When a new technology emerges, it is often claimed that it is outpacing ethics and law. Because of the nature of law in the United States, it is easy for technology to outpace it, especially given the average age of members of Congress. However, it is difficult for technology to outpace ethics.
One reason is that any minimally adequate ethical theory will have the quality of expandability. That is, the theory can be applied to what is new, be that technology, circumstances or something else. An ethical theory that lacks the capacity of expandability would become useless immediately and would not be much of a theory.
It is, however, worth considering that a new technology could “break” an ethical theory in that the theory could not expand to cover the technology. However, this would seem to show that the theory was inadequate rather than showing the technology outpaced ethics.
Another reason technology would have a hard time outpacing ethics is that an ethical argument by analogy can (probably) be applied to new technology. That is, if the technology is like something that exists and has been discussed in ethics, this ethical discussion can be applied to the new technology. This is analogous to using ethical analogies to apply ethics to different specific situations, such as an act of cheating in a relationship.
Naturally, if a new technology is absolutely unlike anything else in human experience (even fiction), then the method of analogy would fail absolutely. However, it seems unlikely that such a technology could emerge. But I like science fiction (and fantasy) and am willing to entertain the possibility of an absolutely new technology. While it would seem that existing ethics could handle, but perhaps something absolutely new would break all existing ethical theories, showing they are all inadequate.
While a single example does not provide much in the way of proof, it can be used to illustrate. As such, I will use the matter of personal drones to illustrate how ethics is not outpaced by technology.
While remote controlled and automated devices have been around a long time, the expansion of technology created something new for ethics: drones, driverless cars, AI, Facebook, and so on. However, drone ethics is easy. By this I do not mean that ethics is easy, it is just that applying ethics to new technology (such as drones) is not as hard as some might claim. Naturally, doing ethics is hard—but this applies to very old problems (the ethics of war) and very “new” problems (the ethics of killer robots in war).
Getting back to the example, a personal drone is one that tends to be much smaller, lower priced and easier to use relative to government operated drones. In many ways, these drones are slightly advanced versions of the remote-control planes that are regarded as expensive toys. Drones of this sort that most concern people are those that have cameras and can hover—perhaps outside a bedroom window.
Two areas of concern are safety and privacy. In terms of safety, the worry is that drones can collide with people (or vehicles, such as manned aircraft) and injure them. Ethically, this falls under doing harm to people, be it with a knife, gun or drone. While a flying drone flies about, the ethics that have been used to handle flying model aircraft, cars, etc. can be applied here. So, this aspect of drones did not outpace ethics.
Privacy can also be handled. Simplifying things for the sake of a brief discussion, a drone allows a person to (potentially) violate privacy in the usual two “visual” modes. One is to intrude into private property to violate a person’s privacy. In the case of the “old” way, a person can put a ladder against a person’s house and climb up to peek through a window. In the “new” way, a person can fly a drone up to the window and peek in using a camera. While the person is not physically present in the case of the drone, their “agent” is present and is trespassing. Whether a person is using a ladder or a drone to gain access to the window does not change the ethics of the situation.
A second way is to peek into private space from public space. In the case of the old way a person could, for example, stand on the public sidewalk and look into other peoples’ windows or yards. In the “new” way, a person can deploy his agent (the drone) in public space to do the same sort of thing.
One potential difference between the two situations is that a drone can fly and thus can get viewing angles that a person on the ground (or even with a ladder) could. For example, a drone might be in the airspace far above a person’s backyard, sending images of someone sunbathing in the nude behind her very tall fence on her very large estate. However, this is not a new situation—paparazzi have used helicopters to get shots of celebrities, and the ethics are the same. As such, ethics has not been outpaced by the drones in this regard. This is not to say that the matter is solved people are still debating the ethics of this sort of “spying”, but to say that it is not a case where technology has outpaced ethics.
What is mainly different about the drones is that they are now affordable and easy to use—so whereas only certain people could afford to hire a helicopter to get photos of celebrities, now camera-equipped drones are easily in reach of the hobbyist. So, it is not that the low priced drone provides new capabilities, it is that it puts these capabilities in the hands of the many.
A Philosopher’s Blog is Now on Substack!
You can subscribe and read for free.