Is Technology value-free? Readings and Answers from John Dewey´s Pragmatism

Abstract

According to Larry Hickman, the study of technological practices constitutes the basis of and provides the models for John Dewey's philosophical project: the analysis and critique of human experience. From Hickman’s view and considering Dewey’s transactional concept of experience, technology transforms both environment and human beings. Thus, Deweyan perspective allows for understanding technology as an instrument or a tool. Even more, following Hickman any kind of inquiry or deliberation, both at a material or conceptual level, is technological because of its instrumental character.

One of the most pressing questions introduced by such reading is whether technology as an instrument is value-free or value-laden. The main purpose of this article is to analyse the links between technology and values so as to claim that from Dewey’s point of view technology is not a value-free instrument. In order to achieve this goal, the article firstly recovers Dewey’s concept of inquiry and explores different senses in which technology is actually instrumental. Secondly, it analyses Dewey’s thesis about the continuity between means and ends and it claims that the latter cannot be considered as isolated elements whose valuative loan is dissociated. Thirdly, it offers a reading of the different senses of technology as an instrument in light of Dewey’s theory of valuation and experience and it claims that such standpoint allows and promotes a political reflexion about the ends of technology and the values that should guide them.