I Van De Poel
Biographic Data
| ID | 30732 |
|---|---|
| NAME | I Van De Poel |
| GIVEN NAMES | I |
| FAMILY NAME | Van De Poel |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DE POEL I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Delft University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9553-5651 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Engineering Ethics in the Netherlands and the United States
This paper investigates the drivers behind the institutionalization of engineering ethics at the national level through a comparative study of the United States and the Netherlands. The study examines the historical evolution and current landscape of engineering ethics activities in both countries. By comparing emergence, process, and actor involvement dimensions, commonalities and differences between the two nations’ approaches to the institutio…
Not a Good Fix
We examine whether Thomsonian constitutivism, a metaethical view that analyses value in terms of ‘goodness-fixing kinds,’ i.e. kinds that themselves set the standards for being a good instance of the respective kind, offers a satisfactory explanation of value change and disagreement. While value disagreement has long been considered an important explanandum, we introduce value change as a closely related but distinct phenomenon of metaethical int…
The distinction between generic and specific concepts and why it matters for conceptual engineering
Conceptual engineering is an approach or method for assessing, improving, adapting and disposing concepts. While recent case studies have shown the possibility and success of conceptual engineering, I argue that not all concepts are equally open to conceptual engineering. It is therefore useful to distinguish between generic and specific concepts. While the latter can be the object of conceptual design, I argue that designing generic concepts is …
Digital ethics by design – a comprehensive evaluation of the design for values approach in practice
Many guidelines outline ethical principles for designing and deploying emerging digital technologies, like AI, in public services, but there is a gap between such principles and practices. We evaluate whether an educational intervention can enable public sector professionals to close this gap and implement responsible innovation. The educational intervention was based on Design for Values, a responsible innovation approach to integrate values int…
Acceptable risk under moral uncertainty
Modelling Value Change
Value and moral change have increasingly become topics of interest in the philosophical literature. Several theoretical accounts have been proposed. These are usually based on certain theoretical and conceptual assumptions. Their strengths and weaknesses are often difficult to determine and compare because they are based on limited empirical evidence. We propose agent-based modeling to build simulation models that can theoretically help us explor…
Sustainable design of multiscale CO2 electrolysis
The present study utilizes a value sensitive design (VSD) inspired approach to contribute to the design and implementation of CO2 electrolysis (CO2E) within the framework of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies, which convert CO2 into valuable products. The focus of this study is on a low technology readiness level (TRL) technology, yet likely relevant to reach climate neutrality by 2050. We examine the perspectives of stakeholders a…
Transforming towards inclusion-by-design
Digitalization and datafication of financial systems result in more efficiency, but might also result in the exclusions of certain groups. Governments are looking for ways to increase inclusions and leave no one behind. For this, they must govern an organizational ecosystem of public and private parties. We derive value-based requirements through a systematic research methodology and iteratively refine design principles for achieving inclusivity …
Understanding engineering ethics in countries
In recent decades, distinct national approaches to engineering ethics have evolved, each tailored to its unique contextual factors. These contextual disparities make it unfeasible to transfer one country's engineering ethics approach directly into another. This calls for a compelling need to enhance our comprehension of engineering ethics within specific national contexts. This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework for national engineerin…
Value Change and Technological Design
Technology helps to solve problems, but it may also lead to unintended consequences. For example, biofuels may help to overcome the disadvantages of fossil fuels, but their production might compete with food production leading to higher food prices and hunger. Therefore, in recent decades, the societal impact of technology has come to the center of attention. To deal with potential ethical issues related to technology, many scholars have emphasiz…
Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies
Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and…
Understanding Technology-Induced Value Change
We propose a pragmatist account of value change that helps to understand how and why values sometimes change due to technological developments. Inspired by John Dewey’s writings on value, we propose to understand values as evaluative devices that carry over from earlier experiences and that are to some extent shared in society. We discuss the various functions that values fulfil in moral inquiry and propose a conceptual framework that helps to un…
Socially Disruptive Technologies, Contextual Integrity, and Conservatism About Moral Change
