The world we inhabit is saturated with designed objects, systems, and environments, and it is common to perceive technology as a collection of neutral tools whose moral significance is determined solely by their application. This chapter challenges this conventional perspective by arguing that ethics is not an exclusively human domain but is intrinsically embedded within the artifacts we create.
From civil engineering projects like bridges and urban infrastructure to medical instruments and software algorithms, the process of design is fundamentally an ethical endeavor.
To explore this, the discussion will focus on three principal themes:
- Ethics as a Matter of Things: How artifacts can embody political and moral values.
- Technological Mediation: The ways in which technology shapes our perception of the world and our actions within it.
- Conflict of Values in Design: Frameworks for identifying and navigating the moral dilemmas that arise during the design process.
Ethics as a Matter of Things
The proposition that inanimate objects can possess political or moral properties is a transformative concept in understanding technology’s role in society.
A classic case study that vividly illustrates this principle involves the infrastructure projects of Robert Moses on Long Island, New York. Moses, a dominant figure in American urban planning during the 20th century, was responsible for much of New York’s modern infrastructure, but his designs often encoded his personal and social biases.
When designing the parkways leading to the popular public space of Jones Beach, Moses deliberately specified that the overpasses be constructed with an unusually low clearance. This design choice had a significant and exclusionary function, as the bridges were too low for public buses to pass beneath them.
At the time, public transit was the primary mode of transportation for lower-income communities and African Americans, whereas automobile ownership was largely confined to the white middle and upper classes. As political theorist Langdon Winner noted,
"Poor people and blacks, who normally used public transit, were kept off the roads... One consequence was to limit access of racial minorities and low-income groups to Jones Beach, Moses's widely acclaimed public park."
This case demonstrates that technological artifacts are not neutral; they can be intentionally designed as instruments of social policy, embodying the discriminatory values of their creator.
Morality Delegated to Objects
This insight leads to a broader philosophical understanding of how morality operates in the world, moving beyond a purely human-centric view. The philosopher Bruno Latour proposed that
we should consider artifacts as active "bearers of morality" to which we "delegate" moral decisions and behavioral enforcement.
Example
A simple yet effective example of this is the speed bump. This physical object embodies the moral prescription to “slow down” in a particular area.
Instead of relying on a driver’s conscience or the presence of a law enforcement officer to regulate speed, the decision to drive slowly is delegated to the artifact itself. The speed bump physically compels the driver to reduce speed to avoid discomfort or vehicle damage, thus becoming an active participant in the moral landscape of the street.
From this perspective, technological artifacts are not passive tools but are politically and morally charged nonhuman actors that actively co-shape our ethical world.
Technological Mediation
Beyond embodying fixed values, technologies dynamically shape human experience through a process known as technological mediation. This concept posits that technologies are not neutral intermediaries that simply connect us to the world; rather, they are impactful mediators that actively transform our relationship with reality by structuring our perceptions and guiding our actions.
The mediation of perception refers to the influence of artifacts on our sensory and interpretive relationship with the world. This can manifest in two primary ways.
- First, through incorporating technologies which seamlessly merge with our experience to the point of becoming experientially invisible.
A prime example is a pair of eyeglasses; the user does not look at the glasses but looks through them to perceive the world more clearly, incorporating the artifact into the very act of seeing.
- In contrast, representing technologies present a depiction of reality that requires conscious interpretation.
A thermometer, for instance, does not provide a direct sensory experience of temperature but offers a numerical representation, such as 32°C, which the user must read and interpret to comprehend the thermal environment.
Case Study: Obstetric Ultrasound
The obstetric ultrasound serves as a profound example of how a technology mediates perception and fundamentally alters human relationships. While its explicit function is diagnostic—to make a fetus visible for medical assessment—its mediating role is far more transformative. The technology performs several “translations” that alter the perception of pregnancy itself.
