VL:
From ‘Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting’ by Shannon Vallor:
‘It is a common habit of many academics to roll their eyes at the first hint of a suggestion that the human situation has entered some radically new phase. As a prophylactic against overwrought claims of this kind, these sober-minded individuals keep on hand an emergency intellectual toolkit (which perhaps should be labelled “Break Glass In Case of Moral Panic”) from which they can readily draw a litany of examples of any given assertion of transformative social change being trumpeted just as loudly a century ago, or five, or ten. This impulse is often well-motivated: libraries worldwide are stocked with dusty treatises by those who, either from a lack of historical perspective or an intemperate desire to sell books, falsely asserted some massive seismic shift in human history that supposedly warranted great cultural alarm.
‘Yet sometimes things really do change in ways that we would be remiss to ignore, and which demand that we loosen up our scripted cultural patterns of response. At risk of inviting the scorn of the keepers of academic dispassion, I suggest that this is one of those times.’
Make the case that, as Vallor herself puts it, ‘the ethical dilemmas we face as 21st century humans are not “business as usual”, and require a novel approach’.
[Note: I haven’t yet read the entire book. This excerpt is taken from its introduction. At the moment I’m primarily interested in the framing of the problem and in the justification for Vallor’s project.]
GPT-4o:
To restate and deepen the question: What are the specific characteristics of the ethical challenges posed by contemporary technology that make them discontinuous with previous historical dilemmas, such that they demand novel ethical frameworks rather than traditional approaches? And how can we justify the claim that these challenges represent a genuine break from ‘business as usual’ in the moral landscape, rather than merely an iteration of longstanding human concerns?
Shannon Vallor’s argument hinges on the claim that the accelerating technological transformations of the 21st century present ethical dilemmas of a qualitatively different kind from those of previous eras, not just in scale but in their fundamental nature. To justify this, we must consider three key dimensions in which contemporary technologies diverge from historical antecedents: (1) the unprecedented scope and speed of change, (2) the autonomy and opacity of artificial systems, and (3) the global, interconnected nature of technological impacts. Each of these factors complicates traditional ethical frameworks, particularly those grounded in virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and utilitarianism, demanding a reconfiguration of moral thinking.
1. Unprecedented Scope and Speed of Technological Change
Historically, ethical challenges arising from new technologies were typically incremental, with enough time between technological breakthroughs for social and moral norms to adjust. Consider the introduction of the printing press or the industrial revolution—each of these marked significant shifts, but they unfolded over decades or centuries, giving society time to assimilate the changes and for ethical frameworks to adapt gradually. By contrast, 21st-century technological change—driven by digital computing, artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering, and nanotechnology—is happening on an exponential curve, and the scale of this change is global.
This acceleration has two key effects. First, it erodes the feedback mechanisms that traditionally allowed for the slow evolution of norms and regulations. Ethical deliberation, which typically requires time for reflection, critique, and consensus-building, is outpaced by technological developments that demand rapid responses. Second, the sheer magnitude of technological power at our disposal (consider CRISPR gene editing or AI with superhuman cognitive capabilities) forces ethical questions that are not merely about better or worse outcomes, but about existential risks—the very continuation of the species and the nature of what it means to be human.
For example, the ethical issues surrounding AI decision-making in high-stakes environments—such as autonomous weapons systems or AI in healthcare—cannot be easily analogised to earlier moral quandaries. The potential for machines to make life-and-death decisions, coupled with the complexity of their algorithms, represents a type of moral calculus that defies classical ethical systems. There’s simply no historical precedent for technologies that operate independently of direct human oversight in such crucial domains.
2. The Autonomy and Opacity of Artificial Systems
The rise of autonomous systems—AI, machine learning algorithms, and robotics—marks another critical discontinuity. Unlike earlier technological tools, which humans directly manipulated and controlled, contemporary AI systems operate with degrees of autonomy and opacity that challenge traditional ethical models. These systems can make decisions based on vast amounts of data and complex probabilistic reasoning, often in ways that are inscrutable even to their creators.
This opacity is a major point of rupture with past ethical frameworks, which have traditionally relied on the assumption of moral agents acting with full knowledge of their choices and the consequences. Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethics, for example, presupposes a rational agent who can reason their way to a moral decision by considering the categorical imperative. But in the case of autonomous AI, we have systems making decisions that no single human could fully explain or understand—how can we hold such systems to account within existing ethical frameworks?
Furthermore, autonomous systems blur the lines of responsibility. When an AI-driven car causes a fatal accident, who is morally responsible—the programmers, the company that deployed it, or the system itself? Classical ethical systems struggle with distributed, non-human agency. This is not merely an extension of past dilemmas about corporate or governmental responsibility; it is a radical shift in the nature of agency itself.
3. Global, Interconnected Impacts
The third dimension of discontinuity is the way in which contemporary technologies operate within an interconnected global system, producing cascading effects that are both unpredictable and irreversible. Technologies like climate engineering, global digital infrastructures, and bioengineering interventions in ecosystems have a planetary scope. Ethical questions surrounding these technologies are not confined to particular nations or communities but implicate the entire human species and, in many cases, non-human life.
The interconnectedness of these impacts also creates ethical dilemmas of a new kind. For instance, consider geoengineering technologies designed to mitigate climate change. Such technologies could have profound consequences for global weather patterns, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations in ways that are impossible to predict with certainty. The global nature of the impact complicates traditional ethical models that are based on local or national communities. How do we weigh the rights and interests of billions of people, many of whom have no say in the decisions being made? And how do we incorporate the non-human world into these ethical considerations, as our technologies increasingly affect ecosystems and biodiversity on an unprecedented scale?
This interconnectedness also amplifies the potential for moral hazard. Technologies like AI, for example, can create feedback loops that exacerbate social inequalities, from biased algorithms reinforcing systemic discrimination to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of tech elites. These global, systemic risks were not a feature of earlier technological revolutions, at least not to the same degree. As philosopher Hans Jonas argued in The Imperative of Responsibility (1979), the sheer scale and unpredictability of contemporary technological interventions call for an ethic of responsibility that extends far beyond traditional notions of duty or utility. Vallor, in building on such thinkers, would argue that this ethical landscape requires us to rethink our moral obligations in light of these global, interconnected risks.
The Need for a Novel Ethical Framework: Technomoral Virtue Ethics
Vallor argues that these discontinuities call for a novel ethical framework, which she terms ‘technomoral virtue ethics’. Drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics, Vallor emphasizes the cultivation of virtues—such as humility, courage, and justice—that are necessary to navigate the unprecedented moral challenges of our technological age. However, she extends this tradition by explicitly addressing the ways in which technology shapes and is shaped by human practices. Unlike utilitarianism, which focuses on outcomes, or deontology, which focuses on rules, technomoral virtue ethics emphasizes the moral character and wisdom of the agents involved, recognising that we now operate in an environment where long-term outcomes are unpredictable and often uncontrollable.
This framework is also inherently interdisciplinary. To address the challenges of opaque AI systems, for instance, we need to integrate insights from computer science, cognitive science, and moral philosophy. To address the global impacts of biotechnology, we must draw from environmental ethics, international law, and political theory. In this sense, Vallor’s project is not simply to develop a new set of ethical rules, but to cultivate the kind of moral and intellectual virtues that will allow humanity to navigate a world that is increasingly defined by complex, interlocking technological systems.
Conclusion: A Break from Business as Usual
In sum, Vallor’s claim that the ethical dilemmas of the 21st century are not ‘business as usual’ is justified by the unprecedented speed and scale of technological change, the emergence of autonomous and opaque systems, and the global, interconnected nature of technological impacts. These factors introduce ethical problems that cannot be adequately addressed by the frameworks that sufficed for earlier technological revolutions. Traditional ethical systems presuppose agents with control over their tools, clear lines of responsibility, and the ability to predict and evaluate the consequences of their actions. But in the contemporary technological landscape, these assumptions no longer hold. Vallor’s call for a novel ethical approach, rooted in technomoral virtue ethics, represents an attempt to confront these challenges head-on, offering a way to cultivate the virtues necessary for responsible action in an era of unprecedented technological power.
VL:
Vallor: ‘To envision a world of pervasive and constant surveillance, you need to know what will be done with the recordings, who might control them, and how they would be accessed or shared. To know whether to will a future full of social robots, you would first need to know what roles such robots would play in our lives, and how they might transform human interactions. To will a world where all humans enhance their own bodies with technology, won’t you first need to know which parts of ourselves we would enhance, in what ways, and what those changes would do to us in the long run, for example, whether we would end up improving or degrading our own ability to reason morally?’
Although the passage above specifically relates to the difficulty of applying Kantian ethical frameworks to modern ethical dilemmas, talk about the degree to which acting morally in our complex, interconnected, globalised world increasingly requires one to have the right answers to many ‘technical’ questions.
GPT-4o:
To deepen the question: How has the increasingly complex and interconnected nature of the contemporary world altered the nature of moral agency itself, particularly in relation to the technical knowledge required for ethical decision-making? In what ways does moral action now depend not only on traditional virtues or principles, but also on understanding deeply technical questions about the structure, impact, and functioning of modern technologies?
Shannon Vallor’s passage raises a significant issue: the nature of moral agency in the 21st century is increasingly entangled with technological expertise. In contrast to earlier historical periods, where moral decisions were primarily constrained by social, cultural, and local contexts, today’s ethical choices are inseparable from complex technical and scientific realities. As Vallor suggests, moral deliberation about issues like pervasive surveillance, social robots, and human enhancement requires understanding not only the immediate ethical principles at stake but also the underlying technological structures and potential long-term effects. In essence, ethical agency in the modern world now demands a kind of epistemic responsibility—a duty to acquire and comprehend the relevant technical knowledge that informs ethical decision-making.
