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Dr Brent Mittelstadt

Job: Research Fellow

Faculty: Computing, Engineering and Media

School/department: School of Computer Science and Informatics

Research group(s): Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility

Address: 51Âþ»­, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH

T: +44 (0)116-255-1551 x6374

E: bmittelstadt@dmu.ac.uk

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Personal profile

An early career academic with strong foundations in ethical theory, applied ethics and interdisciplinary empirical research in computer and medical ethics, as shown through a variety of research dissemination activities and publications, as well as university teaching on social and ethical aspects of information and communication technologies.  Brent’s immediate research interests lie in the social and ethical implications of emerging forms of medical ICT and data mining, including governance and social discourses concerning their development, deployment and regulation.  Secondary interests include theoretical development of the virtue ethics of Alisdair MacIntyre and Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics, and epistemological challenges of anticipatory ethical analysis of emerging technological applications and methods.

Research group affiliations

51Âþ»­ -

University of Oxford – Department of Computer Science

Publications and outputs


  • dc.title: The Ethics of Computing: A Survey of the Computing-Oriented Literature dc.contributor.author: Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-; Mittelstadt, Brent; Timmermans, Job dc.description.abstract: Computing technologies and artifacts are increasingly integrated intomost aspects of our professional, social, and private lives. One consequence of this growing ubiquity of computing is that it can have significant ethical implications that computing professionals need to be aware of. The relationship between ethics and computing has long been discussed. However, this is the first comprehensive survey of the mainstream academic literature of the topic. Based on a detailed qualitative analysis of the literature, the article discusses ethical issues, technologies that they are related to, and ethical theories, as well as the methodologies that the literature employs, its academic contribution, and resulting recommendations. The article discusses general trends and argues that the time has come for a transition to responsible research and innovation to ensure that ethical reflection of computing has practical and manifest consequences.

  • dc.title: How to Shape a Better Future? Epistemic Difficulties for Ethical Assessment and Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies dc.contributor.author: Mittelstadt, Brent; Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-; Fairweather, N. Ben, 1966- dc.description.abstract: Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas’ approach to political discourse, which requires ‘translation’ of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a ‘methodology of translation’ which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design.

  • dc.title: The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring dc.contributor.author: Mittelstadt, Brent; Fairweather, N. Ben, 1966-; Shaw, Mark Christopher; McBride, Neil dc.description.abstract: Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations.1

  • dc.title: On the Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring dc.contributor.author: Mittelstadt, Brent dc.description.abstract: Recent years have seen an influx of medical technologies capable of remotely monitoring the health and behaviours of individuals to detect, manage and prevent health problems. Known collectively as personal health monitoring (PHM), these systems are intended to supplement medical care with health monitoring outside traditional care environments such as hospitals, ranging in complexity from mobile devices to complex networks of sensors measuring physiological parameters and behaviours. This research project assesses the potential ethical implications of PHM as an emerging medical technology, amenable to anticipatory action intended to prevent or mitigate problematic ethical issues in the future. PHM fundamentally changes how medical care can be delivered: patients can be monitored and consulted at a distance, eliminating opportunities for face-to-face actions and potentially undermining the importance of social, emotional and psychological aspects of medical care. The norms evident in this movement may clash with existing standards of ‘good’ medical practice from the perspective of patients, clinicians and institutions. By relating utilitarianism, virtue ethics and theories of surveillance to Habermas’ concept of colonisation of the lifeworld, a conceptual framework is created which can explain how PHM may be allowed to change medicine as a practice in an ethically problematic way. The framework relates the inhibition of virtuous behaviour among practitioners of medicine, understood as a moral practice, to the movement in medicine towards remote monitoring. To assess the explanatory power of the conceptual framework and expand its borders, a qualitative interview empirical study with potential users of PHM in England is carried out. Recognising that the inherent uncertainty of the future undermines the validity of empirical research, a novel epistemological framework based in Habermas’ discourse ethics is created to justify the empirical study. By developing Habermas’ concept of translation into a procedure for assessing the credibility of uncertain normative claims about the future, a novel methodology for empirical ethical assessment of emerging technologies is created and tested. Various methods of analysis are employed, including review of academic discourses, empirical and theoretical analyses of the moral potential of PHM. Recommendations are made concerning ethical issues in the deployment and design of PHM systems, analysis and application of PHM data, and the shortcomings of existing research and protection mechanisms in responding to potential ethical implications of the technology.

  • dc.title: PHM-ethics and ETICA: Complementary approaches to ethical assessment dc.contributor.author: Mittelstadt, Brent; Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-; Fairweather, N. Ben, 1966-

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Research interests/expertise

  • Computer Ethics
  • Medical Ethics
  • Bioethics
  • Animal Ethics
  • Ethical Theory
  • Critical Theory
  • Hermeneutics
  • Surveillance Theory
  • Epistemology
  • Virtue Ethics
  • Discourse Ethics
  • Habermas
  • Ethics of Personal Health Monitoring
  • Telehealth
  • Ambient Intelligence
  • Ubiquitous Computing

Areas of teaching

  • Computer ethics
  • ICT management
  • Security management

Membership of professional associations and societies

INSEIT (International Society for Ethics and Information Technology) – 2011 to 2014 – Member

FRRIICT (Framework for Responsible Research & Innovation in ICT) – 2013 to 2014 – Associate of RRI in ICT

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