LPHIL7255 Technology and Human Values Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This Master’s course explores the social, political, and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies. Technology so permeates our way of life that some have characterised human beings as technological animals. While our relationship with technology is given, the precise nature of this relationship is not. The contemporary world and human history are replete with diverse and sometimes contradictory ways of conceiving how people and technology interact. The course focuses on key questions concerning this interaction: how to understand the humanity-technology relationship; the means to assess technology’s social, ethical, and political aspects; decision-making for integrating emerging technologies into society; and criteria for their appropriateness and intended purposes. From machine learning algorithms to genetically enhanced humans, automated weapons to automated labour, and assisted reproduction to ‘Brexit’, the course critically assesses the relationship between emerging technologies and our societies, cultures, and values. The course guides students in making informed decisions about integrating emerging technologies into society and determining their appropriateness for various ends. Through a curriculum enriched by philosophical analysis and insights from sociology, political science, public policy, and technology studies, this course aims to enhance students’ practical ethics understanding, analytical skills in ethical issues, argument development and deconstruction, abstract theorising, and effective communication. Additionally, it cultivates the ability to engage constructively with peers, process arguments charitably, and participate in productive debates.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject-Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and a range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, and discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies.

Teaching and learning strategies for this course will include:

• Lectures: Instructor-led classes.
• Seminars/workshops: Interactive sessions on project management principles, focused on applying theoretical concepts.
• Experiential Learning, which may include simulations and role-playing for hands-on experience, or guest speakers for insight from professionals.
• Online Resources: Flexible learning with additional study materials.

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups.

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150, including a minimum of 16.5 scheduled hours.

Employability Skills

• Work independently, creatively, and within deadlines
• Work collaboratively with peers and engage in constructive debate and group problem-solving
• Conduct research and explore relevant existing knowledge
• Analyse, contextualise, and interpret complex ideas and materials
• Synthesise and evaluate information against a backdrop of uncertainty
• Present complex ideas clearly and persuasively in both written and spoken formats

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed during the course by means of set assignments. These do not count towards the end of year results, but will provide students with developmental feedback, both written and oral. For example, students may be requested to write an essay about a studied argument. The aim here is for the student to critically engage with the writer’s arguments, perhaps choosing to strengthen or deconstruct a presented case.

Summative

Assessment will be in one form:

The written assignment will be assessed in accordance with the assessment aims set out in the Programme Specification.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is used as part of the approval/modification process only.

Books

Ronald Sandler, ed. (2014) Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Palgrave Macmillan (hereafter abbreviated to ‘EET’).

Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek eds., Philosophy of Technology (2014: Wiley Blackwell, Oxford).

Sven Nyholm (2023). This is Technology Ethics: An Introduction Wiley-Blackwell.

Carissa Veliz, ed. (2023), The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics, Oxford University Press.

Charles Mills, (2017), ‘Racial Exploitation’, in his Black Rights/White Wrongs Oxford University Press.

Journals

Nyholm, S., Smids, J. (2016) ‘The Ethics of Accident-Algorithms for Self-Driving Cars: an Applied Trolley Problem?’ Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19, 1275–1289

Savulescu, J (2007), ‘In Defense of Procreative Beneficence’, Journal of Medical Ethics 33(5): 284-288.

Autor, D. H. (2015), ‘Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29, pp. 3–30

Haraway, Donna (1985), ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’ Socialist Review 80: 65-108.

Sparrow, R. (2007). ‘Killer robots’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24, 62–77.

McTernan, E. (2015). Should Fertility Treatment be State Funded? Journal of Applied Philosophy, 32(3), 227–240.

Anderson, E. (1999), What is the point of equality? Ethics, 109 (2): 287-337.

Dabbagh, H., Earp, B.D., Mann, S.P. et al. (2024) AI ethics should be mandatory for schoolchildren. AI Ethics, forthcoming, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-024-00462-1

Electronic Resources

Living with Robots: A Conversation with Kate Darling, Waking Up podcast, 2017: https://samharris.org/podcasts/living-with-robots/ 

Devlin, K. (2017). ‘Sex robots’, TED talk, 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlNV2fx7iS0

Michael Sandel, ‘The Case Against Perfection’, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-perfection/302927

Indicative Topics

Students will study the following topics:

• Humankind’s relationship with technology
• The challenges posed by automated weaponry and vehicles, relating to risk, responsibility, and control
• Genetic selection, enhancement, and eugenics
• Feminist perspectives on reproductive technologies
• Technology and human relationships, from love drugs to sex robots
• The impact of automation on labour and inequality
• The impact of technology on democracy

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