This commentary is a response to Contextual Integrity as a General Conceptual Tool for Evaluating Technological Change by Elizabeth O’Neill ( Philosophy & Technology (2022)). It argues that while contextual integrity (CI) might be an useful addition to the toolkit of approaches for ethical technology assessment, a CI approach might not be able to uncover all morally relevant impacts of technological change. Moreover, the inherent conservatism of …
Understanding value change
The possibility of value change has implications for how to responsibly develop and deploy new technologies. If values can, and do, change after technologies have been developed and designed, this would seem to have major ramifications for approaches such as value-sensitive design and responsible innovation. This contribution explores descriptive as well as normative accounts of value change. It suggests three methodological principles that descr…
Multilateral governance of technological risks; editors’ overview 1
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public
Tracing Long-term Value Change in (Energy) Technologies
We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technolo…
Value Change in Energy Systems
The ongoing energy transition toward more sustainable energy systems implies a change in the values for which such systems are designed. The energy transition however is not just about sustainability but also about values like energy security and affordability, and we witness the emergence of new values like energy justice and energy democracy. How can we understand such value changes and how can or should they affect the design of future energy …
Covid-19, uncertainty, and moral experiments
Pandemics like COVID-19 confront us with decisions about life and death that come with great uncertainty, factual as well as moral. How should policy makers deal with such uncertainty? We suggest that rather than to deliberate until they have found the right course of action, they better do moral experiments that generate relevant experiences to enable more reliable moral evaluations and rational decisions
Varieties of responsibility
The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities (to society, stakeholders, users) beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of ag…
Embedding Values in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems
Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I…
Digital platforms and responsible innovation
In this paper, we argue that the characteristics of digital platforms challenge the fundamental assumptions of value sensitive design (VSD). Traditionally, VSD methods assume that we can identify relevant values during the design phase of new technologies. The underlying assumption is that there is only epistemic uncertainty about which values will be impacted by a technology. VSD methods suggest that one can predict which values will be affected…
Algorithms and values in justice and security
This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology (not incorporated here are empirical and technical investigations). Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability…
Learning to do responsible innovation in industry
There is now almost a decade of experience with RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation), including a growing emphasis on RRI in industry. Based on our experiences in the EU-funded project PRISMA, we find that the companies we engaged could be motivated to do RRI, but often only after we first shifted initial assumptions and strategies. Accordingly, we formulate six lessons we learned in the expectation that they will be relevant both for RRI in…
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society, and how they affect the current debate about artificial intelligence
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three a…
New Perspectives on Technology in Society
Although we applaud the Presidential Commission's concern for equality as well as safety and effectiveness, in our view, this recommendation and its underlying reasoning are so problematic that we will eventually in this chapter describe their recommendation as a reckless form of social ex- perimentation.The narrow conceptions of "safety" and "effectiveness" in play mean that serious social and normative hazards are ovetlooked.Even when these haz…
The Bugs Eat the Waste
New technologies may give rise to new professions, but existing professions may also try to acquire a role in the design of already existing artefacts that are designed by another profession. If they do so successfully, this may trigger technological change. A case study on the design of sewage treatment plants is presented, in which since the beginning of the 20th century microbiological and biotechnological researchers have tried to acquire a l…
How Should We Do Nanoethics? A Network Approach for Discerning Ethical Issues in Nanotechnology
There is no agreement on how nanoethics should proceed. In this article I focus on approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology, which is as of yet one of the most difficult and urging tasks for nanoethics. I discuss and criticize two existing approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and propose a network approach as alternative. I discuss debates in nanoethics about the desirable role of ethics in nanotechnologica…
The Need for Ethical Reflection in Engineering Design
The authors explore whether the need for ethical reflection on the part of designing engineers is dependent on the type of design process. They use Vincenti's (1992) distinction between normal and radical design and different levels of design hierarchy. These two dimensions are coupled with the concept of ill-structured problems, which are problems in which possible solutions cannot be ordered on a scale from better to worse. Design problems are …
Safe-by-Design
Safe-by-design (SbD) aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of acto…
Sunscreens with Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) Nano-Particles
