Summary and Lecture Notes Society, Politics and Technology
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Course
Society, Politics and Technology
Institution
Universiteit Twente (UT)
This document contains 26.000 words summarizing the obligated readings and lecture notes for the course Society, Politics and Technology as it was taught as part of the first year of the Master Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society in 2020/2021.
Content
Week 1: The State...............................................................................................................3
John Locke – Second Treatise of Civil Government........................................................................3
Charles Mills – The Racial Contract................................................................................................5
Week 2: Liberty...................................................................................................................7
Isaiah Berlin – Two Concepts of Liberty.........................................................................................7
John Stuart Mill – On Liberty.........................................................................................................9
Shoshana Zuboff – Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information
Civilization...................................................................................................................................13
Tromp, Hekkert & Verbeek – Design for Socially Responsible Behavior: A Classification of
Influence Based on Intended User Experience.............................................................................15
Week 3: Justice.................................................................................................................18
John Rawls – Distributive Justice.................................................................................................18
Robert Nozick – Distributive Justice.............................................................................................22
David Gray Grant - Machine Ethics, Part One: An Introduction and a Case Study (Article)...........24
Langdon Winner – Cyberlibertarian Myths And The Prospect For Community (1997).................25
Jeroen van den Hoven and Emma Rooksby - Distributive Justice and the Value of Information: A
(Broadly) Rawlsian Approach (2009)...........................................................................................26
Week 4: Equality...............................................................................................................28
Elizabeth S. Anderson – What Is the Point of Equality?...............................................................28
Amartya Sen - Equality of What..................................................................................................30
Debra Satz – Markets in Women’s Reproductive Labor...............................................................32
Paul DiMaggio & Eszter Hargittai – From the ‘Digital Divide’ to ‘Digital Inequality’: Studying
Internet Use as Penetration Increases.........................................................................................34
Week 5: Community..........................................................................................................35
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – From Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: Second Part.....................35
Whitney Phillips – LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief
online..........................................................................................................................................37
Thomas Powers – Real Wrongs in Virtual Communities..............................................................38
Andrew Feenberg – Online Community and Democracy.............................................................39
Week 6: Democracy..........................................................................................................40
Elizabeth Anderson – The Epistemology of Democracy...............................................................40
Joshua Cohen – Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy........................................42
Richard Sclove - The Nuts and Bolt of Democracy: Democratic Theory and Technological Design
....................................................................................................................................................44
, Candice Delmas – Is Hacktivism the New Civil Disobedience?.....................................................45
Week 7: War.....................................................................................................................50
John Locke – Second Treatise of Government.............................................................................50
Walzer – Just and Unjust Wars....................................................................................................51
Mariarosaria Taddeo – Just Information Warfare........................................................................53
Gertz, Douglas & Verbeek – Cyberwar and Mediation Theory.....................................................55
Week 8: Globalization.......................................................................................................56
John Rawls – The Duty of Assistance...........................................................................................56
Alison Jagger – Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: A Prologue to a Theory of
Gender Justice.............................................................................................................................58
Charles R. Beitz – Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice...............................................................59
Henry Shue – Climate Dreaming: Negative Emissions, Risk Transfer, and Irreversibility..............60
Svoboda et al. – Sulfate Aerosol Geoengineering: The Question of Justice..................................61
,Week 1: The State
John Locke – Second Treatise of Civil Government
II: Of the State of Nature
In the state of nature, people are free to act and deal with their possessions. Everyone is equal here,
unless someone is appointed by God to be the master of others. Even though people are naturally in
a state of liberty, they aren’t in a state of license: one isn’t free to kill himself. The law of nature
obliges people to not harm another or their possessions, because we’re all the possession of God
(God determines the objective morality). This is only allowed to do justice to an offender. Everyone
can execute this law and punish others when they don’t follow the law, to repair damage and refrain
others from doing it again. However, being a judge in one’s own case will make one partial to
themselves and his friends and punish others too harshly. That’s why a civil government is necessary.
This shouldn’t be one man, who would then also judge his own cases.
III: Of the State of War
Once war is declared, killing is allowed, because one party’s life is threatened and the other party
declares a state of enmity (vijandschap). As long as the aggressor doesn’t offer peace, he can be
destroyed. When your freedom is denied in a way without consent, a state of war results. A war
shouldn’t happen when there is a common superior which everyone accepts. This is another
argument for the social contract and joining into a society.
IV: Of Slavery
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power or legislative authority and have only
the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power
but that established by consent in the commonwealth. The freedom from absolute power is so
necessary to man, that one cannot enslave himself to anyone. The only exception is when one has
acted so badly that another person deserves to this to him. When another person rightfully enslaves
you, you gain the right to kill yourself.
VIII: The Beginning of Political Societies
Men can through consent be subject to political power. Only the people who consented are then not
in the state of nature anymore. In this community, the majority have a say about everyone who
consented to this form of living. A political society is thus started with the consent of a number of
men who unite and incorporate into a society, so a lawful government can be formed. You don’t
have to consent explicitly however, but as soon as you benefit in some form of the government, you
tacitly give consent. In practice, this happens when you’re on the territory of the government. This is
because possessions like land fall under the government. You can give up your land and then only be
subject to the law of nature again when you have merely tacitly consented to the rule of
government.
IX: Of the Ends of Political Society and Government
A man would want to give up the natural freedom, because in that case, one is constantly exposed to
the invasion by others, one and his property aren’t safe. The government (1) provides a law which
provides a standard of right and wrong to decide on controversies. In the state of nature, people are
biased by their own interest and don’t follow the law of nature in their cases. The government also
(2) provides a known and indifferent, impartial judge. Finally, the government (3) helps in supporting
and executing a sentence. However, one loses the natural power to preserve oneself the way one
wants and to punish crimes of other people oneself.
XI: Of the Extent of the Legislative Power
, The legislative power:
- Cannot be arbitrary over the lives and possessions of people. It should be aimed to preserve
and therefore is limited to addressing the public good.
- Has to use its power with known authorized judges and through written, clearly put forth,
standing laws. Otherwise, it will again be arbitrary.
- Cannot take any part of man’s property without his consent
- Cannot be executed by other men than those which are appointed by people who consented
to that. Only those people can make laws.
Only with those four conditions, it can become valuable to enter a political society.
Lecture
Locke is writing with the idea of real life politics in mind, he doesn’t just do it for philosophy. Those
who Locke sees as equal to him, Locke sees as human.
I (my mind) own my body (mind-body dualism), which makes my labor and its products mine as well.
What my things do on my behalf is mine, so also what my horse does. Any body that works for me,
extends my property rights. So this can be a horse or my actual body. The external bodies don’t have
a mind, so they are commanded by my mind.
I can break the law of nature if that’s what society has consented to. That’s how inequality (in wealth
for example) can be justified.
The monarchy did everything wrong that Locke stood for and summed up a government should do.
Trading freedom for security/justice.
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