Moral Status of Technical Artefacts

This book considers the question: does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as morally good or bad in themselves? The authors contributions trace recent proposals and topics including instrumental and non-instrumental values of artefacts, agency and artefactual agency, values in and around technologies, and the moral significance of technology. §The editors introduction is highly readable, explaining that as agents rather than simply passive instruments, technical artefacts may actively influence their users, changing the way they perceive the world, the way they act in the world and the way they interact with each other. §This volume features the work of various experts from around the world, representing a variety of positions on the topic. One article explores the contested discourse on agency in humans and artefacts while another presents a defence of the Value Neutrality Thesis, arguing that technological artefacts do not contain, have or exhibit values. One chapter argues that moral agency involves both human and non-human elements.§Further contributions include Luciano Floridi s view of some difficulties arising in Artificial Intelligence and Sven Ove Hansson s exploration of values in Chemistry and in Engineering, two disciplines that are subject to negative moral valuations due to the harmful effects of some of their products.§