Papers by Ehsan Arzroomchilar
Human studies, Apr 11, 2024
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Social theory & health, Jan 26, 2024
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The social model of disability is predicated upon the dichotomy of disability and impairment, whi... more The social model of disability is predicated upon the dichotomy of disability and impairment, which proves vulnerable to objections. Phenomenological approaches to disability in particular found this sharp distinction contrived, and accordingly implausible. Moreover, the social model ignores lived body of individuals and the inside-out perspective on disability. A phenomenological approach thus places the emphasis on the embodied nature of being-in-the-world. Yet, when it comes to the role of technology in disabled people's life, and in particular assistive technologies, it does not do justice to the role they play, and as a result, technology is treated predominantly as instrumental. In this article, I suggest taking a more systematic approach to technology in disability studies and bringing its role into an interrogation. To that purpose, I will draw from the postphenomenology movement to show how technology may actively mediate individuals' life and, perhaps more importantly, how disability is technologically mediated.
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Journal of Social Theory & Health, 2024
With the advancements in digital technologies notions such as aging in place have gained currency... more With the advancements in digital technologies notions such as aging in place have gained currency. But, next to technical issues concerning the extent to which fullblown aging in place is possible, philosophical and ethical questions have been also raised. An important dimension of the digitalization of healthcare is how would aging look to both older adults and the public in the wake of such systems. In this article, I will suggest integrating postphenomenology into Age Studies to explore how aging comes to be conceptualized. An advantage of postphenomenology is that it is anchored in a first-person perspective, and in this sense, it may be a perfect fit to enhance our awareness about the impacts of the digitalization of health on older adults from their own point of view. I will also argue that postphenomenlogy can throw light on digital technologies in their actual use. This may help researchers go beyond merely exploring conditions of use and adoption implemented through notions such as usability, trust, privacy, dignity, and the like, and gain knowledge of how users' relationship with their surroundings reconfigures after exposure to digital assistive technologies.
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Journal of Islamic thought and civilization, Nov 11, 2022
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Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization 12 (2), 14-27, 2022
Technology is a pervasive phenomenon in our surroundings. Today, we rarely experience the natural... more Technology is a pervasive phenomenon in our surroundings. Today, we rarely experience the natural world and our relationship with the world is most often technologically mediated. The long-standing view in the Islamic world toward technology seems to be taking it as an innocent tool which carries only instrumental value. If so, there would not arise any moral question concerning technology per se. Rather, everything would concern with the way it is used by individuals. This instrumentalist approach, however, is notoriously premature. Technology inherently is value-laden and accordingly calls for philosophical as well as moral evaluation. In this article, we will suggest a context for assessing technology from an Islamic point of view. To that purpose, we will unpack Heidegger’s account of technology to bring into relief an enduring problem associated with modern technology, the problem of Gestell. Our source of inspiration to accommodate Heidegger’s concern is the work of Tabātabā’i, the contemporary Muslim thinker, on theory of iʿtibārīat and also his contribution to the virtue ethics. In the end we will find that, according to Tabātabā’i, the problem of technology is rooted in deviation from the golden mean, in the wake of secularization of the world in the modern era.
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Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 2022
As access to the internet continues to grow, so do concerns about its effects on individuals. Thi... more As access to the internet continues to grow, so do concerns about its effects on individuals. This digital revolution is not without its religious implications, and it appears that opinions are divided on how religiosity is being affected. On the one hand, it is possible that the emergence of virtual Islam could lead to an increase in extremism. On the other hand, with more exposure to diverse perspectives, religious tolerance may be bolstered. This article examines the potential effects of the internet and social media on religious thought, drawing upon insights from the contemporary philosophy of technology, specifically postphenomenology. In this framework, technology is seen as an active agent, influencing both the subject and the object. Additionally, this article seeks to explain the logic underlying the conflicting views in the literature.
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Acta FF
Tabātabā'i is one of the greatest philosophers in the contemporary Islamic world. In this pap... more Tabātabā'i is one of the greatest philosophers in the contemporary Islamic world. In this paper, his significant contribution to Islamic philosophy, namely the theory of iʿtibāriyyāt, is discussed. He divides all knowledge into two categories; haqīqī, originating from the external world, and iʿtibārī, constructed out of human needs. The latter kind of knowledge is unreal in the sense that it originates from the soul rather than from the world. Yet it is real in the sense that its effects are visible in the world. Iʿtibāriyyāt can be further classified into categories. More importantly, they are formulated in terms of either being formed before a society is established, i.e., pre-society iʿtibāriyyāt, or being formed when there is already a society around, i.e., post-society iʿtibāriyyāt. The following section of the paper presents the application of Tabātabā'i’s theory in the context of his political philosophy. As we will explain, he seems to favour a religious regulating s...
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International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism
Today there is fairly rich literature to study how radical groups take advantage of technology to... more Today there is fairly rich literature to study how radical groups take advantage of technology to realize their goals. Something, however, is missing in such discussions as to how technology might affect the subjectivity of extremists. Technology, in the most of such inquiries, is taken to be merely a passive tool without any inherent bias. This instrumentalist approach to technology, however, turns out to be problematic. The contemporary studies of technology may provide us, as it will be argued, with insights to understand how technology might incline civilians towards radicalization. Two frameworks of postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) will be the primary focus here to outline a schema of the impacts of technology on radicalization of minds. Although technology, with all its variety, is the general concern of the article, it will narrow the discussion down to social media platforms to make the point. It will be then suggested to ascribe an active role to technology ...
