Contemporary philosophy of technology has been drawing special attention to the claim that technology is not neutral, but it plays an important role in evaluating moral situations. In line with this premise, some ethicists of technology have developed theories which work under the assumption that ethics should be done in a way that incorporates technological artefacts to ethical assessment. Prominent examples of these theories are Verbeek’s technological mediation theory and Brey’ structural ethics framework. 

These kinds of ethical theories of technology do a remarkable job in conceptualising the moral role of technology beyond neutrality. However, many introduce qualitative methods, while others do not explicitly allude to any methods at all. I aim to claim that these theories would greatly benefit from accommodating a quantitative, rather than qualitative operational method. I intend to argue that a specific method to quantify the moral significance attached to technological artefacts would have the potential to deeply transform ethical analysis by introducing brand new tools and criteria for moral explanation. Additionally, a quantitative method would have the advantage of conducting more concrete moral evaluations which could result in very tangible courses of action.

My proposal introduces what I will call the ‘moral weight method’. This quantitative method builds on Brey’s structural ethics theory, which conceptualises both humans and technological artefacts as ‘moral factors’, or entities in network arrangements that have a role in fixing moral outcomes. I suggest that the moral weight method uses the notion of ‘moral factor’ as a conceptual stepping stone, thus evaluating the degree -rather than the kind- of moral significance of moral factors. The result of this evaluation will yield a characterisation of each moral factor as containing ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ moral weight. Although the mere notion of ‘quantifying moral significance’ is in itself controversial, I aim to fortify my position by delineating a wide range of tentative criteria for issuing moral weight. Examples of these criteria are (i) a moral factor’s position in the causal chains binding them to a moral outcome, and (ii) a moral factor’s affordances, or (iii) a moral factor’s ability to incorporate corrective measures. These criteria will be subject to refinement and will be open to further discussion.