Technology and the situationist challenge to virtue ethics

In this paper, I introduce a "promises and perils" framework for understanding the "soft" impacts of emerging technology, and argue for a eudaimonic conception of well-being. This eudaimonic conception of well-being, however, presupposes that we have something like stable character traits. I therefore defend this view from the "situationist challenge" and show that instead of viewing this challenge as a threat to well-being, we can incorporate it into how we think about living well with technology. Human beings are susceptible to situational influences and are often unaware of the ways that their social and technological environment influence not only their ability to do well, but even their ability to know whether they are doing well. Any theory that attempts to describe what it means for us to be doing well, then, needs to take these contextual features into account and bake them into a theory of human flourishing. By paying careful attention to these contextual factors, we can design systems that promote human flourishing

Moral Agents or Mindless Machines? A Critical Appraisal of Agency in Artificial Systems

In this paper I provide an exposition and critique of Johnson and Noorman’s (2014) three conceptualizations of the agential roles artificial systems can play. I argue that two of these conceptions are unproblematic: that of causally efficacious agency and “acting for” or surrogate agency. Their third conception, that of “autonomous agency,” however, is one I have reservations about. The authors point out that there are two ways in which the term “autonomy” can be used: there is, firstly, the engineering sense of the term, which simply refers to the ability of some system to act independently of substantive human control. Secondly, there is the moral sense of the term, which has traditionally grounded many notions of human mor-al responsibility. I argue that the continued usage of “autonomy” in discussions of artificial agency complicates matters unnecessarily. This occurs in two ways: firstly, the condition of autonomy, even in its engineering sense, fails to accurately describe the way “autonomous” systems are developed in practice. Secondly, the continued usage of autonomy in the moral sense introduces unnecessary meta-physical baggage form the free will debate into discussions about moral agency. In order to understand the debate surrounding autonomy, we would therefore first need to settle many seemingly intractable metaphysical questions regarding the existence of free will in human beings

Reactive agency and technology

Is there room for genuine human agency in a world populated by almost incessant technological distraction and influence? It often feels as though our technological landscape is pulling us in a number of directions, and that our agency is more a function of us reacting to the world as opposed to us exerting our will. In this paper I, explore what it would mean to take these contextual factors seriously and bake them into an account of agency. That is, what if agency is reactive all the way down? This is a proposal made by Rüdiger Bittner, who argues that the reason(s) for action are responses to states of affairs in the world. This is in contrast to ‘standard’ views of agency, which explain actions with things like beliefs and desires. Ultimately, I find such a reactive account of agency implausible. However, I think it reveals a potential solution to the ‘new’ problem of all-pervasive technologies: a reactive account does not see these technologies necessarily as a threat, but rather focuses our attention on the ways in which they change and shape our available context and our possibility to act. While I argue the reactive account goes too far, what I take from it is that our environment offers us various possibilities for action (in the form of affordances), and that we ought to take this seriously in our thinking both about agency and about the impacts of technology. Moreover, there is something to learn from our tendency to ‘fall’ for various ‘temptations’ in our environment, and this justifies further reflection on not only the design of different technologies, but whether such technologies ought to exist at all

Free will as an epistemically innocent false belief

In this paper I aim to establish that our belief in free will is epistemically innocent. Many contemporary accounts that deal with the potential “illusion” of freedom seek to describe the pragmatic benefits of belief in free will, such as how it facilitates or grounds our notions of moral responsibility or basic desert. While these proposals have their place (and use), I will not explicitly engage with them. I aim to establish that our false belief in free will is an epistemically innocent belief. I will endeavour to show that if we carefully consider the circumstances in which particular beliefs (such as our belief in free will) are adopted, we can come to better appreciate not just their psychological but also their epistemic benefits. The implications, therefore, for future investigations into the philosophy of free will are that we should consider whether we have been too narrow in our pragmatic defences of free will, and that we should also be sensitive to epistemic considerations.U ovom radu želim utvrditi da je naše vjerovanje u slobodnu volju epistemički nevino. Mnogi suvremeni prikazi koji se bave potencijalnom "iluzijom" slobode nastoje opisati pragmatične dobrobiti vjerovanja u slobodnu volju poput toga kako ona olakšava ili utemeljuje naše predodžbe o moralnoj odgovornosti ili osnovnoj zasluzi. Iako ovi prijedlozi imaju svoje mjesto (i korist) neću se eksplicitno baviti njima. Želim utvrditi da je naše lažno vjerovanje u slobodnu volju epistemički nevino vjerovanje. Nastojat ću pokazati da ako pažljivo razmotrimo okolnosti u kojima su određena uvjerenja (kao što je naše vjerovanje u slobodnu volju) usvojena, možemo bolje cijeniti ne samo njihove psihološke, već i njihove epistemičke koristi. Stoga su implikacije za buduća istraživanja filozofije slobodne volje te da bismo trebali razmotriti jesmo li bili preusko definirali pragmatične obrane slobodne volje te bismo, također, trebali biti osjetljivi na epistemička razmatranja

