5369/ Shrader-Frechette/ Ch 17 Reading Response

Gregory Zobel
Chapter 17
Kristin Shrader-Frechette: Technology and Ethics

Shrader-Frechette argues that the development of technology has not generated new ethical questions; rather, technology has expanded on currently existing ethical questions. She then asserts that new technological developments requires critics who examine ethics and technology need both technological and philosophical skills (187). One reason is that "Although such factual knowledge does not determine the ethical decision, it constrains it in important and unavoidable way" (187). Shrader-Frechette also asserts that knowledge of economics is equally critical.

Next, she describes the five key categories for most technology and ethics questions:
1. conceptual/metaethical
2. general normative
3. particular normative
4. ethical consequences of technological developments
5. ethical justifiability of methods of assessing technology (187).

Central to the discussion of technology and ethics is the concept of risk. Shrader-Frechette asserts that technical experts and engineers define risk in probabilistic terms regarding fatality and use quantitative language. Humanistic critics, she claims, state that such terms are not a full accounting of the risk and do not address issues of democracy, consent, welfare, and personal freedom (188). Even when risks are analyzed and put forth, decision making is still conflicted. Two strong, opposing trends are to select the technology which offers the greatest benefit or to select the technology which offers the least catastrophic risk.

The notion of risk is complicated even more, Shrader-Frechette asserts, by technologies like fission which, if catastrophes do happen, can impact large portions of the population who did not consent to be in the range of the experiment or its benefits. This issue summons another topic: consent. One side argues that if a person takes a job, or a culture wants the benefits of a certain technology, then they have consented to the inherent risks. Opposition states that acceptance does not mean consent to certain risks, especially if those risks are not clearly and thoroughly understood.