Emotions, Risk, and Responsibility

Abstract

Risky technologies such as biotechnology, energy technologies, and digital technologies are frequently highly controversial. While such technologies can contribute to people’s well-being, they can also create social disruption. The latter requires approaches for decision-making on how to responsibly design risky technologies. Technology is not value neutral, rather, design choices imply value choices. That is why scholars in risk ethics and philosophy of technology have argued for long that we need value-sensitive design and responsible innovation in order to ensure that value choices are made explicitly and based on sound ethical considerations. This chapter focuses on the contribution that emotions and values can make to the responsible innovation of risky technologies, based on the idea that emotions can play an important role in ethical decision-making about risky technologies. The chapter develops this idea further and expands it to approaches to responsible innovation in the context of the following key stakeholders: universities, industry, policy makers, and the public. The central idea this chapter investigates is that embedding emotions and values in the innovation of risky technologies can enhance the quality of deliberation and decision-making regarding technological risks, can help to overcome stalemates, and can lead to morally and socially more acceptable, as well as responsible technological innovations.