1. The Epistemic Preconditions for Moral Agency
The first key shift in moral agency relates to the epistemic burden that has intensified in the modern world. In order to act morally, one must not only be ethically aware or virtuous in the traditional sense but must also have access to, and the capacity to understand, complex technical knowledge. This has not always been the case in the same way. In more traditional or historical settings, ethical decisions were often based on more immediate and observable consequences or actions rooted in human social interactions—justice between neighbours, the fairness of contracts, or the duties of citizenship.
However, the advent of modern technologies and global interconnectedness means that the ethical implications of many actions are far more opaque. Consider the decision to use a facial recognition system. A Kantian might initially approach this problem by asking whether deploying such technology respects the dignity of all individuals involved, ensuring that no person is treated merely as a means to an end. Yet, to answer this question rigourously, one would need to understand how facial recognition systems work, including their potential biases, how they aggregate and process data, and how they might disproportionately affect certain populations. Without this technical understanding, the moral agent is operating with incomplete information, and thus the decision risks being morally uninformed.
This epistemic dimension becomes even more critical when dealing with global technologies like climate engineering, AI-driven decision-making, or genetic modifications. Each of these areas involves profound uncertainties and technical complexities. The ethical agent must therefore grapple with questions that are often scientific or technical in nature: What is the long-term ecological impact of geoengineering? How does machine learning reinforce biases? What are the unintended consequences of genetic modification? Moral agency in these contexts thus requires an interdisciplinary understanding—one that bridges the gap between ethical theory and technical knowledge.
2. The Epistemic Limits of Moral Deliberation: A Fragmented Landscape
Another key issue is the fragmentation of expertise. In a globalised, technologically sophisticated world, no single moral agent—or even a collective—can possess complete knowledge of all the relevant technical and scientific facts. This problem creates a kind of epistemic asymmetry, where individuals and even policymakers must rely on experts, often from different and siloed fields, to inform their ethical decisions. However, this reliance on experts creates its own ethical dilemmas: How do we judge the reliability of expert opinions in fields we do not understand? How do we ensure that expert recommendations align with the public good and are not distorted by institutional or commercial biases?
Take the example of environmental ethics concerning global warming. Policymakers and the general public are not climate scientists. They must rely on the scientific community to provide accurate models of future climate conditions and predictions of the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies. But the technical nature of these models and the complexity of the data make it difficult for non-experts to engage in informed moral deliberation about climate policy. Moreover, given that different models may provide different predictions, the epistemic situation becomes even more challenging. As Vallor points out, before making moral judgments about, say, whether to endorse large-scale carbon sequestration or geoengineering, we need to understand the technical feasibility, risks, and long-term effects of these interventions. This is far from a straightforward ethical question, and it implicates complex systems science, ecological modelling, and engineering.
This epistemic fragmentation poses a threat to the autonomy of moral agents. When faced with such high-stakes ethical issues, individual autonomy becomes increasingly dependent on the accuracy and accessibility of technical knowledge from experts. The challenge then is not just one of ethics, but also one of democratic knowledge dissemination—how can we ensure that this necessary technical information is shared transparently and comprehensibly so that moral agents can make informed decisions?
3. Moral Agency in the Age of Predictive Technologies
Modern moral action is also shaped by the growing reliance on predictive technologies, such as machine learning algorithms that forecast human behaviour. These systems often operate in ways that are not transparent, even to the people who design them. For example, predictive policing algorithms are now used by law enforcement agencies to anticipate where crimes might occur. To evaluate the ethical implications of deploying such systems, one needs to understand not only the immediate outcomes (e.g., reducing crime) but also the technical mechanisms (e.g., algorithmic bias) that might lead to discriminatory policing practices.
Again, we see the inseparability of ethical and technical questions. Traditional ethical theories—such as Kant’s categorical imperative, which tells us to treat others as ends in themselves—must now contend with the fact that algorithms might treat people as statistical data points, reinforcing biases hidden deep within the code. To engage in moral action, one must have technical insight into how the predictive systems function, how they are trained on data, and how their use might exacerbate or reduce social injustice. This entanglement of ethics with predictive, data-driven technologies requires moral agents to not only question the ethical ends of their actions but also to interrogate the technological means by which these ends are achieved.
4. The Ethics of Long-Term Technological Consequences
The temporal dimension of technology introduces yet another layer of complexity. As Vallor suggests, it is impossible to determine the moral status of many technological developments without considering their long-term impacts. Take, for instance, human enhancement technologies. The promise of enhancing cognitive or physical abilities through genetic engineering or neural implants is accompanied by deep ethical concerns about how these enhancements might change human nature itself. But before one can make an informed moral decision about endorsing or rejecting human enhancement, one would need to answer a host of technical questions: How will these enhancements interact with our biological systems? What are the unintended side effects? Will cognitive enhancement reduce our ability to empathise or reason morally?
Long-term consequences are often shrouded in uncertainty, and this uncertainty exacerbates the difficulty of moral decision-making. If Kantian ethics requires us to evaluate the universality of a given maxim, the opacity of technological futures makes this task even more challenging. How can we will a future where social robots or human enhancements are ubiquitous, without fully understanding how these technologies will transform the social fabric or moral reasoning over decades or centuries? As Hans Jonas argued in his Principle of Responsibility, the magnitude of human technological power now demands a far greater consideration of long-term risks than traditional ethical systems are equipped to handle.
5. The Responsibility to be Epistemically Informed
Given these complexities, a new kind of moral responsibility emerges—one that Vallor emphasizes and that we might call epistemic responsibility. This is the responsibility to engage with and understand the technical dimensions of the technologies that shape our moral landscape. It is not enough to simply act with good intentions or even to follow traditional ethical principles; one must also take on the intellectual work of understanding the technological systems that mediate moral choices.
In this sense, moral agency is increasingly tied to technological literacy. Moral agents must now ask themselves: Do I have a sufficient understanding of the technology in question to make an informed ethical decision? If not, do I have a responsibility to seek out that knowledge? If the answers are beyond my expertise, how do I weigh the expert opinions that inform my moral decision-making? These are not secondary or peripheral questions; they are central to the ethical dilemmas we face in the modern world.
Conclusion: The Epistemic Dimensions of Modern Ethics
In sum, Vallor’s discussion of Kantian ethics in the context of modern technology reveals a deeper truth about moral agency in the 21st century: acting ethically now requires an unprecedented engagement with technical knowledge. The complexities of our interconnected, globalised world demand that moral agents grapple with questions about how technologies function, their long-term consequences, and their potential to reshape human life itself. Traditional ethical frameworks, though still valuable, must now be supplemented with a robust epistemic responsibility. This responsibility requires individuals and societies to cultivate the knowledge necessary to make informed moral decisions in an era where technology permeates every aspect of our lives.
In the end, moral action in the modern world is no longer solely about virtues or duties in the abstract. It is about understanding the technical realities that shape our choices, and the ways in which those choices reverberate through complex, interconnected systems that extend far beyond our immediate perceptions. Ethical decision-making now depends on a moral agent’s capacity to engage with the technical, scientific, and systemic dimensions of their actions, ensuring that our moral frameworks evolve alongside the technologies that define our age.
VL:
Vallor: ‘Virtue ethicists . . . [deny] that right action is ever captured by fixed principles or rules, and [claim] instead that moral principles simply codify, in very general and defeasible ways, patterns of reasoning typically exhibited by virtuous persons. On this view, moral expertise does not come from fixed moral principles, but is reflected in them; and imperfectly at that. Consider an adult who can easily understand and follow rules, but is wholly lacking in practical wisdom— a cultivated ability of her own to recognise and independently solve moral problems. There is no moral rule or set of rules that one could hand such a person that would, from then on, steer her reliably and safely to the destination of a life lived well. If the rules are well chosen, she might do morally better in life with them than she would without them, but inevitably she will fail to recognise situations to which the rules are supposed to apply, and be caught short by moral situations for which the rules do not seem to fit or where their proper application is not obvious.’
Discuss.
GPT-4o:
To restate and deepen the question: How does virtue ethics, with its emphasis on practical wisdom (phronesis) rather than fixed moral rules, address the inherent limitations of rule-based ethical systems in guiding moral action? And why might virtue ethicists argue that a person equipped only with moral principles but lacking in practical wisdom is ill-prepared to navigate complex and novel ethical situations?
The passage from Vallor captures a central tenet of virtue ethics: the view that moral action cannot be reduced to the application of fixed principles or rules. Rather, virtuous action arises from the cultivated capacity of an individual to respond appropriately to the unique demands of particular moral situations. This capacity, which Aristotle called phronesis (practical wisdom), is acquired through experience and the development of moral virtues over time. Virtue ethicists, therefore, reject the notion that right action can be fully determined by a codified set of rules or principles, even if those principles are well-intentioned and thoughtfully constructed. Instead, principles are seen as general guides that reflect the patterns of reasoning typical of virtuous agents but are necessarily incomplete and defeasible in concrete situations.
1. The Limitation of Rule-Based Ethical Systems
To fully grasp why virtue ethicists reject the primacy of fixed principles, it is useful to consider the main weaknesses of rule-based ethical systems such as deontology or certain forms of utilitarianism. These systems often rely on clearly defined rules or principles that prescribe right action. For example, Kantian ethics famously revolves around the categorical imperative, which posits universalisable maxims as a means to determine moral action. Similarly, act utilitarianism instructs individuals to perform the action that maximises overall utility or happiness.
However, rule-based systems face significant limitations when confronted with the complexity and particularity of real-world moral situations. One of the primary concerns is that moral rules, no matter how carefully formulated, are often too rigid to accommodate the fluid and dynamic nature of human life. A fixed rule may prescribe a course of action that seems morally correct in one context but fails to account for morally relevant details in another. Consider Kant’s well-known example of the duty not to lie: the rule against lying may generally promote truthfulness, but in cases where lying could save an innocent life (such as lying to a murderer about the whereabouts of their intended victim), the categorical imperative seems inadequate or even morally counterproductive. In such situations, adherence to the rule becomes problematic.
