompts us to temper our optimism regarding the likelihood that increased technological power will coincide with greater justice and happiness.

Alan Kim and the Pigs in Clover

Drawing on Taoism, Alan Kim argues that we cause suffering for ourselves through our use of modern technology not because technology is inherently bad or unnatural, but because our use of it is enmeshed within a system of “‘values’ and ends over and beyond immediate need,” putting us in “a perpetual state of disequilibrium” (51).

His essay involves a convincing criticism of Rousseauvian imaginings of prehistoric savage men uncontaminated by technological use, explaining that our evolutionary origins reveal us to have always been an “integration of human and tool” (60). But then he offers an unlikely reading of Plato, maintaining that the Republic ultimately recommends the life depicted in the city of sows (369b-371d), wherein men enjoy an unperturbed communal existence, living in the present without agonizing over questions of better and worse, without concerning themselves with noble actions or refined pleasures, and without intellectualizing considerations of justice and injustice.

According to Kim, the life of the pig satisfied is best for us. Wanting more from life only multiplies our misery. Kim emphasizes, however, that the position he champions is not “advocating a form of Luddism” (58). It is not the use of technology as such that is harmful, but rather, it is ascribing phantasmical values to objects and objectives and proposing to improve ourselves and the world that makes us wretched, subjecting us to insatiable appetites, unruly emotions, pointless struggles, and illusory ideals.

Kim recommends that we should henceforth “refrain from forging values” (59) that lead us to strive after vanities and instead interiorize a What, Me Worry? outlook on technological innovation and implementation. While lamenting our unhealthy tendency to pursue “artificial ends ” (51), Kim collapses the difference between the natural and the artificial in the material world. He envisions a reconciliation and reintegration of nature and artifice that brings about a balance between our needs and our capacity to satisfy them (58).

Being natural tool users, we are all cyborgs already anyway (as Donna Haraway puts it; although I would much rather recommend Regina Spektor’s 2009 song, “Machine”), and so even the prospect of embodying the most thoroughgoing synthesis of flesh and steel (and plastic, ceramic, silicon, and what-not) imaginable would be nothing to get worked up about if it ensues as we reestablish “’equilibrium’ between man and machine” (60).

I wonder if Kim is aware that his ontology and utopian eschatology are not entirely unlike those of Francis Bacon, the principal founder of the vast and voracious technological project that dares anything and everything with a distant end-game in mind. Bacon denied any essential difference between nature and artifact, too. He also recommended changing the human condition so as to bring suffering to an end. This meant immunizing scientists against profit-seeking and glory-mongering while herding humanity toward an undisturbed enjoyment of the simple pleasures of this world.

Kim conceives of a world comprised of unself-conscious people without ambitions or longings residing in independent, self-sufficient villages (59). Realistically, this dream can be realized only if everyone around the world heeds Kim’s advice–an exceedingly unrealistic prospect. Still, one might wonder what we might do to ourselves in an effort to obtain tranquility in harmony as mutable bodies at home in the world, feeling neither alienation nor anxiety, never experiencing pride in achievement.

We might worry that Taoism as here described seems custom-made for despotism, especially when an uncritical technological orientation toward existence is already conducive to tyranny in perpetuity. Kim wouldn’t worry, but we might. I do, however, admit confusion as to why anyone enamored of Taoism labors to persuade others to change their whole way of life. That endeavor invariably involves making evaluative judgments, and it is never without some aggravation. It’s paradoxical.

Virtue from Drugs, Genes, and Machines

Following Kim’s essay, desensitizing us to technology’s metamorphic property, William Cornwell advances an argument that the more we are transformed through biotechnology via cybernetic interfaces, implants, transplants, nanotech, pharmaceuticals, gene therapy, and so on, the “more human” we will become (66)–more human in the sense of being more excellently human, morally and intellectually.

His argument depends on removing from virtue ethics the idea that virtue is rare and difficult, requiring cultivation through habituation to build constancy of character. It disregards the consideration that voluntary decision making requires practical intelligence acquired through experience, an aptitude for independent thought and action, plus a sense of personal responsibility. It supposes that virtue can be manufactured and imposed from the outside in, rather than developed from the inside out.

