The third PEPTalkPlus event, a collaboration between the Platform for the Ethics and Politics of Technology (PEPT) and the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Amsterdam (IAS), will focus on "Technologies of Hope". The event will address questions such as: How should we define hope in an age of powerful but disruptive emerging technologies? How can we interpret the emergence of technologies as hopeful, but not necessarily utopian? How can technologies communicate hope? Can technology bring hope into being? What would a hopeful future with technology look like? Speakers are Katharina Bauer and Titus Stahl

Katharina Bauer - Hope against hope against techno-optimism
In his Techno-Optimist Manifesto published in October 2023, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen claims that “it is time again to raise the technology flag” and turn ourselves into technological supermen, instead of blocking progress through a pessimist “mass demoralization campaign – against technology and against life”.
This manifesto expresses an extreme and reactionary position of a techno-optimist belief in salvation through technological progress, which can also be read as an appeal to the tech lords to take on power. Is techno-pessimism the adequate reaction?
In my talk I will explore if and how ‘technologies of hope’ – unfolding a constitutive tension between powerlessness and empowerment – can offer an alternative to discourses of techno-optimism and techno-pessimism.

Titus Stahl - Ideological Hope

The hope for a better future can, and frequently does, motivate political action. Political hope is therefore often considered a positive force. However, not all forms of political hope are beneficial. Some scholars and activists claim that some kinds of hope also function as an ideology. I argue that we can give a precise meaning to the notion of ‘ideological hope,’ and I argue that to say of a given instance of hope that it is ‘ideological’ means more than that it is irrational or immoral. I distinguish two forms of ideological hope: forms where the ideological nature of hope derives from underlying ideological beliefs and judgments, and structural forms. The case of structurally ideological hope shows that even the rational hopes of political agents can undermine their purposes by binding them to distorted political self-understandings.

Bio’s
Katharina Bauer is Associate Professor of Practical Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Goethe Universität Frankfurt a.M. and Visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin.
Against the background of her research on fundamental ethical ideals (such as dignity; authenticity; autonomy; hope), she investigates the impact of current societal, technological, and ecological challenges on the self-constitution of moral agents.

Titus Stahl is  Associate Professor in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Groningen. He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt and the University of Macquarie for his thesis that was published as Immanent Critique (Rowman and Liittlefield, 2022). He works at the intersection of critical social theory, political philosophy of technology and the philosophy of hope.

Programme 

Admission is free but registration is required (limited spots).