68,475 research outputs found
Artificial morality: Making of the artificial moral agents
Abstract:
Artificial Morality is a new, emerging interdisciplinary field that centres
around the idea of creating artificial moral agents, or AMAs, by implementing moral
competence in artificial systems. AMAs are ought to be autonomous agents capable of
socially correct judgements and ethically functional behaviour. This request for moral
machines comes from the changes in everyday practice, where artificial systems are being
frequently used in a variety of situations from home help and elderly care purposes to
banking and court algorithms. It is therefore important to create reliable and responsible
machines based on the same ethical principles that society demands from people. New
challenges in creating such agents appear. There are philosophical questions about a
machine’s potential to be an agent, or mora
l agent, in the first place. Then comes the
problem of social acceptance of such machines, regardless of their theoretic agency
status. As a result of efforts to resolve this problem, there are insinuations of needed
additional psychological (emotional and cogn
itive) competence in cold moral machines.
What makes this endeavour of developing AMAs even harder is the complexity of the
technical, engineering aspect of their creation. Implementation approaches such as top-
down, bottom-up and hybrid approach aim to find the best way of developing fully
moral agents, but they encounter their own problems throughout this effort
Hybrid laws: constitutionalizing private governance networks
s.a.: Das Recht hybrider Netzwerke. Zeitschrift fĂĽr das gesamte Handelsrecht und Wirtschaftsrecht 165, 2001, 550-575.. Italienische Fassung: Diritti ibridi: la costituzionalizzazione delle reti private di governance. In: Gunther Teubner, Costituzionalismo societario. Armando, Roma 2004 (im Erscheinen)
Between empowerment and abuse: citizen participation beyond the post-democratic turn
In this special issue on “Democratization beyond the Post-Democratic Turn. Political Participation between Empowerment and Abuse”, we have explored changing understandings of participation in contemporary Western representative democracies through the analytical lens of the concept of the post-democratic-turn. We have investigated technology-based, market-based, and expert-led innovations that claim to enhance democratic participation and to provide policy legitimation. In this concluding article, I revisit the cases made by the individual contributors and analyse how shifting notions of participation alter dominant understandings of democracy. I carve out how new and emerging ideas of participation are based on different understandings of political subjectivity; furthermore, how constantly rising democratic expectations and simultaneously increasing scepticism with regard to democratic processes and institutions point to a growing democratic ambivalence within Western societies. Making use of Dahl’s conceptualization of democracy, in this article, I review changing understandings of participation in light of their contribution to further democratization. The article shows how under post-democratic conditions the simulative performance of autonomy and subjectivity has become central to democratic participation. It emphasizes that what in established perspectives on democratization might appear as an abuse of participation, through the lens of a post-democratic-turn might be perceived as emancipatory and liberating
Accountability And Ethics: Reconsidering the Relationships
ABSTRACT
While a relationship between accountability and ethics has long been assumed and debated in Public Administration, the nature of that relationship has not been examined or clearly articulated. This article makes such an effort by positing four major forms of accountability (answerability, blameworthiness, liability and attributability) and focusing on the ethical strategies developed in response to each of these forms
Robots, Autonomy, and Responsibility
We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions for agents fit to be held responsible in a normative sense, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. On the basis of Alfred R. Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility it can be argued that even if robots were to have all the capacities usually required of moral agency, their history as products of engineering would undermine their autonomy and thus responsibility
Could the doctrine of moral rights be used as a basis for understanding the notion of control within data protection law?
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Information & Communications Technology Law on 1 April 2018, available online at:https://doi.org/10.1080/13600834.2018.1458449. Under embargo until 1 October 2019.This article considers the notion of individual control of personal data as envisaged by the European data protection framework and makes the argument that it is a poorly-understood and under-developed concept, but that our understanding of it may be improved by way of analyses and comparisons with the doctrine of moral rights, an important constituent element of intellectual property law. The article starts by examining the concept of personal data itself, and why an enhanced level of individual control over personal data is thought to be a desirable regulatory objective. Following this, the article examines the scholarly literature pertaining to individual control of personal data, as well as a range of relevant EU policy documents. Having done so, the article argues that the notion of control is muddled and confused from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Following this, the article considers the doctrine of moral rights, and through an exploration of its theoretical and practical elements highlights why it may be of assistance in terms of enhancing our understanding of individual control in the data protection context.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Agency and Virtues
In the philosophy of action, agency manifests the capacity of the agent to act. An agent is one who acts voluntarily, consciously and intentionally. This article studies the relationship between virtues and agency to learn to what extent agency is conceptually and metaphysically dependent on moral or epistemic virtues; whether virtue is a necessary condition for action and agency, besides the belief, desire and intention? Or are virtues necessary merely for the moral or epistemic character of the agent and not his agency? If virtues are constructive elements of personal identity, can we say that virtues are necessary for action and agency? If we accept that virtues play a role in agency, the principle of “Ought Implies Can” makes us face a new challenge; which we will discuss. After explaining the concept of action and agency, I will study the relationship between agency and virtues in the field of ethics and epistemology. Ultimately, I conclude that not only in theories of virtue but also in other ethical theories, virtue is independently necessary for the actualization of agency; even if, conceptually, there might not be any relation between the two. In many cases, virtue can also have a crucial role in prudential agency.
agency, action, moral virtue, epistemic virtue, the principle of “Ought Implies Can”.
* Ph.D., Professor. Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, University of Qom, Qom, Iran. ×€ [email protected]
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