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8. The Morality of Things: A Postphenomenological Inquiry
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117 8 The Morality of Things: A Postphenomenological Inquiry Peter-Paul Verbeek Ethics appears to be at the eve of a new Copernican revolution. A few centuries ago, the Enlightenment, with Kant as its major representative, brought about a turnover hitherto unequaled by moving the source of morality from God to humans. But currently there seem to be good reasons to move the source of morality one place further. It increasingly becomes clear that we should not consider morality as a solely human affair, but also as a matter of things. Just like human beings, material objects appear to be able to provide answers to moral questions. The artifacts we deal with in our daily lives help to determine our actions and decisions in myriad ways. And answering the question how to act is the ethical activity par excellence. This “material turn” in ethics raises many questions, though. Is the conclusion that things influence human actions reason enough to actually attribute morality to materiality? Can things be considered moral agents, and if so, to what extent? And is it morally right to go even one step farther and try to explicitly shape this morality of things, by consciously steering human behavior with the help of the material environment? What Things Do One of the first to propound the morality of things was the French philosopher of technology Bruno Latour. In 1988 he delivered a lecture in The Netherlands entitled “Safety Belt—The Missing Masses of Morality.” He stated that it is about time to stop complaining about the alleged moral decay of our society. Such lamentations show a lack of understanding of our daily world. Morality should not be looked for only among humans, but also among 118 Peter-Paul Verbeek things, Latour told his audience. Whoever is able to discern the moral charge of matter sees a society that is swarming with morality. Latour illustrated his thesis by discussing the safety belt. Many cars refuse to start or produce an irritating sound until the driver is wearing his or her seatbelt. According to Latour, such cars embody morality. Designers delegated to it the responsibility to see to it that car drivers wear their safety belts. Apparently, the moral decision whether or not to wear a seatbelt is not made exclusively by the driver, but also by the car in which he finds himself.1 Latour’s thesis that things can possess morality is based on the counterintuitive thought that things, just like human beings, are able to act. In his “a-modern” approach of reality, Latour gives up the rigid distinction between humans and things that has been playing such an important role in Western thinking ever since the Enlightenment.2 Rather than making an a priori distinction between “humans ” and “nonhumans,” Latour prefers to approach them symmetrically. In order to be able to do that, he analyzes reality in terms of “actors” that are associated with each other and interact via “networks.” These actors can be human or nonhuman in nature, and therefore he prefers to call them “actants.” The agency of things consists in their ability to help shape human actions . Latour indicates this ability in terms of “scripts.”3 Just like the script of a movie or a theater play tells the actors what to do at what time, material artifacts can embody implicit prescriptions for the actions of their users. Latour illustrates this not only with the safety belt that was discussed above, but also, for instance with a speed bump. Such a bump has a prescription “built in”: slow down when you approach me. Latour analyzes the script of artifacts in terms of “translations” of “programs of action.” 4 From the perspective of his symmetrical approach, both humans and things possess programs of action. A speed bump translates the action program of a driver (“drive fast because I’m in a hurry,” or perhaps “drive slowly because otherwise I might cause an accident”) by merging it with the action program of a speed bump (“damage the suspension of cars that drive fast”) into a new program: “drive slowly because otherwise I might damage my suspension.” In this translation, the speed bump helps to shape the actions of human beings. According to Latour, the scripts of things can be understood as the result of “inscriptions” or “delegations.” The activities of designers can be understood as “inscribing” programs of action into artifacts. In doing so, designers delegate responsibilities to these artifacts. By inscribing a program...