Publicação
How to deal with existential threats caused by technological progress when we are not aware of them?
| Resumo: | [Excerpt] 1. What is the paper about? In recent decades, numerous authors have expressed their per-plexity about the fact that, in view of the existential threats that are becoming ever more evident, man makes no or only very little effort to avert or counter these dangers. Even if philosophy often falls back on psychological reasons to answer this question, there are also attempts to explain the lack of awareness of existential dangers in a more gen-uinely philosophical way. In this paper, examples from philosophical/ sociological literature - I will draw on Jared Diamond, Byron Willis-ton, Bernard Stiegler and Gunther Anders - will be used to distinguish analytically between different forms of ignorance. An important dis-tinction will be that between remediable and irremediable ignorance. Of particular interest is the question whether irremediable ignorance exists at all, and in which cases it is assumed. Especially in the latter case, it also becomes apparent that often no clear line is drawn be-tween ignorance about dangers and inability to react to them. Since ignorance and inability to respond to existentially threatening dangers is an essential structural moment of individual traumatic experience, this investigation opens an interesting perspective regarding a 'trau-matology' on a collective or human level. [...] |
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| Autores principais: | Sylla, Bernhard |
| Assunto: | technology existential threats |
| Ano: | 2024 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | [Excerpt] 1. What is the paper about? In recent decades, numerous authors have expressed their per-plexity about the fact that, in view of the existential threats that are becoming ever more evident, man makes no or only very little effort to avert or counter these dangers. Even if philosophy often falls back on psychological reasons to answer this question, there are also attempts to explain the lack of awareness of existential dangers in a more gen-uinely philosophical way. In this paper, examples from philosophical/ sociological literature - I will draw on Jared Diamond, Byron Willis-ton, Bernard Stiegler and Gunther Anders - will be used to distinguish analytically between different forms of ignorance. An important dis-tinction will be that between remediable and irremediable ignorance. Of particular interest is the question whether irremediable ignorance exists at all, and in which cases it is assumed. Especially in the latter case, it also becomes apparent that often no clear line is drawn be-tween ignorance about dangers and inability to react to them. Since ignorance and inability to respond to existentially threatening dangers is an essential structural moment of individual traumatic experience, this investigation opens an interesting perspective regarding a 'trau-matology' on a collective or human level. [...] |
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