This project, funded by the Ethics and Values Studies component of the Science and Society Program, involves an empirical study into one aspect of the relationship between ethics and technology. Moral agents who are caught up in sociotechnical ensembles can find themselves stuck as a result, by which we mean that their capacity to engage in ethical deliberation and ethical action is limited or redirected by factors beyond their control. Decisions about how and where to live and how, what, and where to build are ethical decisions to the extent that they have some bearing on human well-being, justice, and sustainability. A crucial premise of the research is that the built environment may be construed as a large, decentralized sociotechnical ensemble. To the extent that this ensemble exhibits obduracy, the PIs expect that the built environment offers up myriad opportunities for getting stuck. To test a number of hypotheses that arise from this premise, the PIs will investigate a set of decisions that currently face a major metropolitan area: the proposed BeltLine in Atlanta, Georgia. The BeltLine is an ambitious plan for a transit corridor, parks, and new development along a ring of disused railroad tracks around downtown and midtown Atlanta. If it is completed as planned, the BeltLine would represent a major shift in the structure and future development of Atlanta as a built environment. The research will proceed in four phases: 1) archival research on the BeltLine proposal and the debate it has generated; 2) review and analysis of existing transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted by the PI in 2003 as part of a related project; 3) new semi-structured interviews with residents of the Atlanta region; and 4) an online survey informed by the results of the previous phases. The PIs will consider in particular whether and to what extent people are stuck in their thinking about the BeltLine, and whether and to what extent these varieties of stuckness may be attributable to the obduracy or resistance of the existing sociotechnical infrastructure of Atlanta. The research draws from the literatures of several conventional disciplines (philosophy, economics, and technology studies, with some contributions from urban planning, moral psychology, and environmental psychology) to shed new light on a serious practical problem: the difficulty of thinking and acting ethically in complex situations. The research will make three distinct contributions to a growing movement in environmental ethics toward what is called a phenomenology of moral experience: 1) some account of whether and why it may be difficult to think and act ethically; 2) an extension of environmental ethics into the sociotechnical environment, where people actually live; and 3) empirical research into how people experience their various situations and prospects. The research will be useful to three overlapping audiences: 1) scholars in environmental philosophy, urban planning, technology studies, and related fields; 2) those involved directly in the decision about the BeltLine in Atlanta, including planners, policy makers, developers, and residents; 3) people in other metropolitan areas who are facing similar decisions. Accordingly, the research results will be disseminated through the popular press and through websites accessible to a broad public as well as through academic journals and conferences. In addition, the results of this research will influence the senior personnel's teaching in environmental ethics, economics, and policy.
