How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An (...) ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society. (shrink)

Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three are still present in current debates about technological change and how it may (...) affect society. This is illustrated for the case of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is argued that each of the three perspectives contributes to the debate of AI but that the third has the strongest potential to uncover blind spots in the current debate. (shrink)

Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I propose an account for determining when an AI system can be said to embody (...) certain values. This account understands embodied values as the result of design activities intended to embed those values in such systems. AI systems are here understood as a special kind of sociotechnical system that, like traditional sociotechnical systems, are composed of technical artifacts, human agents, and institutions but—in addition—contain artificial agents and certain technical norms that regulate interactions between artificial agents and other elements of the system. The specific challenges and opportunities of embedding values in AI systems are discussed, and some lessons for better embedding values in AI systems are drawn. (shrink)

This paper aims at contributing to a research agenda in engineering ethics by exploring the ethical aspects of engineering design processes. A number of ethically relevant topics with respect to design processes are identified. These topics could be a subject for further research in the field of engineering ethics. In addition, it is argued that the way design processes are now organised and should be organised from a normative point of view is an important topic for research.

Climate change is more than a discrete issue demanding political attention and response. A changing climate permeates political life as material processes of planetary change reverberate in our bodies, affecting subterranean processes of attention and evoking bodily responses at and below the threshold of awareness. By way of example, I explore the register of bodily feeling to raise the possibility that proliferating anomalies in atmospheric, oceanic, and seismic activities are entering into subliminal experiences of time and confounding embodied expectations of (...) how the future is likely to flow from the past. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of how micropolitical strategies to amplify visceral experiences of climatic changes might valuably contribute to larger programs for climate action. (shrink)

The Safe-by-Design approach in synthetic biology holds the promise of designing the building blocks of life in an organism guided by the value of safety. This paves a new way for using biotechnologies safely. However, the Safe-by-Design approach moves the bulk of the responsibility for safety to the actors in the research and development phase. Also, it assumes that safety can be defined and understood by all stakeholders in the same way. These assumptions are problematic and might actually undermine safety. (...) This research explores these assumptions through the use of a Group Decision Room. In this set up, anonymous and non-anonymous deliberation methods are used for different stakeholders to exchange views. During the session, a potential synthetic biology application is used as a case for investigation: the Food Warden, a biosensor contained in meat packaging for indicating the freshness of meat. Participants discuss what potential issues might arise, how responsibilities should be distributed in a forward-looking way, who is to blame if something would go wrong. They are also asked what safety and responsibility mean at different phases, and for different stakeholders. The results of the session are not generalizable, but provide valuable insights. Issues of safety cannot all be taken care of in the R&D phase. Also, when things go wrong, there are proximal and distal causes to consider. In addition, capacities of actors play an important role in defining their responsibilities. Last but not least, this research provides a new perspective on the role of instruction manuals in achieving safety. (shrink)

À partir d’une critique des éthiques libérales et des modes de légitimation des inégalités sociales, les recherches sur le care ont constitué depuis une dizaine d’années en France un champ de recherches dialoguant avec les travaux de féministes étatsuniennes et notamment ceux de Carol Gilligan et Joan Tronto. Centrée sur la conception d’un sujet ontologiquement vulnérable et relationnel, cette perspective du care a affirmé l’importance morale et politique du souci d’autrui dans la préservation d’un monde commun. Des travaux transdisciplinaires se (...) sont ainsi saisis de voix étouffées ou minorées par le genre, la classe ou la race ; voix des domestiques, des aides-soignantes, des « femmes de réconfort » ou des personnes en situation de handicap. Ces travaux ont exploré des questions dévalorisées par les sciences sociales, comme le soin non médical, la dépendance ou les multiples attachements des humains aux non-humains. (shrink)

Safe-by-design aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of actors in the value chain like users and operators. We argue that while (...) indeterminacy may be approached by designing out users as much as possible in attaining safety, this is often not a good strategy. It will not only make it more difficult to deal with unexpected risks; it also misses out on the resources that users can bring for achieving safety, and it is undemocratic. We argue that rather than directly designing for safety, it is better to design for the responsibility for safety, i.e., designers should think where the responsibility for safety is best situated and design technologies accordingly. We propose some heuristics that can be used in deciding how to share and distribute responsibility for safety through design. (shrink)

We examine whether Thomsonian constitutivism, a metaethical view that analyses value in terms of ‘goodness-fixing kinds,’ i.e. kinds that themselves set the standards for being a good instance of the respective kind, offers a satisfactory explanation of value change and disagreement. While value disagreement has long been considered an important explanandum, we introduce value change as a closely related but distinct phenomenon of metaethical interest. We argue that constitutivism fails to explain both phenomena because of its commitment to goodness-fixing kinds. (...) Constitutivism explains away disagreement and at best explains the emergence of new values, not genuine change. Therefore, Thomsonian constitutivism is not a good fix for realist problems with explaining value disagreement, and value change. (shrink)

Deals with such questions as: What is engineering? In what respect does engineering differ from science? What ethical problems does engineering raise? By what ethical principles are engineers guided? How do engineers themselves conceive of their profession? What do they see as the main philosophical challenges confronting them in the 21st century?