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Human Studies, 2022
Postphenomenology was envisaged to lay bare the black box of technology through a phenomenologica... more Postphenomenology was envisaged to lay bare the black box of technology through a phenomenological approach. The vision, in this sense, was to identify how technology might mediate both the subjectivity of its immediate user and the world around her. In this paper I will argue that to cognize technology’s effects fully, we need to enrich postphenomenology with further insights. In particular, SCOT and ANT may be integrated into postphenomenology. While the former can provide a historical narrative of how technology has evolved throughout time, the latter may embed technology within a network where the interplay of the technology, the first user, other individuals and the society, on the whole, can be depicted. After a preliminary theoretical discussion, I will go through some case studies to articulate how SCOT and ANT can make a contribution to a systematic investigation of technology.
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Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 2022
A challenging issue in philosophy of technology is moral relevancy of artifacts. While many philo... more A challenging issue in philosophy of technology is moral relevancy of artifacts. While many philosophers agree that artifacts do have moral significance, opinions vary as to how it is to be construed. Here one can find various views, ranging from scholars who argue that there is no room for artifacts in moral debates to those who argue for moral agency of artifacts. In this paper, I subscribe to the effort to avoid extreme positions and accordingly reject both the neutrality thesis and the moral agency of artifacts thesis. Instead, I propose to find a middle way to describe their moral role. In so doing I take Philip Brey's idea of developing a new framework, called 'Structural Ethics', as my departure point. I argue that while the structural ethics proposed by Brey needs some revisions, it may serve as a proper metaethical theory to account for the role of non-humans.
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International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism (IJCWT), 2022
Today there is fairly rich literature to study how radical groups take advantage of technology to... more Today there is fairly rich literature to study how radical groups take advantage of technology to realize their goals. Something, however, is missing in such discussions as to how technology might affect the subjectivity of extremists. Technology, in the most of such inquiries, is taken to be merely a passive tool without any inherent bias. This instrumentalist approach to technology, however, turns out to be problematic. The contemporary studies of technology may provide us, as it will be argued, with insights to understand how technology might incline civilians towards radicalization. Two frameworks of postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) will be the primary focus here to outline a schema of the impacts of technology on radicalization of minds. Although technology, with all its variety, is the general concern of the article, it will narrow the discussion down to social media platforms to make the point. It will be then suggested to ascribe an active role to technology in radicalism scholarship, thereby drawing attentions to the process of designing technologies.
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Human Studies journal/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10746-021-09615-1, 2022
Postphenomenology was envisaged to lay bare the black box of technology through a phenomenologica... more Postphenomenology was envisaged to lay bare the black box of technology through a phenomenological approach. The vision, in this sense, was to identify how technology might mediate both the subjectivity of its immediate user and the world around her. In this paper I will argue that to cognize technology's effects fully, we need to enrich postphenomenology with further insights. In particular, SCOT and ANT may be integrated into postphenomenology. While the former can provide a historical narrative of how technology has evolved throughout time, the latter may embed technology within a network where the interplay of the technology, the first user, other individuals and the society, on the whole, can be depicted. After a preliminary theoretical discussion, I will go through some case studies to articulate how SCOT and ANT can make a contribution to a systematic investigation of technology.
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Organon F, 2018; http://www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/doc/organon/2018/4/517-538.pdf, 2018
One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral s... more One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral significance of artifacts in human life. While many philosophers agree that artifacts do have moral significance attached to them, opinions vary as to how it is to be construed. In this paper we deal with the approach of the influential Dutch philosopher of technology Peter Paul Verbeek. He criticizes traditional ethical theories for assuming that whatever relevancy artifacts have for morality is entirely dependent on human beings, since artifacts are mere passive instruments of human agency. In contrast, he develops a view of moral agency that includes artifacts, in which moral agency is ascribed to human-technology hybrids rather than to humans as such. The goal of this paper is to elucidate Verbeek's account of moral agency and evaluate it. We also deal with his views on postphenomenology and mediation underlying this account. Although the general gist of our paper is expository, we point out to several problems for Verbeek's account.
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Drafts by Ehsan Arzroomchilar
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Organon F, 2018
One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral s... more One of the important questions discussed by philosophers of technology has to do with the moral significance of artifacts in human life. While many philosophers agree that artifacts do have moral significance attached to them, opinions vary as to how it is to be construed. In this paper we deal with the approach of the influential Dutch philosopher of technology Peter Paul Verbeek. He criticizes traditional ethical theories for assuming that whatever relevancy artifacts have for morality is entirely dependent on human beings, since artifacts are mere passive instruments of human agency. In contrast, he develops a view of moral agency that includes artifacts, in which moral agency is ascribed to human-technology hybrids rather than to humans as such. The goal of this paper is to elucidate Verbeek's account of moral agency and evaluate it. We also deal with his views on postphenomenology and mediation underlying this account. Although the general gist of our paper is expository, we point out to several problems for Verbeek's account.
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Conferences by Ehsan Arzroomchilar
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Papers by Ehsan Arzroomchilar
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