An Affordance Account of Value Embedding in Technology: Why Good Intentions are Not Enough

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• Fabio Tollon (Bielefeld University)
• Friday 03 March 2023, 12:00-13:00
• Virtual (Zoom).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Rami Aly.

Abstract:

In this talk I critically evaluate the value neutrality thesis regarding technology, and find it wanting. I then introduce the various ways in which artifacts can come to influence moral value, and our evaluation of moral situations and actions. Here, following van de Poel and Kroes, I introduce the idea of value sensitive design. Specifically, I show how by virtue of their designed properties, artifacts may come to embody values. Such accounts, however, have several shortcomings. In agreement with Michael Klenk, I raise epistemic and metaphysical issues with respect to designed properties embodying value. The concept of an affordance, borrowed from ecological psychology, provides a more philosophically fruitful grounding to the potential way(s) in which artifacts might embody values. This is due to the way in which it incorporates key insights from perception more generally, and how we go about determining possibilities for action in our environment specifically. This account draws our attention to the ways that values might become embodied in technological artifacts despite the best of intentions.

Bio:

Fabio Tollon is a doctoral candidate at Bielefeld University, in the department of philosophy, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – as part of the GRK 2073 “Integrating Ethics and Epistemology of Scientific Research”. He is also a fellow at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR), and an external collaborator at the Unit for the Ethics of Technology at Stellenbosch University. Before coming to Europe he studied at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Topic: NLIP Seminar Time: March 03, 2023 12:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting https://cl-cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94330375053?pwd=TjRtbTg5aUdzWVdLRU15RjR0V2g0Zz09

Meeting ID: 943 3037 5053 Passcode: 768471

This talk is part of the NLIP Seminar Series series.

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