Virtue Ethics for Responsible Innovation

Abstract

Governments and companies are increasingly promoting and organizing Responsible Innovation. It is, however, unclear how the seemingly incompatible demands for responsibility, which is associated with care and caution, can be harmonized with demands for innovation, which is associated with risk-taking and speed. We turn to the tradition of virtue ethics and argue that it can be a strong accomplice to Responsible Innovation by focussing on the agential side of innovation. Virtue ethics offers an adequate response to the epistemic and moral complexity in innovation and encourages moral behaviour. We enumerate a number of virtues that people involved in Responsible Innovation would need to cultivate both related to responsibility, such as justice, anticipation, civility and inclusion, and virtues related to innovation, such as courage, dedication, curiosity and creativity. We put forward practical wisdom (phronesis) as a key virtue to regulate relevant virtues and to deal with the tension between responsibility and innovation. Practical wisdom helps an agent to find an appropriate mean in exercising and expressing the other virtues—where the mean is relative to the specific context of action and the role and abilities of the agent.

Designing in Times of Uncertainty: What Virtue Ethics Can Bring to Engineering Ethics in the Twenty-First Century

“…However, while preventive ethics may be partially effective in achieving its goals, it lacks "an internal, motivational, and often idealistic element present in professional life that cannot adequately be accounted for by rules" (p. 155). It is this element that is said to be better accounted for and mobilised by virtue ethics, resulting in an 'aspirational' ethics that has a positive rather than a preventive orientation (Bowen, 2009;Harris, 2008;Schmidt, 2014;Steen et al, 2021). This positive orientation also captures some of the zeitgeist we experienced at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…At this point, it is imperative to note that the exercise of virtue both in the engineer's personal and professional life requires it to be done deliberately, with practical wisdom. Multiple authors have emphasised the importance of practical wisdom or phronesis for the virtuous engineer and the capability for proper engineering judgement (e.g., Frigo et al, 2021;Harris, 2008;Schmidt 2014;Steen et al, 2021). Aristotle defined practical judgement as "a reasoned and true state of capacity-to act concerning human goods" (NE VI.5).…”

“…Aristotle defined practical judgement as "a reasoned and true state of capacity-to act concerning human goods" (NE VI.5). For engineers, this complex virtue would allow them to know what aspects of a situation are relevant, what virtues are appropriate in a given situation, how they fit together, and how they should be exemplified in practice Steen et al, 2021). As such, the virtue of practical wisdom may be of particular use when the consequences of an action are not entirely known, or the appropriate norms are not given, i.e., it may help engineers when significant aspects of the case are uncertain (Frigo et al, 2021).…”

Phronesis as reflection

“…This has led to the suggestion that phronesis can support integration of theory and practice during reflection (Tsang, 2005). Virtue ethics has also been related to reflexivity when considering innovation (Steen, Sand, & Van de Poel, 2021) and to the self-awareness needed by professionals to act both virtuously and successfully (Stovall, 2011). Birmingham, in the context of education, goes further, equating phronesis with reflection (Birmingham, 2004).…”

The Integrative Expert: Moral, Epistemic, and Poietic Virtues in Transformation Research

“…In this paper, we build upon philosophy (e.g., [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]) and responsible innovation scholarship (e.g., [21][22][23]), and take the language of virtues as a means to spell out the normative aspects of integrated practices of technical experts, showing how this language applies to integrative efforts in SD, TA, and RI. We conduct a theoretical exposition of the capacities that are found to be exercised by scientists and engineers who participated in prior empirical studies.…”