Virtue Ethics and software development: debates and proposals

Resumen

Ethical issues have a growing interest for software developers, in as much as technological developments are more andmore present in our lives, and it has become evident that technologies are morally charged (Verbeek, 2014). From aninterdisciplinary approach, gathering researchers from the fields of computer science and moral philosophy, this paperreflects on virtue ethics –first defined by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle- and explores the possibilities in whichthis classical moral notion can be addressed in contemporary contexts of software development (Haggendorf, 2020;Gamez et al., 2020). Together with general values such as interaction, correctness and security, widely discussed in thefields of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, the research also highlights the importance of intentionality. Giventhe fact that most software developers usually work in a team, and they often take items of software from differentsources available, the implementation of any new software shall be understood as a complex process fragmentedamong many agents (with their consequent and perhaps hidden intentions), hence it is difficult to identify the bearer ofmoral responsibility if that software leads to unethical consequences. The paper elaborates on the notion of ‘intentionaldependency network’ to name this chain of complex interactions in the context of software development. The nodes ofthese intentional dependency networks are constituted by three elements: a human being who interacts with a softwareartefact with a declared intention. Inconsistencies may arise in a node at local level, since a software artefact can producecertain effects that are incompatible with the intention declared by the human. Thus deepening in the complex ecology ofcurrent software development and its networks provides an interesting field to explore the origins and evolution of moralagency. Once thoroughly examined the topics above mentioned, the paper ends with a preliminary proposal on someethical values and attitudes which should be shared by software developers aiming to achieve moral excellence in theirprofessional performance:First, awareness and acknowledgement of the moral dimension of software development.Second, a general attitude of responsibility and preliminary investigation about implicit and declared intentions before useof any piece of already existing software.Third, intentions should be declared as non-functional requirements for any new software. This will help to assume themoral consequences of choices and decisions made in professional contexts, mainly if those consequences are harmful,discriminatory, or lead to any unexpected misuses of software.