Trapped in the Duality of Structure: An STS Approach to Engineering Ethics

There was a remarkable increase in attention given to ethical issues concerning technology in the second half of the previous century. This increase followed the deepening societal impact of technology, and the growing insight into its benefits as well as its potential for disaster. More or less parallel to this development in ethics, sociological studies started to delve empirically into the contextual development of the substance of science and technology. This latter move from the philosophy of technology towards a more empirical type of science and technology studies has lead to a growing interest in everyday practicalities of technology development. However, science and technology studies do not simply open up new theoretical avenues.We shall demonstrate that they also confront moral philosophers with some tough challenges. Until recently, the moral philosophy of technology could be roughly divided into an Anglo-Saxon and a Continental tradition (Mitcham and Nissenbaum ). Within the former tradition, especially in the United States, the ethical approach has been intimately connected with efforts made by the administration to watch over technology by means of technology assessment. The main focus in this policy has been on the just distribution of the costs, benefits and risks of particular technological developments. In sharp contrast, the Continental tradition focussed on the cultural and moral consequences of the general dominance of technology in Western societies, and on the possible rise of a quasi-totalitarian technocracy. The keyword here is alienation, i.e., the situation where the subject is ruled by the object, that is, man is governed by technology of his own making. The conflict between instrumentalist and substantive conceptions of technology formed the issue of the debate between the traditions. In the former conception, technology is a value-neutral instrument that has to be wielded wisely and fairly. In the latter, modern technology embodies substantive values like control and manipula-