Moreover, rule-based approaches may fail to provide clear guidance in situations of moral ambiguity, where no obvious rule applies or where multiple principles seem to conflict. For instance, a utilitarian might struggle to balance competing goods when faced with difficult trade-offs between maximising happiness for one group versus another. Rule-based systems often presuppose that moral situations are clear-cut, with well-defined parameters that allow for the straightforward application of principles. But moral life, as virtue ethicists point out, is rarely so simple.
Vallor’s point is that rules are useful only insofar as they reflect general patterns of virtuous reasoning—they provide rough scaffolding for moral agents but cannot stand in for the fully developed capacity to discern what is morally required in a particular situation. Without the phronesis to judge when and how a rule should be applied (or when it should be set aside), moral agents risk becoming overly dependent on rules that do not adequately address the complexities of real-world moral dilemmas.
2. Practical Wisdom as Moral Expertise
Virtue ethics, in contrast to rule-based ethics, posits that moral expertise is not a matter of knowing and following the right rules, but of having cultivated phronesis, the practical wisdom that enables a person to recognise the morally salient features of a situation and respond appropriately. This practical wisdom is not reducible to knowledge of principles; it is a kind of skill or art that involves sensitivity to the nuances of particular contexts, an ability to navigate moral ambiguities, and the capacity to balance competing goods in a way that reflects the virtuous mean.
Phronesis is acquired through experience and moral development. Aristotle argued that one becomes virtuous not by memorising moral rules but by habituating oneself to act in accordance with the virtues, such as courage, temperance, and justice. Over time, the person develops an intuitive grasp of how to act well in diverse circumstances, and this grasp cannot be codified into a set of rules. Just as a skilled musician knows how to adjust their playing to suit the needs of a particular performance, the virtuous person adjusts their actions to the particularities of each moral situation. This moral flexibility is what distinguishes virtue ethics from more rigid ethical systems.
Consider a real-world example: a doctor may follow certain medical guidelines or rules about patient care, but practical wisdom is needed to decide how to apply these rules in specific cases. When faced with a terminally ill patient, the doctor must balance the principles of beneficence (doing good) and non-maleficence (avoiding harm) while also considering the patient’s wishes and quality of life. The appropriate course of action cannot be determined solely by consulting a rulebook; it requires the doctor’s judgment, empathy, and experience to discern the right balance between prolonging life and alleviating suffering. This kind of moral decision-making, which engages with the complexity of individual cases, is precisely what phronesis enables.
3. The Dangers of Rule-Based Moral Agents
Vallor’s example of an individual who follows rules without practical wisdom illuminates the dangers of relying exclusively on moral principles. Such a person may behave correctly in situations where the rules clearly apply, but will inevitably falter when confronted with moral complexity, ambiguity, or conflict. Without phronesis, the rule-follower lacks the ability to interpret and adapt principles to new and unforeseen circumstances.
For instance, suppose someone rigidly adheres to a moral principle like ‘always tell the truth’. While this rule generally promotes honesty and trust, there will inevitably be cases where following it leads to moral failure. If the person is incapable of recognising exceptions to the rule—such as when telling the truth would cause unjust harm—they may act in ways that are morally inappropriate, even though they are technically adhering to a principle. The lack of flexibility and contextual sensitivity inherent in rule-based reasoning can lead to what Aristotle called ‘moral error’, even if the agent’s intentions are good.
This is why virtue ethicists argue that moral rules, while helpful as general guides, are insufficient on their own. A person who can only follow rules will struggle to navigate complex, ambiguous, or novel moral situations, precisely because such situations require judgment, not mere obedience to rules. The development of phronesis is therefore essential for moral agency.
4. The Context-Dependence of Virtue
Another key point in virtue ethics is that virtuous action is context-dependent. This stands in contrast to the universalism of rule-based systems, which assume that the same rule should apply across all situations, regardless of the specifics. Virtue ethics, however, holds that what is morally appropriate can vary depending on the particulars of the situation, the relationships involved, and the moral agent’s character.
Take the virtue of courage as an example. A courageous action for one person in one situation might look very different from a courageous action in another context. A soldier in battle might exhibit courage by risking their life to protect others, while a whistleblower might exhibit courage by standing up against corruption at great personal cost. In each case, the action reflects the mean between cowardice and recklessness, but what constitutes the appropriate balance varies depending on the details of the situation.
This context-dependence is a feature, not a bug, of virtue ethics. It acknowledges that moral life is messy and cannot be neatly packaged into fixed rules or principles. Virtue ethics emphasizes the importance of moral perception—the ability to see the world in terms of morally relevant features, such as which virtues or vices are at play, and how they intersect with the particularities of a situation. This ability is precisely what phronesis cultivates.
5. The Role of Moral Principles in Virtue Ethics
It is important to note that virtue ethics does not reject moral principles outright. Rather, it views them as secondary to the cultivation of virtues and phronesis. Principles serve as useful heuristics or guidelines that can help orient a person’s moral reasoning, but they do not capture the full complexity of moral life. A virtuous person might follow principles like ‘be honest’ or ‘act justly’, but they do so not because these principles provide an exhaustive account of right action, but because they reflect deeper patterns of virtuous reasoning.
In this sense, moral principles are reflections of moral expertise, not the source of it. They emerge from the wisdom of virtuous agents who, through experience and careful reflection, have developed reliable ways of responding to moral challenges. But they are generalisations, not prescriptions, and they must always be applied with care and sensitivity to the particulars of a situation.
Conclusion: Virtue Ethics as an Adaptive Moral Framework
In sum, virtue ethics offers a compelling alternative to rule-based ethical systems by emphasizing the importance of phronesis, or practical wisdom, in moral decision-making. This wisdom enables individuals to navigate the complexities and ambiguities of real-world moral situations in ways that rigid adherence to rules cannot. While moral principles have their place, they are ultimately insufficient without the cultivated ability to perceive and respond to the unique demands of each moral context. Virtue ethics thus recognises the limitations of fixed rules and advocates for a more flexible, adaptive approach to moral reasoning—one that is grounded in the development of character and the cultivation of practical wisdom.
VL:
Of the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident (in which a Luftwaffe pilot escorted a damaged B-17 and its crew to safety rather than shooting it down), Vallor writes: ‘Other morally salient considerations and principles that spoke against such an act of mercy, such as loyalty and duty, might have bound Stigler, and did at many other moments in the war. This unexpected act, the virtue of which is nevertheless easy to explain in hindsight, expressed the total and singular moral sense he was able to make of the complex demands of that worldly moment confronting him.’
Justifying his actions later, Stigler claimed ‘It would have been like shooting at a man in a parachute.’
Vallor intends this as some sort of argument in favour of virtue ethics, whereas for me it demonstrates that one can retain feelings of virtuousness while being, in the final consequential analysis, a bad actor.
GPT-4o:
To reframe the question: How does the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident illustrate the tension between the subjective sense of virtue and the objective consequences of moral actions? And how might one argue that Stigler’s sense of moral virtue, while personally authentic and noble, could be viewed as ethically insufficient or even misguided when subjected to consequentialist analysis?
The Franz Stigler incident during World War II offers a powerful case study in the ethical debate between virtue ethics and consequentialist frameworks. Stigler, a Luftwaffe pilot, chose not to shoot down a severely damaged American B-17 bomber, instead escorting it to safety, an act that he later justified by comparing it to shooting at a man in a parachute—an action he considered morally dishonourable. Shannon Vallor uses this example to support a virtue ethics perspective, arguing that Stigler’s act represents a moment of practical wisdom (phronesis), where the virtuousness of his decision emerged from his ability to recognise the singularity of the situation and respond in a way that reflected compassion and mercy, even in the face of his duty as a soldier.
You suggest, however, that Stigler’s decision, while perhaps motivated by a virtuous sense of mercy, may nonetheless demonstrate the limitations of virtue ethics, as it allowed him to retain a feeling of moral righteousness despite potentially producing ethically problematic consequences when viewed through a consequentialist lens. To engage with this critique, we must unpack the assumptions of both virtue ethics and consequentialism, as well as the tension between subjective moral integrity and the objective moral assessment of an action’s outcomes.
1. Virtue Ethics and the Subjective Experience of Morality
Virtue ethics, particularly as developed by Aristotle, focuses on the character of the moral agent and their capacity to exercise practical wisdom in navigating the complexities of moral life. The central premise of virtue ethics is that right action arises not from adherence to fixed rules or principles, nor from the calculation of outcomes, but from the cultivation of virtuous character traits—such as courage, temperance, and compassion—and the capacity to apply these traits wisely in particular contexts.
In this framework, Stigler’s decision is defensible because it expresses key virtues: compassion for a fellow human being, mercy towards a vulnerable enemy, and respect for the dignity of life, even in a wartime context. Vallor emphasizes that Stigler’s act reflects a particular instance of phronesis—the practical wisdom that enables an individual to see beyond the strict rules of military duty and loyalty and recognise the moral demands of the situation confronting him. The singularity of the situation—the wounded and defenceless state of the bomber crew—presented Stigler with a moral choice that transcended the ordinary demands of war.
For virtue ethicists, the subjective moral clarity that Stigler experienced—his recognition that shooting at the crippled B-17 was akin to shooting a man in a parachute—demonstrates the depth of his moral character. His refusal to reduce his enemies to abstract targets to be eliminated speaks to a profound moral insight. In this sense, virtue ethics prizes the internal moral deliberation and the agent’s alignment with their moral character as central to determining the rightness of action.
2. The Consequentialist Critique: Moral Righteousness vs Moral Outcomes
However, as you suggest, from a consequentialist standpoint, Stigler’s action may appear problematic. Consequentialism, particularly utilitarianism, evaluates the moral worth of an action based on its outcomes—whether it produces more good than harm or minimises overall suffering. In the context of war, where military objectives and the consequences of individual decisions can ripple out into larger strategic outcomes, the decision not to shoot down the B-17 could be seen as ethically dubious if it ultimately allowed the bomber to return and contribute to further destruction and loss of life.