It initiates an ontological shift by visually isolating the fetus from the maternal body, which can grant it a new status as a separate, individual being—a “patient” or even a “person” long before birth. This act simultaneously medicalizes the natural state of pregnancy, reframing it as a clinical process governed by data, risk assessment, and potential interventions. Within this medicalized context, congenital defects are framed as “preventable sufferings,” turning pregnancy into a complex process of choices.
The ethical implications of this mediation are deeply ambivalent. The powerful visual bond it can create between parents and the fetus may discourage abortion, while its diagnostic capacity to identify abnormalities can simultaneously encourage it to prevent future suffering, demonstrating that the technology is not neutral but actively reframes the moral choices at hand.
Mediation of Action
In a parallel manner, artifacts mediate action by influencing how humans behave. Technologies are designed with an inherent invitation-inhibition structure, meaning they are configured to encourage certain actions while discouraging others. This structure is often guided by a “script”.
Definition
A script is a prescription on how to act that is built (designed) into an artefact (speed bump “slow down when you approach me”, plastic coffee cup “throw me away after use”)
Example
- The speed bump’s script, for example, invites slow, cautious driving while inhibiting speeding.
- A disposable coffee cup contains a script that invites the user to “throw me away after use,” thereby promoting convenience and disposability while inhibiting behaviors like reuse and environmental consideration.
Applying these concepts to contemporary digital technologies reveals how design choices embed specific values.
- The “Like” button on social media platforms, for instance, operates on a script that invites quick, low effort engagement and the expression of positive feedback, while simultaneously inhibiting more nuanced, critical, or lengthy discussion.
- Similarly, the “read receipt” feature in messaging applications invites an expectation of an immediate response, valuing transparency but potentially inhibiting a user’s autonomy and privacy to reply at their leisure.
- Finally, password complexity requirements explicitly value security over user convenience; their script invites robust security practices by inhibiting the use of simple, easily remembered passwords, thereby enforcing a specific set of priorities through design.
Conflict of Values in Design
Given that the design process inherently embeds values into artifacts and systems, the field of engineering design ethics is primarily concerned with establishing frameworks for making responsible moral choices.
Definition
Design can be understood as the activity of translating a set of functions into a detailed blueprint for an artifact.
This translation process is fraught with ethical considerations because a single function—such as facilitating transportation across a river—can be realized through numerous technical solutions, including a bridge, a tunnel, or a ferry service. Each of these options necessitates a complex balancing of additional design requirements, such as cost-effectiveness, speed, safety, environmental sustainability, and aesthetic impact. These requirements are not merely technical specifications; they are directly tied to competing moral values, and the choices made between them constitute significant ethical decisions.
Value Conflicts
A value conflict emerges in design when a choice must be made between at least two viable options, where different moral values serve as the primary criteria for the decision, and these values are in tension with one another such that neither one clearly overrides the other.
Example
A historical example of such a conflict arose in the design of refrigerators after it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), then a common coolant, were severely damaging the Earth’s ozone layer.
Designers were tasked with finding alternatives, which created a direct conflict between the value of environmental protection and the value of user safety, as many alternative coolants were either flammable or toxic.
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)
To navigate such dilemmas, several methodical approaches have been proposed to structure the decision-making process.
Definition
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) operates by quantifying all advantages (benefits) and disadvantages (costs) of a given design option into a single common metric: monetary units. The option that demonstrates the most favorable cost-benefit ratio is then selected as the most rational choice.
To assign a price to non-economic values, such as environmental health or public safety, CBA may employ techniques like contingent valuation, which involves surveying people to determine how much they would theoretically be willing to pay for a certain level of safety or preservation.
However, CBA is subject to significant criticism.
- Its primary weakness lies in the problem of quantification, as assigning a monetary value to a human life, clean air, or social justice is an ethically contentious and often arbitrary exercise.
