The ethical horizon of the Technosphere: a holistic chain of responsibility of the cognitive agent in eastern European twentieth-century science fiction

Abstract

The aim of the article is to identify and conceptually analyze the ethical horizon of the technosphere within the context of twentieth-century Eastern European science fiction as an alternative to normative models of science and technology ethics. The article substantiates the thesis that within the Eastern European intellectual tradition, stable preconceptions of the responsibility of the cognitive agent have emerged – preconceptions that cannot be reduced to formalized ethical codes or algorithmic prescriptions but possess a holistic, anthropological, and existential-systemic character. The research methodology is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity, holism, and historical-philosophical analysis, with the use of science fiction as a form of thought experiment in the history of ideas concerning science and technology. An analytical reconstruction of models of responsibility represented in the works of Eastern European authors is applied, with particular attention to anti-normative, anthropoethical, existential-systemic, and cybernetic dimensions of interpreting the technosphere. The study shows that in twentieth-century Eastern European science fiction, the technosphere appears as a holistic environment of meanings, goals, and consequences of scientific and technical activity, within which the responsibility of the cognitive agent cannot be delegated to technical systems or removed through normative formalization. Invariant features of ethical thinking have been identified, related to the priority of goal setting over rules, awareness of the limits of control, and cceptance of the «cost of error» as an ethically significant factor. The scientific novelty of the article stems from the substantiation of the concept of the ethical horizon of the technosphere as a dynamic horizon of responsibility, as well as from the demonstration of the heuristic productivity of Eastern European science fiction for contemporary philosophy of science and technology. The obtained results are relevant for the further development of artificial intelligence ethics, engineering ethics, and philosophical-pedagogical approaches to the formation of responsibility in subjects of scientific and technological activity.