Indeed, one could argue that Stigler’s act of mercy, while subjectively noble, potentially had harmful consequences when viewed in the broader scope of the war effort. The bomber crew, once safely returned, could have participated in future missions that inflicted casualties on German soldiers or civilians. The fact that Stigler acted in accordance with his personal virtues of mercy and compassion does not, from a consequentialist viewpoint, absolve him of responsibility for the possible negative consequences that flowed from his decision.
In this light, your critique can be understood as an argument against virtue ethics’ emphasis on the internal moral experience of the agent. By focusing on the cultivation of virtues and subjective moral clarity, virtue ethics may obscure the larger ethical implications of an action’s consequences. Even if Stigler acted with the best of intentions, and even if his action is virtuous in the sense that it reflects compassion and practical wisdom, one could argue that the moral worth of his decision should be assessed by its effects on the broader course of the war, rather than by the internal experience of virtue it produced in him.
3. The Problem of Moral Luck
The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident also highlights the problem of moral luck, a concept often discussed in the context of virtue ethics and consequentialism. Moral luck refers to the extent to which the moral assessment of an agent’s actions depends on factors beyond their control. In Stigler’s case, his decision to spare the bomber was made in the moment, based on his immediate moral sense of the situation. Yet the ultimate consequences of that decision—whether it led to further violence or spared lives—were largely out of his hands.
From a consequentialist perspective, the evaluation of Stigler’s decision might change depending on what the bomber crew went on to do. If they were involved in further missions that caused significant harm, Stigler’s act of mercy could retrospectively be viewed as ethically problematic. If, however, they never flew again or contributed minimally to the war effort, his action might be viewed more favourably. This is a clear example of moral luck: Stigler’s moral standing seems to hinge not just on his virtuous intentions, but on the unpredictable consequences of his actions in a highly complex, contingent environment.
For virtue ethicists, moral luck is less of a concern because the moral worth of an action is judged primarily by the agent’s character and decision-making process, not by the ultimate consequences. Stigler’s action remains virtuous because it reflects the compassionate and wise response of a morally developed agent, regardless of the outcomes. For consequentialists, however, moral luck complicates moral assessment, because the ethical status of an action can shift based on factors outside the agent’s control.
4. The Limits of Virtue Ethics in War
The Stigler incident also raises broader questions about the limits of virtue ethics in contexts like war, where moral choices are rarely clear-cut, and the stakes are extraordinarily high. In war, individual acts of mercy or restraint, such as Stigler’s, can have far-reaching consequences, both positive and negative. While Stigler’s act might be seen as virtuous on a personal level, the broader moral calculus of war often demands a kind of hard-nosed consequentialism, where decisions are judged by their strategic and utilitarian outcomes rather than by individual expressions of virtue.
In this sense, war presents a particularly challenging environment for virtue ethics because the kinds of virtues that are appropriate in everyday life—compassion, mercy, and restraint—may conflict with the demands of military duty and the goal of minimising overall harm. Soldiers are often required to subordinate their personal moral intuitions to the strategic objectives of the war effort, which may involve actions that seem at odds with virtue, such as killing enemy combatants or even civilians. In these cases, virtue ethics might appear too focused on the internal experience of the agent and insufficiently concerned with the larger, more consequentialist logic of wartime morality.
5. Virtue and the Incommensurability of Values
Finally, the Stigler incident illustrates the incommensurability of values in virtue ethics. For Stigler, the values of compassion and respect for human life took precedence over his military duty to shoot down the bomber. Yet this decision involved a conflict between incommensurable values: loyalty to one’s comrades and nation versus the moral imperative to show mercy to a helpless enemy. Virtue ethics acknowledges that moral life often involves such conflicts, where there is no simple way to balance competing goods. In such cases, phronesis becomes essential, as it allows the agent to navigate these tensions without relying on fixed rules or predetermined outcomes.
However, from a consequentialist perspective, this incommensurability of values may seem unsatisfactory, as it leaves moral decision-making in the realm of subjective judgment without clear guidance on how to weigh the relative importance of different goods. In wartime, where the consequences of individual actions can have profound and far-reaching effects, the lack of a clear decision-making framework might seem irresponsible or even dangerous.
Conclusion: Virtue Ethics and the Challenge of Consequences
The Stigler incident reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of virtue ethics. On the one hand, virtue ethics allows for a nuanced understanding of moral action that takes into account the particularities of the situation and the character of the agent. Stigler’s act of mercy, in Vallor’s view, exemplifies the kind of practical wisdom that virtue ethics celebrates—an ability to respond to the specific moral demands of the moment with compassion and moral clarity. On the other hand, your critique points to the limits of this approach, particularly when the consequences of an action may undermine its initial virtuousness. From a consequentialist perspective, Stigler’s decision, while noble in intention, may have produced negative outcomes that outweigh the subjective sense of virtue he experienced.
This tension between subjective moral experience and objective moral consequences highlights a key challenge for virtue ethics, particularly in complex, high-stakes environments like war. While virtue ethics emphasizes the development
VL:
My argument wasn’t so much that Stigler’s act of mercy had negative overall consequences. It was more that Stigler could selectively dole out these virtuous acts while remaining an active and morally untroubled contributor to the German war effort. That’s not how he subsequently framed it, of course, but there’s little in the story as initially told to suggest that this was a moment of moral awakening or a turning point in his ethical life.
His reference to shooting at parachutes was in fact a direct echo of a statement made by one of his mentors Gustav Rödel; ‘If I hear of one of you shooting a man in a parachute, I’ll shoot you myself!’ indication that Stigler’s action sprang from sentiments widely held by fellow Nazi officers. Many of them undoubtedly considered themselves honourable, virtuous and sportsmanlike - though few would have responded in quite the way Stigler did in that specific situation.
GPT-4o:
To reframe your critique: Does Stigler’s act of mercy, when viewed in the broader context of his participation in the Nazi war effort, reveal a deeper problem with the subjective experience of virtue? Can a single act of mercy truly reflect a virtuous character when it is performed by someone who continues to actively contribute to a morally indefensible cause? Moreover, does Stigler’s justification—rooted in military codes of honour rather than a more expansive moral awakening—undermine the idea that virtue ethics provides a robust guide to moral conduct in complex and compromised situations?
Your argument challenges the interpretation of Stigler’s action as exemplary of moral virtue by emphasizing its selective and context-bound nature. While Stigler performed an isolated act of mercy, this did not represent a wholesale moral awakening or rejection of the larger cause to which he remained committed. As you point out, his justification for sparing the B-17 crew—comparing it to the dishonour of shooting at a man in a parachute—echoed sentiments that were common among many Luftwaffe officers, who prided themselves on adhering to codes of chivalry and honour, even while participating in the larger machinery of the Nazi regime. This raises important questions about the limits of virtue ethics in evaluating moral agents whose occasional acts of mercy or sportsmanship coexist with their broader complicity in morally reprehensible systems.
1. The Problem of Selective Virtue
One of the key tensions your critique highlights is the problem of selective virtue—the idea that an individual can exhibit virtue in isolated moments without fundamentally transforming their character or conduct in ways that reflect a more holistic commitment to morality. Stigler’s decision to spare the B-17 crew was indeed a virtuous act in the narrow sense of showing compassion and mercy to a vulnerable enemy. But this act occurred in the context of his larger role as a pilot in the Luftwaffe, actively fighting for a regime responsible for systemic atrocities, including the Holocaust and aggressive military expansion.
From a virtue ethics perspective, this raises an important question: Can an individual be truly virtuous if their morally praiseworthy actions are selective and compartmentalised, while they remain otherwise committed to a deeply immoral cause? Virtue ethics emphasizes the development of character and the consistent application of moral virtues across one’s life. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a virtuous person is not someone who occasionally performs virtuous acts, but someone whose entire way of being is oriented toward the good, consistently exercising virtues like justice, courage, and compassion.
Stigler’s case complicates this ideal. His act of mercy toward the B-17 crew may have been virtuous in isolation, but it did not represent a break from his role in the Nazi war effort. This selective application of virtue suggests that it is possible to perform actions that appear virtuous without fundamentally being a virtuous person in the Aristotelian sense. Indeed, Stigler’s participation in the war, and his apparent lack of moral conflict over it, suggests a compartmentalisation of his moral thinking: he could act honourably in specific situations, like sparing the bomber crew, while remaining morally untroubled by his broader complicity in the Nazi cause.
2. The Moral Comfort of Honor Codes
The reference to the military honour code—Stigler’s comparison of shooting at a defenceless bomber to shooting a man in a parachute—further complicates the idea that this was an act of deep moral reflection. Instead, Stigler’s action seems to spring from a deeply ingrained code of sportsmanship and honour that existed among many Luftwaffe pilots, as illustrated by the statement from his mentor, Gustav Rödel. This code framed certain actions, such as sparing a helpless enemy, as dishonourable and unworthy of a true soldier. However, the presence of this code does not necessarily reflect a broader moral rejection of the Nazi war effort or the ideologies that underpinned it.
This raises questions about the nature of virtue itself. If Stigler’s act was motivated by adherence to an honour code rather than a more fundamental moral insight, does this diminish the moral significance of his action? Honour codes can provide individuals with a sense of moral clarity and righteousness while allowing them to remain blind to the broader injustices in which they participate. Many Nazi officers, as you point out, considered themselves honourable and virtuous despite serving a regime that was responsible for atrocities. They followed codes of conduct that reinforced their sense of virtue, even as they remained complicit in evil.
Virtue ethics, particularly in its Aristotelian form, emphasizes the need for moral reasoning that is not only context-sensitive but also directed toward the broader good. If Stigler’s action was motivated by a narrow sense of honour, rather than a deeper reflection on the larger moral stakes of his involvement in the war, then his mercy toward the B-17 crew may reflect a limited, situational virtue rather than a commitment to a genuinely virtuous life. In this sense, the action can be seen as morally shallow—a performance of virtue within a larger context of moral blindness.
