On and beyond artifacts in moral relations: accounting for power and violence in Coeckelbergh’s social relationism

Abstract

The ubiquity of technology in our lives and its culmination in artificial intelligence raises questions about its role in our moral considerations. In this paper, we address a moral concern in relation to technological systems given their deep integration in our lives. Coeckelbergh develops a social-relational account, suggesting that it can point us toward a dynamic, historicised evaluation of moral concern. While agreeing with Coeckelbergh’s move away from grounding moral concern in the ontological properties of entities, we suggest that it problematically upholds moral relativism. We suggest that the role of power, as described by Arendt and Foucault, is significant in social relations and as curating moral possibilities. This produces a clearer picture of the relations at hand and opens up the possibility that relations may be deemed violent. Violence as such gives us some way of evaluating the morality of a social relation, moving away from Coeckelbergh’s seeming relativism while retaining his emphasis on social–historical moral precedent.

Thinking Unwise: A Relational U-Turn

“…Secondly, my analysis of their case-by-case method demonstrated that the Relationist can neither secure objective morality nor provide sufficient action guidance. Despite considering Gunkel's ethical pluralism (2018a) I, following Tollon and Naidoo (2021) and Mosakas (2020), concluded that this is not a satisfactory response. Thus, this essay has illustrated that not only is the Relationist's method of ascribing AMS anthropocentric, it cannot secure sufficient action guidance.…”

“…Following Tollon and Naidoo (2021), this issue pertains to the Relationist's fundamental caseby-case method of ascription as, as individuals "we often misinterpret the moral nature of relations" ( §6). Although their love for books compels them to treat books with respect, it does not, therefore, follow that books objectively deserve to be treated with respect -let alone mean that "books do in fact have moral status" (Ibid).…”

“…Moreover, they are subjective and independent. Thus, on Relational accounts, whereby whatever we deem our relation to be with an artefact determines their moral character (Tollon and Naidoo, 2021), this ascription only extends to ourselves. On a Relationist account, we are unable to secure objective morality.…”