The Danger of Technology to Human Flourishing | Prof. James Madden

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2020

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

This talk is Prof. Madden's third and final lecture given at the Thomistic Institute's intellectual retreat, "Virtuous Autonomy: Freedom and Independence in a Technological Age," August 7 - 10, 2020.

For more events and info, please visit thomisticinstitute.org

Speaker bio:

Dr. James Madden is Professor of Philosophy at Benedictine College. He lives in Atchison, Kansas with his wife (Jennifer) and their six children. He is originally from Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. from St. Norbert College, and did his graduate work at Kent State (MA, 1998) and Purdue (Ph.D., 2002). He was awarded the Benedictine College Distinguished Educator of the Year Award in 2006. Prof. Madden's long term research interests are modern philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind.

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of our themes for this weekend is that is a consideration of the contemporary challenges that subvert true agency with technology.
0:11.0	There are plenty of worries about the consequences of technology abroad today among our chattering classes.
0:18.0	The threat of environmental degradation following on the emergence of the techno-industrial
0:23.9	society has been a going concern for at least a century.
0:28.4	The application of biotechnology to human beings, especially during the embryonic stage of
0:33.8	our lives, has raised the two-edged promise of both the alleviation of grave suffering
0:39.3	and the massive body count among our most vulnerable brethren.
0:43.9	We are familiar with the ill consequences of personalized digital technology that it has
0:49.6	for how we spend our time and the substance of what we fill our minds with.
0:55.0	Not to mention the emerging evidence of the developmental harm done to children reared mostly in front of screens.
1:02.0	To this standard list of technological woes, I also add our current obesity and opiate epidemics.
1:09.0	Certainly the availability of easily produced and distributed
1:12.7	food stuff is one of the great boons of the technological age, but it has also addicted
1:17.5	us to cheap pseudo foods that are wrecking havoc on our bodies and our healthcare systems.
1:23.2	The development of wonder pain relieving drugs like OxyContin have done much to spare many of us
1:29.3	horrid pain suffered by prior generations though the availability of those drugs has also sent many
1:35.7	human lives down a spiral of degradation often with mortal consequences these are all grave
1:42.7	concerns and they are particularly pressing today as the speed of technological advance seems to pile problems up faster than our intellectuals can even enumerate them.
1:53.0	Notice, however, that these worries are all a bit hackney, they're common complaints.
2:00.0	Going back to the tale of the Tower of Babel
2:02.9	in Genesis, we have always known that technological innovation carries unforeseen consequences
2:08.7	that should puncture our pride and our ability to contrive our environment to fit our projects.
	...

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