To each technology its own ethics? : a reply to Sætra and Danaher (and their critics)

Abstract

Contemporary ethics is currently ramifying into different sub-ethics specific to each type of technology. Although this trend has been very timely and rightly called into question by Sætra and Danaher, both these authors and their critics Llorca Albareda and Rueda leave the matter unsolved from a discipline point of view. In this commentary, we clarify the statute of the ethics of technology, which corresponds to that of a subsidiary applied ethics, and show how it is precisely that, what renders the creation of an ethics for each technology inappropriate. We thus provide a disciplinary reason to support Sætra and Danaher’s concern on tech ethics proliferation and to refute Llorca Albareda and Rueda’s relativization of it. In turn, we conclude by drawing some guidelines for tech ethics in practice.