Toward an Ethics of Technologies as Prostheses

This paper discusses critically the historical bond that exists between contemporary culture and the instrumental definition of technology, according to which technology is a means, a complex of instruments that serve particular human ends. It argues and illustrates that technologies not only serve human ends but also have ends in themselves. Ancient and modern technologies have always had intrinsic ends, they are highly effective achieving those ends and these have ethical importance. As cultural entities with intrinsic ends, technologies are not necessarily congruous with our ends and have generally transformed our ways of life in very unconscious ways.I propose an ethics of technologies based on the idea that all technologies have a tendency to become prostheses. As part of our being, the ends of technologies become our ends. In the frenzy of instrumentalism and presumed progress, contemporary technologies as prostheses transform the experience of what is far at the expense of what is near. Our ethics opens ways of raising questions with respect to these structural transformations and the communities we might want to envision and consider for humans who may hopefully be capable and willing to choose their technologies in more conscious ways.