Ethics and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Engineering

The Ethics of Technology. Methods and Approaches avoids the overly simplistic and individualistic approach to the ethics of technology, which might otherwise mislead the reader into a superficial understanding of the discipline. Too often, the ethics of technology is reduced to an overt and over reliance on professional codes, ethical theories (spelled out in terms of the dichotomy between deontology and utilitarianism) and the application of a prescribed heuristic to what most often are black and white individualistic dilemmas described by case studies. The collection of essays edited by Hansson is thus an important contribution to the growing body of literature on the ethics of technology, as it questions and brings to light the broader purpose of engineering and the conceptual tools required for the responsible practice of the profession if we are to enable engineers to address structural issues.

Given the affective psychological and cognitive dynamics prevalent during human-robot-interlocution, the vulnerability to cultural-political influences of the design aesthetics of a social humanoid robot has far-reaching ramifications. Building upon this hypothesis, I explicate the relationship between the structure of the constitution social ontology and computational semiotics, and venture a theoretical framework which I propose as a thesis that impels a moral responsibility on engineers of social humanoids. In distilling this thesis, the implications of the intersection between the socio-aesthetics of racialised and genderised humanoids and the phenomenology of human-robot-interaction are illuminated by the figuration of the experience of a typical black rural African woman as the user, that is, an interlocutor with an industry-standard socially-situated humanlike robot. The representation of the gravity of the psycho-existential and socio-political ramifications of such woman's life with humanoids is abstracted and posited as grounds that illustrate the imperative for roboticists to take socio-ethical considerations seriously in their designs of humanoids.

Social robots in education introduce new moral challenges. The aim of this exploratory study is to gain a better understanding of the moral conceptions held by parents regarding the implementation of social robots in primary schools. These moral conceptions are important because parents are the representatives of children, but also experience the effects of robot tutoring first-hand. Through empirical data gathered from focus group sessions with parents, we identified and categorised the concerns and opportunities linked to implementing social robots in an educational context from the perspective of parents. These opportunities and concerns formed the basis for identifying the moral values held by parents that are affected by the introduction of these social robots. We mapped the opportunities and concerns to a list of 14 relevant moral values regarding social robots and education as identified in a review on ethics and educational robots, in order to identify and conceptualise the relevant moral values for parents. We identified the relevant moral values for parents that are affected by the social robot to gain a better understanding of parents' attitudes towards the use of social robots in education, to help the robotic industry integrate parents' moral values in their robot tutor design, and to help create the necessary moral guidelines towards an ethical implementation of social robots in education.

Bidrag till en vänbok för Bo Rothstein till hans 65-årsdag.
Till en akademisk professors särskilda auktoritet i offentligheten bidrar förväntningen att hen någotsånär vet vad hen talar om. Är det en mindre och väl definierad sak hen säger sig veta något om är det lättare att kontrollera vad professorn säger sig veta, än om professorn gör anspråk på att veta en större sak som inte bara kräver vetskap om många mindre saker, utan som också förutsätter att vetskapen om en mindre sak binds samman med vetskapen om en annan mindre sak och kanske en tredje och fjärde. Då är det nämligen inte bara de mindre sakerna var för sig vi måste kunna kontrollera utan också hur de mindre sakerna fogas samman och förhåller sig till varandra och formar den stora sak som professorn gör anspråk på att veta något om. Många små saker kan forma otaliga stora saker, och beroende på vem som gör det och hur det görs, kan vitt skilda saker berättas. Och då är vi snart ute på det vida och stormiga hav där professorsauktoriteten ständigt måste förtjänas och försvaras genom att göra trovärdigt och sannolikt att den stora saken är berättad så sanningsenligt som möjligt, utan dolda agendor eller avsikter.

At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which was held in August 2002 in Johannesburg, an organization called ETC Group (Erosion, Technology, and Concentration) called for a moratorium on the environmental release and commercial use of nanomaterials.  They called for a ban on self-assembling nanomaterials and for a ban on patents for nanoscale technologies.  The reason given by ETC Group for this concerns the long-term and, perhaps, irreversible damage that can be caused by releasing engineered nanomaterials into the environment, whether for commercial, medical, or other purposes.  A 2004 report commissioned by the European Parliament also recommended that engineered nanoparticles should not be released into the environment.  However, concern over the safety of nanomaterials is not limited to their impact on the environment since, due to some of their size-dependent unique properties, nanomaterials are also being used in biomedicine and in a multitude of consumer products.  In addition to being concerned over the safety of these materials once they are taken into the world outside of the laboratory in which they are manufactured, one must also be concerned about their safety of handling nanomaterials for the chemical engineers who manipulate them in the laboratory.  The ability to handle nanomaterials safely in the laboratory depends upon the ability to control these materials and control depends upon having epistemic access to these materials.