This commentary extends Hertwig & Ortmann's analysis by asking how stricter model selection conventions can facilitate the accumulation of information from experimental studies. In many cases researchers are currently motivated to summarize their data with ambiguous and/or multi parameter models. A “generality first” convention can help eliminate this problem.

The growing literature on how people learn to make decisions based on experience focuses on two types of paradigms. In one paradigm, people are faced with a choice, and must retrospectively consult past experience of similar choices to decide what to do. In the other paradigm, people are faced with a choice, and then have the opportunity prospectively to gather new experiences that might help them make that choice. The current paper examines the joint impact of both retrospective and prospective (...) experiences. Two experiments reveal strong interactions. In Study 1, repeated experience with new samples appears to reduce sensitivity to the average outcome in the samples and enhances underweighting of rare events. Study 2 shows that repeated experience with pre-choice samples can reverse the impact of the new information. The results suggest that prospectively gathering new samples can have two, potentially contrasting, influences on choice: the first focuses on the sample’s face value and selects the option with the higher value in the new sample; by contrast, the second treats the new sample as a cue to recall similar prior experiences, which in turn drive choice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibility that part of the descriptive value of prospect theory reflects the fact that it summarizes the joint impact of similar “face-or-cue” processes. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program enables (...) students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

Barbey & Sloman (B&S) attribute base-rate neglect to associative processes (like retrieval from memory) that fail to adequately represent the set structure of the problem. This commentary notes that associative responses can also lead to base-rate overweighting. We suggest that the difference between the two patterns is related to the distinction between decisions from experience and decisions from description.

Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature? This book shows how technologies can be (...) socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential. Four technologies are studied: social media, social robots, climate engineering and artificial wombs. The authors highlight the disruptive potential of these technologies, and the new questions this raises. The book also discusses responses to conceptual disruption, like conceptual engineering, the deliberate revision of concepts. (shrink)

Peterson's objection to my proposal to treat new technologies as social experiments seems straightforward. Doing so would replace the old question ‘Is technology X ethically acceptable?’ (Let us ca...

The Straniak Philosophy Prize 1995 awarded by the Hermann and Marianne Straniak Foundation Sarnen/Switzerland This book explores Eastern and Western ideas of freedom and reveals the essential differences, as well as similarities, between Eastern and Western cultural values. Inspired by an ancient Greek myth recounted by Protagoras, the authors suggest that three important values tend to motivate human activity: achieving pleasure, achieving results, and obeying moral law. Then, drawing on intellectual sources ranging from traditional Hinduism to modern existentialism, the authors (...) proceed to show how these values - pleasure, efficiency, and morality - determine the idea of freedom as it appears in various philosophical systems of East and West. In the course of their analysis, the idea of freedom is itself emancipated from the usual kinds of cultural boundaries that have so often limited both its usefulness and its timeliness. (shrink)

This research provides evidence regarding the causal effect of group conformity on task performance in stable and variable environments. Drawing on studies in cultural evolution, social learning, and social psychology, we experimentally tested the hypotheses that conformity improves group performance in a stable environment (H1) and decreases performance (by hindering adaptability) in a temporally variable environment (H2). We compare the performance of individuals, low conformity groups, and high conformity groups in a four-arm randomized lab experiment (N = 240). High conformity (...) was manipulated by rewarding agreement with the group’s majority and imposing a cost on disagreement. The monetary implications of conformity impaired performance in a variable environment but did not have a significant effect on performance in the stable environment. Intragroup individual-level analyses provide insights into the mechanisms that account for the group-level results by showing that lower conformity in groups facilitates efficient adaptability in the use of social information. (shrink)

Featuring a unique systematic approach to dealing with ethical problems known as the 'ethical cycle, ' the book utilizes an abundance of real-life case studies ...

In the value sensitive design literature, there has been little attention for how values may change during the adoption and use of a sociotechnical system, and what that implies for design. A value change taxonomy is proposed, as well as a number of technical features that allow dealing with value change.

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral (...) responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking and forward-looking. Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings. (shrink)

In recent years, informed consent has been suggested as a way to deal with risks posed by engineered nanomaterials. We argue that while we can learn from experiences with informed consent in treatment and research contexts, we should be aware that informed consent traditionally pertains to certain features of the relationships between doctors and patients and researchers and research participants, rather than those between producers and consumers and employers and employees, which are more prominent in the case of engineered nanomaterials. (...) To better understand these differences, we identify three major relational factors that influence whether valid informed consent is obtainable, namely dependency, personal proximity, and existence of shared interests. We show that each type of relationship offers different opportunities for reflection and therefore poses distinct challenges for obtaining valid informed consent. Our analysis offers a systematic understanding of the possibilities for attaining informed consent in the context of nanomaterial risks and makes clear that measures or regulations to improve the obtainment of informed consent should be attuned to the specific interpersonal relations to which it is supposed to apply. (shrink)

How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An (...) ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society. (shrink)

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap (...) in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility. (shrink)

