Ethics on the Basis of Technological Choices

Abstract

In the past few decades, the philosophy of technology has shifted from its ‘classical’ approach (focusing on how technology as a whole negatively affects society at large, and even the human condition) to a more empirical approach focusing on objects themselves (Brey 2010). Now philosophers are becoming more and more interested in the way concrete objects are designed in the laboratory in order to scrutinise how objects materialise norms and values, and introduce them into society. Philosophers of technology have shifted from their usual observation posture to a more active one; in other words, they have to more actively intervene in the design of technologies—they have to become fully-fledged actors of engineering processes. What about their traditional role as critics of current social organisation, and of its admitted set of norms and values? Are they in danger of losing their vigilance, which requires a certain ‘distance’? Is the social role of philosophy now limited to ‘accompanying’ science and technology, and to providing an expertise for engineers and science policy-makers? This perspective is obviously unsatisfactory and raises the question of the role of philosophy when philosophers have to face such demands.