indo-us workshop at iiit delhi feb10th to 12th,2011 1 technological progress and human values r...

Indo-US workshop at IIIT Delhi Feb10th to 12th ,2011

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Technological Progress and Human Values

R Sharan

LNMIIT JAIPUR(Earlier at IIT Kanpur)sharan[at]iitk.ac.in


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Contents

• Why courses on engineering ethics?

• Wiener and Gandhi.

• Multicultural issues: Knowing the learner.

• Sharing the Experience


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• Courses on Engineering ethics started in the decade of 1970s.

• By 1990s courses on computer and information ethics started (Bynum, SEP)

• Bynum refers to work of Norbert Wiener

• The Human Use of Human beings. (Cybernetics and Society)


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Norbert Wiener

• ‘Thus the new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword. It may be used for the benefit of humanity, but only if humanity survives…It may also be used to destroy humanity, and if it is not used intelligently it can go very far in that direction’ (Weiner,1954: 162)


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Two books (by Norbert Wiener and Mahatma Gandhi)

• The Human Use of Human beings. (1950/ 1954)

• Hind Swaraj (1908/1909)


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Hind Swaraj (1909), Chapter on the

condition of India

Railways, lawyers and doctors have impoverished the country so much so that, if we do not wake up in time, we shall be ruined.


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Gandhi on Technology

How can I be when I know that even this body is a most delicate piece of machinery? The spinning wheel itself is a machine; a little tooth-pick is a machine. What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such.


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Gandhi and Wiener

Both advocate technological progress within moral boundary.

Moral Boundaries- Wiener: Deontism, Utilitarianism,

Phenomenology, Virtue Ethics.

Gandhi: Talisman


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Talisman of Gandhi"Whenever you are in doubt, or when

the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it?"


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How does a Learner of Engineering Ethics look at

moral boundary?


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Understanding the learner: Alasdair Macintyre.

• :”I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. ---These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is the part what gives my life its own particularity”


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Indian Situation

Education1660

1862

1857 1908 1947 2011

India

Morrill Act

Europe

America

Royal Society

Gandhi Forgotten


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• East India Company

• Political Independence

Post independence economic growth and education


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Stratification of Indian society

(i) a small Indian elite trying to be like the western elite;

(ii) an Indian middle class trying to follow the Indian elite; and

(iii) a large deprived section of people who, like the Indians of colonization era, feel that great injustice is being done to them.


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Experience

• The students were not willing to accept that there were a large number of deprived persons in India. They thought that this was a thing of the past. Hence, Gandhi’s talisman remained only at a ritualistic level and did not make any real impact.


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Task for Indian scientific and technological elite

Look inwards to

(i) build scaffoldings which enable even deprived persons to participate in creation of technological progress and

(ii) think of moral boundaries within which this should take place.

That would be meaningful relevant engineering ethics.


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Steinbeck Nobel Prize acceptance speech 1962

“We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God”.


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Steinbeck Nobel Prize acceptance speech 1962

• “We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God”.

• “Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.”


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Steinbeck Nobel speech 1962(contd)

• “The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand.Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope.”

• Kamayani of Jaya Shankar Prasad?

indo-us workshop at iiit delhi feb10th to 12th,2011 1 technological progress and human values r...

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