We propose a pragmatist account of value change that helps to understand how and why values sometimes change due to technological developments. Inspired by John Dewey’s writings on value, we propose to understand values as evaluative devices that carry over from earlier experiences and that are to some extent shared in society. We discuss the various functions that values fulfil in moral inquiry and propose a conceptual framework that helps to understand value change as the interaction between three manifestations of (...) value distinguished by Dewey, i.e., “immediate value,” “values as the result of inquiry” and “generalized values.” We show how this framework helps to distinguish three types of value change: value dynamism, value adaptation, and value emergence, and we illustrate these with examples from the domain of technology. We argue that our account helps to better understand how technology may induce value change, namely through the creation of what Dewey calls indeterminate situations, and we show how our account can integrate several insights on moral change offered by other authors. (shrink)

Engineering ethics and science and technology studies have until now developed as separate enterprises. The authors argue that they can learn a lot from each other. STS insights can help make engineering ethics open the black box of technology and help discern ethical issues in engineering design. Engineering ethics, on the other hand, might help STS to overcome its normative sterility. The contributions in this special issue show in various ways how the gap between STS and engineering ethics might be (...) overcome. In this editorial introduction, the authors discuss the various contributions briefly and delve into the way the various authors conceptualize the engineering design process and the consequences of those conceptualizations for what ethical issues become visible. They also discuss the implications for the responsibility of engineers for technological development. (shrink)

The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of agents and unpredictable, far-reaching causal chains from innovation to social impacts, which creates great uncertainty. A second problem is constituted by possible trade-offs between different (...) kinds of responsibility. It is evident that attributing backward-looking responsibility for product failures diminishes the willingness to learn about such defects and to take forward-looking responsibility. We will argue that these problems can be overcome by elaborating what it is exactly that innovators are responsible for. In this manner, we will distinguish more clearly between holding responsible and taking responsibility. This opens a space for ‘supererogatory’ responsibilities. Second, we will argue that both innovation processes and outcomes can be objects of innovators’ responsibility. Third, we will analyze different kinds of responsibility and show that the functions of their attribution are not necessarily contradictory. Based on this conceptual refinement, we will argue that accountability, responsibility-as-virtue and the willingness to take responsibility are crucial for responsible innovation. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 285-290, October 2011.

In this paper, we argue that the characteristics of digital platforms challenge the fundamental assumptions of value sensitive design (VSD). Traditionally, VSD methods assume that we can identify relevant values during the design phase of new technologies. The underlying assumption is that there is onlyepistemic uncertaintyabout which values will be impacted by a technology. VSD methods suggest that one can predict which values will be affected by new technologies by increasing knowledge about how values are interpreted or understood in context. (...) In contrast, digital platforms exhibit a novel form of uncertainty, namely,ontological uncertainty: even with full information and overview, it cannot be foreseen what users or developers will do with digital platforms. Hence, predictions about which values are affected might not hold. In this paper, we suggest expanding VSD methods to account for value dynamism resulting from ontological uncertainty. Our expansions involve (1) extending VSD to the entire lifecycle of a platform, (2) broadening VSD through the addition of reflexivity, i.e. second-order learning about what values to aim at, and (3) adding specific tools of moral sandboxing and moral prototyping to enhance such reflexivity. While we illustrate our approach with a short case study about ride-sharing platforms such as Uber, our approach is relevant for other technologies exhibiting ontological uncertainty as well, such as machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This paper describes a teaching methodology whereby students can gain practical experience of ethical decision-making in the engineering design process. We first argue for the necessity to teach a ‘practical’ understanding of ethical issues in engineering education along with the usual theoretical or hypothetical approaches. We then show how this practical understanding can be achieved by using a collaborative design game, describing how, for example, the concept of responsibility can be explored from this practical basis. We conclude that the use (...) of games in design education can provide an excellent basis for discussing practical and ethical reasoning during the process of design. (shrink)

There is no agreement on how nanoethics should proceed. In this article I focus on approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology, which is as of yet one of the most difficult and urging tasks for nanoethics. I discuss and criticize two existing approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and propose a network approach as alternative. I discuss debates in nanoethics about the desirable role of ethics in nanotechnological development and about the newness of ethical issues in nanotechnology. On (...) basis of a critical analysis of both debates, I formulate a number of desiderata for a method for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and argue that the network approach that my colleagues and I have developed for ethical issues in research and development networks is also appropriate in nanotechnology. (shrink)

This paper aims at contributing to a research agenda in engineering ethics by exploring the ethical aspects of engineering design processes. A number of ethically relevant topics with respect to design processes are identified. These topics could be a subject for further research in the field of engineering ethics. In addition, it is argued that the way design processes are now organised and should be organised from a normative point of view is an important topic for research.

The ongoing energy transition toward more sustainable energy systems implies a change in the values for which such systems are designed. The energy transition however is not just about sustainability but also about values like energy security and affordability, and we witness the emergence of new values like energy justice and energy democracy. How can we understand such value changes and how can or should they affect the design of future energy systems? This introduction to the special section on value (...) change in energy systems introduces the main themes and questions. It discusses different understandings of values and value change, explains why the topic is important and how it can be methodologically studied. (shrink)