IB Philosophy 9.1.1 Nature and Role of Technology Notes

What Is Technology?

Aristotle: Techne and Instrumental Rationality

1. Unit 9 addresses philosophy and contemporary issues, beginning with the philosophical examination of technology. This is not a question about specific devices or software but about the fundamental nature of technology itself: what it is, what role it plays in human life, and whether it is merely a tool or something more.
   1. Aristotle distinguished techne from other forms of knowledge in the Nicomachean Ethics.
2. Techne is the knowledge of how to make things. Unlike episteme (knowing that something is true, like a mathematical law) or phronesis (practical wisdom about how to live well), techne is about creating things that would not exist in nature on their own.
   1. For Aristotle, techne involves both knowledge of universal principles and the ability to apply them to particular cases. A physician knows the general principles of health and can apply them to treat individual patients.
   2. A builder understands the properties of materials and the principles of construction. Techne is therefore a kind of reasoned, purposeful skill: the ability to produce something through informed action.
3. The Aristotelian conception treats technology as instrumental: it exists for the sake of the products it creates, which in turn serve human purposes. Technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
   1. Health is the end, medicine is the techne that serves it. Shelter is the end, building is the techne that produces it.

Kapp: Technology as Organ Projection

1. Ernst Kapp proposed the theory of “organ projection” in his Elements of a Philosophy of Technology (1877). Kapp argued that technological tools are extensions of human organs: the hammer extends the fist, the telescope extends the eye, the railway extends the legs.
   1. On Kapp's view, technology is not something alien or separate from human beings. It is an outward expression of our own abilities, our bodies and minds made into objects we can use.
2. Kapp’s organ projection thesis suggests that technology reveals something about human nature itself. By studying the tools humans create, we learn about the capacities and limitations of the human body and mind.
   1. Technology is a mirror of humanity, reflecting our physical and cognitive structures in material form.
3. The question “Is technology a means to an end or an end in itself?” introduces a crucial philosophical distinction. The instrumentalist view holds that technology is always a tool serving human purposes.
   1. The substantivist view holds that technology has its own logic, values, and momentum that shape human life independently of human intentions.

Marx and Floridi: Technology as a medium

1. Karl Marx placed technology at the centre of historical change, arguing that the forces of production (tools, machines, techniques) determine the economic and social structure of society. This analysis, and its implications for the question of whether technology controls us, is explored fully in 9.1.2.
2. Luciano Floridi argues in The Fourth Revolution (2014) that we have entered the information age, in which the boundary between online and offline, human and artificial, has become blurred. Floridi coins the term “infosphere” to describe the informational environment in which humans now live.
   1. Technology is no longer simply a set of tools but the medium through which we exist.
   2. Consider a person whose morning begins with a smartwatch reporting sleep quality, whose commute is navigated by GPS, whose work is conducted through cloud platforms, whose social life exists on messaging apps, and whose evening entertainment is algorithmically curated.
   3. This person does not simply use technology. They inhabit the infosphere.
   4. There is no longer a clear boundary between where this person ends and where their technology begins. The digital environment does not just surround them; it has become part of how they experience and understand the world.

Heidegger: Technology as a “Way of Knowing”

Ancient vs Modern Technology and Enframing

1. Martin Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology" (1954) is the most influential philosophical analysis of technology in the twentieth century.
   1. Heidegger's central claim sounds like a riddle but is philosophically precise: the essence of technology is not found in machines or devices. What matters is not the gadget itself but the way technology changes how we see and relate to everything around us.