Only Through Complexity. Morality and the Case of Supererogation

This volume deals with some of the major issues in contemporary moral philosophy. The core metaethical argument illuminates the structure of a moral system and emphasizes the importance of a phenomenological attitude toward the moral subject. From this starting point, further questions (typically addressed in normative ethics) arise: “How does moral deliberation work?” “How is moral justification possible?” “What is moral pluralism?” “How do we give an account of supererogatory acts?” Regarding all these questions, the volume works out the following answer: only through complexity. This view entails the belief that a life lived well is richer if we endorse a moral system that denies theoretical oversimplifications and favors the abundance of the constraints of moral obligations. As such, the overall goal of this volume involves mapping and recognizing different instances of moral complexity. This acknowledgment comes with several assumptions. Only through complexity can we make sense of what lies beyond the call of duty. Only through complexity can we give an account of how morality works from the first-person perspective. Only through complexity can we better promote the pursuit of a flourishing life

Intelligent Machines, Collectives, and Moral Responsibility

Collectives, such as companies, are generally thought to be moral agents and hence capable of being held responsible for what they do. If collectives, being non-human, can be ascribed moral responsibility, then can we do the same for machines? Is it equally the case that machines, particularly intelligent machines, can be held morally responsible for what they choose to do? I consider the conditions required for moral responsibility, and argue that, in terms of the agency condition, artificial, non-human entities in general are excused from being responsible because, although they may choose their actions, the beliefs and desires that form the basis of their choices are predetermined by their designers, placing them in an analogous position to persons suffering covert manipulation. This creates a problem for collective responsibility, but I argue that collectives, through their supervention on human persons, represent an exception. Finally, I consider that the design of future machines may be sufficiently abstract and high-level as to fall below some threshold of influence, allowing machines enough freedom for us to hold them responsible

Moral psychology of nursing robots : Exploring the role of robots in dilemmas of patient autonomy

Artificial intelligences (AIs) are widely used in tasks ranging from transportation to healthcare and military, but it is not yet known how people prefer them to act in ethically difficult situations. In five studies (an anthropological field study, n = 30, and four experiments, total n = 2150), we presented people with vignettes where a human or an advanced robot nurse is ordered by a doctor to forcefully medicate an unwilling patient. Participants were more accepting of a human nurse's than a robot nurse's forceful medication of the patient, and more accepting of (human or robot) nurses who respected patient autonomy rather than those that followed the orders to forcefully medicate (Study 2). The findings were robust against the perceived competence of the robot (Study 3), moral luck (whether the patient lived or died afterwards; Study 4), and command chain effects (Study 5; fully automated supervision or not). Thus, people prefer robots capable of disobeying orders in favour of abstract moral principles like valuing personal autonomy. Our studies fit in a new era in research, where moral psychological phenomena no longer reflect only interactions between people, but between people and autonomous AIs.Peer reviewe

Philosophy of Computer Science: An Introductory Course

There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments

Moral Dilemmas for Moral Machines

Autonomous systems are being developed and deployed in situations that may require some degree of ethical decision-making ability. As a result, research in machine ethics has proliferated in recent years. This work has included using moral dilemmas as validation mechanisms for implementing decision-making algorithms in ethically-loaded situations. Using trolley-style problems in the context of autonomous vehicles as a case study, I argue (1) that this is a misapplication of philosophical thought experiments because (2) it fails to appreciate the purpose of moral dilemmas, and (3) this has potentially catastrophic consequences; however, (4) there are uses of moral dilemmas in machine ethics that are appropriate and the novel situations that arise in a machine-learning context can shed some light on philosophical work in ethics

