Artifacts and affordances: from designed properties to possibilities for action

Abstract

In this paper I critically evaluate the value neutrality thesis regarding technology, and find it wanting. I then introduce the various ways in which artifacts can come to influence moral value, and our evaluation of moral situations and actions. Here, following van de Poel and Kroes, I introduce the idea of value sensitive design. Specifically, I show how by virtue of their designed properties, artifacts may come to embody values. Such accounts, however, have several shortcomings. In agreement with Michael Klenk, I raise epistemic and metaphysical issues with respect to designed properties embodying value. The concept of an affordance, borrowed from ecological psychology, provides a more philosophically fruitful grounding to the potential way(s) in which artifacts might embody values. This is due to the way in which it incorporates key insights from perception more generally, and how we go about determining possibilities for action in our environment specifically. The affordance account as it is presented by Klenk, however, is insufficient. I therefore argue that we understand affordances based on whether they are meaningful, and, secondly, that we grade them based on their force.

Adapting Ourselves, Instead of the Environment: An Inquiry into Human Enhancement for Function and Beyond

“…Indeed, our definition does not make any normative statement about whether the enhancement will be good or bad. However, the normative value of any technology – and therefore also of any Human Enhancement – can be assessed in terms of the possibilities of action the respective technology provides in a specific environment to a specific user (Döbler & Bartnik, 2022 ; Klenk, 2021 ; Tollon, 2021 ). Moreover, as discussed later, evaluation of the enhancement hinges on its ability to foster effective engagement with the world and present normativity.…”

“…The dominant mode of using a technology emerges from practice and is related to which possibilities of action the environment and artifact provide to the user (Boer, 2021). Therefore, multistability is tied to determining a technology's moral value through related affordances (Boer, 2021;Klenk, 2021;Tollon, 2021).…”

Do digital technologies have politics? Imaginaries, practices and socio-political implications of civic blockchain

“…At the same time, attention has been called to the political implications of scientific knowledge production and technological development (Haraway 1985;1988). In keeping with Winner's (1980) original ideas, recent debates in Science and Technology Studies (STS) have signalled how criteria for choice of design features are neither neutral nor objective (as such principles as efficiency, productivity, and technical improvement are sometimes believed to be), but rather reflect personal judgements, competing rationales, and contending visions of desirable futures (Jasanoff and Kim 2015;Tollon 2022). Inevitably certain interests are prioritised over others; in most cases this follows existing power relations and privileges (van den Hoven 2005; Klenk 2020).…”

Explaining multistability: postphenomenology and affordances of technologies

“…Recent work in the philosophy of technology has mobilized elements of affordance theory to explain why technological artifacts embody values (Tollon 2021;Klenk 2020). In doing so, such accounts attempt to prove the theoretical inadequacy of the "value-neutrality thesis" concerning technologies: the idea that technologies are mere instruments through which agents achieve the ends they have set more or less independently.…”

“…Third, I introduce the recent notions of "rich landscape of affordances" and "form of life" to argue that the normativities present in specific social practices put constraints on technology use. Fourth, I briefly contrast my approach with how Klenk (2020) and Tollon (2021) have conceptualized the "affordance character" of technological artifacts, and highlight how a focus on the situated nature of affordances augments these earlier conceptualizations, and helps accounting for multistability. In conclusion, I briefly elaborate how the approach to affordances developed in this paper might inform our understanding of the "disruptive" nature of new technologies.…”