Although quite a bit has been written by philosophers of chemistry about the ontology of nanomaterials, this paper proposes to address the question of epistemic access to nanomaterials.  This question will be addressed from the perspective of the phenomenology of technology, since this approach can provide important insights regarding nanotechnology’s ability to yield transparent epistemic access to nanomaterials.  In fact, I will argue that nanotechnology lends itself to the same sort of phenomenological analysis as other technologies (such as nuclear reactors) in which direct epistemic access to the product of the technology is not possible due to the nature and/or features of that product.  To argue this point, I will consider what philosophers of chemistry have proposed regarding the ontology of nanomaterials, since ontological questions affect whether or not transparent epistemic access to nanomaterials is possible at all.  I will conclude that, in the case of nanotechnology, direct epistemic access is not possible because of the extremely small scale of nanomaterials, which must therefore be engineered and handled via mediating devices.

I will argue that this ‘mediated access’ creates a relation between the chemical engineer and the engineered nanomaterials that requires the chemical engineer to infer what is happening at the nanoscale by interpreting the information provided by mediating devices.  Because of this interpretive inference, the epistemic relation between the engineer and the engineered product is referred to as a ‘hermeneutic intentionality relation’.  However, the indirect and interpretive nature of this epistemic relation increases the probability of ‘misreading’ what is occurring at the nanoscale and of unintended exposure to the nanomaterials being manipulated.  Due to the nature of the technology and of the engineered materials, the problem of indirect epistemic access and of possible misinterpretation are problems that are inherent to nanotechnology itself and that persists regardless of how the methods for handling nanoproducts are modified.  This analysis will conclude that, from the standpoint of safety, there are serious reasons for concern regarding nanotechnology due to the toxicological and environmental effects that may result from accidental direct or indirect exposure to nanomaterials.  These concerns stem from the fact that, among other things, the phenomenological limits of the epistemic access is endemic to nanotechnology itself.

Oggi, nell'epoca del terrorismo globale e del disastro ecologico, in un medioevo tecnologico nel quale si approfitta dei vantaggi della tecnica senza conoscerne i potenziali danni, nell'epoca dell'insostenibilità dello sviluppo e di un abissale sbilanciamento economico fra regioni e popoli, oggi più che mai bisogna favorire l'affermazione di un pensiero dell'armonia.

Today, in the era of global terrorism and ecological disaster, in a technological Middle Ages in which one takes advantage of the technical progress without knowing its potential damage, in the era of unsustainable development and of an abysmal economic imbalance between regions and peoples, today more than ever we must favor the affirmation of a thought of harmony.

Penicillin is a serendipitous discovery par excellence. But, what does this say about Alexander Fleming's praiseworthiness? Clearly, Fleming would not have received the Nobel Prize, had not a mould accidently entered his laboratory. This seems paradoxical , since it was beyond his control. The present article will first discuss Flem-ing's discovery of Penicillin as an example of moral luck in science and technology and critically assess some common responses to this problem. Second, the Control Principle that says that people are not responsible for things beyond their control will be defended. An implication of this principle is that Alexander Fleming's desert, which is based on his epistemic skills, remains untouched by luck. Third, by distinguishing different notions of praiseworthiness, a way to resolve the paradox of moral luck will be elaborated. Desert provides only a pro tanto reason to determine whether someone is an appropriate addressee of reward. Here, luck can make a difference. Forth, it will be argued that stimulating the quest for socially beneficial science provides a compelling reason to treat scientists with equal desert differently. Penicillin provides striking evidence for the importance of this quest and showcas-ing it incentivizes the making of socially beneficial science. Ultimately, it will be justified why Fleming deserved the Nobel Prize in at least one sense of the concept.

This thesis conceptually investigates the relationship between human existence and the technical object, and thereby relates questions faced within the philosophy of technology to the field of philosophical anthropology. This conceptual work will be taken up in a twofold manner. Firstly, I detail how the Western philosophical tradition has tended to distance its own practice and thinking from the technical, and how it, relatedly, has hierarchically subjugated technics from what essentially defines us as human beings. This will involve a genealogical investigation of the figure of the philosopher and the technician, which will detail how and why these figures have been antagonistic and oppositional from the start. The argument being that this relationship constitutes a genuine hindrance for thinking of existence as originarily technical within the confines of traditional philosophical inquiry and its various schools of thought. Secondly, I conceptually investigate and phenomenologically describe the relationship between human existence and technics by way of an engagement with, first and foremost, the early and late thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the work of the French palaeoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan and the thought of the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. The thesis sets out to question, in this regard, whether or not tool-user and tool, the human and the technical object are originarily prosthetically coupled, and hence if, so to speak, the inventor is also invented with what it invents. Its argument being, in this connection, that the invention of the human is technics. The central thesis of Heidegger’s later philosophy of technology that the essence of technics is by no means anything technical will thus be called into question.

