2. Moral authority

Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 2008

The purpose of this chapter is to explore whether information and information technology in certain cases ought to be valued as ends in themselves rather than as mere means to other ends. I will address this problem by proposing a theory of moral status: a theory of who or what has moral status in the sense that we, as moral agents, have an obligation to take their well-being into consideration when making ethical judgments. The proposed relational theory of moral status draws on insights from both classical Western and East Asian philosophy in order to question the exclusion of all nonliving entities in most theories of moral status. The relational properties constitutivity and irreplaceability are singled out as ethically relevant and are suggested as one possible way to ground the moral status of information and information technologies.

2007

The technological advances of contemporary society have outpaced our moral understanding of the problems that they create. How will we deal with profound ecological changes, human cloning, hybrid people, and eroding cyberprivacy, just to name a few issues? In this book, Lorenzo Magnani argues that existing moral constructs often can not be applied to new technology. He proposes an entirely new ethical approach, one that blends epistemology with cognitive science.

Theory, Culture & Society, 2002

The End of the Means Bruno Latour, translated by Couze Venn I T IS readily admitted that although human beings pose themselves moral problems concerning technologies (Should or should we not introduce in Europe genetically modified organisms? Must we dispose of the waste from the nuclear industry in deep or surface silos?) the objects in themselves do not have a moral dimension. Such is the current view of a large number of sociologists . Technologies belong to the realm of means and morality to the realm of ends, even though, as Jacques Ellul declared a long time ago, some technologies end up invading the whole horizon of ends by setting up their own laws, by becoming 'autonomous' and no longer merely automatic. Even in this extreme case, it is maintained, there is no other resource for human beings than to disengage from this domination by technologies, a domination that is all the more perverse for not imposing the law of a master but that of an emancipated slave who does not have the least idea about the moral goals proper to humankind. We know about the advantage that Heideggerians have drawn from the idea of a technology that could not be tamed since it was itself pure mastery without a master . To become moral and human once again, it seems we must always tear ourselves away from instrumentality, reaffirm the sovereignty of ends, rediscover Being; in short, we must bind back the hound of technology to its cage.

Journal of Business Ethics, 1999

Drawing on William F. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis, an inherent conflict is proposed between the rapid speed of modern technological advances and the slower speed by which ethical guidelines for utilization of new technologies are developed. Ogburn's cultural lag thesis proposes that material culture advances more rapidly than nonmaterial culture. Technology is viewed as part of material culture and ethical guidelines for technology utilization are viewed as an adaptive aspect of nonmaterial culture. Cultural lag is seen as a critical ethical issue because failure to develop broad social consensus on appropriate applications of modern technology may lead to breakdowns in social solidarity and the rise of social conflict. Reasons for cultural lag between technology and ethics include the social structural and market conditions under which each are developed. The thesis is illustrated by reviews of technological trends involving computer-telecommunications electronics and bio-genetic engineering, and the implications of these and other technologies for privacy rights, electronic commerce, control of essential resources and social definitions of life are discussed.

Metaphilosophy, 1997

In computer ethics, as in other branches of applied ethics, the problem of the justification of moral judgment is still unresolved. I argue that the method which is referred to as "The Method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium" (WRE) offers the best solution to it. It does not fall victim to the false dilemma of having to choose either case-based particularist or principle-based universalist approaches to the problem of moral justification. I claim that WRE also provides the best model of practical moral reasoning available for computer ethics. It does not pretend to provide quasi-algorithmic procedures for moral decision making, but neither does it abandon the regulative ideal of communicative transparency in discursive public justification.

What role does technology play in ethics? The question is not answered by working out how agents choose to use particular technologies, but by asking whether technology changes the infrastructure of our ethical experience and decisions. This paper argues that it does, in three ways: 1) the technologies we use impose definite structures of human activity on the world, 2) technologies structure what we do and how we do it by changing what possibilities are available to us, and therefore how we experience the world, and 3) unlike any other kind of thing, technology seems not to make moral demands of us: it seems morally neutral. This gives us a peculiar way of relating to the good: instead of experiencing the ethical demand others place on us, it puts the value of things in our hands. It offers us the freedom of imposing on something that does not impose back. In these three ways, then, technology structurally changes our ethical relationship with and experience of the world.

Human Studies, 2022

Technological mediation theorists (such as Don Ihde and Verbeek) believe that human beings' moral actions can be transformed through technological artefacts to constitute a "good life". This paper, however, critically analyses two understandings of technological mediation, (1) technological mediation is something between humans and the world (prominent in Don Ihde), and (2) technological mediation is a direct constitutive effect (prominent in Verbeek), which will inevitably lead to the problem of "moral suspension" that I define. In the first understanding (following Zygmunt Bauman), the causal relations between moral actions and actual consequences are distanced from each other because of the "interval" effects of technological artefacts. In the second understanding (following Jean Baudrillard), designers are just "simulating" moralities in specific use and design contexts. Thus, moral realities are ultimately replaced by moral "simulacra". Then, I argue that to overcome the problem of "moral suspension," rather than distancing actions from their consequences or simulating moralities in specific scenarios, two possible approaches may be needed, the Way of Zhuangzi who declined to use any adroit technology to improve efficiency, thereby clarifying the relationship between moral actions and consequences; and the attitude of Bauman, who motivated our moral consciences and moral sensitivities, thereby reflecting the side effects of technological mediations and systems. In the end, I conclude that both of these two approaches are too difficult to universally apply, and the most viable approach is to use what Confucius called "the Doctrine of the Mean," i.e., seeking a balance between the two approaches. That is, while we should acknowledge that technologies intervene our lifeworld and constitute our thinking and moralizing ways, we also need to break away from technological trivialities to think about and pursue long-term moral goals.

Technology and Culture, 2014

Science and Engineering Ethics, 2012

Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks when they are in presence of incomplete information and possess a diminished capacity to act morally. Many external things, usually inert from the moral point of view, can be transformed into what we call moral mediators. Hence, not all of the moral tools are inside the head, many of them are shared and distributed in “external” objects and structures which function as ethical devices. For example we can use external “tools”, like computer or biotechnology, to reconfigure previously given social orders morally unsatisfactory: two interesting examples we will illustrate are e-democracy projects and their possible role in enhancing human rights or cloning and genetic engineering for enhancing human health.