3. Complicity and the Limitations of Individual Virtue
Your critique points to a broader issue: the extent to which individual acts of virtue can be morally meaningful in the context of complicity in systemic evil. Even if we accept that Stigler’s action was virtuous in the moment, it is difficult to ignore the larger context of his involvement in the Nazi war machine. This raises a fundamental question for virtue ethics: how do we evaluate the moral worth of individuals who perform isolated acts of virtue while remaining complicit in a larger system of injustice?
Virtue ethics focuses on the character and moral development of individuals, but it often struggles to address cases where individuals are embedded in corrupt or unjust systems. Stigler’s action, while merciful, did nothing to challenge or undermine the broader system of violence and oppression in which he was a participant. This complicity raises the possibility that individual acts of virtue can be ethically insufficient if they do not lead to a deeper moral reckoning with the larger structures of power and violence that enable such actions to take place.
In the case of Stigler, his selective act of mercy might be seen as an example of what philosopher Iris Murdoch described as moral consolation—the idea that individuals can feel morally righteous or virtuous by performing small acts of goodness, even as they remain participants in larger evils. In this sense, Stigler’s action could be seen as providing him with a sense of moral satisfaction, allowing him to feel like a virtuous person without confronting the deeper ethical implications of his role in the war.
4. The Dangers of Sentimentalizing Virtue
Another danger of focusing on isolated acts of virtue, especially in contexts like war, is the risk of sentimentalising or romanticising morally complex situations. Stigler’s decision to spare the B-17 crew is often framed as a noble act, a moment of human compassion amidst the brutality of war. However, this narrative can obscure the broader moral reality of the war itself, reducing complex ethical issues to simple stories of individual heroism or mercy.
The sentimentalisation of virtue in this case may lead us to overlook the ways in which such acts of mercy can coexist with, or even reinforce, larger systems of violence. Stigler’s act of mercy did not challenge the Nazi regime or disrupt the war effort; it was a momentary gesture of compassion that allowed him to maintain a sense of personal honour while continuing to serve a morally corrupt cause. In this sense, the story of Stigler’s mercy can be seen as a way of sanitising the moral reality of war, focusing on individual moments of virtue while ignoring the broader context of systemic evil.
5. The Inadequacy of Virtue Ethics in Contexts of Systemic Injustice
Your critique suggests a deeper limitation of virtue ethics: its focus on individual character and situational responses may be insufficient in contexts of systemic injustice, where moral agents are deeply embedded in structures of power and violence. In such contexts, individual acts of virtue may be morally shallow if they do not lead to a broader rejection of the system itself. Stigler’s mercy toward the B-17 crew, while commendable in isolation, does not constitute a moral challenge to the Nazi war effort, nor does it represent a deeper ethical transformation on his part.
This raises a critical question for virtue ethics: is it enough to focus on individual acts of virtue, or must we also consider the broader systems in which individuals are embedded? In cases like Stigler’s, where an individual performs acts of virtue within the context of complicity in a larger system of injustice, virtue ethics may struggle to provide an adequate moral framework. While phronesis (practical wisdom) allows individuals to respond to specific situations with sensitivity and care, it may be insufficient when the moral agent’s broader participation in systemic violence is left unexamined.
Conclusion: Virtue, Complicity, and the Limits of Individual Morality
The case of Franz Stigler reveals the potential limitations of virtue ethics when confronted with the complexities of war and systemic injustice. While Stigler’s act of mercy toward the B-17 crew reflects a momentary expression of virtue, it does not represent a fundamental moral awakening or a rejection of the broader cause to which he remained committed. Your critique highlights the danger of selectively applying virtue in ways that allow individuals to feel morally righteous without confronting their complicity in larger systems of violence and oppression.
Ultimately, Stigler’s story raises important questions about the adequacy of virtue ethics in addressing moral agents embedded in unjust systems. While virtue ethics emphasizes the cultivation of character and situational moral reasoning, it may be insufficient in contexts where systemic injustice requires a more fundamental moral reckoning.
VL:
Provide (if you have sufficient information to do so) a detailed summary of Vallor’s book.
GPT-4o:
Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting presents a compelling argument for reimagining ethical frameworks in light of contemporary technological advancements. Vallor contends that traditional ethical theories like deontology and utilitarianism are insufficient to navigate the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and climate engineering. Instead, she advocates for a revival of virtue ethics, drawing on ancient traditions—particularly Aristotelian, Confucian, and Buddhist ethics—to guide moral decision-making in an era of rapid technological change.
At the heart of her argument is the notion of technomoral virtues: qualities of character that individuals and societies must cultivate to manage the ethical risks and opportunities presented by technology. These virtues, which include honesty, self-control, empathy, justice, and technomoral wisdom, are not just traditional moral ideals repackaged for modern times; they are specifically adapted to help us navigate the unique moral terrain shaped by global interconnectivity, data privacy issues, automation, and ecological crises.
Vallor identifies seven key elements of moral self-cultivation necessary for developing these virtues, including moral habituation, reflective self-examination, and prudential judgment. Importantly, she does not claim that these virtues will yield simple rules for action but rather insists that they must be cultivated continuously to handle the evolving challenges posed by technology.
In Part II of her book, Vallor applies these ideas to specific emerging technologies, showing how technomoral virtues can help guide ethical choices in fields like AI, robotics, and biomedical enhancement. She emphasizes that these issues cannot be addressed in isolation; they require global, cooperative deliberation, as the impacts of technology are felt worldwide and affect all of humanity.
Ultimately, Vallor’s book is a call to action: it invites us to rethink our ethical frameworks in the face of unprecedented technological power and to cultivate the virtues necessary for a future worth wanting【18†source】【19†source】【20†source】.
VL:
It seems, based on a cursory reading of the book’s introduction, that the moral difficulties presented by emerging technologies, to the extent that they differ from the moral difficulties we have always faced, are primarily epistemic: we do not yet fully grasp what these new marvels are, and we often cannot even sketch, even in broad outline, the shape of the future worlds created by their use.
How does a shift to an ethical framework based on ‘technomoral virtues’ solve this epistemic problem?
GPT-4o:
To deepen the question: How does Shannon Vallor’s framework of ‘technomoral virtues’ address the epistemic uncertainties that characterise our relationship with emerging technologies? Specifically, how can a virtue-based ethical approach guide moral action in a world where we often lack complete knowledge of the future impacts of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, and climate engineering?
Your observation is astute—Vallor does indeed recognise that many of the ethical challenges posed by contemporary technologies are epistemic in nature. Technologies like AI, robotics, and genetic engineering introduce unprecedented uncertainty because we often do not fully understand their long-term impacts or the novel social structures they will create. These epistemic gaps complicate traditional ethical decision-making, which relies on a relatively stable understanding of human actions and their likely consequences. Vallor’s shift to a virtue ethics framework attempts to address this epistemic uncertainty by focusing not on fixed principles or precise outcomes, but on the cultivation of character traits that can help individuals and societies navigate uncertainty and complexity.
1. Technomoral Virtues as Epistemic Tools
Technomoral virtues, as Vallor presents them, are specifically designed to help moral agents act wisely in situations where knowledge is incomplete or where future consequences are difficult to predict. These virtues emphasize practical wisdom (phronesis)—the ability to make sound moral judgments in the face of uncertainty. In this sense, technomoral virtues function as epistemic tools. Rather than assuming that we can always predict the future consequences of a technology, Vallor’s framework encourages the cultivation of virtues such as humility, flexibility, and prudence, which help individuals recognise and respond to the limitations of their knowledge.
For example, the virtue of humility is crucial in contexts where our understanding of a technology’s potential risks is incomplete. Humility involves acknowledging the limits of our knowledge and being open to revising our actions and policies as new information becomes available. This stands in contrast to ethical frameworks that rely on definitive moral principles or utilitarian calculations, which may struggle when faced with epistemic uncertainty. In cases where the full implications of a technology are unknown, humility tempers overconfidence in our predictions and allows for a more cautious, adaptable approach【20†source】【19†source】.
Similarly, the virtue of flexibility is key to navigating technological landscapes that are rapidly evolving and unpredictable. Flexibility enables moral agents to adjust their responses as new technological developments emerge and as unforeseen consequences of technology use become apparent. This contrasts with ethical systems that might rigidly apply predefined rules to complex situations. Vallor’s emphasis on flexibility thus helps to mitigate the paralysis that can result from epistemic uncertainty, allowing individuals and societies to adapt their actions in light of new evidence【20†source】【21†source】.
2. Relational Understanding and Moral Self-Cultivation
Vallor also emphasizes the importance of relational understanding as part of the cultivation of technomoral virtues. This virtue encourages individuals to perceive the interconnections between technological, social, and environmental systems, fostering a holistic view of the potential impacts of emerging technologies. Relational understanding goes beyond narrow technical expertise, requiring moral agents to consider how technologies will affect not only immediate stakeholders but also distant and future populations. By encouraging moral agents to cultivate relational understanding, Vallor’s framework addresses the epistemic problem by helping individuals grasp the broader, often indirect consequences of technology deployment【20†source】.
Furthermore, moral self-cultivation—the continuous process of reflecting on and improving one’s character—is another critical element of Vallor’s virtue ethics. In a rapidly changing technological world, where new moral dilemmas frequently arise, agents must be committed to ongoing learning and moral growth. This process of self-cultivation is particularly important in addressing epistemic uncertainties because it fosters an adaptive mindset. Rather than relying on static ethical principles, individuals committed to self-cultivation remain open to revising their beliefs and practices in response to new technological realities【19†source】【21†source】.
