Hopster lists among the potential targets of technologically induced social disruption ‘social relations, institutions, epistemic paradigms, foundational concepts, values, and the very nature of human cognition and experience’ (2021, 1). This is quite a heterogeneous list; it is not immediately obvious what unifies these objects as potential targets of disruption, if anything.

One approach to unifying these potential targets of technologically induced social disruption is to consider their role in enabling aspects of human life, and how technology can interfere with this enabling role. Nickel, Kudina, and van de Poel argue that moral disruption initiates ‘a process of attempting to close an interpretive and conceptual gap, so as to make sense of one’s experiences and choices in a way that is understood and shared by others in the moral community’ (2022, 277). Along similar lines, Hermann has argued that new technology can undermine “moral certainties” which ‘form a moral world-picture that enables humans to make moral sense of the world and act morally in the world’ (2023, 32). If we cannot make sense of the world in this way, we become practically stuck; progress becomes impossible.

In this paper, I develop a Wittgensteinian picture of disruption as the loss of confidence in how to “go on in the same way”. I argue that this notion underpins many of our most important judgements of progress: progress through greater conformity with principles and values, competence with concepts, and correct reasoning. The inherent sociality of such judgements is explored. I conclude that the potential targets of social disruption are precisely those features of human social life that underpin such experiences of confidence in how to go on in the same way – the very experiences which make progress possible. Thus, social disruption and progress are conceptually interrelated.

This presentation is part of the panel The Ethics of Progress