Moral Hermeneutics and Technology

Making Moral Sense through Human-Technology-World Relations

This book considers morality as a dynamic ecosystem that can change in response to its sociomaterial embedding. It particularly explores the role of technology in mediating the meaning of human values and studies the implications of this capacity for the use, design, and governance of technologies.

In Moral Hermeneutics and Technology: Making Moral Sense through Human-Technology-World Relations, Olya Kudina explores the role of technology in the way people arrive at their moral intuitions and choices and revise their moral commitments, a phenomenon she calls “moral hermeneutics.” This book considers technology as a mediator of human relations and questions the traditional anthropocentric view of morality. Drawing on the philosophical traditions of postphenomenology and pragmatism and empirical explorations from multiple case studies, Kudina shows how values co-evolve with the dynamic human-technology-world environment and even change in response to it. Consequently, Kudina presents morality as a dynamic practice of sense-making, where people, technologies, and the cultural setting all play an active role. This book explores the implications of such a technologically mediated moral hermeneutics for the informed use, design, and governance of technologies, while accounting for the intimate connection between values and technologies.