IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 47

are higher or lower has yet to be considered. So,
in the pursuit of identifying all values relevant to
the SoI and stakeholders, it is useful to consider the
deontological point of view.
The argument for the coherency of eliciting values
from a utilitarian point of view is similar. MVE
considers utilitarian theories to have elevated the
values of happiness, the provision of pleasure, and
the avoidance of pain above other values. As in the
case of deontological theories, the other values are
reduced to the status of auxiliaries, being sometimes
instrumental in judging what constitutes achieving
the greatest good for the greatest number. But again,
because the brainstorming-like P7000 value elicitation
and analysis process gathers the identities of
values, the requirement to list values from the utilitarian
point of view remains useful because it provides
another position from which to view the realm
of values around the SoI and stakeholders.
How MVE relates to virtue ethics is particularly
important to explore because virtue ethics is the
most enduring of the three types of theory, starting in
ancient Greece with Aristotle [12], continuing through
the middle ages most notably in the work of Aquinas
[13], becoming less central during the Enlightenment,
but experiencing a rebirth starting in the mid-20th
century [14]. Virtue ethics has become an important
approach to technology ethics, for example, through
the work of Vallor [15]. She presents a multicultural
virtue ethics (called Global Technosocial Ethics) that
promotes virtues (called techno-moral virtues) that
lead to technology becoming a font of human flourishing
rather than an existential risk to human well-being.
A fuller examination of the role of virtue ethics in
an earlier draft of P7000, with particular attention to
Vallor's work, appears in [1].
MVE's relationship with virtue ethics is more complex
than that with deontology and utilitarianism.
This is because, unlike those kinds of ethical theory,
virtue ethics delves into the personhood of the agent
[11, Ch. 8]. From the perspective of MVE, a virtue
has a priori content derived from the realm of values.
Each virtue requires separate investigation (which is
beyond the scope of this article) to explore its foundation
in the realm of values. Such explorations provide
insights into the structure of the realm of values.
For a person to have a virtue is for the person
reliably to perceive and accomplish what ought to
be done in a particular class of circumstances, that
is, what would bring into existence a state of affairs
September 2021
that bears values appropriate to the situation and
does not bear disvalues. A person who is virtuous
possesses a basic moral tenor, an understanding of
the realm of values, and a proper ordo amoris (an
ordering of loves for the values that prefers higher
values over lower) that results in their reliably willing
and successfully completing value-enhancing
and disvalue-reducing acts. In MVE, such a person is
said to possess moral intelligence [12]. Persons are
not born with moral intelligence. It must be learned,
through a life containing a richness of experience of
willing realizations of values, acting to make them
be borne, and sensing the consequent value-feelings
during and after these moral actions. This reliable
behavior is what virtue ethics calls character.
P7000 requires process participants to think of,
name, and describe values that affect the virtues of
the SoI's stakeholders, that is, tend to build them up or
tear them down over time. As each virtue is itself the
result of the interplay of a variety of values, relations
between them, and cultural and sociological factors
that make that virtue relevant. Thus, consideration of
each virtue is potentially a window into a swathe of
the realm of values relevant to human actions. This is
in contrast to the cases of deontology and utilitarianism,
which emphasize only a couple of values each.
Such a structured examination of values and virtues
also has an interpretation from the standpoint
of Vallor's Global Technosocial Ethics. Vallor argues
that a virtue required in our technological world
that of techno-moral wisdom. This virtue is central to
Vallor's goal that technology promotes rather than
impedes human flourishing. Techno-moral wisdom
is the practical, unified, and balanced cultivation and
exercise of other virtues such as empathy, courage,
justice (equity), and care for others, while simultaneously
applying a practical understanding of technology.
Techno-moral wisdom, like all virtues, is a habit
that must be cultivated and practiced. A structured
examination of values and virtues requires the participants
to use their empathy and care for others,
with consideration of justice for the stakeholders, in
the context of their technical understanding. That
is, the structured examination of values and virtues
may also be considered an exercise for cultivating
techno-moral wisdom.
An aspect that value identification from the perspectives
of all three types of ethical theory share is
that those from whom values are elicited must be
able to experience the value feelings asked for not
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021

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