فصلنامه راهبرد فرهنگ
پیاپی 34 (تابستان 1395)

There are two kinds of moralities in the field of technology respectfully called pre-technological and post-technological moralities. It is argued in this paper that these two cases are related to the domain of public morality of creators, craftsmen, actors and users of technologies. Some intellectual tests are presented showing the refusal of direct entry of morality into the sphere of technology, connecting it to the domain of public morality of all actors. This analysis will come to two conclusions, according to one of which morality is a priori and according to the other it is a posteriori to the technology that has already laid in its value and ideological aspects and will be established afterwards. Based on this analysis, there is a kind of indeterminacy in post-technological morality arising from the complexities of the function. The domain of this indeterminacy can even be expanded to pre-technological morality and this is what renders the duty of morality in technology unclear and almost suspended. This conclusion can be used as evidence to the contention that technology lacks the essence which Heidegger attributed to it. However, the solution to any crisis arising from technology, including moral crisis, is still what he suggested.

Development requires planning, policymaking and management in all stages of preparation of the vision, strategy and implementation. Attempts have been made to show that division of labor and specialization of science on the side of some philosophies involve threatening influence of technocracy on policymaking. Technocracy ultimately prevents development from moving towards the direction of public welfare. Hence, in order to have suitable indigenous development and progress, we need philosophical backgrounds as suitable contexts for possibility of criticism and reformation of policymaking.

Science and technology play a key role in most fields in the world today. This role is particularly very crucial in the fields of policymaking, engineering education and public sphere. Hence, the nature and quality of their relationship is very important. With regard to the relationship between the two, public opinion often maintains that technology is applied science. The main objective of this paper is to study and critically review the said belief through theoretical and empirical arguments. Attempts have been made to show that this reading of the relationship between science and technology is not correct nor is it precise and hence requires revision and redefinition. Finally, some suggestions are given regarding the alternative type of relationship between science and technology.

The ethics of social networks is a nascent research branch which has sprouted from the main trunk of applied ethics. This growing literature discusses Web-based social networks in their relations with issues like identity, privacy, and the concept of friendship. In this paper, attempts have been made to develop the list of subjects discussed in the field to include the phenomenon of solitude and its relations with broad changes that social networks have brought about in today’s man lifestyle. Solitude is a rich experience in human life and has been broadly reflected upon in literary, mystical, and philosophical writings of all traditions in the East and West. Contrary to the feeling of loneliness and isolation, this experience is not an unpleasant one. It is full of outstanding exclusive spiritual qualities. In this paper, attempts have been made to discuss the nature, dimensions, and virtues of solitude to show that newly emerging technologies, particularly social networks, will gradually put this experience out of human reach if they are used carelessly and recklessly.

Modern technology has created unprecedented ethical challenges for man. On the one hand man has become the subject of technology and on the other the extensive and inevitable impacts of the ever increasing spread of technology on environment has turned decision-making about the use of technology into ethical challenges. Hans Jonas, in an article titled “Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Tasks of Ethics,” reviewing the changes in status of man and his condition due to development of modern technology, tries to show that the traditional ethical systems due to their characteristics cannot respond to the newly emerged ethical issues. Based on Jonas’ article, attempts have been made in this article to formulate and analyze the arguments that consider traditional ethics incapable of responding to the problems caused by modern technology. Since Islamic ethics too is a subject of Jonas’ verdict about traditional ethics, in this article, we will examine Jonas’ contention specifically from the perspective of Islamic ethics and study the capacity of Islamic doctrines in responding to the newly emerged queries and preventing the contemporary crises.

Actor-network theory (ANT), as an important theory in the field of science and technology studies, treats artifacts as mediators and agents on the side of human beings in social networks. Human beings and technologies are mediators which transform the essence of each others. So, human actions, agencies and decisions are mediated; we decide and act »with «artifacts not» by« them. Decisions do not stem from an isolated human nature, and action and agency do not exclusively belong to human beings, but are distributed to a socio-technical network of human beings and objects. This approach creates some questions about relationship between artifacts and human beings and agency and human decision-making, including the followings: Does not distributed agency and agency of artifacts take away intentionality and freewill from man? What will happen to ethical and legal responsibilities of human beings? Following the distributed agency is the responsibility too distributed to the artifacts? Attempts have been made to provide answer to these questions in this paper. Based on the Actor-network theory (ANT) ’s approach, it will be demonstrated that network and symmetric approach to artifacts and considering them as mediators and agents, would not take away intentionality from human beings nor will it give intentionality to artifacts nor does it have non-intuitional consequences regarding responsibility.

The countries that import technology, in the first step, try to select the required technology concomitant with their needs and, in the second step, they try to make the imported technology compatible with their domestic conditions. Since, the issue of transfer of technology has been discussed in Iran either in the field of development or engineering sciences, question about the foundations of technology before the complete development of technology has been considered one of the main obstacles in the way of transfer of technology. The hypothesis of this paper is that philosophical question about foundations of technology not only is not an obstacle in the way of transfer of technology, but also is one of the main pillars for moving towards compatible and indigenized technology. After critically studying transfer of technology from the perspective of philosophy of technology, by focusing on three issues, i.e. value-orientedness of technical product, fundamental difference between technological knowledge and scientific knowledge and the significance of the social technical system, attempts have been made in this article to demonstrate that the prevailing approach to the transfer of technology is superficial. On the basis of this approach two solutions have been suggested for the transfer of technology.