The international academic workshop held in the Institute for the Humanities, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, with representatives of different philosophical areas, debated over the relevance of concepts inspired by the European Enlightenment, and especially Kant’s philosophy, in the search for answers to the global challenges of our time. In their reports and discussion, the participants reviewed the possibilities and restrictions of applying Kant’s transcendental philosophy to solving the modern issues of science and applied ethics, law and politics, as well as the importance of modified educational rationality for modern education, the development of critical thinking and the restoration of socially responsible communication between science and society amidst today’s global challenges. One of the focuses was the Kant’s concept of man and its heuristic capabilities in the era of the booming robotics, genetic and biomedical engineering, and in the conditions of the ever-growing human dehumanization.

To develop more effective ethics education for cross-cultural and international engineering, a study was conducted to determine what Chinese engineering students have learned and think about ethics. Recent research shows traditional approaches to ethics education are potentially ineffective, but also points towards ways of improving ethical behaviors. China is the world’s most populous country, graduating and employing the highest number of STEM majors, although little empirical research exists about the ethical knowledge and perspectives of Chinese engineering students. When compared to engineering students in the US, Chinese engineering students (1) received less ethics education; (2) the form of the education they did receive stressed virtue ethics or the development of moral character; (3) conceive of ethics in contradistinction to the law, where ethics deals with matters of right and wrong not covered by legality. Based on these findings and research in moral psychology and behavioral ethics, recommendations are made for improving engineering ethics education both in China and abroad.

Science as an object of sociological study” presents a theoretical reflection
about the attributes of science that makes it a sociological matter of interest. Since science operates in a world composed of strong territorial, linguistic, cultural and political / ideological differences, it has been in the midst of a controversy between those who maintain that it is determined by social factors and those who conceive it as an entity that develops with a relative autonomy of them. The article argues that the tension between one conception and another diminishes when conceiving the rigorousness that distinguishes scientific methodology, not only as cognitive rules but also as symbolic ways which have been created and shared socially to materialize the consubstantial ethical principles of scientific rationality.

To ensure more long-term ethical behaviors within engineering, a website is being developed to host educational modules on global engineering ethics and conduct research on cross-cultural moral psychology. The modules are all-inclusive, with a cross-cultural and international focus, requiring less preparation on the part of instructors and are easier for different types of students to use than existing online resources. Education and research using the site can occur at the same time, each strengthening the other in the process. Rather than simply ethical understanding or the ability to reason ethically, research on moral psychology can ensure more ethical behaviors, better understanding what people know and think about ethics and the causes of (un)ethical behaviors. This research is cross-cultural, since culture has been shown to affect behaviors and thoughts related to ethics, and the educational and working environments of engineering are more cross-cultural and international than ever before. Introduction This paper describes the motivations for and nature of a website being developed to host educational modules on engineering ethics, as well as to collect information regarding cross-cultural moral psychology.

In this article, the concept of moralistic fallacy introduced by B. D. Davis is elaborated on in more detail. Th e main features of this fallacy are discussed, and its general form is presented. Th e moralistic fallacy might have some undesirable outcomes. Some of them might even be in direct confl ict to the original moral position. If this occurs, it is possible to characterize it as a paradox of moralistic fallacy. Th e possibility of this paradox provides a further reason not to prevent any scientifi c inquiries and not to depict any knowledge as dangerous. Paradox moralistického omylu: argument proti nebezpečné znalosti Abstrakt: V článku je rozveden koncept moralistického omylu, který předložil B. D. Davis. Jsou diskutovány základní charakteris-tiky tohoto omylu s cílem představit jeho obecnou formu. Moralistický omyl má přitom nechtěné následky, z nichž některé dokonce mohou být v přímém rozporu s původní morální pozicí, která stojí v začátku tohoto samotného omylu. Pokud takovýto stav nastane, lze ukázat, že mora-listický omyl způsobuje paradox. Možnost takovéhoto paradoxu pak poskytuje důvod k tomu, aby bylo odmítnuto omezování vědeckého zkoumání a aby nebyla žádná zna-lost charakterizována jako nebez-pečná. Klíčová slova: moralistický omyl; reverzní naturalistický omyl; Bernard D. Davis; paradox moralistického omylu; nebezpečná znalost TOMÁŠ ONDRÁČEK