IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 46

Feature
realm of values, and the feelings engendered by the
realm of values after completion of the action. These
include feelings set in motion by the success (or lack
of it) in achieving the willed outcome in the realm
of values. In the context of VBD, these correspond
to sensations and feelings, including value feelings,
of those who choose design elements to satisfy the
EVRs and build the SoI.
These feelings are not proper subjects for standardization,
so it is entirely natural and proper for
P7000 not to discuss them. Nevertheless, if we
pass from consideration of the process of VBD to
consider what its effects will be not only on the
SoI and the stakeholders, but also on the organization's
management, the members of the P7000
team, and those who build the system, then such
feelings become important to understand and evaluate.
There are two reasons for this. One is that such
feelings are indications of the success or failure of
achieving the willed outcomes in the realm of values.
The other is that the feelings will influence how
VBD is perceived in the organizations that try to use
it, impacting whether VBD takes hold as a common
practice, and how and how well it is done. In the
following section, particular activities that require
the P7000 participants to engage with value-feelings
are discussed.
Identification, analysis, and
prioritization of values in P7000
Identification
The second stage of the P7000 process, where
values potentially affected by the SoI are identified
and prioritized, is somewhat akin to brainstorming.
First, values are elicited from all process participants
with the goal of identifying, naming, and describing
all relevant values. Then, values are analyzed and
prioritized. P7000 does not limit the inspiration or
sources of values contributed by the participants.
It acknowledges that the P7000 participants and
stakeholders (including SoI users) may be in any
geographic region, residents of any nations, and of
any culture and religion and that these things will
affect the values, their sources, and the relationships
between them. The standard recommends that the
perspective of any ethical philosophy culturally relevant
to the participants or stakeholders be used to
identify values for later analysis.
46
Identification, MVE, and other ethical theories
Although P7000 does not limit the sources of the
values that are elicited, it does require that the perspectives
of the three classic categories of Western
ethical theory-deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue
ethics-be considered. (To clarify: P7000 does
not use these theories to decide what is ethical but
as points of view from which participants are to
explore to identify values potentially affecting SoI
stakeholders.) But P7000 adopts MVE, which does
not neatly fit into these three classic categories, as its
axiology and organizing ethical theory. Is it coherent
then to use these other kinds of ethical theories to
elicit values?
It
is. This is the case since MVE provides an
account for how persons and the values they bear
operate in actions guided by following rules and
norms (i.e., deontology), notions of the best total
human benefit (i.e., utilitarianism), and building the
character of persons (virtue ethics).
In MVE, norms and their encoding and enforcement
by social institutions as rules and laws are
derivative [11, Ch. 6]. The question of what we
ought to do is instead answerable only with consideration
of what has and bears values. Obligations,
contra Kant, are not the primal ethical phenomena.
They arise instead from a sense of moral duty
that is in fact a value feeling. Elevating the corresponding
value to primacy makes all other values
mere means for carrying out duties. These other
values can correspond only to the avoidance of
disvalues and the undermining of positive values.
The full realm of values is unavailable to the
deontological viewpoint.
But these other values are still present in agents,
still felt by them. For the purposes of P7000 value
elicitation, they are available to be identified,
named, and described. That is, by requiring participants
in P7000 value elicitation to name values
based on their understanding of their duties and
obligations as designers of and stakeholders in the
SoI, these persons consider not just the value of
moral duty but also the values that can be instrumental
in carrying out moral duty in the circumstances
surrounding the life cycle of the SoI. Since
analysis and prioritization of values is separate from
value identification in P7000, it does not matter that
deontological theories give short shrift to these
instrumental values. During the process of identification,
all values are equal simply because which
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021