3. Technomoral Wisdom: Navigating Uncertainty
Perhaps the most central of Vallor’s technomoral virtues is technomoral wisdom, a contemporary extension of Aristotle’s phronesis that specifically addresses the challenges posed by modern technologies. Technomoral wisdom is the capacity to make ethically sound decisions in complex, ambiguous situations where the future consequences of one’s actions are uncertain. It involves balancing competing ethical considerations—such as the potential benefits of a technology against its risks—while remaining attentive to the long-term impacts that are difficult to foresee.
In this sense, technomoral wisdom acts as a kind of ethical compass for navigating epistemic uncertainty. Instead of seeking definitive answers or complete knowledge before acting, agents guided by technomoral wisdom learn to act responsibly in the absence of certainty. This is particularly important in the context of emerging technologies, where the pace of innovation often outstrips our ability to fully grasp the ethical implications【20†source】【19†source】.
4. Global Technomoral Virtue Ethic: A Cooperative Epistemic Framework
Vallor also proposes that the cultivation of technomoral virtues should not be limited to individuals but should be a global, cooperative project. She argues that many of the ethical challenges posed by technologies—such as climate change, AI governance, and biotechnological risks—require globally coordinated action. This global perspective introduces a shared epistemic framework where collective moral deliberation can help address uncertainties more effectively than isolated individual judgments.
By fostering globally cooperative deliberation, technomoral virtues like empathy, civility, and magnanimity enable diverse groups to collaborate across cultural and epistemic divides. In this way, the epistemic challenges of technological uncertainty are distributed across a global network of moral agents, allowing for more robust, multi-perspective analysis of the potential consequences of technological decisions. This cooperative epistemic approach allows societies to draw on a broader range of knowledge, expertise, and moral traditions when grappling with complex, uncertain technologies【20†source】.
Conclusion: Virtue Ethics and the Epistemic Challenge
In sum, Vallor’s shift to a technomoral virtue ethics addresses the epistemic challenges posed by emerging technologies not by solving them in the traditional sense—through complete knowledge or precise prediction—but by fostering the character traits and habits of mind that allow moral agents to navigate uncertainty with wisdom, humility, and adaptability. By focusing on the cultivation of virtues like humility, flexibility, relational understanding, and technomoral wisdom, Vallor’s framework provides the tools necessary to make ethically responsible decisions in a world where the future impacts of technology remain fundamentally uncertain. The solution to the epistemic problem is not to eliminate uncertainty but to cultivate the virtues that allow us to act wisely and ethically despite it.
VL:
Morality, at least as I understand it, is about choice. Most ethical systems provide, at least in principle, guides to choosing, criteria by which different courses of action may be evaluated. Virtue ethicists, on the other hand, seem to sidestep this central question and recommend instead that we become certain kinds of people. How do we navigate this complexity, we ask our friendly neighbourhood virtue ethicist - and she replies: be humble, be flexible, be wise, cultivate the ‘technomoral virtues’ - in other words, be the kind of person who can navigate this complexity.
GPT-4o:
To deepen your critique: How does virtue ethics, particularly in the context of emerging technologies, address the moral agent’s need for specific guidance in choosing between competing courses of action, when it seems to focus more on the cultivation of character than on providing concrete decision criteria? Does the recommendation to ‘become the kind of person who can navigate this complexity’ really offer an actionable solution to ethical dilemmas, or does it sidestep the central issue of choice that other ethical systems aim to address more directly?
Your concern identifies a longstanding critique of virtue ethics: that it focuses on the development of virtue (being a certain kind of person) but offers less clear guidance on how to make specific moral choices (doing the right thing in concrete situations). This critique becomes especially salient in the context of emerging technologies, where the complexity and novelty of moral dilemmas seem to demand clear principles for action rather than abstract advice to cultivate virtues like humility, flexibility, or technomoral wisdom. Let’s unpack this further.
1. Virtue Ethics and the Role of Practical Wisdom
Virtue ethicists, particularly those in the Aristotelian tradition, would respond to your critique by emphasizing the centrality of practical wisdom (phronesis) in guiding moral choice. In this framework, practical wisdom is not a vague recommendation to simply ‘be wise’ but is the developed capacity to discern the morally salient features of a situation and to apply the virtues appropriately. For example, humility, courage, and flexibility are not standalone character traits that exist apart from decision-making; they are qualities that shape how a virtuous person makes decisions in complex, ambiguous contexts.
In this sense, phronesis is precisely about making choices—it is the intellectual virtue that allows one to navigate uncertainty and complexity in the absence of clear rules. This is particularly relevant in the modern world of emerging technologies, where the available information is often incomplete and the consequences of actions are difficult to predict. Vallor and other virtue ethicists argue that in such cases, the most responsible course of action is not to rely on rigid decision-making criteria, but to cultivate the judgment and wisdom necessary to weigh competing values and uncertainties on a case-by-case basis【19†source】【20†source】.
For instance, when faced with the ethical implications of deploying AI in healthcare, practical wisdom would guide a technomoral agent to balance concerns of privacy, efficiency, and equitable access, adapting their judgment as the technology evolves. This does not mean sidestepping the decision but addressing the complexity by considering how virtues (like justice, care, and humility) should guide the evaluation of risks and benefits.
2. Action-Guiding Virtues: The Bridge Between Character and Choice
Virtue ethics does not claim that moral virtues provide automatic solutions to moral problems, but it does argue that virtues structure how one perceives and reasons about choices. From this perspective, virtues are not merely character traits but also action-guiding dispositions. They shape how moral agents interpret and weigh different factors in a given situation. For example, the virtue of justice will prompt an individual to consider fairness and equality when deciding how to allocate resources, while the virtue of humility might lead one to question their assumptions or consult others when making difficult choices under uncertainty.
In Vallor’s framework, technomoral wisdom is designed to fill this gap, functioning as an ethical compass in contexts where the stakes are high, but knowledge is limited. The idea is that through the cultivation of virtues like empathy, flexibility, and prudence, technomoral agents become better equipped to make decisions that are sensitive to context, morally aware, and reflective of long-term consequences【20†source】.
But does this really solve the epistemic and decision-making challenge you’re raising? To some extent, virtue ethics acknowledges that there are limits to how much guidance can be provided in advance. Unlike utilitarianism, which provides a principle (maximise happiness) that can theoretically be applied to any situation, virtue ethics suggests that moral reasoning is situational and contextual. This means that, in some cases, virtue ethics offers guidance by shaping how we think about decisions, rather than by providing specific instructions on what to do in a given scenario.
3. Virtue Ethics vs Principle-Based Ethics: The Strength in Flexibility
While this may seem unsatisfying to those looking for concrete decision-making tools, virtue ethicists would argue that this flexibility is a strength, not a weakness. Rigid ethical principles can be inadequate or overly simplistic when applied to complex, real-world situations. Emerging technologies often introduce moral dilemmas that defy pre-existing rules. For instance, the ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapon systems or genetic engineering don’t fit neatly into traditional moral frameworks because these technologies create novel scenarios that our ethical theories have not yet fully anticipated.
Virtue ethics, in contrast, offers an adaptive framework. By focusing on the development of moral character and practical wisdom, it allows moral agents to approach new, unprecedented ethical dilemmas with a well-developed sense of judgment. This does not mean abandoning the need for choices; rather, it means recognising that making good choices in complex, uncertain contexts requires more than applying static principles—it requires developing the right habits of thought and action that allow for nuanced, context-sensitive decisions.
For example, in deciding whether to implement a new AI-driven surveillance system, a rule-based system might fixate on rights to privacy or security, without fully accounting for the trade-offs between them in specific contexts. A technomoral agent, however, would weigh the relevant virtues—humility to acknowledge the limits of their knowledge, justice to ensure that marginalised communities are not unfairly targeted, and flexibility to adapt the system as its impacts become clearer—providing a more holistic and flexible approach to moral decision-making.
4. Navigating Complexity: Moral Self-Cultivation as a Process
Your critique suggests that the instruction to ‘become the kind of person who can navigate this complexity’ might evade the core problem of ethical choice. But Vallor’s virtue ethics framework is not about simply being virtuous in some static sense; it is about ongoing moral self-cultivation. This process of moral development is dynamic, involving continuous reflection and adjustment as one confronts new challenges. The idea is not to avoid the question of choice but to prepare oneself to make better, wiser choices in uncertain and evolving circumstances.
This process is especially relevant in the context of technology, where the future consequences of current actions are often opaque. By emphasizing self-cultivation, virtue ethics encourages moral agents to remain ethically vigilant and adaptive—constantly learning, reflecting, and revising their judgments as new information comes to light. In other words, technomoral virtues equip individuals to not only make ethical decisions in the present but also to grow and improve their moral reasoning over time, as they encounter new ethical dilemmas posed by technological change【20†source】.
Conclusion: Virtue Ethics as a Response to Complexity
In sum, the shift to a virtue ethics framework, as Vallor advocates, is not about evading choice but about recognising that ethical decision-making in the context of emerging technologies requires more than applying fixed rules or principles. Virtue ethics seeks to cultivate the qualities that enable moral agents to make wise, context-sensitive decisions in complex and uncertain environments. While this approach may seem less directive than principle-based systems, it offers an important alternative: it prepares moral agents to navigate the evolving challenges of technology with flexibility, humility, and practical wisdom. Rather than sidestepping the question of choice, it equips individuals to make better, more informed choices in situations where traditional ethical systems may falter.
VL:
I’m still not convinced.
You write ‘practical wisdom is not a vague recommendation to simply “be wise” but is the developed capacity to discern the morally salient features of a situation and to apply the virtues appropriately’.
But the questions remain: How do we develop this capacity? What are the morally salient features of a given situation? How do we apply the virtues appropriately?
You write: ‘Phronesis . . . is the intellectual virtue that allows one to navigate uncertainty and complexity in the absence of clear rules.’
And how does one acquire this virtue?
You write: ‘Where the available information is often incomplete and the consequences of actions are difficult to predict, the most responsible course of action is not to rely on rigid decision-making criteria, but to cultivate the judgment and wisdom necessary to weigh competing values and uncertainties on a case-by-case basis.’
