SPT SIG on Virtue Ethics

Welcome to the webpage of the Society for Philosophy and Technology‘s Special Interest Group on Virtue Ethics.

Webinars in 2024 (please register via email: marc.steen@tno.nl):

Thursday 7 March 2024, Pak-Hang Wong: ‘Confucian “Trustworthy AI”: Diversifying a Keyword in the Ethics and Governance of AI‘. A summary: Pak-Hang talked about xin, a key concept in Confucianism, which roughly translates into trustworthiness. It requires an active effort of respect and care towards others, so that one can be trusted by them. This perspective can be used to further develop ‘Trustworthy AI’. For example, xin can help to rethink and redesign communication around AI systems, in order to avoid over-promising and mis-representation, so that these systems become worthy of our trust.

Wednesday 10 April 2024, Charles Ess: ‘An (ethical) kybernetes or (not even) a Script Kiddie? Phaedrus, AI / ML “decision-making” and the risks of deskilling phronēsis‘. A summary: Charles’ talk circled around practical wisdom; he went back and forth between the Greek idea of kybernetes, ‘steering a ship’; and his experiences with building an 8-bit computer with transistors on a breadboard. Such a practical and embodied engagement with computer hardware and software–esp. the trouble shooting–can help us to develop, deploy, and use technology more mindfully and more wisely. It can also remind us that ‘ChatGTP is only a big calculator’.

Wednesday 29 May 2024, 10-11 AM CET (9-10 AM UK; 16-17 PM Hong Kong; 20-21 PM New Zealand), Liezl van Zyl, associate professor in philosophy at the University of Waikato: ‘What can a virtue ethicist learn from the trolley problem?‘ Paper by Liezl van Zyl: The Trolley Problem: A virtue-ethical perspective.

Monday 10 June 2024, 16-17 PM CET (7 AM PDT; 10 AM EDT; 15 PM UK; 22 PM Hong Kong), Micky van Zeijl, lecturer/researcher Civic Interaction Design, at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences: ‘The virtuous designer: using virtue ethics in applied (digital) design education‘.

September; to be announced.

October; to be announced.

November; to be announced.

December; to be announced.

 

Chairs of this SIG: Marc Steen (marc.steen@tno.nl) and Zoë Robaey (zoe.robaey@wur.nl)

Goal: To further develop the field of virtue ethics in the context of technology, design, engineering, innovation, and professionalism.

Themes: We understand virtue ethics broadly: as diverse efforts to facilitate people to cultivate relevant virtues so that they can flourish and live different versions of ‘the good life’, with technology, and to help create structures and institutes that enable people to collectively find ways to live well together. More specifically, we envision further work on the following themes:

  • Citizens and usage: Continue to work on understanding how technologies and applications can help, or hinder, people to cultivate specific virtues (Vallor 2016), e.g., how using a social media app can corrode one’s self-control; and also how this can help to inform the design of alternative applications, e.g., a social media app, with alternative business models and affordances, so that people can use these differently, e.g., to cultivate self-control. (Please note that we use the term ‘citizen’, rather than, e.g., user or consumer, to allude to living well together, in a polis.)
  • Practices: Conduct studies of people’s practices as they pertain to cultivating virtues, e.g., how specific technologies or applications can help, or hinder, people to cultivate relevant virtues.
  • Professionals and design: Further understand the work of developers, engineers, and the like—as an alternative to consequentialist or deontological views on ethics (Steen 2022). This theme also relates to education and training (below). Please note that we are open to a blurring of boundaries between usage (above) and design; e.g., one can enable people to tweak, modify technologies or applications, or develop alternatives (‘makers’).
  • Institutions: Conduct studies of how various institutions, e.g., for governance or oversight, or how companies’ codes of conduct, can support professionals in cultivating relevant virtues. 
  • Education and training: Based on such research (above), education and training programs and interventions can be developed and deployed. This offers opportunities to study the effects (and possibly also the effectiveness) of such programs and interventions. We may be able, e.g., to study how students or professionals cultivate virtues (possibly ‘in real time’). This will involve reflexivity and cultivating practical wisdom, as a pivotal virtue that can help people to steer and modify the cultivation of other virtues (Steen et al. 2021).
  • Traditions and cultures: Continue to appreciate various ‘Non-Western’ virtue ethics traditions, like Confucianism and Buddhism (Ess 2006; Vallor 2016), and Indigenous cultures (Steen 2022b). This may require engagement with relational ethics or feminist ethics, and discuss issues of power. This may also involve studies of virtues in domain specific practices, like health care or the military. This line of research is meant to contribute to robust knowledge, which would be applicable across different cultures—of course, with appreciation for the differences.

Online resources