Can morality be computed? An exploration of whether machines can be moral agents

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Applied Ethics for Professionals 31 May, 2015, JohannesburgTechnology is an integral part of our daily lives and continues to advance rapidly, impacting our physical and social worlds. We increasingly rely on advanced machines to act in more autonomous and sophisticated ways. What would happen if artificial forms of intelligence developed to the point where machines behaved more like us and we started treating them as people? Ethics should anticipate and account for such possibilities so that science does not move faster than our moral understanding. My thesis states that when we are able to feel gratitude or resentment towards the actions of artificially intelligent machines we can be said to see them as morally responsible agents. I argue that standard ethics frames morality developmentally – only when we reach adulthood are we deemed able to enter into the type of relationships where we can hold one another morally responsible for our actions. I apply a more abstract notion of moral development to future versions of technology and couple this with a definition of morality as a relational or social construct. This allows me to argue that machines could develop to a point in the future where we react to them morally as we would to humans. Questions on whether we ought to react in this way are muted as relationally we quite simply would be unable to feel otherwise. Objections from definitions of moral agency based on innate qualities, specifically those associated with the concept of intelligence, are dispelled in favour of a relational definition

Designing a greener product: the Hoover 'New Wave' washing machine range

Hoover is one of the best known manufacturers of domestic appliances in Britain and has made washing machines at its Merthyr Tydfil factory since 1948. This article discusses the creation of the Hoover New Wave range of ‘green’ washing machines, which were launched in 1993 after a four year programme of research, design and development and investment in new manufacturing plant costing £15 million.The New Wave range were the first products to be awarded an EU Ecolabel, having exceeded set criteria for energy, water and detergent consumption and wash performance

Reading in the 21st century; reading at scale

Essay from a festshrift that was originally published in: Reading for faith and learning : essays on scripture, community, and libraries in honor of M. Patrick Graham / edited by John B. Weaver and Douglas L. Gragg. Abilene : Abilene Christian University Press, 2017

Most Programs Stop Quickly or Never Halt

Since many real-world problems arising in the fields of compiler optimisation, automated software engineering, formal proof systems, and so forth are equivalent to the Halting Problem--the most notorious undecidable problem--there is a growing interest, not only academically, in understanding the problem better and in providing alternative solutions. Halting computations can be recognised by simply running them; the main difficulty is to detect non-halting programs. Our approach is to have the probability space extend over both space and time and to consider the probability that a random $N$-bit program has halted by a random time. We postulate an a priori computable probability distribution on all possible runtimes and we prove that given an integer k>0, we can effectively compute a time bound T such that the probability that an N-bit program will eventually halt given that it has not halted by T is smaller than 2^{-k}. We also show that the set of halting programs (which is computably enumerable, but not computable) can be written as a disjoint union of a computable set and a set of effectively vanishing probability. Finally, we show that ``long'' runtimes are effectively rare. More formally, the set of times at which an N-bit program can stop after the time 2^{N+constant} has effectively zero density.Comment: Shortened abstract and changed format of references to match Adv. Appl. Math guideline

Roles of accounting practice in a public setting: the case of the Parisian Great Exhibitions (1855-1900).

