Ethics in an Age of Technology

Ian G. Barbour

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780062275677
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

The Gifford Lectures have challenged our greatest thinkers to relate the worlds of religion, philosophy, and science. Now Ian Barbour has joined ranks with such Gifford lecturers as William James, Carl Jung, and Reinhold Neibuhr. In 1989 Barbour presented his first series of Gifford Lectures, published as Religion in an Age of Science. In 1990 he returned to Scotland to present his second series, dealing with ethical issues arising from technology and exploring the relationship of human and environmental values to science, philosophy, and religion and showing why these values are relevant to technological policy decisions.

In examine the conflicting ethics and assumptions that lead to divergent views and technology, Barbour analyzes three social values: justice, participatory freedom, and economic development. He defends such environmental principles as resource sustainability, environmental protection, and respect for all forms of life. He present case studies in agriculture, energy policy, genetic engineering, and the use of computers. Finally, he concludes by focusing on appropriate technologies, individual life-styles, and sources of change: education, political action, response to crisis, and alternative visions of the good life.

Part One

CONFLICTING VALUES

CHAPTER 1

Views of Technology

Technology, the source of the problem, will once again prove to contain within itself the germs of a solution compatible with the betterment of man’s lot and dignity.

CHARLES SUSSKIND1

Our enslavement to the machine has never been more complete.

JOHN ZERMAN AND ALICE CARNES2

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

C. S. LEWIS3

Appraisals of modern technology diverge widely. Some see it as the beneficent source of higher living standards, improved health, and better communications. They claim that any problems created by technology are themselves amenable to technological solutions. Others are critical of technology, holding that it leads to alienation from nature, environmental destruction, the mechanization of human life, and the loss of human freedom. A third group asserts that technology is ambiguous, its impacts varying according to the social context in which it is designed and used, because it is both a product and a source of economic and political power.4

In this chapter, views of technology are grouped under three headings: Technology as Liberator, Technology as Threat, and Technology as Instrument of Power. In each case the underlying assumptions and value judgments are examined. I will indicate why I agree with the third of these positions, which emphasizes the social construction and use of particular technologies. The issues cut across disciplines; I draw from the writings of engineers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and theologians. The human and environmental values relevant to the appraisal of technology are further analyzed in chapters 2 and 3. These three chapters provide the ethical categories and principles for examining policy decisions about particular technologies in later chapters.

Technology may be defined as the application of organized knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems of people and machines.5 There are several advantages to such a broad definition. “Organized knowledge” allows us to include technologies based on practical experience and invention as well as those based on scientific theories. The “practical tasks” can include both the production of material goods (in industry and agriculture, for instance) and the provision of services (by computers, communications media, and biotechnologies, among others). Reference to “ordered systems of people and machines” directs attention to social institutions as well as to the hardware of technology. The breadth of the definition also reminds us that there are major differences among technologies.

I. TECHNOLOGY AS LIBERATOR

Throughout modern history, technological developments have been enthusiastically welcomed because of their potential for liberating us from hunger, disease, and poverty. Technology has been celebrated as the source of material progress and human fulfillment.

1. THE BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY

Defenders of technology point out that four kinds of benefits can be distinguished if one looks at its recent history and considers its future:

1. Higher Living Standards. New drugs, better medical attention, and improved sanitation and nutrition have more than doubled the average life span in industrial nations within the past century. Machines have released us from much of the backbreaking labor that in previous ages absorbed most of people’s time and energy. Material progress represents liberation from the tyranny of nature. The ancient dream of a life free from famine and disease is beginning to be realized through technology. The standard of living of low-income families in industrial societies has doubled in a generation, even though relative incomes have changed little. Many people in developing nations now look on technology as their principal source of hope. Productivity and economic growth, it is said, benefit everyone in the long run.

