Professional Judgment In Turbulent Times: Technology, Authority and Moral Responsibility

Professional Judgment in Turbulent Times: Technology, Authority and Moral Responsibility

Professional authority has long been linked to the capacity to exercise judgment under conditions of uncertainty. From medicine and law to education, engineering, and public administration, professions have claimed legitimacy not through specialized knowledge alone but through their ability to determine what ought to be done in particular situations.

Yet, professional judgment has always existed in tension with efforts to standardize, formalize, and calculate decision-making. Successive waves of managerial and digital technologies have sought to reorganize professional judgment, including protocols, performance measures, behavioural designs, decision-support systems, and, more recently, artificial intelligence. As professional work becomes increasingly mediated by such technologies, questions of expertise, authority, discretion, and responsibility acquire renewed significance.

If professional authority rests on the capacity to exercise judgment, what happens when technologies increasingly classify, predict, recommend, evaluate, and steer action? How do such technologies displace professional judgment, redistribute it, or create new demands for expertise? And how do they reshape the obligations attached to professional officeholding and conduct?

This session invites theoretical and empirical contributions on the changing nature of professional judgment in technologically turbulent environments. We are particularly interested in contributions addressing:

• Judgment and technology: what remains distinctive about professional judgment when technologies increasingly guide or structure professional discretion?
• Authority, expertise, and office: how are professional authority, jurisdiction, and officeholding reshaped by new technological and organizational arrangements?
• Moral responsibility and accountability: how do professionals navigate ethical uncertainty and responsibility when decisions are increasingly mediated by advanced technologies?