Deck 15: The Ethics of Artifacts

Question 1

What is technological mediation? What is the moral relevance of this phenomenon?

Answer 1

No Answer.

Question 2

Did Lee Harvey Oswald and his rifle kill John F. Kennedy? Or was it just Lee Harvey Oswald? Explain your answer.

Answer 2

No Answer.

Question 3

Which view is most plausible, the strong view or the common sense view? Explain why.

Answer 3

No Answer.

Question 4

Does the designer's intention influence the moral properties of a technological artifact? If so, how?

Question 5

How should we understand Latour's notion of an "actant"?

Question 6

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 20, 1963. According to defenders of the strong view, he was killed by

A) Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle.
B) Lee Harvey Oswald and his rifle.
C) Lee Harvey Oswald.
D) someone else.

Question 7

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 20, 1963. According to defenders of the common sense view, he was killed by

A) Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle.
B) Lee Harvey Oswald and his rifle.
C) Lee Harvey Oswald.
D) someone else.

Question 8

The furnaces used by Nazis in the death camps were

A) used by the Nazis without the awareness of the designers.
B) refitted for use in the camps for a purpose different from their design.
C) designed and sold with knowledge of how they would be used in the camps.
D) poorly designed and engineered.

Question 9

The invention of the telephone to help hard of hearing people might be used as an example of

A) the adage that necessity is the mother of invention.
B) how we have too many technological mediators governing our communication.
C) how technological artifacts take on a life of their own beyond the intentions of their designers.
D) an actant.

Question 10

The word mediate literally means "placing in the middle." Which of the following represents a strong view of technology as mediating action?

A) A speed bump that slows down cars
B) A pair of blue glasses that make everything look blue
C) A television which allows us to witness world events as they happen from our homes
D) A microscope that enables us to see tiny things

Question 11

Robert Moses is said to have designed bridges with low overpasses

A) to save on construction costs.
B) for aesthetic value.
C) to keep lower class and blacks out who rely on public transportation.
D) All of the above

Question 12

Langdon Winner believes that the low overpasses on Long Island designed by Robert Moses "embody a systematic social inequality, a way of engineering relationships among people that, after a time, becomes just another part of the landscape." This quote can be used to exemplify the

A) neutral (or weak) view.
B) moderate view.
C) deterministic view.
D) strong view.

Question 13

On Winner's view, technological artifacts come to

A) mediate our activity in the world.
B) nothing; they are completely inert.
C) embody values.
D) reveal standing-reserve.

Question 14

The apartheid system in South Africa ended with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. The apartheid regime built separate schools, healthcare units and restaurants for White and non-White people. Langdon Winner and other advocates of the strong view would say that

A) engineers in the South African society had a second-order responsibility to redesign the public buildings designed by the apartheid regime.
B) engineers in the South African society had a first-order responsibility to redesign the public buildings designed by the apartheid regime.
C) the social values of the apartheid system were engineered into nearly all public buildings in the South African society.
D) the public buildings designed by the Apartheid regime were morally neutral means to an end.

Question 15

The French sociologist Bruno Latour asks us to consider an example in which "the driver modifies his behavior through the mediation of the speed bump: he falls back from morality to force . . . on the campus road there now resides a new actant that slows down cars." This quote can be used to exemplify the

A) neutral (or weak) view.
B) moderate view.
C) deterministic view.
D) strong view.

Question 16

Sociologist Bruno Latour ask us to consider a "speed bump that forces drivers to slow down on campus. . . . The driver modifies his behavior through the mediation of the speed bump . . . on the campus road there now resides a new actant that slows down cars." Latour does not claim that the speed bump itself is a moral agent or "actant." It is not the speed bump that performs the action of slowing down cars. Latour's view is, rather, that

A) the people who design and use the speed bump slows down cars.
B) it is the combination of the speedbump and the people who design and use it that together slows down cars.
C) engineers have a first-order responsibility to design speed bumps that are safe and respect the driver's autonomy.
D) engineers have a second-order responsibility to design speed bumps that safe and respect the driver's autonomy.

Question 17

Which of the following might be an objection to Winner's view?

A) Technology is active in our lives whether designers intend it or not.
B) Technology reveals what actions designers have set for us.
C) Technology determines our actions in accordance with wishes of designers.
D) Technology cannot hold values unless we know intentions of designer.

Question 18

Which would of the following would count as further explanation of the strong view of technology?

A) The claim that technology cannot mediate our actions
B) The claim that there are no agents or actors but humans
C) The claims that moral responsibility is in rational agents
D) The claim that technology reveals certain activities to us

Question 19

Which of the following views technology and humans as forming hybrid agents?

A) Winner
B) Heidegger
C) Latour
D) None of the above

Question 20

What is an advantage of actor-network theory?

A) It explains why we should regulate the Internet.
B) It explains how technological networks reveal actions for actors.
C) It explains that technology matters in ethical discussions because it is not passive.
D) It explains that technology should be regulated by a network of scientists.

Question 21

The Chinese government banned Google search engines so as to

A) prevent users in China from obtaining information that is politically dissident.
B) prevent users in China searching about Tiananmen Square.
C) control the information that users can access in China.
D) All of the above

Question 22

Latour might interpret the Chinese firewall as a(n)

A) mere tool being used improperly by the Chinese.
B) new technological actant that mediates perception of the world.
C) example of why Communism should be opposed.
D) example of how technology promotes political stability.

Question 23

Martin Heidegger argues that "an airliner . . . stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is ordered to insure the possibility of transportation." Which of the following is the most plausible interpretation of his claim?

A) Airplanes reveal activities we can perform.
B) Airplanes merely give us access to new options.
C) Airplanes are moral agents.
D) Airplanes are morally irrelevant objects.

Question 24

Illies and Meijers think technology

A) mediates our knowledge of the world and should be viewed with suspicion.
B) reveals ways we can use artifacts and so influences our activity.
C) is entirely inert and so not a proper subject of moral concern.
D) creates more possibilities for action which is always better.

Question 25

Illies and Meijers think engineering is special because engineers

A) determine how reality is mediated through technology.
B) generate new actants.
C) reveal the world.
D) have second order moral responsibilities to increase our morally good options.