New Methods for Ethics

@article{Pregent2025,

title = {Why you Should not use CI to Evaluate Socially Disruptive Technology},

author = {Alexandra Pregent},

url = {https://www.esdit.nl/wp-content/uploads/s13347-025-00838-z.pdf},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-025-00838-z},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-14},

urldate = {2025-01-14},

journal = {Philosophy & Technology},

volume = {38},

number = {6},

pages = {19},

abstract = {Contextual Integrity (CI) is built to assess potential privacy violations of new sociotechnical systems and practices. It does so by evaluating their respect for the context-relative informational norms at play in a given context. But can CI evaluate new sociotechnical systems that severely disrupt established social practices? In this paper, I argue that, while CI claims to be able to assess privacy violations of all sociotechnical systems and practices, it cannot assess the ones that cause severe changes and disruptions in the norms and values of a given context. These types of technology are known as socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) and this paper argues that they are beyond CI’s scope. It follows that at best, a privacy assessment of those technologies by CI would be useless and, at worst, lead to potential harm, including failure to identify privacy violations and unwarranted legitimisation of privacy-threatening technology. Government actors, policymakers, and academics should refrain from relying on CI to assess this type of technology.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hopster2023,

title = {Conceptual Engineering and Philosophy of Technology: Amelioration or Adaptation?},

author = {Jeroen Hopster and Guido Löhr},

url = {https://www.esdit.nl/conceptual-engineering-and-philosophy-of-technology/},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00670-3 },

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-10-18},

urldate = {2023-10-18},

journal = { Philosophy & Technology },

volume = {36},

abstract = {Conceptual Engineering (CE) is thought to be generally aimed at ameliorating deficient concepts. In this paper, we challenge this assumption: we argue that CE is frequently undertaken with the orthogonal aim of conceptual adaptation. We develop this thesis with reference to the interplay between technology and concepts. Emerging technologies can exert significant pressure on conceptual systems and spark ‘conceptual disruption’. For example, advances in Artificial Intelligence raise the question of whether AIs are agents or mere objects, which can be construed as a CE question regarding the concepts AGENT and OBJECT. We distinguish between three types of conceptual disruption (conceptual gaps, conceptual overlaps, and conceptual misalignments) and argue that when CE occurs to address these disruptions, its primary aim is not to improve concepts, but to retain their functional quality, or to prevent them from degrading. This is the characteristic aim of CE when undertaken in philosophy of technology: to preserve the functional role of a concept or conceptual scheme, rather than improving how a concept fulfills its respective function.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lundgren2023c,

title = {Two notes on Axiological Futurism},

author = {Björn Lundgren},

url = {https://www.esdit.nl/two-notes-on-axiological-futurism/},

doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103120},

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-02-14},

urldate = {2023-02-14},

journal = {Futures},

abstract = {Recently, John Danaher defended a research agenda he calls “Axiological Futurism”. In this commentary, I propose two revisions for how that research agenda is defined. I argue that it ought to focus on disagreements and comparison of different axiologies.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}