Published: 2021-09-03

The Rule of the System of Technology and Its Algorithms and the Problem of Moral Responsibility

Mariusz Wojewoda Logo ORCID
Section: studies and essays
https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.10415

(A research article in English/Artykuł w języku angielskim)

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of the problems of technology in the context of exercising power in an organization. The power of the system today is addressed in terms of the “rule of numbers,” based on the impersonal authority of the algorithms which is an extension of the modern concept of the instrumental reason. In keeping with the rules of efficiency the employees manifest modes of behavior analogous to those characterizing the functioning of technology and specifically emphasized by Max Horkheimer and Jacques Ellul. In the author’s view, the rule of the algorithm-based technological systems leads to the atrophy of the moral responsibility and the loss of agency. Attempting to defend the idea of man’s free agency in the context of the algorithm-based technological system, the author invokes Hans Jonas’s theory of moral responsibility and refers to the concept of “ethical anarchism” as proposed by Emmanuel Lévinas.

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Citation rules

Wojewoda, M. (2021). The Rule of the System of Technology and Its Algorithms and the Problem of Moral Responsibility: (A research article in English/Artykuł w języku angielskim). Er(r)go. Theory - Literature - Culture, (42), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.10415

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Er(r)go 42 (1/2021)

No. 42 (2021)
Published: 2021-09-19


ISSN: 1508-6305
eISSN: 2544-3186
Ikona DOI 10.31261/errgo

Publisher
University of Silesia Press | Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego i Wydawnictwo Naukowe "Śląsk"

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