Education for freedom versus socio-technical control by pedagogical means

pp. 259-268

in: Carl Mitcham (ed), Philosophy of technology in Spanish speaking countries, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

The rise of modern science and technology itself gave rise to distinctive discussions of what has since the modern period been taken as a defining characteristic of being human — namely, free will. The main questions have been: To what extent is science able to know the foundations of free action? What are the possibilities for the technological manipulation or control of such action?¹ Expanding on such basic questions are a host of more specific ones: Does scientific and technological progress expand human freedom, as nineteenth-century positivists believed, or does it limit freedom? Is freedom different in the so-called "developed" than in the "developing" world? And most immediately relevant to the present discussion: Is human freedom subject to socio-technical control by pedagogical means?²