Abstract
Technology is a practically indispensible means for satisfying one’s basic interests in all central areas of human life including nutrition, habitation, health care, entertainment, transportation, and social interaction. It is impossible for any one person, even a well-trained scientist or engineer, to know enough about how technology works in these different areas to make a calculated choice about whether to rely on the vast majority of the technologies she/he in fact relies upon. Yet, there are substantial risks, uncertainties, and unforeseen practical consequences associated with the use of technological artifacts and systems. The salience of technological failure (both catastrophic and mundane), as well as technology’s sometimes unforeseeable influence on our behavior, makes it relevant to wonder whether we are really justified as individuals in our practical reliance on technology. Of course, even if we are not justified, we might nonetheless continue in our technological reliance, since the alternatives might not be attractive or feasible. In this chapter I argue that a conception of trust in technological artifacts and systems is plausible and helps us understand what is at stake philosophically in our reliance on technology. Such an account also helps us understand the relationship between trust and technological risk and the ethical obligations of those who design, manufacture, and deploy technological artifacts.
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- 1.
We may distinguish between welfare interests and ulterior interests. Welfare interests are those interests which are assumed to be had by any person, such as freedom of movement, ownership of property, life, and health. Ulterior interests are related the specific goals of individuals, such as the desire to own a motorboat, to travel to Hawaii, or to start an organic farm. See Feinberg (1984).
- 2.
Recent special issues of Knowledge, Technology and Policy and Ethics and Information Technology are devoted to trust in technology (Taddeo 2010).
- 3.
People often contrast trust with mere reliance, but this is not a suitable comparison. Reliance is way of acting, whereas trust is an attitude. For our comparison we must therefore find an attitude associated with “mere” acts of reliance—here I call this a judgment of reliability.
- 4.
Or even aggression: destruction of objects is a clinical criterion for hostile aggression, although this is often a surrogate for interpersonal aggression (Ramírez and Andreu 2006).
- 5.
This entitlement holds even if one is not oneself the person originally called. For example, suppose my brother was phoned but had to leave suddenly just after the call was cut off, and before the conversation had finished. If I am standing nearby, I am entitled to rely on the original caller’s calling again.
- 6.
An exception is the case in which I am told something false by another person. But in that case, I have reason to be angry at the person not just because her claim happened to be false but because she wrongly presented the claim as true.
- 7.
This point is due to Peter Kroes.
- 8.
These definitions of risk incorporate value notions such as “serious negative effect” and “reasonable to accept.” For an argument that the notions of risk and safety are fundamentally normative, see the chapter by Möller in this volume.
- 9.
This issue is famously discussed by Aristotle, who already sensed the difficulty of settling it in book III of his Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle 1998). Aristotle himself calls coerced actions voluntary because their immediate cause lies in the person who acts.
- 10.
There is also a more specialized sense of “design for trust.” Vermaas et al. discuss a special case in which the item to be designed is itself a trust-facilitating information technology (2010).
- 11.
Nickel 2011. I will simply say “designer” and “user” in what follows for the sake of economy.
- 12.
The principle of informed consent is best known from the domains of research ethics and medical ethics (National Commission 1979). My suggestion here differs from the usual application of the principle of informed consent in three ways: first, I am not suggesting that it be thought of primarily as an institutional or legal norm; second, I am applying it to any technological artefact or system that has significant possible impacts for the user, where the user is in a position to choose that technology; and third, I am applying it to the reasons for trust, rather than to the risks and benefits associated with the technology itself. (In the usual application of the principle, the technology in question would be a research protocol or a medical therapy.)
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Nickel, P.J. (2013). Trust in Technological Systems. In: de Vries, M., Hansson, S., Meijers, A. (eds) Norms in Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5243-6_14
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