D E S I G N E T H I C S¶
During this class we were introduced to different ethics and filosofical theories as well as having discussions about what ethics in design actually is. A very interesting and important subject within design and something that very much reflects the master we are studying, therefor it’s a shame that we had this class so late on in the third term. It would be very helpful to start this class in the first terms, and preferably more classes as they reflect what we are doing in the master, and I think very much why we have chosen it, and explains this in useful words and thoughts.
We were introduced to philosophy of technology and the relationships we have with it, do we determine technology or does it determine us? To what extents? Technology is all around us and a part of our lives, it responds to social forces - We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. - John Culkin
‘Technologies (and the technosphere) are a materialization of the values (a part of a) society upholds.‘
“Why design? How does design practice find its purpose and make its judgments? What are the grounds for favouring some purposes, needs, or courses of action over others? Who designs and for whom? Whose purposes are advanced by design? Who are the ultimate beneficiaries of design, and what political and power arrangements are reinforced or weakened by practices and products of design? How do the injustices brought about by products and services intersect with larger systemic issues, such as capitalism, colonialism, neoliberalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism?” Nassim Parvin, Just Design: Pasts, Presents, and Future Trajectories of Technology
What is design? The answer to that question can very much vary depending on who you are asking. It can be the creation, plans or prototype of an artefact, but can also be seen as the configuration or reconfiguration of ways of living, as a strategic way. Everything human made is ‘designed’ and it affects the way we behave and act around it.
What is a designer? Everyone can be a designer, remodelling their homes, writing posts in the stairway for neighbours, building things etc, everything we have around us is design, problemsolving in different ways. But if the question relates to a profession, not everyone is a designer in practice, as an occupation or professional activity. Design as a profession can behack harder to define as it isn’t as clear as other professions, say for example a nurse or a doctor - their purpose as a profession is to keep people healthy.
THE NORMATIVE DIMENSION OF DESIGN Something is normative when its basic uses involve prescribing norms or standards, explicitly or implicitly. Michael Proudfoot and A. R. Lacey, “Normative,” in The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2010), https://www.ethicsfordesigners.com/tools
Design has been seen to produce how we think things ought to be, materialising the notions of the good and the right. It seeks to influence behaviours in a particular way, a way that someone has decided to be the ‘right and good’ way, meaning that it’s never neutral. Who decides what is good and what is right? This makes design ethically relevant, and important to ask ethical questions of why, how and what What should I do? What is the right thing to do? What actions are morally justifiable? What is good?
Ethics is about discerning how we should live and what it means to live a good life. What kind of person do I want to be?
There are many different models from different parts of the world. Care Ethics: The good or bad, right or wrong are to be evaluated in how they support relations. It’s a relational ethics, i.e. it involves caring for (one) another.
“To care well for our world and live well with others, we must create the conditions within which care can occur. We acknowledge that enacting care occurs simultaneously in multiple worlds, interconnected and entangled in relations between the human and the more-than-human.” Alana Powell, Insights from Feminist Ethics of Care as a Contemporary Critical Theory for Contesting Binaries and Imagining Possibilities
Sumak Kawsay Quechua for Good living / Buen vivir. Alternative to the Western notion development, which is extractive and neo-colonialist.The subject of wellbeing is not the individual, but the individual in the social context of a community in a specific time and environmental situation. Gudnyas: buen vivir is equally influenced by indigenous world views as by western critiques of capitalism (esp feminist thought and environmentalism). “It certainly doesn’t require a return to some sort of indigenous, pre-Colombian past.” Buen vivir has been criticised by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui as being too vague and ornamental. Preserving the common is everyone’s responsibility. Harmony between human and non-humans as well as the envisioning of possible futures depends on fairness and equality.
This class was very useful and interesting in relation to what we are doing as designers and why, understanding that everything we do will affect others and that this can never be neutral, meaning that we have to carefully try to understand how what we make will affect others and how . It offered many terms that are useful to put words to thoughts and the class held great discussions.