Responsibility and Visioneering—Opening Pandora’s Box

Martin Sand*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    12 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The number of publications that highlight the influence of visions and futuristic narratives on the development of emerging technologies increases. Toolboxes such as “Hermeneutical Technology Assessment” and “Vision Assessment” provide methodological considerations on how to assess techno-futuristic narratives, their proponents, and their impact on technological development. Because of their contributions to the technoscientific discourse, a special responsibility for technological processes is attributed to the “visioneers” of such narratives. While such a claim naturally follows from an agential role in a process, it is not clear whether visioneers should be held responsible. Some problems of this attribution will be addressed in the present paper. Particularly the following questions will be considered: Which role does autonomy play for responsibility? Is causation sufficient for the attribution of responsibility? Which role do intentions and alternatives play for the responsibility of visioneers? These questions will be discussed against the backdrop of contemporary approaches to the responsibility of visioneering and classic philosophical works in the field. Furthermore, the problem of accountability will be considered. Socio-technical systems are highly complex, which makes it hard to trace back the origins of particular developments. It will be argued that it is currently unreasonable to give visioneers the status of an important player. The article will shed light on the several dimensions of responsibility and provide a more nuanced understanding of responsibility in the context of new and emerging technologies.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)75-86
    Number of pages12
    JournalNanoEthics
    Volume10
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2016

    Keywords

    • Accountability
    • Autonomy
    • Causation
    • Intention
    • Responsibility
    • Visioneering

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