Pesch Udo
Department of Values, Technology and Innovation, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, P.O. Box 5015, 2628 BX, Delft, The Netherlands,
Sci Eng Ethics. 2015 Aug;21(4):925-39. doi: 10.1007/s11948-014-9571-7. Epub 2014 Jul 9.
Knowing that technologies are inherently value-laden and systemically interwoven with society, the question is how individual engineers can take up the challenge of accepting the responsibility for their work? This paper will argue that engineers have no institutional structure at the level of society that allows them to recognize, reflect upon, and actively integrate the value-laden character of their designs. Instead, engineers have to tap on the different institutional realms of market, science, and state, making their work a 'hybrid' activity combining elements from the different institutional realms. To deal with this institutional hybridity, engineers develop routines and heuristics in their professional network, which do not allow societal values to be expressed in a satisfactory manner. To allow forms of 'active' responsibility, there have to be so-called 'accountability forums' that guide moral reflections of individual actors. The paper will subsequently look at the methodologies of value-sensitive design (VSD) and constructive technology assessment (CTA) and explore whether and how these methodologies allow engineers to integrate societal values into the design technological artifacts and systems. As VSD and CTA are methodologies that look at the process of technological design, whereas the focus of this paper is on the designer, they can only be used indirectly, namely as frameworks which help to identify the contours of a framework for active responsibility of engineers.
鉴于技术本身就负载价值且与社会系统地交织在一起，问题在于个体工程师如何能够接受为其工作承担责任的挑战？本文将论证，工程师在社会层面没有这样一种制度结构，能让他们认识、反思并积极整合其设计中负载价值的特性。相反，工程师必须利用市场、科学和国家等不同的制度领域，使其工作成为一项结合了不同制度领域元素的“混合”活动。为应对这种制度上的混合性，工程师在其专业网络中形成了惯例和启发法，但这些并不能让社会价值以令人满意的方式得以体现。为了实现“积极”的责任形式，必须要有所谓的“问责论坛”来引导个体行为者进行道德反思。本文随后将审视价值敏感设计（VSD）和建设性技术评估（CTA）的方法，并探讨这些方法是否以及如何能让工程师将社会价值融入技术人工制品和系统的设计中。由于VSD和CTA是着眼于技术设计过程的方法，而本文的重点是设计者，所以它们只能被间接使用，即作为有助于勾勒工程师积极责任框架轮廓的框架。