2. Opportunity for Choice. Individual choice has a wider scope today than ever before because technology has produced new options not previously available and a greater range of products and services. Social and geographical mobility allow a greater choice of jobs and locations. In an urban industrial society, a person’s options are not as limited by parental or community expectations as they were in a small-town agrarian society. The dynamism of technology can liberate people from static and confining traditions to assume responsibility for their own lives. Birth control techniques, for example, allow a couple to choose the size and timing of their family. Power over nature gives greater opportunity for the exercise of human freedom.6

3. More Leisure. Increases in productivity have led to shorter working hours. Computers and automation hold the promise of eliminating much of the monotonous work typical of earlier industrialism. Through most of history, leisure and cultural pursuits have been the privilege of the few, while the mass of humanity was preoccupied with survival. In an affluent society there is time for continuing education, the arts, social service, sports, and participation in community life. Technology can contribute to the enrichment of human life and the flowering of creativity. Laborsaving devices free us to do what machines cannot do. Proponents of this viewpoint say that people can move beyond materialism when their material needs are met.

4. Improved Communications. With new forms of transportation, one can in a few hours travel to distant cities that once took months to reach. With electronic technologies (radio, television, computer networks, and so on), the speed, range, and scope of communication have vastly increased. The combination of visual image and auditory message have an immediacy not found in the linear sequence of the printed word. These new media offer the possibility of instant worldwide communication, greater interaction, understanding, and mutual appreciation in the “global village.” It has been suggested that by dialing coded numbers on telephones hooked into computer networks, citizens could participate in an instant referendum on political issues. According to its defenders, technology brings psychological and social benefits as well as material progress.

In part 2 we will encounter optimistic forecasts of each of the particular technologies examined. In agriculture, some experts anticipate that the continuing Green Revolution and the genetic engineering of new crops will provide adequate food for a growing world population. In the case of energy, it is claimed that breeder reactors and fusion will provide environmentally benign power to replace fossil fuels. Computer enthusiasts anticipate the Information Age in which industry is automated and communications networks enhance commercial, professional, and personal life. Biotechnology promises the eradication of genetic diseases, the improvement of health, and the deliberate design of new species—even the modification of humanity itself. In subsequent chapters we will examine each of these specific claims as well as the general attitudes they reveal.

2. OPTIMISTIC VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGY

Let us look at some authors who have expressed optimism regarding technology. Melvin Kranzberg, a prominent historian of technology, has presented a very positive picture of the technological past and future. He argues that urban industrial societies offer more freedom than rural ones and provide greater choice of occupations, friends, activities, and life-styles. The work week has been cut in half, and human wants have been dramatically fulfilled.7 Emanuel Mesthene, former director of the Harvard Program in Technology and Society, grants that every technology brings risks as well as benefits, but he says that our task is the rational management of risk. Some technologies poison the environment, but others reduce pollution. A new technology may displace some workers but it also creates new jobs. Nineteenth-century factories and twentieth-century assembly lines did involve dirty and monotonous work, but the newer technologies allow greater creativity and individuality.8

A postindustrial society, it is said, is already beginning to emerge. In this new society, according to the sociologist Daniel Bell, power will be based on knowledge rather than property. The dominant class will be scientists, engineers, and technical experts; the dominant institutions will be intellectual ones (universities, industrial laboratories, and research institutes). The economy will be devoted mainly to services rather than material goods. Decisions will be made on rational-technical grounds, marking “the end of ideology.” There will be a general consensus on social values; experts will coordinate social planning, using rational techniques such as decision theory and systems analysis. This will be a future-oriented society, the age of the professional managers, the technocrats.9 A bright picture of the coming technological society has been given by many “futurists,” including Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn, and Alvin Toffler.10

Samuel Florman is an articulate engineer and author who has written extensively defending technology against its detractors. He insists that the critics have romanticized the life of earlier centuries and rural societies. Living standards were actually very low, work was brutal, and roles were rigidly defined. People have much greater freedom in technological societies. The automobile, for example, enables people to do what they want and enhances geographical and class mobility. People move to cities because they prefer life there to “the tedium and squalor of the countryside.” Florman says that worker alienation in industry is rare, and many people prefer the comfortable monotony of routine tasks to the pressures of decision and accountability. Technology is not an independent force out of control; it is the product of human choice, a response to public demand expressed through the marketplace.11