- Furthermore, CBA can perpetuate distributional injustice; by focusing solely on the total net benefit, it often ignores how those benefits and costs are distributed, potentially endorsing a project that is efficient overall but deeply unfair to a specific community or minority group.
As a purely consequentialist framework, it may also justify actions that violate fundamental rights or duties if the projected economic benefits are high enough.
Threshold Approach
An alternative framework is the threshold approach.
Definition
Threshold approach involves setting a minimal acceptable level, or threshold, for each critical design criterion or value. Any design option that fails to meet the established threshold for any single value is summarily rejected.
This method is prevalent in regulatory contexts, such as legislation and technical codes that prescribe minimum standards for safety, accessibility, or environmental impact.
While straightforward, this approach also has notable weaknesses.
- The process of setting a specific threshold can be arbitrary, raising questions about why one level of risk is deemed acceptable while a marginally higher one is not.
- This method can also stifle innovation, as it provides no incentive for designers to optimize a solution or exceed the minimum requirements once they have been met.
- Moreover, the threshold approach struggles with the problem of incommensurability, as it is exceedingly difficult to set clear, quantifiable thresholds for qualitative values such as personal privacy or aesthetic beauty.
Value Sensitive Design (VSD)
A third, more integrated methodology is Value Sensitive Design (VSD).
Definition
Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach aims to proactively incorporate values of ethical importance in a systematic way throughout the entire design lifecycle. Rather than treating values as constraints or forcing trade-offs between them, VSD encourages the pursuit of innovative technical solutions that can satisfy multiple values simultaneously.
As outlined by its proponents, VSD typically involves three distinct types of investigations: empirical investigations to understand the context and experiences of all stakeholders affected by the technology; conceptual investigations to identify the core values at stake and analyze potential conflicts; and technical investigations to examine how the technology’s architecture and features support or undermine those values.
Despite its holistic aims, VSD is not without its challenges.
- The process can be complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive, making it difficult to implement within rapid development cycles.
- Furthermore, VSD does not offer a clear procedure for situations where value conflicts are fundamental and cannot be resolved through technical innovation, leaving designers without guidance on how to make a final trade-off.
- It can also be difficult to identify all relevant stakeholders and their corresponding values at the outset of a project, especially as values may emerge or shift over time.
How to Choose a Method?
Summary
Method Description Pros Cons Cost-Benefit Analysis Quantifies benefits and costs in monetary terms to select the best option. - Provides clear, quantitative comparison
- Useful for large-scale projects- Difficult to quantify non-economic values
- May ignore fairness and rightsThreshold Approach Sets minimum acceptable standards for each value; rejects options below any threshold. - Ensures critical values are protected
- Simple to apply in regulatory contexts- Thresholds can be arbitrary
- May stifle innovation
- Struggles with qualitative valuesValue Sensitive Design Integrates stakeholder values throughout the design process. - Proactively addresses multiple values
- Encourages stakeholder engagement- Complex and resource-intensive
- No clear procedure for unresolved conflicts
No single method for resolving value conflicts in design is flawless; different alternatives will inevitably perform differently when measured against a range of values. However, the choice between these alternatives need not be arbitrary. Methodologies such as Cost-Benefit Analysis, the threshold approach, and Value Sensitive Design should be viewed as useful tools for structuring moral deliberation and making the underlying ethical dimensions of design explicit.
The most appropriate method will depend on the specific context.
A large-scale public infrastructure project might benefit from the quantitative rigor of a CBA (despite its flaws), whereas the design of a socio-technical system like a social media platform may be better served by the stakeholder-centric approach of VSD.
Ultimately, the greatest benefit of these frameworks lies in their capacity to foster reasoned debate.
By discussing the pros and cons of each approach, design teams can make choices grounded in proper reasons rather than intuition alone. A critical awareness of the shortcomings inherent in each method is crucial, as this allows teams to anticipate potential problems and consciously work to mitigate them, leading to more ethically robust and responsible design outcomes.