Technology & Human Dignity
Welfare is a central value in technological design, but it is not the only sort of value we care about. We typically oppose, at least to some degree, lying to an adult person even if doing so would promote her welfare. Additionally, we typically identify various individual rights (such as the right to free expression) that cannot be infringed even for the sake of the public welfare.
There are a variety of considerations that matter to our moral thinking but which cannot be adequately captured simply by appeal to welfare. One set of these considerations can all be grouped under the broad concept of human dignity. Given the sort of beings that humans are, with their individualized interests and ability to establish and follow plans, they have a dignity which should be respected. This respect may sometimes mean sacrificing some welfare, as when we allow people to make bad decisions.
In the three chapters of this part, we focus on the idea of human dignity and how it may be impacted by technological design. Concern for human dignity most fully relates to the ethical principle of respect for persons, where ‘person’ is understood as a moral concept, denoting a being that has a dignity that demands respect.
Chapter 7 focuses on the principle of respect for persons, its relationship to codes of ethics, and common dignity-related values, including most notably the value of privacy.
Chapter 8 introduces a new Value Sensitive Design tool – The Value Scenario – and the related idea of a Value Tension. Value scenarios can helpfully illustrate potential value tensions, putting a human face on technological design and thus encouraging us to keep dignity in mind. Value tensions, more broadly, commonly arise in technological design as it is not usually possible to maximally promote or respect all relevant values in design. Value tensions can arise between any values, but we introduce the concept here since it is quite common for welfare values to be in tension with dignity values.
Chapter 9 ends our exploration of technology and human dignity by introducing dignity-based evaluative methods. These related methods all, in various ways, focus on respecting people as distinct individual beings each with their own hopes, dreams, and concerns. This lies in deep contrast with the welfare-based evaluative methods that focused on populations and the harms and benefits across a society.