The five Universal Exhibitions held in Paris between 1855 and 1900 share the particularity of having been, unlike their British counterparts, financed first wholly, then in part, by the Government. Public financing led to public finance principles (budgetary and public accounting) being applied to the organisation of the Exhibitions. Along with these, the organisation in charge of running these events imported a set of well-formatted techniques. However, these techniques (budgeting and accounting technique) were part of a highly specific type of organisation that bore all the hallmarks of a project:  an Exhibition is characterised by strong notions of vision, intentionality and voluntarist action: it seeks to achieve objectives (of presentation/democratisation and dissemination) which require a certain number of specific activities to be set up, the results of which, subject to uncertainty or exogenous variables, must be measured both as preparations advance, and then again retrospectively, after the event.  an Exhibition is an event limited in time and space (it opens on a given date and for a length of time decided by the law (or decree) and its organisation is traditionally divided into four well-defined phases: preparation, realisation, exploitation and liquidation. The principles of public finance must therefore be adapted to a specific organisational environment and in particular, to the managerial constraints of the event. The system of accounting information is very much part of a process of organisational perception, governance and strategic mobilisation. The Universal Exhibitions provide an original field of investigation for examining the roles attributed to accounting within the framework of the organisation of such events. The originality here derives as much from the context (a project to be managed over a period of time and where no tool or project management model existed (Michaïlesco, 2007)) as from the public nature of the accounting technique used. Indeed, since knowledge of public accounting practice is incomplete, the study of organisation by the state would seem extremely interesting for the history of public finance (Thuillier, 1999). From this point of view, the Universal Exhibitions organised in Paris during the second half of the 19th century were organised under two different political regimes and within two distinct public finance frameworks. Changes in the regulations governing public finances had an impact on the powers bestowed on the organisations in charge putting on the Exhibitions. The accounting systems which were set up therefore had to be adapted to fit within the time limit. Moreover, public accounting was designed with the aim of controlling the collection of taxes and their use (Lemarchand, 1999), which is different from running an Exhibition, in particular if the event is seen in terms of project management. This change of objective modified the use of accounting systems and led to the emergence of specific roles that had to evolve as a result of both the accumulation of knowledge and the political context. The aim of this article is therefore to analyse the role of public accounting within the framework of the five Universal Exhibitions organised in Paris during the second half of the 19th century. The analysis was carried out using Burchell & al.âs classification system (1980). The latter distinguishes between four types of role assumed by accounting systems with reference to the characteristics of decision-making within an organisation. Indeed, decision-making is affected by adhesion to an objective and the uncertainty surrounding the consequences of the action taken. Depending on the degree of adhesion and uncertainty, decision-taking is described as âdecision by computationâ, âdecision by judgementâ, âdecision by compromiseâ, or âdecision by inspirationâ. The roles of accounting ascribed to these are as follows: âanswer machinesâ, âlearning machinesâ, âammunition machinesâ and ârationalization machinesâ. Two groups of Universal Exhibitions have been identified: those held under the Second Empire (the 1855 and 1867 Exhibitions) and those held under the 3rd Republic (the 1878, 1889 and 1900 Exhibitions). This division into two main periods allows us to take two important factors into account: on the one hand, the change of political regime that influenced the rules of public finance and on the other, the constitution of fairly general principles for the running of these events. The comparative study of these two groups of Exhibitions reveals that two distinct roles can be allotted to the accounting systems: a learning role during the Exhibitions of the first period, then a rationalization role in the case of the Exhibitions held during the second period. Under the Second Empire, the Universal Exhibitions financed exclusively by the Government were supported by strong political, economic and social aims. The importance given to holding such an event dispensed these projects from control by Parliament, whose influence had already been weakened considerably under Napoleon III. Although the decision to organise an Exhibition was unanimous, lack of knowledge on how to run such a project meant there was great uncertainty as to the consequences of decisions since the concept was new. Experience of running such a wide-ranging project therefore had to be acquired. An accounting system based on the rules and principles of public accounting and adapted to the events in question therefore met these needs. Within the framework of the Universal Exhibitions organised under the Second Empire, accounting may therefore be analysed as a learning instrument and aid to decision-making (learning machine). The arrival of the 3rd Republic and with it the return of strict parliamentary control, saw great controversy emerge as to the economic usefulness of Universal Exhibitions and the financial implication of the Government in their organisation. The difficulty in obtaining a consensus on how they should be run led to a process of retrospective justification in which accounting acquired considerable importance. Despite the financial disengagement of the Government, the principles of public finance were still applicable but had evolved as a result of changes in the political and economic environment. Experience acquired in the organisation of the preceding Exhibitions reduced the uncertainty inherent in evaluating the consequences of decisions taken. However, the need then arose to rationalize the existence of these events and the use of the private finances obtained. Budgetary procedures were strengthened and there was an overproduction of information in the shape of financial reporting and statistics. In this context, the accounting system, which had been adapted many times after the first Exhibitions as a result of changes in the environment, was then used to rationalize the action taken (rationalization machine). The documents used to carry out this study are of two different kinds. On the one hand, there are the various documents generated by the organization of the Exhibitions (correspondence, plans of the exhibition palaces, photographs, administrative and accounting documents etc.) that were presented to the national archives by the Ministry for Commerce between 1877 and 1910 (de Maurepas, 1998). In addition to these documents there are the official reports written by the general commissioners of the successive Exhibitions assessing the organisation of the events and the results (these reports are available in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs).finance publique; système d'information comptable; Rôles de la comptabilité;