Does any serious-minded modern ethicist (consequentialist or deontologist) advocate reliance on rigid decision-making criteria (where ‘rigidity’ refers to a failure to adapt to the specifics of the ethical dilemma or to changed circumstances)?
Etc.
GPT-4o:
To deepen your critique: Is phronesis, as understood in virtue ethics, a practical and teachable capacity that can be meaningfully developed, or does it simply defer moral guidance to a vague appeal for cultivated wisdom? If the latter, does this represent a significant limitation of virtue ethics, particularly when compared to consequentialism or deontology, which at least provide clear, actionable frameworks—even if they are not rigid?
1. How Do We Develop Practical Wisdom (Phronesis)?
One of the central criticisms of virtue ethics is precisely the challenge you identify: How is phronesis—the capacity for practical wisdom—acquired, and how is it supposed to guide us in making real-world decisions?
Aristotle, the originator of the concept of phronesis, argues that it is developed through experience and moral habituation. The idea is that we learn to recognise the morally salient features of situations by repeatedly engaging in ethical decision-making and reflecting on the outcomes of our choices. According to Aristotle, we become virtuous by doing virtuous things; this is a gradual, iterative process where one builds up a repertoire of ethical experience, learning to discern which virtues are applicable in which situations.
In Vallor’s adaptation of this for the technological age, she adds the need for reflective engagement with technology itself. The capacity to navigate the novel ethical terrains created by AI, biotechnology, and other emerging technologies requires that moral agents cultivate technomoral virtues by continually interacting with these systems and reflecting on their impacts. However, this still leaves open the question: How does one reliably develop phronesis in an age where the ethical stakes are high, and the consequences of decisions can be catastrophic?
The concern is that virtue ethics does not offer a clear pedagogical strategy for acquiring phronesis beyond the exhortation to ‘practice’. Aristotle provides some guidance here by emphasizing the importance of moral exemplars—individuals who already possess phronesis and from whom others can learn. But this introduces a new problem: if few have cultivated phronesis to begin with, and if it is tied to long-term experience, then how do we start cultivating it in younger generations or across societies that face radically new ethical dilemmas (e.g., with technologies that are unprecedented)? In short, phronesis is not a skill that can be easily taught or reduced to a curriculum【20†source】【19†source】.
2. Identifying Morally Salient Features: How Do We Know What Matters?
Your question regarding how we identify the morally salient features of a situation is critical. In virtue ethics, phronesis involves being attuned to the specific aspects of a situation that call for a particular virtue or set of virtues. But how do we identify these features, especially when the context is novel and highly complex, such as in the case of technologies that alter human capacities or reshape social structures?
From the perspective of virtue ethics, this discernment process is inherently contextual. The morally salient features are those that stand out to a morally developed agent as being relevant to the ethical decision at hand. However, this leads back to the same challenge: the need for a pre-existing phronesis to know what matters. If I don’t already possess practical wisdom, how do I know what features of a situation to focus on? The concern is that virtue ethics, while strong on moral character, provides little in the way of guidance for those without extensive moral experience. It lacks the heuristics that other systems, like deontology (with rules) or consequentialism (with outcomes), offer to those less morally practiced.
To take an example from contemporary technological ethics: When dealing with data privacy concerns in AI, how do we weigh the right to individual privacy against the potential social benefits of data-driven decision-making? A consequentialist might approach this by weighing harms and benefits. A deontologist might ask whether privacy is a right that must be protected. A virtue ethicist, by contrast, would argue that the morally salient features depend on the virtues of justice, honesty, and care—but the application of these virtues still requires considerable phronesis to discern how they apply. This is where the epistemic uncertainty you mentioned becomes especially troubling. Without a robust understanding of the technology and its consequences, how can even the virtuous agent know which features matter most?
3. The Application of Virtues: What Does This Mean in Practice?
The challenge of applying virtues ‘appropriately’ in specific cases goes to the heart of the critique you’re raising. Virtue ethicists like Vallor emphasize the importance of flexibility and phronesis, but this does not resolve the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes ‘appropriate’ application. Vallor’s technomoral virtues, such as humility, empathy, and justice, provide a broad moral orientation but not a precise formula for action.
In practical terms, applying virtues like humility might mean acknowledging the limits of one’s knowledge before deploying a technology, while empathy might involve prioritising the well-being of marginalised groups who might be disproportionately affected by that technology. Yet the specifics of how these virtues play out can vary widely depending on the situation, leading to ambiguity in action. For example, what does humility look like in the context of a decision about using autonomous weapons? Does it mean hesitating before using lethal force, or does it mean deferring to experts with more knowledge about the technology?
Critics argue that virtue ethics, especially in its contemporary application to technology, risks being too vague to provide actionable moral guidance. In contrast, consequentialism and deontology often provide a more structured approach to decision-making, with clear evaluative criteria: maximise utility, respect rights, etc. Even though these systems can be flexible (most serious-minded consequentialists and deontologists, as you note, do not advocate for rigid application), they offer frameworks that allow for the evaluation of different courses of action in a structured way.
4. Do Consequentialists or Deontologists Rely on Rigid Criteria?
You rightly point out that few serious-minded ethicists—whether consequentialist or deontologist—would advocate for rigid decision-making criteria. Both consequentialism and deontology allow for the adaptation of principles to the specifics of ethical dilemmas. Rule utilitarians, for example, endorse rules that generally maximise utility but allow exceptions when breaking a rule results in better outcomes. Kantians, too, consider contextual factors when determining how a maxim applies in practice, allowing for different interpretations depending on the situation.
However, virtue ethics proponents like Vallor argue that even this flexibility in principle-based systems can fail to capture the full complexity of moral life, especially in the case of unprecedented technological developments. They suggest that virtue ethics, by focusing on character and practical wisdom, is inherently more adaptable to new situations than systems that are still tied to the application of principles. The question is whether this flexibility leads to greater moral insight, or whether it risks leaving agents without the clear guidance they need.
5. Conclusion: Is Virtue Ethics Sufficiently Actionable?
In the end, the core of your critique remains: while virtue ethics, especially in Vallor’s technomoral adaptation, emphasizes the cultivation of judgment and character, it risks not providing the specific moral guidance necessary for making difficult choices in situations of profound uncertainty. The recommendation to ‘become the kind of person who can navigate complexity’ can feel evasive if it does not answer the more pressing questions of how one actually makes difficult decisions when phronesis has not yet been developed or when one lacks the experience to discern the morally salient features of a situation.
Consequentialists and deontologists offer frameworks that, while imperfect, attempt to provide clearer action-guiding principles—even if those principles must be adapted to specific cases. Virtue ethics, by contrast, places a heavier burden on the moral agent to develop their capacity for judgment over time, which may leave those without phronesis struggling to make sense of their moral obligations in complex, novel contexts.
In summary, while virtue ethics holds out the promise of moral wisdom tailored to complex, real-world situations, it faces significant challenges in providing clear, actionable guidance for those still in the process of developing that wisdom. This may limit its usefulness in addressing the urgent ethical dilemmas posed by rapidly advancing technologies.
VL:
Let’s step back a bit. What are the functions of an ethical framework? What should it do? Off the top of my head: provide criteria for resolving ethical dilemmas, provide criteria for evaluating the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of actions, provide guides to moral action . . . extend and flesh out.
GPT-4o:
To step back and address the fundamental question: what functions should an ethical framework fulfil, and how can we systematically approach what it ought to do in guiding moral action and deliberation?
1. Providing Criteria for Resolving Ethical Dilemmas
One of the primary functions of any ethical framework is to offer criteria for resolving moral dilemmas—situations where conflicting values or principles make the correct course of action unclear. Ethical frameworks should provide clear tools or methods that allow agents to evaluate competing considerations and determine which course of action is morally preferable.
For instance:
Consequentialism resolves dilemmas by assessing the consequences of actions and opting for the one that maximises overall good (such as happiness or well-being).
Deontology, particularly in the Kantian tradition, resolves conflicts by referring to universal moral principles or duties that must be followed regardless of consequences (e.g., the principle that one should never lie).
Virtue ethics resolves dilemmas through the cultivation of phronesis (practical wisdom), encouraging moral agents to exercise virtues like justice, courage, and empathy in deciding what to do.
In any case, an ethical framework should offer a structured process to help agents weigh values and competing interests in complex scenarios.
2. Providing Guides to Moral Action
Ethical frameworks should serve as guides for action—not just in moments of moral conflict but in everyday life. They should help moral agents orient themselves toward living a morally good life. These guides can take different forms:
Principles or rules: Deontological frameworks often provide explicit rules or commandments (e.g., do not lie, do not harm others), which can serve as a direct guide to behaviour.
Outcome-based assessments: Utilitarian or consequentialist frameworks guide agents to focus on the outcomes of their actions, prompting them to aim for the greatest good or least harm.
Character and virtues: Virtue ethics, instead of prescribing rules, focuses on the agent’s moral character, offering guidance on how to cultivate traits like honesty, humility, and courage that will guide action across a range of situations.
The challenge for ethical frameworks is to balance specificity with flexibility. Too rigid a guide, and it risks being irrelevant in many contexts; too flexible, and it may fail to offer any meaningful guidance.
3. Evaluating Blameworthiness and Praiseworthiness
A third essential function of an ethical framework is to provide criteria for evaluating the moral status of actions and the agents performing them. This involves assessing whether actions were blameworthy or praiseworthy and why. Importantly, frameworks must also address issues like moral responsibility and moral luck—the extent to which agents are responsible for outcomes that may be beyond their control.
Consequentialists often evaluate actions based on their outcomes. If an action leads to a bad outcome, even if unintended, the moral agent may be deemed blameworthy.
Deontologists focus on the intentions and adherence to duty. Actions performed in accordance with moral principles are praiseworthy, while those that violate moral laws, even with good intentions or outcomes, can be morally condemned.