The risks of novel technologies, such as nano(bio)technology cannot be fully assessed due to the existing uncertainties surrounding their introduction into society. Consequently, the introduction of innovative technologies can be conceptualised as a societal experiment, which is a helpful approach to evaluate moral acceptability. This approach is illustrated with the marketing of sunscreens containing nano-sized titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) particle…
Reflective Equilibrium in R & D Networks
In this article, we develop an approach for the moral assessment of research and development (R & D) networks on the basis of the reflective equilibrium approach proposed by Rawls and Daniels. The reflective equilibrium approach aims at coherence between moral judgments, principles, and background theories. We use this approach because it takes seriously the moral judgments of the actors involved in R & D, whereas it also leaves room for critical…
Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies
Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and…
Varieties of responsibility
The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities (to society, stakeholders, users) beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of ag…
Tracing Long-term Value Change in (Energy) Technologies
We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technolo…
Covid-19, uncertainty, and moral experiments
Pandemics like COVID-19 confront us with decisions about life and death that come with great uncertainty, factual as well as moral. How should policy makers deal with such uncertainty? We suggest that rather than to deliberate until they have found the right course of action, they better do moral experiments that generate relevant experiences to enable more reliable moral evaluations and rational decisions
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society, and how they affect the current debate about artificial intelligence
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three a…
Values in engineering models
We discuss whether, and if so, in which ways, engineering models are value-laden. In doing so, we propose to distinguish between ‘embedded values’, which are values built into the model, be it intentionally or unintentionally, and ‘implied values’ which are value-laden consequences of the intended use of the models. We present six examples of engineering models and discuss in which ways they are value-laden. On the basis of our empirical material…
Ethical considerations in engineering design processes
Engineering ethics involves a broad range of (ethical) issues. In this article, we focus on the specific area of engineering ethics pertaining to engineering design. We believe that engineering design constitutes an interesting starting point for ethical issues in engineering, both for educational and research purposes. So far, there has not been much systematic research on ethical aspects in engineering design and on how engineers deal with such…
The Need for Ethical Reflection in Engineering Design
The authors explore whether the need for ethical reflection on the part of designing engineers is dependent on the type of design process. They use Vincenti's (1992) distinction between normal and radical design and different levels of design hierarchy. These two dimensions are coupled with the concept of ill-structured problems, which are problems in which possible solutions cannot be ordered on a scale from better to worse. Design problems are …
How Should We Do Nanoethics? A Network Approach for Discerning Ethical Issues in Nanotechnology
There is no agreement on how nanoethics should proceed. In this article I focus on approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology, which is as of yet one of the most difficult and urging tasks for nanoethics. I discuss and criticize two existing approaches for discerning ethical issues in nanotechnology and propose a network approach as alternative. I discuss debates in nanoethics about the desirable role of ethics in nanotechnologica…
The Bugs Eat the Waste
New technologies may give rise to new professions, but existing professions may also try to acquire a role in the design of already existing artefacts that are designed by another profession. If they do so successfully, this may trigger technological change. A case study on the design of sewage treatment plants is presented, in which since the beginning of the 20th century microbiological and biotechnological researchers have tried to acquire a l…
Sunscreens with Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) Nano-Particles
The risks of novel technologies, such as nano(bio)technology cannot be fully assessed due to the existing uncertainties surrounding their introduction into society. Consequently, the introduction of innovative technologies can be conceptualised as a societal experiment, which is a helpful approach to evaluate moral acceptability. This approach is illustrated with the marketing of sunscreens containing nano-sized titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) particle…
Reflective Equilibrium in R & D Networks
In this article, we develop an approach for the moral assessment of research and development (R & D) networks on the basis of the reflective equilibrium approach proposed by Rawls and Daniels. The reflective equilibrium approach aims at coherence between moral judgments, principles, and background theories. We use this approach because it takes seriously the moral judgments of the actors involved in R & D, whereas it also leaves room for critical…
Moral Responsibility
A Philosophy of Technology
Engineering and the Problem of Moral Overload
