Summary 0SEUA0 Quality of Life
Lecture 1 Impacts of technology
Meaning of quality of life:
- Happiness, well-being, health, free to make choices
- Meaningful relationships, living in safety/good circumstances
- Able to develop yourself, have meaningful job, having money
Engineering responsibilities
- Avoiding unprofessional conduct (bribes, conflicts of interest, practicing outside of area of
expertise)
- Preventing harm to the public: whistle-blowing, considering long-term effects of innovations
- Promoting the public good: using engineering to improve welfare, well-being, QoL of the
public/different stakeholders
In engineering, one of the constraints of a good design is design for Qol or well-being:
- Hard impact: focus on health, safety and environmental risks. They are quantifiable, clear
and they are facts, link between technology and impact are clear, fits into consequentialism
(most positivity)
- Soft impacts: unintended and unforeseen side effects, not clear whether impact is good or
bad, they are more private
- Forward looking responsibility: exploring what technology’s soft impacts might be
- The unforeseen effects can change/mediate behavior and norms(use of phone in public)
Revenge effect: the opposite of the intended effect happened, examples are energy-saving light
bulbs (people used more lights to light up the room, so more energy use), computers to combat
paper waste (people still print).
Technological mediation: influence of technology on what people do/perceive, technology mediates
in three ways:
1. What “is” the situation? The new technology mediates how we perceive the world.
examples are contact lenses with which the view/perception of people is mediated or
microscope makes bacteria’s visible so we know more about hygiene
2. What “can” I do? Technology mediates our practical options, it can create more options
(the car) or take away options or choices
3. What “ought” I do, given the situation and these possibilities? We do or don’t do certain
things because they conform or conflict with our values, technologies can change values,
goals or duties
,Lecture 2 What is Qol?
Quality of life: what makes a life good, positive feelings and an absence of negative feelings and
mental states
Happiness is a short feeling/emotion, well-being is a feeling you have over a longer period
Harvard study showed that good relationships keep you healthier and happier
Value sensitive design (VSD): draws on wide range of empirical data, considers different
stakeholders, take multiple values in account and translates it into technical investigations
Three philosophical theories of well-being:
Hedonism
Hedonism: what would be best for someone is what would make his life happiest.
Quantitative hedonism/simple hedonism: Jeremy Bentham, only pleasure is the intrinsically good,
and pain is the only intrinsic bad, so accumulate pleasure and avoid pain. The value of pleasure is
only determined by its quantity(duration and intensity) and not by its quality, so what type of
pleasure doesn’t matter because pleasures are equal. The good life the one where the amount of
pleasure is maximized and pain is minimized. Part of utilitarianism, the action is good when the total
sum of happiness is increased in a given society (utility)
Qualitative hedonism: John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, criticism on Bentham, certain types of
pleasure seem more valuable than others. “It is better to be an unsatisfied human than a satisfied
pig”. Which means higher quality pleasures are more worthwhile than lower quality pleasures. The
better life is the one in which the highest quality pleasures are well-represented
There are four types of pleasures:
- Physio-pleasures: pleasure for our senses, example clothes design
- Psycho-pleasures: pleasure from cognitive or emotional reactions, example games
- Socio-pleasures: pleasure from relationships or the society as a whole, example smartphone
and social media
- Ideo-pleasures: pleasures that shape identity, example jewelry, fair-trade shopping
Hedonism in design: design for pleasurable experiences or for prevention of negative ones
Criticism on Bentham and Mill, experience machine of Robert Nozick, many people prefer to not
plug into such a machine for the rest of their lives, people value more than pleasurable experiences.
Hedonism assumes that pleasurable experiences are the only thing of ultimate value.
Desire-fulfillment theories
Desire-fulfillment theories: well-being lies in the fulfillment of one’s desires. It has a practical
advantage because it can be measured because value is attached to satisfactions of preferences,
fundamental advantage is that is avoids the experience machine, because people desire that one’s
experiences are real, real experiences have more value. Three types:
- Simple desire-fulfillment theories: one is better off when one’s current desires are satisfied;
the best life is one in which all one’s actual desires are fulfilled. Problem; many desires that
people have (and should be fulfilled) go against their long-term interest and decreases one’s
welfare
, - Reflective/comprehensive desire-fulfillment theories: give priority to one’s reflective
preferences that concern one’s life as a whole, so trump short-term preferences that go
against the long term goal. Problem; you can only make a well-informed choice if you are
well-informed about all the alternatives
- Informed desire-fulfillment theories: the best life one could led is the life in which all
desires are fulfilled that one would have if one were fully informed of one’s situation.
Criticism John Rawls’s grass-counter
Criticism on desire-fulfillment theories: it does not tell us anything about the sources and reasons of
well-being or what makes the desires good to satisfy
In design: focus on satisfying desires of users and investigate what people desire, create design to
help these desires come true
Objective list theories
Objective list theories: well-being is the result of a number of objective conditions of persons rather
than the subjective experience of pleasure or the fulfillment of subjective desires, there are goods
that contribute to our well-being even if we do not desire them or experience pleasure from them.
Well-being is attained by living a life in which one has all or most of the goods on the list. Distinction
of Philip Kitcher:
- Bare objective theories: present a list of items that contribute to well-being independently
of the others
- Explanatory list theories: identify a fundamental element that unifies all the items on the list
and explains why they contribute to well-being
o Perfectionism: what items on the list have in common is their contribution to the
realization or perfecting of human nature. Example Aristotle’s theory of
Eudaimonia(the highest good), cultivation of human virtues
o Neo-Aristotelian perfectionism: human nature has three types of perfection,
physical, theoretical and practical perfection which realize well-being
Capability theories Martha Nussbaum: there is a list of 10 capabilities
(having the opportunity to do it) that are necessary for well-being, you don’t
need them all for well-being, some are less important for some persons
Amartia Senn: capabilities approach in economics
- Criticism on objective list theories: they claim that things may be good for people even if
they don’t want or value them, they deny that people are differentpaternalist. And items
on the list often seem incomparable
In design: design should help bring out acquisition of good on the objective list, but lists are too
abstract and different to offer guidance for design
Hedonism and desire-fulfillment theories are subjective because what is good for people is relative
to their own perspective and attitudes, objective list theories are more objective because internal
and external conditions constitute well-being and also normative because it tells us how a person
should live and which elements of a good life a society should foster.