Virtue ethicists assess the character and motivations of the agent. They ask whether the action flowed from a virtuous character or a vicious one. Importantly, virtue ethics does not merely judge isolated actions but also looks at whether the agent consistently acts virtuously over time.
For instance, if a doctor makes a decision under conditions of uncertainty (e.g., deploying an experimental treatment), consequentialists might evaluate the outcome (did the treatment help or harm?), while virtue ethicists would examine the motivations (was the doctor acting with compassion, prudence, and courage?).
4. Cultivating Moral Character and Habits
An ethical framework should also provide tools for moral development. It should not merely tell people what to do in specific situations but also guide them in cultivating moral habits and dispositions. This is a key feature of virtue ethics, which emphasizes the importance of moral education, habituation, and the development of practical wisdom over time.
Even in deontology and consequentialism, moral development is important:
Deontologists emphasize moral education that helps individuals internalise principles like fairness and respect for persons.
Consequentialists might focus on teaching people to consider the broad, long-term consequences of their actions and develop empathy for distant or future others.
A mature ethical framework thus addresses both actions and agents—it tells us what to do, but also what kind of person we should aim to become.
5. Offering a Basis for Moral Critique and Social Justice
Beyond guiding individual action, ethical frameworks must also provide a basis for critiquing unjust social structures, practices, and policies. They need to offer criteria for evaluating institutions, not just individual actions. This is especially important in addressing structural injustices or systemic moral failures, such as racism, poverty, and environmental degradation.
Consequentialism critiques institutions and policies based on their overall social utility, focusing on the well-being and happiness of populations.
Deontologists evaluate the justice of institutions according to how well they respect individual rights, treat people with dignity, and enforce moral duties.
Virtue ethics, though traditionally more focused on individuals, can also critique societies that fail to promote the moral flourishing of their citizens or foster environments where virtues cannot thrive.
For example, the capabilities approach (developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen) builds on virtue ethics to argue that just societies should provide individuals with the opportunities to develop and exercise important human capabilities, such as education, health, and political participation. This framework offers a way of connecting virtue ethics to social justice.
6. Facilitating Global and Interdisciplinary Ethical Deliberation
In the modern world, ethical frameworks must also be capable of facilitating global and interdisciplinary deliberation. Technological advances, globalisation, and ecological crises require ethical frameworks that can be applied across cultural contexts and integrate insights from science, technology, and politics.
Vallor’s technomoral virtue ethics acknowledges this need by emphasizing that moral agents must cultivate virtues that are adaptable to rapid technological change and global interdependence. Her framework promotes international dialogue on shared ethical challenges, such as climate change and AI governance【21†source】【19†source】.
Conclusion: The Functions of an Ethical Framework
In sum, the key functions of an ethical framework are to:
Resolve ethical dilemmas by providing structured criteria for decision-making.
Guide moral action by helping individuals make choices in a variety of situations, whether through rules, outcomes, or virtues.
Evaluate moral responsibility, determining when actions are blameworthy or praiseworthy.
Foster moral development, shaping both moral agents and their habits over time.
Critique social structures to advance justice and address systemic moral failures.
Enable global and interdisciplinary dialogue to tackle complex and interconnected ethical issues.
A robust ethical system is one that not only prescribes actions but also shapes individuals and societies to be capable of moral growth, response, and adaptation to new challenges.
VL:
And though we’ve touched on this throughout this conversation, could we revisit the initial question and explore (quite apart from Vallor’s contribution) how a morally serious actor should approach ethical decision making in the 21st century (specifically in relation to ethical dilemmas surrounding emergent technologies).
GPT-4o:
To approach ethical decision-making in the 21st century—especially regarding emergent technologies—a morally serious actor must grapple with several layers of complexity. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, autonomous systems, and climate engineering present challenges that traditional ethical frameworks often struggle to address comprehensively. A sophisticated approach to such dilemmas must be both multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from ethics, technology studies, political theory, and the sciences. Below, I outline several key principles that can guide such an actor in making ethical decisions in this complex technological landscape.
1. Engage in Epistemic Responsibility
The first principle is epistemic responsibility—the recognition that morally responsible action requires adequate understanding of the technology in question and its potential consequences. This idea can be traced back to philosophers like Hans Jonas, who argued that with the expanded power of modern technologies comes an expanded duty to understand their far-reaching and sometimes unpredictable effects.
In practice, this means:
Acquiring knowledge about the underlying mechanics of the technology.
Engaging with interdisciplinary research that combines ethical theory with technical expertise.
Collabourating with stakeholders, including scientists, engineers, ethicists, and affected communities.
For example, before endorsing or deploying AI systems in law enforcement, a morally serious actor would need to understand how these systems operate, the risks of algorithmic bias, and the social consequences for marginalised groups.
2. Consider Long-Term and Systemic Consequences
Ethical decision-making in relation to emergent technologies must account for long-term and systemic consequences, an approach that parallels consequentialist ethics but is broadened in scope to include indirect and long-term effects. Emerging technologies often generate ripple effects that are hard to predict. For instance, CRISPR gene editing may solve genetic disorders but could have unforeseen effects on biodiversity or introduce new forms of inequality.
This is where ethical futurism comes into play. As discussed by Jonas and later thinkers like Nick Bostrom, moral agents must factor in worst-case scenarios—especially when technologies pose existential risks. This precautionary approach calls for scenario planning and stress-testing ethical choices against a range of possible futures.
Key steps here include:
Modelling potential downstream effects of the technology.
Asking not only ‘What are the benefits now?’ but ‘What could go wrong in the future?’
Building in reversibility or safeguards when deploying technologies that could have catastrophic risks (e.g., autonomous weapons, synthetic biology).
3. Moral Pluralism and Deliberative Ethics
A morally serious actor in the 21st century must embrace moral pluralism. There is rarely one ethical theory that fits all aspects of emergent technology dilemmas, and complex technological systems intersect with multiple domains of value—human rights, justice, privacy, fairness, environmental sustainability, etc.
One way to navigate this is through deliberative ethics. Drawing from Habermasian discourse ethics, this approach advocates that ethical decisions involving technology should be collectively reasoned by affected stakeholders through transparent and inclusive dialogues. This ensures that the voices of diverse groups, including those who may be most vulnerable to technological harm, are heard.
For example, in the case of autonomous vehicles, deliberative ethics would call for policymakers, engineers, ethicists, and the public to engage in reasoned debate about acceptable trade-offs between safety and efficiency, or between privacy and data collection.
4. Respect for Human Dignity and Rights
Many technological developments raise significant concerns about human dignity and rights. From surveillance technologies that infringe on privacy to autonomous systems that may make life-and-death decisions without human oversight, emergent technologies can easily violate the deontological principle of treating individuals as ends in themselves, rather than means to an end (as in Kantian ethics).
Key issues here include:
Informed consent: ensuring that users of technologies (e.g., genetic editing, biometric data systems) fully understand the risks and benefits.
Autonomy and agency: safeguarding individual choice, particularly when technologies operate in ways that shape or limit personal freedoms (e.g., algorithmic decision-making in parole decisions or healthcare).
Non-discrimination: ensuring that technologies do not disproportionately harm or disadvantage particular groups, such as racial minorities, women, or the disabled.
The moral agent here must critically evaluate technologies from the standpoint of universal human rights—privacy, freedom, equality—and resist justifications for violating these rights based on utilitarian grounds.
5. Adopt a Precautionary Principle
Given the uncertainty and unpredictability that often accompany emerging technologies, the precautionary principle should guide action. This principle suggests that when there is a risk of significant harm (especially irreversible or catastrophic harm), the burden of proof falls on those advocating for the use of the technology to demonstrate that it is safe.
This has been widely applied in environmental ethics, such as debates over climate engineering technologies like solar geoengineering, but it can be extended to any high-risk technology. A morally serious actor would refrain from endorsing or developing technologies that present unknown risks until those risks can be more clearly understood and mitigated.
In practical terms:
Regulators should adopt adaptive governance structures that can respond quickly to new information about a technology’s harms.
Ethical actors should promote the development of safety nets—mechanisms to roll back, suspend, or correct the deployment of a technology if serious risks materialise.
6. Foster Virtuous Innovation
A morally serious approach to emergent technologies also involves fostering virtuous innovation. This means ensuring that technological development is not driven solely by profit or efficiency, but by ethical considerations, human flourishing, and global justice. Drawing on the Aristotelian tradition, this approach calls for cultivating technomoral virtues—honesty, empathy, justice, humility, and wisdom—in innovators, policymakers, and users.
In this sense, moral actors should advocate for:
Ethical research and development practices that integrate ethical review processes into every stage of technological design.
Accountability mechanisms that ensure technologies are designed and implemented with the aim of serving the common good, not just narrow economic or political interests.
Public education to ensure that citizens are empowered to understand and engage with the ethical dimensions of technologies.
7. Engage in Global and Collective Responsibility
Finally, ethical decision-making in the 21st century must be global in scope. The challenges posed by technologies—whether AI, climate engineering, or biotechnology—often have consequences that transcend national boundaries. The moral agent must therefore engage in global ethical reasoning and take collective responsibility for the impact of technologies on global well-being.
This global perspective echoes cosmopolitan ethics, where moral agents have obligations not only to their immediate communities but also to future generations and distant others. This means advocating for global standards in the ethical use of technology (e.g., universal guidelines for AI ethics) and ensuring that technological benefits and risks are equitably distributed across societies.
Conclusion: A Multi-Dimensional Ethical Approach
A morally serious actor navigating ethical dilemmas around emergent technologies in the 21st century should adopt a multi-dimensional approach. This includes being epistemically responsible, weighing long-term consequences, respecting human dignity, embracing moral pluralism, applying the precautionary principle, fostering virtuous innovation, and thinking globally. In short, ethical decision-making in this context requires balancing flexibility, humility, and the practical wisdom needed to address unprecedented challenges, while remaining rooted in respect for human rights and the common good.
