IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 86

commentary

Michael Arnold

The story so far...
n Part One of the
series it was suggested that technologies
are not innocent, and
should be held to
moral account. In most interpretations of Western moral philosophy, moral judgement does not
extend to non-humans, and for nonhumans to be included, a number
of objections need to be overcome.
The objections include: the arguments that morality is the exclusivity
domain of humans (considered in
Part Two), the argument that nonhumans don't really act (considered in Part Three), the argument
that technologies are just dumb
instruments (considered in Part
Four), the free will argument (considered in Part Five), and the dilution of responsibility argument
(considered in Part Six). By way
of conclusion we ask, does any of
this matter?

Conclusion
In a series of installments it has been
argued that moral agents are not in
principle limited to members of the
human race, that non-humans and in
particular technologies can be considered to act in the world, and that when
they do so, they cannot be regarded as
just tools or dumb instruments, that
the actions of technologies are willful and occur in the foreknowledge of
consequences, in a significant way,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2697058
Date of publication: 8 June 2017

Christopher Pearce

Are Technologies
Innocent?
Part Seven: Conclusion
and that even technologies that are
distributed in time and space may be
defined with sufficient specificity to
allocate moral accountability. Taken
together, it has been argued that
technologies are not innocent, and
can be held to moral account.
But does any of this matter? Even
if the argument is accepted and the
actions of technologies become subject to moral evaluation as well as
instrumental assessment, what are
we going to do - put the Doctor's
computer system in gaol? Send the
axe to confession? Fine it? Execute
it? Re-educate and rehabilitate technologies that are immoral?
Well, yes.
Although it is allowed that in a
literal sense jail and fines might
not work, a figurative execution or
rehabilitation of non-human technologies are certainly options that
should be considered.
Execution for example, is an attractive option in some circumstances.
There are technologies whose constitution so well express an "in order to"
that is aligned to bad outcomes, and
whose actions are so deeply impliIEEE Technology and Society Magazine

cated in both the means and the ends
of bad outcomes, that rehabilitation
is improbable, and the permanent
destruction of the technology (that
is, execution) becomes the best way
of avoiding those outcomes. One
might think here of napalm, cluster
bombs, CF2 spray, dioxin, battery
cages, bear-bile milkers, automated
spam, malware, and so forth. To
blame humans and only humans for
the acts of napalm, cluster bombs or
CF2 spray, and to direct moral outrage at humans and only humans,
whilst implicitly or explicitly finding
the napalm, the cluster bombs or the
CF2 spray in themselves irrelevant
to a moral assessment, lying outside
an ethical jurisdiction, and thereby
innocent of all moral wrong, is nothing short of perverse. These technologies act in the world, the world
is different for their actions, and at
the very least, they share responsibility for the outcomes of their actions
in the world. Accordingly, certain
technologies should share the focus of
moral outrage, and their moral assessment has a place in the restitution of
moral order.
∕

June 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017