This is Technology Ethics

3METHODS OF TECHNOLOGY ETHICS: THE ETHICS OF SELF‐DRIVING CARS AS A CASE STUDY

3.1 Methodologies of Ethics?

3.1 When academic researchers apply for research grants, they typically have to complete various forms. The application forms usually have a section in which the researchers need to describe what methods they use. This methodology section is one that philosophy researchers, including philosophers focusing on ethics, often find it a bit hard to fill out. This is not because there are no methods that they are using. (To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, there are certainly “methods to the madness” that is philosophy!) It is rather because the choice of method is often itself a philosophical—or indeed even an ethical—issue that needs to be debated and reflected on. Philosophers tend to disagree about what methods are the best ones to use. When it comes to ethics, it can sometimes even happen that certain methods of studying the topic may appear to be ethically questionable to some. More on this later.

3.2 So how do philosophers typically deal with the methodology section in grant applications? What many philosophers end up doing is to say that they will be using the so‐called reflective equilibrium methodology. The idea is that in thinking about philosophical issues, one should continually be moving back and forth between more general ideas, principles, and intuitions, on the one hand, and more specific ideas, judgments, and intuitions, on the other hand. One ...