Solicitude, Emotions, and Narrative in Technology Design Ethics

Authors

  • Paul Hayes TU Dublin; GradCAM; ECT Lab+; EUt+ Ideas Institute; SFI ADAPT Research Centre
  • Noel Fitzpatrick TU Dublin; GradCAM; ECT Lab+; EUt+ Ideas Institute; SFI ADAPT Research Centre

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/errs.2024.645

Keywords:

Emotion, Ethics, Technology, Narrative

Abstract

The first objective of this paper is to recognize the role of emotion and feeling in Ricœur’s “little ethics” and what they can further add to it, then to explore in more detail how solicitude as a virtue, and affective disposition more broadly, can contribute to a modern ethics of technology. Ultimately, emotions help us to understand technologies and technological ways of being today; Ricœur’s “little ethics”, along with his narrative theory, provide a framework for understanding the ethically salient aspects of technical practice, especially through the openness to the other demanded by solicitude, and essentially by emphasising emotion or feeling as a way of being in the world, and a mode of existence: one which is done with, if not sometimes because of, technology and technical practice.

Author Biographies

Paul Hayes, TU Dublin; GradCAM; ECT Lab+; EUt+ Ideas Institute; SFI ADAPT Research Centre

Paul Hayes is currently a postdoctoral researcher in TU Dublin working on questions of the ethics of AI and the ethics of technology more broadly. He works in association with SFI’s ADAPT Research Centre, the EUt+’s ECT Lab+ and Ideas Institute think tank, as well as TU Dublin’s Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media. Paul holds a PhD in Ethics and Human rights which he received from Trinity College Dublin in 2018.

Noel Fitzpatrick, TU Dublin; GradCAM; ECT Lab+; EUt+ Ideas Institute; SFI ADAPT Research Centre

Noel Fitzpatrick is Professor of Philosophy in TU Dublin, the Dean of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, and the Academic Lead of the European University of Technology’s European Culture and Technology Laboratory (ECT Lab+). He is principal investigator of multiple EC funded projects including MSCA EPISTEAM and MSCA NEST.

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Published

2024-08-28

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 1 (2024)

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Articles

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