Jose' M. Galvan.
Pontifical University Santa Croce,
Rome, Italy.

The Ethical Challenges of the IC Technologies.

The development of robotics and ICT and the imprecise definition of
their future fields of application requires an ethical analysis of
the present questions or of those that are reasonably predictable. It
is of paramount importance to propose general ethical principles able
to judge in a practical way any new situation in which humanity can
fall due to the technical development. Technology must rediscover its
anthropological role as central element for the hope of mankind. We
analyse the causes of the lack of an ethical dimension of technology
in modern society. We also study the approach for the rediscovery of
the ethical intrinsic value of the technological conception of
mankind. In particular, the Aristotelian concepts of praxis and
kinesis are proposed as key ideas for the ethical interpretation of
the interaction between man and machine (cyborg-technologies) and the
symbolic transfer between human free-will and the symbolic ability of
ICT and humanoid robotics.