When thinking about ethics, technology is often only mentioned as the source of our problems, not as a potential solution to our moral dilemmas. When thinking about technology, ethics is often only mentioned as a constraint on developments, not as a source and spring of innovation. In this paper, we argue that ethics can be the source of technological development rather than just a constraint and technological progress can create moral progress r…
Making Values Explicit During the Design Process
When people design products and services, they often do so to help realize specific values. Design is a value-driven activity, although the values often remain implicit and unarticulated. Here we reflect on a design-driven research project in which a series of innovative telecommunication, multimedia, and gaming applications were developed and evaluated in close cooperation with potential users. In our reconstruction, we focus on designers' inten…
Translating Values into Design Requirements
Values in engineering models
We discuss whether, and if so, in which ways, engineering models are value-laden. In doing so, we propose to distinguish between ‘embedded values’, which are values built into the model, be it intentionally or unintentionally, and ‘implied values’ which are value-laden consequences of the intended use of the models. We present six examples of engineering models and discuss in which ways they are value-laden. On the basis of our empirical material…
Early Engagement and New Technologies
The socio-technical challenges of nuclear power production and waste management in the post-Fukushima era
Our work on this project was conducted within the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at Delft University of Technology, and at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition to thanking these two groups, we also thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Ibo van de Poel’s work was funded by an NWO VICI grant…
Informed Consent in Asymmetrical Relationships
In recent years, informed consent has been suggested as a way to deal with risks posed by engineered nanomaterials. We argue that while we can learn from experiences with informed consent in treatment and research contexts, we should be aware that informed consent traditionally pertains to certain features of the relationships between doctors and patients and researchers and research participants, rather than those between producers and consumers…
New Perspectives on Technology in Society
Although we applaud the Presidential Commission's concern for equality as well as safety and effectiveness, in our view, this recommendation and its underlying reasoning are so problematic that we will eventually in this chapter describe their recommendation as a reckless form of social ex- perimentation.The narrow conceptions of "safety" and "effectiveness" in play mean that serious social and normative hazards are ovetlooked.Even when these haz…
Safe-by-Design
Safe-by-design (SbD) aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of acto…
Embedding Values in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems
Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I…
Digital platforms and responsible innovation
In this paper, we argue that the characteristics of digital platforms challenge the fundamental assumptions of value sensitive design (VSD). Traditionally, VSD methods assume that we can identify relevant values during the design phase of new technologies. The underlying assumption is that there is only epistemic uncertainty about which values will be impacted by a technology. VSD methods suggest that one can predict which values will be affected…
Algorithms and values in justice and security
This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology (not incorporated here are empirical and technical investigations). Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability…
Learning to do responsible innovation in industry
There is now almost a decade of experience with RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation), including a growing emphasis on RRI in industry. Based on our experiences in the EU-funded project PRISMA, we find that the companies we engaged could be motivated to do RRI, but often only after we first shifted initial assumptions and strategies. Accordingly, we formulate six lessons we learned in the expectation that they will be relevant both for RRI in…
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society, and how they affect the current debate about artificial intelligence
Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three a…
Covid-19, uncertainty, and moral experiments
Pandemics like COVID-19 confront us with decisions about life and death that come with great uncertainty, factual as well as moral. How should policy makers deal with such uncertainty? We suggest that rather than to deliberate until they have found the right course of action, they better do moral experiments that generate relevant experiences to enable more reliable moral evaluations and rational decisions
Varieties of responsibility
The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities (to society, stakeholders, users) beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of ag…
Understanding Technology-Induced Value Change
We propose a pragmatist account of value change that helps to understand how and why values sometimes change due to technological developments. Inspired by John Dewey’s writings on value, we propose to understand values as evaluative devices that carry over from earlier experiences and that are to some extent shared in society. We discuss the various functions that values fulfil in moral inquiry and propose a conceptual framework that helps to un…
Computer Science (24 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Engineering (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Engineering ethics (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Law (11 works)