CONFLICTS OF TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS By Stephen Glossner

What are Ethics? moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. The basic concepts and fundamental principals of decent human conduct. It includes study of universal values such as the essential equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern for health and safety and, increasingly, also for the natural environment

What is Technology? the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science

Technology Based Ethical Conflicts There are many ethical conflicts but there are specific conflicts that really apply to technology and other types of sciences Eight of these conflicts will be represented in this presentation

Violations of Establihed World Orders These conflicts arise when scientific or technological breakthroughs make possible actions or practices that some believe violate some established order of things whose prevention matter greatly to them Example: There has been opposition to recent achievements in biomedicine and genetic engineering because these techniques are “unnatural”

Violations of Supposedly Exceptionless Moral Principles Ethical issues arise from the fact that use, failure to use, or withdrawal of particular scientific procedures or items of technology is seen by some as violating one or another important moral principal that its adherents believe to be exceptionless Example: Some people are opposed to nuclear weapons on the grounds that their use will inevitably violate the supposedly exceptionless principal that any course of action will result in the destruction of innocent lives

Distributions of Science or Technology Related Benefits Ethical conflicts arise from the fact that the benefits of development in science and technology are allocated in ways that do not seem equitable to one or another social group Example: New medical procedures are very expensive and one can argue that the more affluent members of a society have an advantage over the poorer members

Infliction of Harm Significant Risk of Harm Without Prior Consent Ethical conflicts that arise from activities that, while undertaken to benefit one group, inflict harm or impose significant risk of harm on another without the latter group’s consent. Example: Animal testing or maintenance of carcinogen containing workplaces

Science or Technology Precipitated Value Conflicts This conflict arises when a technological advance allows something new to be done that precipitates a value conflict, not necessarily between the values of opposed parties, but between two or more cherished values of one and the same party Example: life extending technology have had to make family choose between two values, human life preservation and death with dignity

Public Harms of Aggregation These ethical conflicts arise when large groups people carry out essentially the something. Each individual action has at worst a negligible negative effect on the environment, but the effect of the entire group causes substantial harm to the environment. Example: one person driving a vehicle has virtually no effect on the environment but millions of people driving has a very substantial negative effect on the environment

Conclusion Technology will keep advancing and changing, ethics will always be there and the conflict between technology and ethics will always be there.