Andreas Spahn

The three-tenet model, which focuses on ‘distributional justice’, ‘procedural justice’, and ‘justice as recognition’, has emerged as the most influential framework in the field of energy justice. Based on critical reviews of the three-tenet model, we identify three challenges that the model currently still faces: (i) a normative challenge on the grounding of the three-tenet model in philosophical theories; (ii) an ‘elite’ challenge on the justification of the use of power in energy-related decision; and (iii) a practical challenge on the application of the three tenets in situations of conflicting justice demands. In this article, we provide the basic contours of a three-step pluralist and pragmatic dialogue model for questions of energy justice that addresses the three challenges, based on the ‘commonwealth model’ of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The model proposes to create moral legitimacy in the face of plural demands for energy justice by engaging actors in an inclusive dialogue based on an explicit recognition of Boltanski and Thévenot’s commonwealth model. We thereby make three contributions to the existing literature on energy justice. First, the commonwealth model’s rootedness in normative political theory provides a stronger philosophical underpinning than was available up till now in the literature (challenge 1). Second, it allows one to go beyond the (almost exclusive) focus on injustices perpetrated on disempowered or marginalised groups, to include questions on the justified exercise of power (challenge 2). Third, the commonwealth model shows us practical ways out of situations where conflicting demands for justice are being made (challenge 3).

This chapter explores the shift in the balance of individual versus collective values instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The incredible viral spread rate among the population and its relatively high fatality rate has initially resulted in an assertion of the primacy of collective values (such as collective safety, collective responsibility, conformism). In contrast, individual rights and values (such as the individual counterparts of autonomy, freedom, responsibility, and privacy) took a ‘back seat’ for the good of the collective. However, as the pandemic extended over the months, there emerged a pressure to reject the primacy of collective values and restore the importance of individual values. If we are to return to a healthy and prosperous living within a well-functioning society, this balance shift between collective and individual values will have to be re-negotiated and resolved to reach a societally acceptable balance position.We conduct this ethical exploration, first, by following the ethico-philosophical discussion on the balance between individual and collective values generally, as well as in times of crisis, with special focus on the COVID-19 crisis. Second, we explore this topic through the lens of recent changes to how particular technologies were and are used before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. More precisely, we identify and explore broad trends we see relevant to ethics – with a particular focus on crowd management and nudging and on the balance shift between individual and collective values. Finally, by exploring findings from a sociophysics case study dealing with crowd management of people before and during the pandemic, we argue that some sociophysical phenomena can be used as proxies for ethical principles. Here, distance is used as a conceptual proxy for individual and collective responsibility, having in mind COVID-19 distancing rules and recommendation.With all the above, we identify several broad trends that have been instigated by the pandemic that are relevant to ethics. These changes relate to future crowd management, nudging, and control; individual (per-person) tracking; insistence on the importance of collective values in times of crisis, and the rejection of this infringement upon individual rights. In this regard, we assert that such value changes are an opportunity to rethink and (re)set balance points between individual and collective rights for each particular society.

Research on the effectiveness of case studies in teaching engineering ethics in higher education is underdeveloped. To add to our knowledge, we have systematically compared the outcomes of two case approaches to an undergraduate course on the ethics of technology: a detached approach using real-life cases and a challenge-based learning (CBL) approach with students and stakeholders acting as co-creators (CC). We first developed a practical typology of case-study approaches and subsequently tested an evaluation method to assess the students’ learning experiences (basic needs and motivation) and outcomes (competence development) and staff interpretations and operationalizations, seeking to answer three questions: (1) Do students in the CBL approach report higher basic needs, motivation and competence development compared to their peers in the detached approach? (2) What is the relationship between student-perceived co-creation and their basic needs, motivation and competence development? And (3) what are the implications of CBL/CC for engineering-ethics teaching and learning? Our mixed methods analysis favored CBL as it best supported teaching and research goals while satisfying the students’ basic needs and promoting intrinsic motivation and communication competences. Competence progress in other areas did not differ between approaches, and motivation in terms of identified regulation was lower for CBL, with staff perceiving a higher workload. We propose that our case typology model is useful and that as a method to engage students as co-creators, CBL certainly merits further development and evaluation, as does our effectiveness analysis for engineering ethics instruction in general and for case-study approaches in particular.

Virtue accounts of innovation ethics have recognized the virtue of creativity as an admirable trait in innovators. However, such accounts have not paid sufficient attention to the way creativity functions as a collective phenomenon. We propose a collective virtue account to supplement existing virtue accounts. We base our account on Kieran’s definition of creativity as a virtue and distinguish three components in it: creative output, mastery and intrinsic motivation. We argue that all of these components can meaningfully be attributed to innovation groups. This means that we can also attribute the virtue of creativity to group agents involved in innovation. Recognizing creativity as a collective virtue in innovation is important because it allows for a more accurate evaluation of how successful innovation generally happens. The innovator who takes a collective virtue account of creativity seriously will give attention to the facilitation of an environment where the group can flourish collectively, rather than only nurturing the individual genius.

Digitalization affects the relation between human agents and technological objects. This paper looks at digital behavior change technologies (BCT) from a deontological perspective. It identifies three moral requirements that are relevant for ethical approaches in the tradition of Kantian deontology: epistemic rationalism, motivational rationalism and deliberational rationalism. It argues that traditional Kantian ethics assumes human ‘subjects’ to be autonomous agents, whereas ‘objects’ are mere passive tools. Digitalization, however, challenges this Cartesian subject-object dualism: digital technologies become more and more autonomous and take on agency. Similarly, human subjects can outsource agency and will-power to technologies. In addition, our intersubjective relations are being more and more shaped by digital technologies. The paper therefore re-examines the three categories ‘subject’, ‘object’ and ‘intersubjectivity’ in light of digital BCTs and suggests deontological guidelines for digital objects, digital subjects and a digitally mediated intersubjectivity, based on a re-examination of the requirements of epistemic, motivational and deliberational rationalism.