The idea that technologies influence society—both positively and negatively—is not new. This is mainly the terrain of the philosophy and the ethics of technology research. Similarly, design research aims to help create new technologies in line with individual, social, and societal needs and values. Against this backdrop, it seems essential to expose relations between design and philosophy of technology research, particularly from a methodological perspective. The main goal of this paper is to suggest a preliminary overview of methods and approaches that can inspire and inform interdisciplinary collaboration and, with that, systematic engagement with ethics in design processes. Through interdisciplinary exchange, we propose a preliminary typology of ethics-informed methods and approaches based on two main dimensions, namely theory-grounded approaches to theoretically-flexible techniques and assessment to accompaniment. This mapping intends to help navigate the ethical qualities of selected methods from both disciplines, and it aims to create a platform for fruitful interdisciplinary conversations.

What society experiences today as morally questionable design—from gendered toys for children to public benches that prevent sleeping—can be considered the aftermath of an underdeveloped foundation for systematic ethical reflection in design methodologies. Although designing is an inherently moral activity, research on how to recognize and handle ethical questions and moral dilemmas in early (conceptual) design activities is scarce. In this article, we use an interdisciplinary lens to analyze and respond to the challenges of bridging moral psychology, ethics of technology, and design methodologies. For this, we introduce the concept of moral engagement in design, which is inspired by Moral Disengagement Theory. Finally, we propose five preliminary considerations for enacting moral engagement in design practices. These considerations form an interdisciplinary bridge to help us reflect on the moral dimensions of methodological choices in conceptual design practices.

Technology is no stranger to the city. Cities are planned, built, maintained, governed, demolished, and destroyed by technical means. Yet, the city has yet to receive much attention within the philosophy of technology. This volume addresses this gap, and in doing so contributes to the much-needed discussion on technology-enabled urban futures from the perspective of the philosophy of technology. In this introductory chapter, the larger volume is introduced by reflecting on the rationale and need for such a collection, sketching the main themes analyzed throughout, and providing an overview of the contributions.

More than any other facet of resilience, social resilience raises the inherent tension within the concept between identity or persistence, and transformation. Is a community the people who make it up, or the geography or physical infrastructure they share? What about the resilience of communities that transform, as a result of a sudden disaster or over time? In this paper, we explore the impact of this tension on how social resilience indicators can be developed and used. Beginning with a close look at the ways in which our concepts of resilience and our use of indicators interact, several points are raised. First, that how we identify a community and frame its resilience conveys particular conceptualisations of resilience, which in turn have normative implications for the communities themselves. In part, this is because of the difficulty in capturing important adaptations and transformative actions within and by those communities. Further, measuring and comparing the resilience of communities, and aspects of quantification that go along with selecting, aggregating and comparing indicator values, ensure that the decisions made about how indicators ought to be used carry normative weight. Through this exploration, we identify several normative implications of choices in indicator design and application. We conclude with recommendations for moving forward with greater transparency and responsibility toward those communities whose social resilience we hope to measure in order to improve.