Florman grants that technology often has undesirable side effects, but he says that these are amenable to technological solutions. One of his heroes is Benjamin Franklin, who “proposed technological ways of coping with the unpleasant consequences of technology.”12 Florman holds that environmental and health risks are inherent in every technical advance. Any product or process can be made safer, but always at an economic cost. Economic growth and lower prices for consumers are often more important than additional safety, and absolute safety is an illusory goal. Large-scale systems are usually more efficient than small-scale ones. It is often easier to find a “technical fix” for a social problem than to try to change human behavior or get agreement on political policies.13

Florman urges us to rely on the judgment of experts in decisions about technology. He says that no citizen can be adequately informed about complex technical questions such as acid rain or radioactive waste disposal. Public discussion of these issues only leads to anxiety and erratic political actions. We should rely on the recommendations of experts on such matters.14 Florman extols the “unquenchable spirit” and “irrepressible human will” evident in technology:

For all our apprehensions, we have no choice but to press ahead. We must do so, first, in the name of compassion. By turning our backs on technological change, we would be expressing our satisfaction with current world levels of hunger, disease, and privation. Further, we must press ahead in the name of the human adventure. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business. We simply cannot stop while there are masses to feed and diseases to conquer, seas to explore and heavens to survey.15

Some theologians have also given very positive appraisals of technology. They see it as a source not only of higher living standards but also of greater freedom and creative expression. In his earlier writings, Harvey Cox held that freedom to master and shape the world through technology liberates us from the confines of tradition. Christianity brought about the desacralization of nature and allowed it to be controlled and used for human welfare.16 Norris Clarke sees technology as an instrument of human fulfillment and self-expression in the use of our God-given intelligence to transform the world. Liberation from bondage to nature, he says, is the victory of spirit over matter. As cocreators with God we can celebrate the contribution of reason to the enrichment of human life.17 Other theologians have affirmed technology as an instrument of love and compassion in relieving human suffering—a modern response to the biblical command to feed the hungry and help the neighbor in need.

The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, writing in the early years of nuclear power, computers, and molecular biology, expressed a hopeful vision of the technological future. He envisioned computers and electronic communication in a network of interconnected consciousness, a global layer of thought that he called “the noosphere.” He defended eugenics, “artificial neo-life,” and the remodeling of the human organism by manipulation of the genes. With this new power over heredity, he said, we can replace the crude forces of natural selection and “seize the tiller” to control the direction of future evolution. We will have total power over matter, “reconstructing the very stuff of the universe.” He looked to a day of interplanetary travel and the unification of our own planet, based on intellectual and cultural interaction.18

Here was an inspiring vision of a planetary future in which technology and spiritual development would be linked together. Teilhard affirmed the value of secular life in the world and the importance of human efforts in “building the earth” as we cooperate in the creative work of God. Technology is participation in divine creativity. He rejected any note of despair, which would cut the nerve of constructive action. At times he seemed to have unlimited confidence in humanity’s capacity to shape its own destiny. But his confidence really lay in the unity, convergence, and ascent of the cosmic process of which humanity and technology are manifestations. The ultimate source of that unity and ascent is God as known in the Christ whose role is cosmic. For Teilhard, eschatological hope looks not to an intervention discontinuous from history, but to the fulfillment of a continuing process to which our own actions contribute.

Teilhard’s writings present us with a magnificent sweep of time from past to future. But they do not consider the institutional structures of economic power and self-interest that now control the directions of technological development. Teilhard seldom acknowledged the tragic hold of social injustice on human life. He was writing before the destructive environmental impacts of technology were evident. When Teilhard looked to the past, he portrayed humanity as an integral part of the natural world, interdependent with other creatures. But when he looked to the future, he expected that because of our technology and our spirituality we will be increasingly separated from other creatures. Humanity will move beyond dependence on the organic world. Though he was ultimately theocentric (centered on God), and he talked about the redemption of the whole cosmos, many of his images are anthropocentric (centered on humanity) and imply that other forms of life are left behind in the spiritualization of humankind that technology will h...