Cornwell furthermore hinges our success at perfecting ourselves on a colossal, wishful contingency. It will happen “if we make the right choices” (66). I am curious as to whether Cornwell really thinks that being more technologically savvy has made the current crop of undergraduates in his philosophy classes better at critical thinking and more likely to exhibit personal discipline and moral resolve.

Cornwell does not seem overly concerned that there is a serious problem in expecting admittedly imperfect beings to make the best possible choices so as to perfect themselves. He at least recognizes a concern related to the issues addressed by Zlatarova above – that the very same people who are most gung-ho about technological progress tend to be the least educated and interested in ethics – and so, these technologies may be used in infelicitous ways by the likes of malicious “hackers” (87).

Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to trust “experts” and “engineers” with the responsibility of ensuring that our technological enhancements work properly and yield desirable benefits (81). He is quite prepared to see technology used to “tweak a person’s character” as needed (83), especially so that otherwise troublesome sorts may better serve their social functions.

Indeed, he is glad to make the move from acknowledging that no human being is entirely independent and self-sufficient to suggesting that there is therefore nothing objectionable about re-engineering every aspect of any person. He contends that “technologies that help us to be more virtuous have moral value” (84), notwithstanding that his positions (and those technologies) undermine meaningful conceptions of moral agency. (His choice of the objective first person plural pronoun there is telling.)

Cornwell’s biggest qualm is that it may prove difficult to ensure that all the advances that promise to enhance us will be available equally to all. I can assure him that they won’t be, at least not in any fashion consistent with liberty, a sine qua non of human virtue.

The bare logistics of equal distribution alone combined with the inevitability of design flaws and the ongoing onset of obsolescence would render the dream of egalitarian enhancement a nightmare to implement. I am always a little astounded whenever someone wrings his hands at the prospect of inequalities while advocating the manufacture of superior beings, recognizing furthermore the indispensability of experts to that end.

In the end, Cornwell makes recourse to the old diabolical dodge that any concerns people might have regarding the biotechnological project of perfecting mankind will disappear as its manifestations become increasingly commonplace. Maybe man can get used to anything, but this trait hardly makes him more human, unless becoming more human would be a step down.

Grant Havers: Gold amidst the Grotesque

The volume’s most compelling essay, in my estimation, follows next. Grant Havers explains that natural rights theorists are correct to criticize the pretense of purveyors of utilitarian calculi, especially when answering questions regarding biotechnological progress or policy.

These purveyors are neither objectively rational–since they substitute prejudicial assumptions about human nature for an examination of the complex totality that comprises us, reducing us to mere pleasure-seekers and pain-evaders–nor properly called moral, as they convert ethical matters into schemata of appetites and interests, even though desires and preferences do not bestow value or generate obligations.

Havers furthermore argues that modern (i.e., secular) natural rights theories themselves cannot hold up under scrutiny when they propose to ground themselves on reason alone, especially reason as it was narrowly construed during the age of enlightenment. Meanwhile, critics of the thoroughly modern defense of natural rights–who make recourse to the wisdom of the ancients in order to buttress the theory–run into trouble, too, since the teachings of Plato and Aristotle alike are deeply antithetical to the modern liberal democrat’s adherence to “a universal commitment to equality and dignity” (99). Only something else, something higher, could supply a theory of human rights with immovable resistance to the biotechnological juggernaut. Absent that, avers Havers, humanity is apt to enslave itself in the attempt to idolize itself.

I agree in principle with the position that our rights cannot be sustained theoretically on the basis of modern rationalism and mundane experience alone. But in this age of evolving sensibilities, perhaps the charitable thing to do in practice is make allowances for those who believe that they can be, since they are more likely to lose faith in our rights than gain faith in their source. After all, in the spirit of the times, it seems that even among those who confess some faith nowadays there are many who like to believe that it belongs to the essence of the eternal itself to be semper reformanda, as if Progress were Lord and permission Her law.

Liberty versus Scientism

Continuing the criticism of the chapters which adopted a blasé or boosterish stance regarding biotechnology while bringing the conversation back down to earth, Christopher Vasillopulos reminds us first that, in fact, “no society suggests that life is an absolute value transcending all others” (110), and second, that “science cannot determine policy . . . . Nor can the worth of the policy be measured by science” (111).

