Progress, Values, and Responsibility

Abstract

In any case, progress implies that it looks much greater than it really is."This statement by the Austrian poet Johann Nestroy became famous when Ludwig Wittgenstein chose it as a text for the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations.Is it true, however?It seems to be true for the problems, methods, and methodologies of philosophy itself-for Wittgenstein's own investigations, which depend on Georg Lichtenberg, Arthur Schopenhauer, Fritz Mauthner, and other forerunners.But it does not seem to be true for technical or technological progress.Instead, we might say that, "Technical progress is much greater than seems to be the case."But technical progress is not identical with cultural or moral progress.Discrepancies between the two have been highlighted and focused on time and again; these discrepancies have also been used-e.g., by Albert Schweitzer, C. P. Snow, Daniel Bell, and Arthur Koestler-to explain untoward effects.Progress as a unique general social phenomenon, without any differentiation, does not exist.However, there are systems interlockings and systems effects which had been discovered already in the twenties by the philosopher of economics, F. von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld.In his classic, Wirtschaft und Technik [economics and technology] (1923), he stressed the "interlocking of individual steps toward a total movement of technology": namely, creative analogies from different fields, combinations of results from earlier progress that are preconditions of a genuinely innovative technical progress in general-which has to be relevant to the fulfilment of demands.He also said that technical progress has to be distinguished from technological progress, which is progress in knowledge about and of technologies even where no technical progress has occured.Progress in technological knowledge, moreover, is extremely important for the mutual interlocking of subsystems.Here von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld mentions system continuities, technological and technical mutations (the jump to another basic problem solution), as well as systematic contexts for individual technical problems and solutions (his name for this is Eigenleben or "proper context") and derivative problems and solutions.All together, these eventually lead to a unitary system of technical questioning or probing, i.e., to a kind of methodological unity.The "self-advancement" (Selbststeigerung) of technological progress is here rendered in system terms (see Ropohl, 1979).This led, later on (see Hübner, 1968), to the idea of modern technology "becoming self aware," and this idea led to applications in cybernetics.What is characteristic of technological development, of ever accelerating technical progress in its overall situation in our society today?Doubtless one characteristic is the fact that moral and legal concepts, except when they have been modified, have not kept up with technological applications.Hans Sachsse, the late Nestor of German philosophy of technology, claimed, for instance, that concepts like "property," "theft," "just," "exchange," and even "consumption"-developed in view of the classical concept of possession of goods, of some kind of underlying or philosophical category of substance which cannot be multiplied-cannot be simply transferred to the new concept of information.Moreover, rapidly changing circumstances in modern life in dynamic and pluralistic societies-as well as the accelerating dynamics of social, political, economic, and technological conditions-

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