Ethics of Technology in War and Peace

The use of technology for military purposes is a thorny subject. Some advocate for a total ban on e.g. AI for military purposes. How can we ethically evaluate military technology? And what has religion to do with this? You will learn about the relationship between ethics and technology with special attention to military technology. We explore these issues from ethically dominant perspectives as well as from lesser known Christian philosophy perspective. This will help you formulate your own opinion and arguments on an important and highly relevant topic. Your instructor has done research on ethics of military technology for over a decade at various universities and military institutions in the Netherlands, USA and Australia. She also holds the special Chair for Christian Philosophy at TU/e. You will receive weekly assignments, lectures and group work. Assignments vary from pre-reading, movies, a newspaper item around the topic of military technology, ethics and religious assumptions.

After this course, students are able to:

• Identify key debates about the ethics of technology and the basics of Just War Theory.
• Explain ethical debates and regulatory attempts related to AI in the military.
• Examine religious assumptions and their influence on ethical evaluations of technology.
• Taking a (well considered) stance on ethics, technology and/or religion and arguing for it orally and in writing

You must meet one of the following collections of requirements

• Collection 1
• Completed Final examination Bsc program
• Collection 2
• Completed Pre-Master

• Book chapters and Journal Articles will be offered via Canvas.