Explorative Experiments and Digital Humanism: Adding an Epistemic Dimension to the Ethical Debate

Abstract

The rise of Digital Humanism calls for shaping digital technologies in accordance with human values and needs. I argue that to achieve this goal, an epistemic and methodological dimension should be added to the ethical reflections developed in the last years. In particular, I propose the framework of explorative experimentation in computer science and engineering to set an agenda for the reflection on the ethical issues of digital technologies that seriously considers their peculiarities from an epistemic point of view. As the traditional epistemic categories of the natural sciences cannot be directly adopted by computer science and engineering, the traditional moral principles guiding experimentation in the natural sciences should be reconsidered in the case of digital technologies where uncertainty about their impacts and risks is very high.