A Coherentist View on the Relation Between Social Acceptance and Moral Acceptability of Technology

Abstract

According to the empirical turn, we should take empirical facts into account in asking and answering philosophical, including ethical, questions about technology. In this chapter, the implications of the empirical turn for the ethics of technology are explored by investigating the relation between social acceptance (an empirical fact) and moral acceptability (an ethical judgement) of a technology. After discussing how acceptance is often problematically framed as a constraint to overcome, a preliminary analysis of the notions of acceptance and acceptability is offered. Next, the idea of a logical gap between acceptance and acceptability is explained. Although the gap is accepted, it is also argued that the distinction between acceptance and acceptability does not exactly map on the descriptive/normative distinction and that both notions are maybe best seen as thick concepts. Next, it is shown how a coherentist account of ethics, in particular John Rawls’ model of wide reflective equilibrium can account for the relation between acceptance and acceptability.