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How to Shape a Better Future? Epistemic Difficulties for Ethical Assessment and Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies

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Abstract

Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas’ approach to political discourse, which requires ‘translation’ of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a ‘methodology of translation’ which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design.

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Notes

  1. We are not making the claim that the only valid philosophical approach to address the epistemic difficulties with ‘evidence’ for future-oriented policy and governance is Habermas’ discourse ethics, but rather that Habermas’ works provide one viable approach to explain the epistemic status of normative claims about the future, which is required to justify the usage of such claims as evidence in evidence-based policy and similar anticipatory actions.

  2. How validity derives from scientific observation is contentious question. We adopt Popper’s critical rationalist position, in which all scientific knowledge is provisional and held up to the standard of falsification. Certainty, then, refers to the falsifiability of a scientific hypothesis or theory.

  3. Certainty refers here to the possibility of falsification of the claim and its evidence base. Uncertain normative claims are characterised by reliance upon descriptions of the future which are inherently uncertain, whereas religious claims rely upon faith or belief beyond empirically observable phenomena.

  4. A distinction must be made here between the concept of ‘translation’ recently proposed by Habermas (2008, 2011) which is an action to be undertaken in public discourse, and ‘translation’ as used in Science and Technology Studies, for example originating in the work of Latour (1987). Here we refer solely to the concept as used by Habermas for purposes of establishing a rational discourse.

  5. Criteria to determine credible predictions of the future will vary among stakeholders in discourse and between disciplines. The determination of acceptable criteria in this regard is a separate issue from establishing the need for and process of translation.

  6. Criteria were developed in this project to assess the success of particular instances of translation based on the comprehensibility and acceptability of translated claims according to participants in the discourse. These criteria go beyond the scope of this paper, the key aspect of which is to suggest future avenues of conceptual development of discourse ethics as an account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims, and for development of a methodology of translation. For further details, see: Mittelstadt 2013 pp. 198-207.

  7. Alternatively, it may be desirable to admit claims based on public fears or superstition to the discourse if the concerns grounding the fears as seen as legitimate, for example by conceptualizing ‘fear’ as a form of mental harm. The determination of appropriate criteria for translation relates to existing issues in risk management over the weight given to such ‘empirically groundless’ fears about the future. While it may be possible to prescribe ‘universal’ criteria based on Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, it may similarly be preferable to develop criteria for accepting translated claims into discourse on a case-by-case or culture-by-culture basis. This problem, which fundamentally addresses moral relativism, goes beyond the scope of the paper but is certainly an area requiring consideration in future discourses.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements n° 230318 and 230602.

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Correspondence to Brent Daniel Mittelstadt.

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Mittelstadt, B.D., Stahl, B.C. & Fairweather, N.B. How to Shape a Better Future? Epistemic Difficulties for Ethical Assessment and Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 1027–1047 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9582-8

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