Moral vocabularies and public debate

Tsjalling Swierstra

pp. 223-240

in: Jozef Keulartz, Michiel Korthals, Maartje Schermer, Tsjalling Swierstra (eds), Pragmatist ethics for a technological culture, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

Technological innovation not only creates new possibilities and answers, but new problems and questions as well. New technologies can pose risks to our safety, health, and natural environment. Furthermore, they intervene in economic relations, shift (political and social) power relations, reshuffle distributions of responsibilities, and coshape our conceptions of who we are and what would be a good life for us to lead. Today, it is hard to think of a single domain - social, political, economic, ethical - not profoundly influenced by technology. Until recently, the course of technological development was usually understood as dictated by its inner workings.¹