Attempts to justify political decisions by saying that they are dictated by objective, neutral, impartial science are made by persons who either are trying to deceive or are themselves deceived. The rhetoric of science often grants “a cover of rationality for policies which might otherwise create hesitation or opposition” (114).

Vasillopulos uses the classic case of how the Nazis used this very strategy to illustrate his point, although he means to expose the ruse more generally. Wherever the state positions itself as “omnicompetent” (114) and “confound[s] science with morality” (118) to justify its actions, policies worthy of opprobrium may win widespread, casual approval. This essay stands as a warning to peoples everywhere not to surrender their freedom of thought and action, let alone sacrifice their own lives and their fellows’, to those who pretend to govern scientifically.

Following Vasillopulos’s essay on the misuse of science for political purposes, Gabriel R. Ricci contributes a diatribe against the corruption of science for political purposes, which he sees as having taken place under the administration of George W. Bush. Here I will only say that Ricci misapprehends Francis Bacon’s conception of modern science by construing it as apolitical.

A Clever Arrangement of Disparate Claims

The volume is rounded out by three shorter contributions. Thomas R. Winpenny studies the Amish to confirm that “the distractions and temptations of wealth” tend to threaten religious communities and their values. Kyle Powys Whyte maintains that tribal lands are disproportionately “targeted for risky technologies” (145) making the native peoples of North America victims of “techno-oppression” and “environmental racism” (146). Thomas A. Easton’s essay recalls the first chapter, on the question of what confers value on something, by considering the specific case of 3D printing, a relatively new technology that produces replicas of solid objects. (Google it!)

Examining the book in its entirety, I observe that Ricci has assembled these disparate chapters in a fashion that brings to mind a strikingly familiar model. Ricci’s achievement is made all the more remarkable given that one must assume that the contributing authors did not know how their individual essays would be situated, as the placement of each within the structure of the whole is suggestive of its relative significance and implies some criticism of its claims.

The book begins with a quarrel over the scope of moral obligation and what is owed to whom. In other words, it disputes the meaning of justice. The outrageous opinion that mankind is responsible for saving everything in the universe (akin to a declaration that justice is the advantage of the weaker and an antithesis to the idea that each man has no responsibilities except to himself) gets embarrassed for its internal incoherence (Barker vs. Floridi). Afterwards, a relatively straightforward affirmation of conventional morality yields recommendations for upholding it (Zlatarova). The life of men in a healthy pre-political state is then compared with the feverish existence people lead in the modern age, raising questions about the right way to live, individually and collectively (Kim).

Next we are inundated with a series of radical recommendations for transforming men and women into hitherto unknown extraordinary beings through innovative manipulations that would remold their bodies, augment their minds, and program their behavior. It is imagined that human beings could be made the best that they could be through rational control, overriding traditional ethical concerns and abolishing personal freedom (Cornwell).

A subsequent investigation into the basis of our ideas regarding right and wrong then establishes the conclusion that there is no meaningful speech about goods unless there are transcendent truths regarding such things toward which we may ascend. Only by beholding what is natural and right truly in the light of their source may we recognize their distortion by those whose ignorance and arrogance steers others toward greater peril (Havers). The more abstract consideration of what truly is and how things ought to be in theory gives way to a discussion of how things actually proceed in this world among imperfect beings who know only partially and behave partially, too.

First, a regime that may be described as a timocratic tyranny is contemplated and condemned (Vasillopulos), then a regime that combines democratic and oligarchical elements (Ricci). The book ends with a reflection on how in a high-tech age we find ourselves increasingly captivated by imitations of imitations (of imitations…) (Easton), an account of the needfulness of religion in reinforcing good morals and sustaining a decent community (Winpenny), all supplemented by an illustration of how injustice and ruin result when defective conceptions of the best way of life presume to prove their universality (Whyte).

Ricci has produced a book that is greater than the sum of its parts, selecting and arranging each piece so as to induce an implicit dialogue among its contributors. Although what prospective readers will get out of this book is bound to depend on the training and tools they take with them, digging in does cast light on various controversies currently on display in the academy regarding the relationships between goodness, truth, right, and might.

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