Towards an agency-based philosophy of (advanced) technology

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Anna Laktionova
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536935318

Machine agency becomes central, when technology’s activities are increasingly steered and controlled by software and the radius of machinic actions becomes larger and more autonomous. Computers, but also numerically controlled machines and robots, computer-chip equipped devices and smart objects not only have become widespread technical artifacts, but have established a new type of technology. Referring and expanding Carl Mitcham’s typology of technology, I argue that technology has turned into ‘activity as technology,’ and the necessary preconditions are sensors, actuators, algorithms and software. In particular, today's adaptive robots interlinking behavioral robotics with machine learning technologies have become paradigmatic entities of machine agency. The project investigates qualitative-empirically machinic actions as basis of an agency-based philosophy of (advanced) technologies.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position