44 2 CHAPTER 2 2.7 DESIGN FOR VALUES Design for Values is an approach to develop technology based on moral and societal values (van den Hoven, Vermaas, & van de Poel, 2015). It is aimed at countering the standard practice of designing technology as an alleged value-neutral artifact that, as a matter of fact, meets the requirements set by producers, clients or users and by this disregarding values of society at large. Design for Values attempts to prevent the Collingridge dilemma (Collingridge, 1980). The Collingridge dilemma implies that in early stages of technology development there is much possibility to change the design, but the information about the unintended or undesired outcomes of using the technology is scarce, while in later stages of technology development this information is available but changing the design is often impossible or expensive. In addition to be morally and socially desirable, Design for Values can have economic benefits as it contributes to the acceptability and success of innovations. Several Design for Value approaches exist, for example the Value-Sensitive Design method (described in section 1.3), Technology Assessment, Constructive Technology Assessment and a value hierarchy. All these methods have three criteria in common: 1) the belief that values can be incorporated into technology, 2) it is morally significant to think about values in technology explicitly, and 3) in order to make a difference, value considerations need to be incorporated early on into the design process (van den Hoven et al., 2015). As an example of a Design for Values approach, we describe the theory of the value hierarchy method and apply it to the case of Autonomous Weapon Systems in the next section. Value hierarchy One approach to consider which values are relevant in the design of Autonomous Weapon Systems is the translation of values into design requirements which can be made visible by means of a value hierarchy (Van de Poel, 2013). This hierarchical structure of values, norms and design requirements makes the value judgements, that are required for the translation, explicit, transparent and debatable. To do so, the values that are described in the natural language will need to be translated to ‘formal values in a formal language’ (Aldewereld, Dignum, & Tan, 2015, p. 835). One way of formalizing values into norms would be to use a convention of rules which are represented as: ‘ ”X counts as Y” or “X counts as Y in context C” ’ (Searle, 1995, p. 28). The explicitly of values in formal rules allows for critical reflection in debates and pinpoint the value judgements that are disagreed on. Transparency is important as Van de Poel (2013, p. 265) eloquently states: ‘Although transparent choices are not necessarily better or more acceptable, transparency seems a minimal condition in a democratic society that tries to protect or enhance the moral autonomy of its citizens, especially in cases that design
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