New Directions in Understanding Ethics and Technology

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

This endeavor examines the implications of recent work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) for understanding the connection between ethics and technology. It involves integration of insights from two fields of research that have significantly evolved in the last two decades: Social studies of technology; and Applied and practical ethics related to technology. STS theories of technology provide a rich foundation for understanding the connection between ethics and technology insofar as they reveal the intimate connections between technology and society, and especially the social shaping of technology. STS scholars have rejected the idea that technologies simply appear and then have social impacts. They now favor more complex, co-creation models of technology and society. However, many ethicists continue to use a model of technology arriving intact and then having impacts, i.e., threatening particular social values or raising ethical issues. When the seamless connection between technology and society is better understood, many new and promising directions for research on ethics and technology become apparent. This project aims to develop, articulate, illustrate, and disseminate a theoretical account (or accounts) of the connection between ethics and technology, an account that incorporates and builds on STS social shaping/co-creation theories. The major task of the project will be to draw out the implications of STS theory for ethics. Three directions will serve as starting places for this endeavor. STS theory suggests that technology should be understood to be not just material objects but material objects together with social institutions, social practices, and human relationships. In this view, ethical and value issues may be present at any point in the life cycle of a technology, from design, to manufacture, to marketing and distribution, to adoption and use. Second, a good deal of STS literature addresses the values embodied in the design of material objects and this has enormous implications for understanding the possibility of moral values being 'in' material objects. Third, understanding the connection between ethics and technology opens up the possibility of better understanding the role of human agency in technology-mediated activities and consequently the accountability of humans for such activities. The project is philosophical and theoretical in nature, not empirical. While the research to be done will draw on empirical studies of technology, the methodology of the project is conceptual, thematic, and analytical. The investigator is a philosopher who has worked both in STS and in the field of applied/ practical ethics, especially ethical issues in computer technology. Two post-doctoral research associates, one post-doc with a background in STS and one with a background in ethics are involved. Each will be trained to understand the other field so that both can assist in the development of the theoretical account and work on an individual project.