A Study On Paul Verbeek’s Materializing Morality Thought

Peter Paul Verbeek is Professor of Philosophy of Technology in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.As a representative of the Dutch School of Philosophy of Technology,Verbeek has a direct influence on promoting the third turn of Philosophy of Technology.The birth of the idea of "moral materialization" is an inevitable product of the development of modern technological civilization.It vividly reflects the transformation of people’s philosophical thinking in the context of the great modern technological change,and also reflects the fact that philosophers of technology,faced with the development of emerging technologies,carried out a courageous and aggressive attempt.The idea of "moral materialization" was put forward by the Latour.And then by the Netherlands.The scholar Athus clearly put forward the concepts of "artificial morality" and "materialized ethics" in the moralization of instruments.After developed by scholars such as Ide and Latour,it finally became an independent school under the perfection of Verbeek.On the basis of Ide’s theory of technological intentionality,Verbeek devides the relationships among human beings,technological objects and the world into six relationships,such as cyber and composite,which provides a theoretical basis for his technology-mediated thought.Verbeek absorbed Latour’s actor network theory,reconstructed the relationship between technology and morality,and derived a complete thought of "moral materialization".In the thought of "moral materialization",Verbeek regards technical norm morality as an ethical orientation,technical regulation morality as a subject orientation,emphasizes the moral regulation role of technical objects,and endows technical objects with the same intentionality and freedom as human beings,highlighting that technological objects play an intermediary role in human cognition and behavior,and calling for the "materialization" of human society’s ethics and morality into technological objects through technological design,so as to play the ethical guiding role of technology on human behavior and cognition.Up to now,there is still a great controversy about Verbeek’s "moral materialization" thought.However,from the perspective of philosophical practice,Verbeek’s thought of "moral materialization" still has great guiding value.It not only promotes the development of philosophy of technology at the theoretical level,but also combines the advantages of "empirical turn" and "ethical turn".It expands the dimension and connotation of human ethical philosophy at the realistic level,and opens up a new way for people to embrace the "good life" of technological objects.