Technology’s Intrinsic Value
摘要
This chapter provides the crucial, positive counterpoint to the intrinsic value of nature, establishing the Intrinsic Value of Technology as the opposing pole of the political spectrum. It begins by arguing that technology’s value extends far beyond its obvious instrumental and economic benefits, positing that a deeper “technological imperative” exists, valuing technological states of affairs suis generis (for their own sake) under a Moorean conception of intrinsic value. Since this position is largely undefended in analytical philosophy, four distinct lines of argument are advanced: (1) Brute Intuition, using examples like spacecraft to evoke direct, non-instrumental appreciation; (2) Appeal to Liberty, arguing that functional artifacts uniquely expand physical liberty (or Amartya Sen’s “option sets”), which is a political value on par with social and economic liberty; (3) Appeal to Virtue Epistemology, drawing an analogy between the value of knowledge and the value of technology, where the creation of artifacts is defended as a “technological achievement” that is credit-worthy, often as an irreducibly collective human virtue; and (4) Appeal to Misattributed Value for Scientific Knowledge, demonstrating that much of the public and philosophical esteem for “science” is in fact owed to the concrete act of engineering (the application of knowledge) as exemplified by record-breaking technologies and the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) spectrum.