Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration \ud

Should we grant rights to artificially intelligent robots? Most current and near-future robots do not meet the hard criteria set by deontological and utilitarian theory. Virtue ethics can avoid this problem with its indirect approach. However, both direct and indirect arguments for moral consideration rest on ontological features of entities, an approach which incurs several problems. In response to these difficulties, this paper taps into a different conceptual resource in order to be able to grant some degree of moral consideration to some intelligent social robots: it sketches a novel argument for moral consideration based on social relations. It is shown that to further develop this argument we need to revise our existing ontological and social-political frameworks. It is suggested that we need a social ecology, which may be developed by engaging with Western ecology and Eastern worldviews. Although this relational turn raises many difficult issues and requires more work, this paper provides a rough outline of an alternative approach to moral consideration that can assist us in shaping our relations to intelligent robots and, by extension, to all artificial and biological entities that appear to us as more than instruments for our human purpose

Two Dogmas of Moral Theory? Comments on Lisa Tessman’s Moral Failure

In Moral Failure, Lisa Tessman argues against two principles of moral theory, that ought implies can and that normative theory must be action-guiding. Although Tessman provides a trenchant account of how we are thrust into the misfortune of moral failure, often by our very efforts to act morally, and although she shows, through a discussion well-informed by the latest theorizing in ethics, neuroethics, and psychology, how much more moral theory can do than provide action-guiding principles, I argue that the two theses of moral theory that she disputes remain indispensable for ethical theory

Mathematics, metaphor and economic visualisability

The mathematisation of economic theory is an issue that has been discussed many times. These discussions have been dominated by debate about the appropriateness of the deductive method for economics. This rather narrow focus has pushed a number of important methodological issues regarding the nature of mathematical economics aside. In this paper, it is argued that mathematical economics involves the construction of metaphor and is therefore metaphorical in nature. Whilst mathematical economics has been responsible for what are generally regarded to be notable theoretical achievements and retains a place in economics as an apparatus for the development of economic science, the meaning of mathematical economics is restricted to those elements of economic reality that may be talked about in terms of mathematical objects and there is a danger of declining economic visualisability as the metaphors of mathematical economics become less vivid