Abstract
Modern technology has brought about consequences of such magnitude that old policies and ethics can no longer contain them. Technological advances have made nature an object of human responsibility, and, as a result, if we are to restore and ensure her health, we must employ clever new approaches and rich, updated scientific and ethical knowledge. In our technological world, producing and applying such knowledge to real situations has become a duty, one that is just as important as making scientific advances.
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Notes
- 1.
First edition Conoscenza come dovere. Moralità distribuita in un mondo tecnologico, Pavia, Associated International Academic Publishers, 2005 (second Italian edition, Aracne, Rome, 2019).
- 2.
Non technological things endowed with moral values are for example written laws, religious objects, objects we love, important artistic buildings, etc.
- 3.
- 4.
Abductive cognition refers to all kinds of inferences able to produce plausible hypotheses, such as, for example, in the case of diagnostic reasoning or in scientific discovery.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Below I will address some details about the role of this kind of cognitive delegation from an ethical perspective.
- 8.
The ethics of care is an ethical theory that considers moral action centered on interpersonal relationships and care or benevolence as a virtue. It is one of the main aspects of normative ethical theories that were developed by feminists in the second half of the twentieth century (Urban Walker 1996).
- 9.
The role of the ethics of care in bioethics is illustrated in (Carse 1999).
- 10.
On ethics of care and related problems see above Sect. 13.2.2.
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This article is excerpted from L. Magnani (2007), Morality in a Technological World. Knowledge as Duty, Cambridge, with permission from ©2007 Cambridge University Press.
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Magnani, L. (2021). Knowledge as Duty. In: Chiodo, S., Schiaffonati, V. (eds) Italian Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54522-2_13
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