The Ethical Behavior Of Technological Subjects:Regulation, Anomy And Its Countermeasures

Technological subjects, such as technology designers, developers and manufacturers must be evaluated when technology ethical issues are researched. This is because in the objective relationship of "technological subjects-technology." technological subjects play a leading role in the generation and development of technology, technology could exist because the scale, values and purposes of technological subjects’exist logically first. Therefore, in this study, from the perspective of technological subjects and their ethical behavior technology ethical issues are researched, by adopting some methods such as conception analysis, historical critical method and inter-discipline research method comprehensively also on the basis of the technology ethical issues’research achievements at home and abroad.The ethical behavior of technological subjects refer to technological behavior with moral value which are dominated by ethical awareness of technological subjects. In order to make the ethical behavior of technological subjects possesses positive moral value, it should be regulated in the dimension of ethics. Two necessities to do this from the perspective of ethics. Firstly, comparing with other social norms like law and regulated-by-things, only technology ethical norms can be internalized into the self-regulation of technological subjects, and is the main virtue of technological subjects. Technology ethical norms are the only and inevitable way to shape technological subjects through constraint in the form of surface. Secondly, the impact on the living world from the ethical behavior of technological subjects strengthens continually. They don’t only expand the object of manufacture from things to things and techno-human, but enlarging the extent of moral agent from human to human and things. All these impact results in lots ethical issues, asking for regulating the ethical behavior of technological subjects. Regulating the ethical behavior of technological subjects, essentially reflecting human’s pursuit of order and happiness. However, in reality, the ethical behavior of technological subjects exists the phenomenon of anomy:the ethical behavior of technological subjects violates established technology ethical norms, or no specific technology ethical norms can be followed. This would lead to much more serious technology ethical issues, such as ethical behavior of technological subjects couldn’t go smoothly, harm to others and social security, waste of social resources, increasing degradation of social atmosphere, and bad impact on the credibility of government. The subjective reasons caused the anomy of ethical behavior of technological subjects mainly include the atrophying of technological subjects existing in moral dimension, and ethical autonomy of technological subjects suppressed by organization managers; and the objective reasons mainly include the development of technology ahead of that of ethics, especially the challenges from emerging technologies to traditional ethical norms, and the objective existence of technology ethical conflicts. The ultimate goal of this research is to study how to deal with the anomy of ethical behavior of technological subjects, how to make the ethical behavior of technological subjects finally be moral acts which are good at others and society, and help to increase human well-being. For this reason, it comes up with some available countermeasures from system, individual and organizational levels and other approach to prevent and reduce the anomy. The measure from system level is to develop technology ethical norms which can be followed by technological subjects, this is the first process to prevent and reduce the anomy of ethical behavior of technological subjects. The measure from individual level is to foster awareness of technology ethics to ensure technological subjects to follow established technology ethical norms consciously and spontaneously. But even technological subjects have fostered awareness of technology ethics, their ethical decision would fail to carry out because their ethical autonomy may suppressed by their managers. What leads to this situation is organization which technological subjects in with stiff bureaucracy organizational structure in which the power of managers and leaders given to deny the professional ethical decision of technological subjects. Therefore, in order to keep ethical autonomy of technological subjects away from managers’suppression, it is necessary to arise countermeasure from organizational level, which is to reorganize hierarchical organization to network organization. However, furthermore, even technological subjects serve in network organization, and have fostered awareness of technology ethics, as well as have existed technology ethical norms to follow, sometimes they are still at a loss when they are facing technology ethical conflicts. Hence, the theory of Technology Ethics Hierarchy is proposed trying to help technological subjects to figure out technology ethical conflicts and dilemmas.The content of this research is generated from the field of Philosophy of Technology. To some extent, modern philosophy of technology has been become a typical example of Field Philosophy intentionally or unintentionally. The general outlook for this research in this theoretical background is to produce a concept named "Re-engineering Ethics." That is to say, in order to prevent and reduce technology ethical issues effectively, the general public, especially stakeholders should participate into the course of the technology ethical behavior as wide and full as they can, they should supervise and appraise technological subjects’ ethical behavior. The ultimate aim of re-engineering ethics is to push this social problem of technology ethical issues outside of the Philosophy building, creating opportunities for "peers" from a wider range of areas in addition to philosophers to review it. This outlook provides a clear and far-sighted guideline for future research.