The prospective robots in healthcare intended to be included within the conclave of the nurse-patient relationship—what I refer to as care robots—require rigorous ethical reflection to ensure their design and introduction do not impede the promotion of values and the dignity of patients at such a vulnerable and sensitive time in their lives. The ethical evaluation of care robots requires insight into the values at stake in the healthcare tradition. What’s more, given the stage of their development and lack of (...) standards provided by the International Organization for Standardization to guide their development, ethics ought to be included into the design process of such robots. The manner in which this may be accomplished, as presented here, uses the blueprint of the Value-sensitive design approach as a means for creating a framework tailored to care contexts. Using care values as the foundational values to be integrated into a technology and using the elements in care, from the care ethics perspective, as the normative criteria, the resulting approach may be referred to as care centered value-sensitive design. The framework proposed here allows for the ethical evaluation of care robots both retrospectively and prospectively. By evaluating care robots in this way, we may ultimately ask what kind of care we, as a society, want to provide in the future. (shrink)

Current uses of robots in classrooms are reviewed and used to characterise four scenarios: Robot as Classroom Teacher; Robot as Companion and Peer; Robot as Care-eliciting Companion; and Telepresence Robot Teacher. The main ethical concerns associated with robot teachers are identified as: privacy; attachment, deception, and loss of human contact; and control and accountability. These are discussed in terms of the four identified scenarios. It is argued that classroom robots are likely to impact children’s’ privacy, especially when they masquerade as (...) their friends and companions, when sensors are used to measure children’s responses, and when records are kept. Social robots designed to appear as if they understand and care for humans necessarily involve some deception, and could increase the risk of reduced human contact. Children could form attachments to robot companions, or robot teachers and this could have a deleterious effect on their social development. There are also concerns about the ability, and use of robots to control or make decisions about children’s behaviour in the classroom. It is concluded that there are good reasons not to welcome fully fledged robot teachers, and that robot companions should be given a cautious welcome at best. The limited circumstances in which robots could be used in the classroom to improve the human condition by offering otherwise unavailable educational experiences are discussed. (shrink)

Developing technology that accounts for values has been achieved in many areas, including security, gaming, finance, engineering, and many more. The main methodological approach has been that of value sensitive design. But most of the work to date has been on the first of its three stages. The focus of this article is on advances related to its second stage, empirical investigation, and in particular the impact of contextual understanding in that stage. Although lessons can be learnt from other domains, (...) the specific context of dementia means that there are nuances to understanding values, including justice and autonomy, that differ from other areas. The integration of value considerations in the development of assistive technology in dementia is explored in two broad categories: the traditional and ongoing need for fixed decision support, and adaptable decision support technologies. For fixed decision support the A&D Benchmark is particularly useful in design. But for adaptable technologies, that benchmark requires further development, including consideration of the values of additional stakeholders, such as the general public. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to add one further value to the previously articulated “universal values” and to describe the constituent components of three universal values.Design/methodology/approachThis interpretive/constructivist study of Australia's largest online community of seniors involved a 30‐month ethnographic investigation. After an initial period of 11 months of observing social interaction on the entire site, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 participants, selected according to criterion sampling, a form of purposive sampling.FindingsFour key moral values were identified: equality, freedom, (...) respect and trust. All of them had been found in other studies, with equality and respect (as human dignity) identified as universal values. The findings from this study suggest that freedom is another universal value.Originality/valueThis study extends the understanding of universal values to include freedom. Further, it demonstrates the constituent components for freedom, and those of two other universal values previously identified in the literature, equality and human dignity, as well as revealing linkages between these three values. (shrink)

Implicit in the value sensitive design (VSD) approach is a concern for understanding, and where possible, disrupting problematic power relationships. Yet an awareness of the issues and ethics of power relations is a pre-requisite for such a concern to bear fruit. This article provides some insight into the issues, and through a case study of technology design to support care arrangements for age-related cognitive decline, illustrates how finding a satisfactory resolution can be particularly troublesome.

This essay presents a theory of the role of technology in the distribution and exercise of social power. The paper studies how technical artefacts and systems are used to construct, maintain or strengthen power relations between agents, whether individuals or groups, and how their introduction and use in society differentially empowers and disempowers agents. The theory is developed in three steps. First, a definition of power is proposed, based on a careful discussion of opposing definitions of power, and it is (...) argued that a theory of power should have two components: a theory of power relations and a theory of empowerment. Second, an analysis of power relations is presented, in which five basic types of power relations between agents are distinguished, and this analysis is applied to technology, resulting in an account of the possible roles of technical artefacts in power relations. Third, I analyse how technology can lead to or contribute to empowerment and disempowerment, and what resistance strategies are possible against disempowerment through technological means. The theory of technology and power presented in this paper is claimed to be an essential ingredient of a critical theory of technology, which is a theory that analyses and critiques the role of technology in the distribution and exercise of power in society. In the final section of this paper, it is argued that the theoretical analysis of power and technology presented in this paper provides an adequate basis for the further development of such a critical theory of technology. I study how it may, specifically, be used to develop strategies for the democratization of technology. (shrink)

This is a book about evolution from a post-Darwinian perspective. It recounts the core ideas of French philosopher Henri Bergson and his rediscovery and legacy in the poststructuralist critical philosophies of the 1960s, and explores the confluences of these ideas with those of complexity theory in environmental biology. The failings in the development of systems theory, many of which complex systems theory overcomes, are retold; with Bergson, this book proposes, some of the rest may be overcome too. It asserts that (...) Bergson’s ideas can further our understanding of evolution, and of complex systems, and aid the work of scientists working in the field of ecological complexity. See http://www.creativeemergence.info/ for more detail and sample chapter. "The claim is that Bergson's notions of duration and élan vital resonate with and provide interesting metaphysical speculations complementing a process structuralist biology of the Goodwin and Kauffman stripe. This is certainly provocative and worth further thought. The key claim is that the openness and unpredictability of systems "at the edge of chaos" (where a system can be said to "choose" at bifurcation points in its state space) meets the Bergsonian desideratum of an open universe that takes irreversible time and evolutionary difference seriously. In particular, Kreps stresses the way Bergson's insistence on the differentiating force of élan vital (which Kreps successfully defends from the charge of a substantialist vitalism along the lines of Hans Dreisch) puts him in line with those who see natural selection as a secondary pruning of a primary differentiation." -John Protevi, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2016.01.20 'This is no ordinary introduction to Henri Bergson. What David Kreps' excellent study gives us is Bergson, complexe: first, because there is no simple way to take (or leave) Bergson's ideas - his thought of durée, élan, and 'multiplicity' demands the most subtle and nuanced reading to give them their full justice; and second, because only by intertwining his ideas with the most up-to-date research in systems thinking, complexity theory, and poststructuralism can we begin to understand their absolute contemporaneity. Kreps' work does all this and more: it gives us the Bergson we need for today.' -John Mullarkey, author of Bergson and Philosophy 'Kreps' book is a thoroughly researched and well-written work that shows how Bergson's philosophy of evolution and time can also reinvigorate our ideas about complexity and organization in the natural and physical sciences.' -Stephen Crocker, author of Bergson and the Metaphysics of Media. (shrink)

"--David Dickson, New York Times Book Review "The Whale and the Reactor is the philosopher's equivalent of superb public history.