Technoethics - History of Technoethics

History of Technoethics

Though the ethical consequences of new technologies have existed since Socrates's attack on writing in Plato's dialogue, Phaedrus, the formal field of Technoethics had only existed for a few decades. The first traces of Technoethics (TE) can be seen in Dewey and Pearce’s Pragmatism. With the advent of the industrial revolution, it was easy to see that technological advances were going to influence human activity. This is why they put emphasis on the responsible use of technology. The term Technoethics was coined in 1977 by the philosopher Mario Bunge to describe the responsibilities of technologists and scientists to develop ethics as a branch of technology. Bunge argued that the current state of technological progress was guided by ungrounded practices based on limited empirical evidence and trial-and-error learning. He recognized that “the technologist must be held not only technically but also morally responsible for whatever he designs or executes: not only should his artifacts be optimally efficient but, far from being harmful, they should be beneficial, and not only in the short run but also in the long term.” He recognized a pressing need in society to create a new field called ‘Technoethics’ to discover rationally grounded rules for guiding science and technological progress.

With the spurt in technological advances came technological inquiry. Societal views of technology were changing; people were becoming more critical of the developments that were occurring and scholars were emphasizing the need to understand and to take a deeper look and study the innovations. Associations were uniting scholars from different disciplines to study the various aspects of technology. The main disciplines being philosophy, social sciences and science and technology studies (STS). Though many technologies were already focused on ethics, each technology discipline was separated from each other, despite the potential for the information to intertwine and reinforce itself. As technologies became increasingly developed in each discipline, their ethical implications paralleled their development, and became increasingly complex. Each branch eventually became united, under the term Technoethics, so that all areas of technology could be studied and researched based on existing, real-world examples and a variety of knowledge, rather than just discipline-specific knowledge.

Ethics Theories

Technoethics involves the ethical aspects of technology within a society that is shaped by technology. This brings up a series of social and ethical questions regarding new technological advancements and new boundary crossing opportunities. Before moving forward and attempting to address any ethical questions and concerns, it is important to review the 3 major ethical theories to develop a perspective foundation :

• Utilitarianism (Bentham,J) is an ethical theory which attempts to maximize happiness and reduce suffering for the greatest amount of people. Utilitarianism focused on results and consequences rather than rules.

• Duty Ethics ( Kant) notes the obligations that one has to society and follows society’s universal rules. It focuses on the rightness of actions instead of the consequences, focusing on what an individual should do.

• Virtue Ethics is another main perspective in normative ethics. It highlights the role and virtues that an individual’s character contains to be able to determine or evaluate ethical behaviour in society.

• Relationship ethics states that care and consideration are both derived from human communication. Therefore ethical communication is the core substance to maintain healthy relationships.