The Ethics of Technology A Geometric Analysis of Five Moral Principles

265 Pages·2017·2.33 MB·English

by  Martin Peterson

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The Ethics of Technology
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The Ethics
of Technology
A Geometric Analysis of Five Moral Principles
Martin Peterson
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1
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
PART I: Foundations
1. Introduction 3
2. The Geometry of Applied Ethics 29
3. Experimental Data 58
PART II: Five Principles
4. The Cost- Benefit Principle 87
5. The Precautionary Principle 112
6. The Sustainability Principle 137
7. The Autonomy Principle 157
8. The Fairness Principle 168
PART III: Wrapping Up
9. Are Technological Artifacts Mere Tools? 185
10. Conclusion 204
Appendix: Case Descriptions 209
Notes 217
References 231
Index 241
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PREFACE
In recent years, discussions about the ethics of technology have been domi-
nated by philosophers rooted in the continental tradition. To the best of
my knowledge, there is no analytic work aiming to sketch the bigger pic-
ture. What are the key issues in the field, and how can we tackle them?
This book develops an analytic ethics of technology based on a geometric
account of moral principles. The allusion to Spinoza’s Ethics, Demonstrated
in Geometrical Order (1677) is somewhat accidental. I do share Spinoza’s
basic conviction that geometric methods can help us to make philosophical
views more precise, but I do not believe this approach can solve any “deep”
metaphysical problems. What I try to show is that geometric concepts such
as points, lines, and planes are useful for clarifying the structure and scope
of moral principles. This adds a new perspective to the ethics of technology,
and possibly to methodological discussions of applied ethics in general.1
I hope scholars working in other subfields of applied ethics will find my
methodology clear and useful.
Most of the material included in this volume has not appeared in print
before. However, some of the sections are based on previously published
articles, some of which I have written with others. Sections 4.2 to 4.6
are based on R. Lowry and M. Peterson (2012), “Cost-B enefit Analysis
and Non- Utilitarian Ethics,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11: 258–
279. I am grateful to Rosemary Lowry for allowing me to reuse a slightly
revised version of this material. Section 5.3 is based on some points first
made in M. Peterson (2011), “Should the Precautionary Principle Guide
Our Actions or Our Beliefs?,” Journal of Medical Ethics 33: 5– 10. Sections
6.3 to 6.5 come from M. Peterson and P. Sandin (2013), “The Last Man
Argument Revisited,” Journal of Value Inquiry 47: 21– 133. I would like to
sincerely thank Per Sandin for giving me permission to include this mate-
rial here. I am also grateful to Per for helpful comments on the entire man-
uscript and for helping me to articulate the five domain- specific principles
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discussed in this work. Finally, some of the materials in chapter 9 (mainly
Sections 9.3 and 9.5) first appeared in M. Peterson and A. Spahn (2011),
“Can Technological Artifacts Be Moral Agents?,” Science and Engineering
Ethics 17: 411– 424. Chapter 9 also draws on M. Peterson (2014), “Three
Objections to Verbeek,” Philosophy and Technology 27: 301– 308. I would like
to thank Andreas Spahn for allowing me to reuse some sections from our
joint paper.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude
to numerous colleagues for valuable input and feedback. I began working
on this project in 2012, while based at Eindhoven University of Technology
in the Netherlands. Early versions of chapters 1 and 2 were presented at
workshops in Eindhoven in the spring of 2014. I am particularly grate-
ful to Wybo Houkes and Philip Nickel for helpful suggestions and critical
questions. In August 2014 I took up the Sue and Harry E. Bovay Chair for
the History and Ethics of Professional Engineering in the Department of
Philosophy at Texas A&M University. I would like to express my gratitude
to my colleagues Glen Miller and Roger Sansom for extremely helpful com-
ments, and Zak Fisher and Robert Reed for helping me to develop some of
the case descriptions discussed in c hapter 8. In the summer of 2016 parts
of the manuscript were discussed at workshops and conferences in Tilburg,
Windsor, Linköping, Tallinn, and Stockholm. I would like to thank the audi-
ences at all those events for giving me valuable feedback. I would also like
to thank Neelke Doorn, Thomas Boyer-K assem, Norbert Paulo, and two
anonymous readers for Oxford University Press who provided extremely
helpful comments on a draft manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my
research assistant, Rob Reed, for helping me to edit and prepare the final
version of the manuscript.
[ viii ] Preface
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The Ethics of Technology