“Guns Don’t Kill, People Kill”; Values in and/or Around Technologies

Pitt, Joseph C.

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7914-3_6

Cited by 40 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Related to this line of reasoning is what has been termed the "value neutrality thesis", which Ihde and several other especially critical philosophers of technology argue very strongly against (see, for example, Ellul 1962;Winner 1977). Pitt (2014) in his "Guns don't kill; people kill" defines the value neutrality thesis as: "Technological artifacts do not have, have embedded in them, or contain values" (p. 90), and goes on to explain his pragmatist stand on this thesis (cf. Pitt 2006):…”

Section: Defining Technological Determinism: a Research Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying the past, designing the future: technological determinism reconsidered in technology education

Hällström

2020

Int J Technol Des Educ

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From a philosophical viewpoint, technological design is about connecting what is desirable with what is technically possible. Technology itself plays a major role in design processes, not only because technology development is what designing is all about, but also since the existing technology at any given point in time frames what is possible to achieve in terms of new outcomes. A limiting role of technology in design, education and other societal activities goes under the concept of technological determinism and has arguably been one of the most significant points of debate in the social sciences in the last decades. The aim of this article is to investigate how philosophical, sociological and historical research, as well as design and innovation research about technological determinism, could be fruitfully reconsidered in technology education. The analysis yielded three novel findings about the nature of technological determinism. First of all, technological determinism can take the form of an idea, theory or a way of explaining technology development in history or the present, but it can also take the form of actual material structures that-implicitly or explicitly-permeate and influence society, or, at least, this is what some researchers claim. Secondly, technological determinism is not just something that is the result of a bird's eye view of technology and society or when we study technology as part of the macro level of society. Determinism can appear on all levels, even the micro level. Thirdly, like its counterpart social/societal determinism, technological determinism is not necessarily a "bad" thing, but a natural result of design being a balance between what is societally desirable and technically possible. The most critical issue from the point of view of technological literacy is to promote the idea that it is humans that design and retain control over technology.

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Section: Defining Technological Determinism: a Research Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying the past, designing the future: technological determinism reconsidered in technology education

Hällström

2020

Int J Technol Des Educ

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“…A good example of this approach is Joe Pitt's work on the neutrality of technology [1]. Pitt defends the thesis that it is highly undesirable to give up…”

Section: Human-technology Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As soon as we bestow material artifacts, rather than human beings, with agency, we dilute the idea of moral responsibility. Seeing technologies as more than neutral opens the door to arguments like "the machine made me do it" [1]. Pitt claims this view pretends that humans can share responsibilities with technologies, and therefore provides an unjustified moral excuse.…”

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confidence: 99%

COVER STORYBeyond interaction

Verbeek

2015

interactions

195

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“…While contemporary academic philosophers and theorists of technology from different schools widely reject VNT, 1 it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are more than just a figure of speech; namely, whether they are non-trivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This challenge has been most thoroughly developed by Joseph Pitt, who, primarily in his paper "Guns don't kill, people kill," gives an explicit full-fledged argument for VNT (Pitt 2014;Pitt 2000: 72-86). The absence of a satisfactory response to Pitt's challenge may partly explain why VNT remains a common platitude in the general public and among technology developers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Technology Value-Neutral?

Miller

2020

Science, Technology, & Human Values

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According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology.

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“Guns Don’t Kill, People Kill”; Values in and/or Around Technologies

Cited by 40 publications

References 3 publications

Embodying the past, designing the future: technological determinism reconsidered in technology education

Embodying the past, designing the future: technological determinism reconsidered in technology education

COVER STORYBeyond interaction

Is Technology Value-Neutral?

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