Abstract
Engineers are initially responsible for the artefacts they produce, but at some point, part of the responsibility for the artefact shifts from the engineer to the user. This chapter will analyse how and when this transfer of responsibility takes place. Specifically, it will combine the theory of responsibility and control of Fischer and Ravizza (1998) and the use plan theory of knowledge of artefact functions by Houkes and Vermaas (2004) into a new theoretical framework which specifies the conditions under which this transfer can take place. After introducing both theories and combining them, I will give an example of how the combined theory works and apply it to a test case to show how it functions in practice.
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Notes
- 1.
See Whitbeck (1998) for a good overview of non-transferrable professional responsibilities of engineers.
- 2.
Whenever I refer to Fischer and Ravizza, I refer to Fischer and Ravizza (1998). Whenever I refer to Houkes and Vermaas, I refer to Houkes and Vermaas (2004).
- 3.
Research on the distribution of responsibility within organizations has for example been done by Royakkers et al. (2006).
- 4.
I am grateful to Carl Mitcham for bringing this point to my attention.
- 5.
According to Fischer and Ravizza, you are morally responsible when you are an appropriate candidate for the reactive attitudes (gratefulness, resentment, etc.). In this, they follow Strawson (1962).
- 6.
For a critical examination of Responsibility and Control, see the book symposium in the journal Philosophical Explorations 8(2). For a good overview of the topics in the contemporary debate on responsibility and free will, see Fischer (1999).
- 7.
Nicomachean Ethics (1985), 1109b30–1111b5.
- 8.
These conditions are not only recognized by the Anglo-American analytical tradition in which Fischer and Ravizza write. Jonas (1984) adopts them too as he writes: “The first and most general condition of responsibility is causal power, that is, that acting makes an impact on the world; the second, that such acting is under the agent’s control; and third, that he can foresee its consequences to some extent” (p. 90). While Fischer and Ravizza take the causal power of actions for granted, they view the recognition of an agent that her actions have causal power as a crucial part of her becoming a responsible agent.
- 9.
Chapters 2 and 3 of Fischer and Ravizza’s book deal in more detail with what they mean by “moderate reasons-responsiveness”. Roughly, they claim that an agent is moderately reasons-responsive when he acknowledges that at least in some situations there might be reasons to choose another course of action than in the current situation, and that there should be a pattern to those reasons, e.g. “I will not buy this car if the price is over $5000.”
- 10.
For a critical examination of this claim, see Judisch (2005).
- 11.
For an elaboration of the concept of role responsibilities, see for example May (1992), Chapter 9, or Mitcham and Von Schomberg (2000). Mitcham and Von Schomberg, however, find that the concept focuses too much on the individual to be useful for engineers. They propose an alternative called “collective co-responsibility” to better fit engineering practice.
- 12.
Indeed, Yaffe (2000) notes that Fischer and Ravizza never directly address the issue of how physical constraints in general might affect moral responsibility. This chapter should help to at least fill the lacuna concerning the constraints those physical objects known as artefacts place upon us.
- 13.
Fischer and Ravizza argue that nobody really has regulative control, as the thesis of determinism they endorse entails that people never have the “freedom to do otherwise”. I use “exercising regulative control” here as similar to “choosing” and “deciding”: useful to make sense of our behaviour in everyday practice, but if determinism is true, possibly an incorrect description of what actually takes place.
- 14.
These are not the only forms of responsibility possible. Dennett (1984), for example, also deals with “responsibility for the self”.
- 15.
An agent does not need to have freedom of the will to execute a use plan: the use plan might already have been constructed specifically with the goals of this agent in mind. The distinction between freedom of the will and freedom of action is elaborated upon in Frankfurt (1971).
- 16.
I assume that all technical components needed to perform those actions are already included in the artefact (e.g. batteries) or readily available. After all, the use plan is explicitly made for a functional technical artefact.
- 17.
I take the concept of actions under a description from Anscombe (2000).
- 18.
Specifically, this condition is about forward-looking moral responsibility.
- 19.
Houkes and Vermaas see the construction and communication of at least one use plan as a prerequisite for “good design”.
- 20.
While an engineer cannot exempt herself from responsibility by fulfilling conditions I–III without an able user present, a user can take responsibility for an artefact (or any natural object) by fulfilling conditions IV–V, assuming he has acquired a use plan P in some way and actually tries to execute it (experimenting). Houkes and Vermaas (2004) analyse several ways in which users may aquire use plans.
- 21.
I will leave out middlemen like car dealers to focus on the transfer itself: the section on the Abcoude dosing lock will deal with a more complex case. Alternatively, you could read “engineer” as “the institution or organization that employs the engineer”. The “user” can similarly be an institution or organization.
- 22.
The main cause was people driving through the red light (project leader public works Abcoude, private correspondence).
- 23.
The municipality did give control over the dosing lock to emergency services and regional buses, who could turn it off with a remote control if they had to to pass quickly.
- 24.
In January 2009, the magistrate of Utrecht found the municipality partially liable for two out of three examined accidents, as the safety measures taken at the time of the accidents were judged insufficient.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Wybo Houkes and Jessica Nihlén-Fahlquist for commenting on earlier versions of this chapter.
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Pols, A. (2009). Transferring Responsibility Through Use Plans. In: Poel, I., Goldberg, D. (eds) Philosophy and Engineering:. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2804-4_16
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