Van kennis naar cognitie : boekbespreking

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Book review: L.E.J. Brouwer en de grondslagen van de wiskunde

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1661-1966) was één van de grootste, en eigenzinnigste, wiskundigen die Nederland heeft gekend - en naar wie zelfs een krater op de maan vernoemd is (zie [1]). Hij was zijn tijd ver vooruit betreffende zijn wiskundige en filosofische ideeën, zeker op het gebied van de grondslagen der wiskunde

Verbied bewapende robot

Bewapende militaire robots worden steeds vaker ingezet. Over de ethische en maatschappelijke problemen die daaraan kleven, is volgens dr. ir. Lambèr Royakkers nog onvoldoende nagedacht. Hij pleit voor een verbod op de ontwikkeling van bewapende robots

Lethal military robots:who is responsible when things go wrong?

Although most unmanned systems that militaries use today are still unarmed and predominantly used for surveillance, it is especially the proliferation of armed military robots that raises some serious ethical questions. One of the most pressing concerns the moral responsibility in case a military robot uses violence in a way that would normally qualify as a war crime. In this chapter, the authors critically assess the chain of responsibility with respect to the deployment of both semi-autonomous and (learning) autonomous lethal military robots. They start by looking at military commanders because they are the ones with whom responsibility normally lies. The authors argue that this is typically still the case when lethal robots kill wrongly - even if these robots act autonomously. Nonetheless, they next look into the possible moral responsibility of the actors at the beginning and the end of the causal chain: those who design and manufacture armed military robots, and those who, far from the battlefield, remotely control them

Ethiek in de rechtspraktijk

In dit boek wordt een methode besproken om morele dilemma's te analyseren, die juristen in hun werk tegenkomen

Developing tools to counteract and prevent suicide bomber incidents:A case study in Value Sensitive Design

Developers and designers make all sorts of moral decisions throughout an innovation project. In this article, we describe how teams of developers and designers engaged with ethics in the early phases of innovation based on case studies in the SUBCOP project (SUBCOP stands for ‘SUicide Bomber COunteraction and Prevention’). For that purpose, Value Sensitive Design (VSD) will be used as a reference. Specifically, we focus on the following two research questions: How can researchers/developers learn about users’ perspectives and values during the innovation process? and How can researchers/developers take into account these values, and related design criteria, in their decision-making during the innovation process? Based on a case study of several innovation processes in this project, we conclude the researchers/developers involved are able to do something similar to VSD (without them knowing about VSD or calling it ‘VSD’), supported by relatively simple exercises in the project, e.g., meetings with potential end-users and discussions with members of the Ethical Advisory Board of the project. Furthermore, we also found—possibly somewhat counterintuitively—that a commercial, with its focus on understanding and satisfying customers’ needs, can promote VSD

Blame it on me

\u3cp\u3eIn this paper, we develop a formalisation of the main ideas of the work of Van de Poel on responsibility. Using the basic concepts through which the meanings of responsibility are defined, we construct a logic which enables to express sentences like “individual i is accountable for φ”, “individual i is blameworthy for φ” and “individual i has the obligation to see to it that φ”. This formalization clarifies the definitions of responsibility given by Van de Poel and highlights their differences and similarities. It also helps to assess the consistency of the formalisation of responsibility, not only by showing that definitions are not inconsistent, but also by providing a formal demonstration of the relation between three main meanings of responsibility (accountability, blameworthiness, and obligation). The formal account can be used to derive new properties of the concepts. With the help of the formalisation, we detect the occurrence of the problem of many hands (PMH) by defining a logical framework for reasoning about collective and individual responsibility. This logic extends the Coalition Epistemic Dynamic Logic (CEDL) by adding a notion of group knowledge (and generalize the definitions of individual responsibility to groups of agents), agent ability and knowing how to its semantics.\u3c/p\u3

The ethical cycle and judgment in design

This paper starts with the claim that the design analogy, i.e., the analogy between design and ethics, helps to understand and to deal with moral problems, and suggests some useful strategies for addressing moral problems. In applying the basic problem solving cycle of design to ethical decision making, we develop a model for moral problem solving. In this light we discuss two general issues in applied ethics: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. Then we will reverse the analogy, and draw lessons for the area of design

De verantwoordelijkheid van ingenieurs

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