Design and Reflective Judgment are central concepts in an argument about the importance of diverse dialogue and perspectives in the shaping technological design (means and ends). But what is that argument, and what is its validity? Why not let a few individuals make the important decisions, such as the experts who can build the technology, or others experts with the vantages points and authority to discern the goals and ends, such as business managers with their typical focus on profitability and efficiency deemed necessary to ensure organizational survival in the marketplace?

Andrew Feenberg's argument derives from Hannah Arendt's Reflective Judgment, which itself rests on reformulated ideas from Immanuel Kant and Socrates. In our paper, we argue that reflective judgment in contrast with determinative judgment, emerges from individual experiences and opinions about technology (negative and positive), which is legitimized through its sharing and agreement with others. It is thus from experiences that are impressions and categories of technology are formed. Like Kant's example of the individual sharing of aesthetic experiences through opinions about a painting or nature, reflective judgments are revealed to be valid through a different process – by sharing, discussion and agreement with others.

Hannah Arendt expands the possibility for reflective judgment beyond Kant's paintings and nature to argue for a politics based on it. In doing so, she draws upon philosophers which informed Kant, particularly Socrates. A key idea in Arendt's formulation from Socrates is (paraphrasing) an argument for both the diversity and limits of individuals' knowledge of a shared world. As such, individuals are partial knowers of the world. As such, they are (perhaps) motivated through a desire to collectively know “the” world through conversations with other partial knowers, as equals and as friends, with an “it appears to me” for discussion, not an “I know”. (see Basurto, A. (2016). Hannah Arendt’s Kantian Socrates: Moral and Political Judging. Teoria Politica, 6, Article 6.)

Perhaps because of this Socrates espoused (and practiced) the importance of dialogue and questioning to cure ignorance e.g. the Socratic Method. A key process in the method is the need for individuals to converse (note: con-verse) with each other in a back-and-forth of claim and counter-claims, in order to move beyond their restricted and idiosyncratic experiences and perceptions of the world, to foster an enlarged mentality.

“Critical thinking is possible only where the standpoints of all others are open to inspection. Hence, critical thinking, while still a solitary business, does not cut itself off from ‘all others.’ To be sure, it still goes on in isolation, but by the force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves in a space that is potentially public, open to all sides; in other words, it adopts the position of Kant’s world citizen. To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting.”

– Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy

(cited in https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/critical-thinking-judgment-and-empathy-2015-04-20)

However, in drawing upon Immanuel Kant through Arendt and back to Socrates, we take on the moral reasoning of a priori conclusions of him, that are beyond experience or results – that fairness, the value of the individual and the autonomy of the will are a priori moral principles which we are obliged to follow (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics). Are we any further in answering:

1. why is diverse dialogue and perspectives in the shaping technological design (means and ends), necessary?
2. what is the argument, and what is its validity?
3. Why not let a few individuals make the important decisions, such as the experts who can build the technology, or others experts with the vantages points and authority to discern the goals and ends, such as business managers with their typical focus on profitability and efficiency deemed necessary to ensure organizational survival in the marketplace?

I think we are further along:

• if individuals are limited knowers
• if that conversation provides this enlarge mentality for the individuals and the group (but is this too ends oriented)?
• if we assume that individuals have value on their own, beyond their use value
• if this enlarged mentality is what we are after, and not exclusively other artifactual or practical ends only.