Reflection Five

This week’s article, written by Susan Cozzens, addresses the nature of inequity and inequality within technology through the view of four political philosophies: libertarian, utilitarian, contractarian and communitarian. Each philosophy has it’s own positive and negative aspects. Before making this comparison, she quotes Amartya Sen and defines inequality. Sen’s view is that there equality is multi-dimensional, and each observer values different dimensions on different levels. By creating equality in one dimension, other dimensions become inequal, which is why finding a true equality is difficult.

Each particular philosophy has it’s own contribution, libertarian allows for rights of property but no other rights are addressed. Utilitarian relies on a “trickle down” effect where the raising of the upper class will eventually benefit all lower classes, however it does not consider the growing gap between upper and lower classes, and therefore does not have provisions for inequality.

Contractarian highlights “three ‘layers’ of distributive mechanisms” that apply to scientific and technological policies: “market exchange, market-oriented stimulus through public funding, and public research programs targeted at helping the least advantaged.” Cozzens goes on the illustrate that while there may be a three fold policy that is all inclusive, it does nothing to address growing inequality.  

This brings us to the communitarian philosophy, which puts the main focus on the community, meaning morality is based on the benefit to the community rather than the individual. The political philosophy also tells us that there are no standards for distributive justice, similar to the reading last week by Latour which emphasizes moral decisions being made based on individual circumstances rather than prior moral assumptions. One highlight of communitarianism is their warning against the polarization of wealth, that is the difference in wealth between the rich and the poor.

The conclusion of the article tells us that all of these philosophies have something to contribute to science and technology policy, and that a composite approach that includes all of these philosophies in certain aspects is necessary.