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Himma, K. E. (2009). Artificial Agency, Consciousness, and the Criteria for Moral Agency: What Properties Must an Artificial Agent Have to Be a Moral Agent? Ethics and Information Technology, 11, 19-29.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-008-9167-5

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Can Technological Artifacts Become Moral Agents? —A Reconstructive Inquiry Based on Verbeek’s Theory of Technological Mediation

  AUTHORS: Fang Wang

  KEYWORDS: Technological Mediation, Intentionality, Freedom, Moral Agency, Postphenomenology

  JOURNAL NAME: Open Journal of Social Sciences, Vol.14 No.5, May 12, 2026

  ABSTRACT: Traditional approaches in the ethics of technology, grounded in a humanist subject-object dichotomy, typically regard technology as a morally neutral, instrumental entity. In contrast, Peter-Paul Verbeek, drawing on the theory of technological mediation, offers a relational reconstruction of the concepts of intentionality and freedom. Intentionality is no longer understood as an exclusive property of human consciousness, but as a relationally distributed structure of directedness emerging within the human-technology-world nexus. Likewise, freedom is not conceived as a transcendental capacity to escape all external influences, but as a reflective and creative practice enacted within technologically mediated contexts. Accordingly, the moral subject can no longer be treated as a pre-given starting point of ethical analysis; rather, it is constituted within a network of mutual mediation between humans and technological artifacts.