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Responsibility-Enhancing Assistive Technologies and People with Autism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2020

FIACHRA O’BROLCHAIN  and
BERT GORDIJN
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Abstract

This paper aims to explore the role assistive technologies (ATs) might play in helping people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a concomitant responsibility deficit become more morally responsible. Toward this goal, the authors discuss the philosophical concept of responsibility, with a reliance on Nicole Vincent’s taxonomy of responsibility concepts. They then outline the ways in which ASD complicates ascriptions of responsibility, particularly responsibility understood as a capacity. Further, they explore the ways in which ATs might improve a person’s capacity so that responsibility can be properly ascribed to them. After demonstrating that although assistive technologies are likely to be able to enhance a person’s capacity in such a way so that responsibility can be ascribed to them, the authors assert that these technologies will have a number of additional effects on the other aspects of the concept of responsibility.

Keywords

autismassistive technologiesresponsibilitymoral enhancement
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 29 , Special Issue 4: Clinical Neuroethics , October 2020 , pp. 607 - 616
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Funding: This research was supported by funding from the charity RESPECT and the People Program (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement no. PCOFUND-GA-2013-608728.

References

Notes

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