Le château de Bournazel, l’Antiquité retrouvée

À l’occasion de l’analyse du décor de ce château de l’Aveyron, à l’architecture précocement classique, l’auteur s’interroge sur le sens de l’iconographie des métopes étonnement variées (où apparaît en particulier Jupiter Amon) et de la présence d’une série de bustes évoquant des figures impériales à côté de héros et de femmes illustres. On peut y voir une stratégie seigneuriale ambitieuse, qui convoque Venus armata ou la Fortune, à côté d’un rapport nouveau à l’Antiquité, propre aux élites urbaines des villes méridionales riches en monuments de l’ancienne Narbonnaise.Analyzing the decor of this Aveyron castle, with its early classical architecture, the author thinks over the meaning of the iconography of the surprisingly varied metopes (with the figure of Jupiter Amon in particular) and the presence of a series of busts of imperial figures alongside heroes and illustrious ladies. One can see in it an ambitious memorial strategy, summoning Venus armata or Fortune, alongside a new relationship to Antiquity, particular to the urban elites of the southern cities fraught with monuments of the ancient Narbonnese

Moral Encounters of the Artificial Kind: Towards a non-anthropocentric account of machine moral agency

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2019.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this thesis is to advance a philosophically justifiable account of Artificial Moral Agency (AMA). Concerns about the moral status of Artificial Intelligence (AI) traditionally turn on questions of whether these systems are deserving of moral concern (i.e. if they are moral patients) or whether they can be sources of moral action (i.e. if they are moral agents). On the Organic View of Ethical Status, being a moral patient is a necessary condition for an entity to qualify as a moral agent. This view claims that because artificial agents (AAs) lack sentience, they cannot be proper subjects of moral concern and hence cannot be considered to be moral agents. I raise conceptual and epistemic issues with regards to the sense of sentience employed on this view, and I argue that the Organic View does not succeed in showing that machines cannot be moral patients. Nevertheless, irrespective of this failure, I also argue that the entire project is misdirected in that moral patiency need not be a necessary condition for moral agency. Moreover, I claim that whereas machines may conceivably be moral patients in the future, there is a strong case to be made that they are (or will very soon be) moral agents. Whereas it is often argued that machines cannot be agents simpliciter, let alone moral agents, I claim that this argument is predicated on a conception of agency that makes unwarranted metaphysical assumptions even in the case of human agents. Once I have established the shortcomings of this “standard account”, I move to elaborate on other, more plausible, conceptions of agency, on which some machines clearly qualify as agents. Nevertheless, the argument is still often made that while some machines may be agents, they cannot be moral agents, given their ostensible lack of the requisite phenomenal states. Against this thesis, I argue that the requirement of internal states for moral agency is philosophically unsound, as it runs up against the problem of other minds. In place of such intentional accounts of moral agency, I provide a functionalist alternative, which makes conceptual room for the existence of AMAs. The implications of this thesis are that at some point in the future we may be faced with situations for which no human being is morally responsible, but a machine may be. Moreover, this responsibility holds, I claim, independently of whether the agent in question is “punishable” or not.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis het ten doel om ʼn filosofies-geregverdigde beskrywing van Kunsmatige Morele Agentskap (KMA) te ontwikkel. Gewoonlik behels die vraagstuk na die morele status van Kunsmatige Intelligensie (KI) twee vrae: die morele belang waarop sulke stelsels geregtig is (dus, of hulle morele pasiënte is) en of sulke stelsels die bron van morele optrede kan wees (dus, of hulle morele agente is). Die Organiese Benadering tot Etiese Status hou voor dat om ʼn morele pasiënt te wees ʼn voorvereiste daarvoor is om ʼn morele agent te kan wees. Daar word dan verder aangevoer dat Kunsmatige Agente (KA) nie bewus is nie en gevolglik nie morele pasiënte kan wees nie. Uiteraard kan hulle dan ook nie morele agente wees nie. Die verstaan van “bewustheid” wat hier bearbei word, is egter konseptueel en epistemies verdag en ek voer gevolglik aan dat die Organiese Siening nie genoegsame bewys lewer dat masjiene nie morele pasiënte kan wees nie. Ongeag hierdie bevinding voer ek dan ook verder aan dat die aanname waarop die hele projek berus foutief is—om ʼn morele pasiënt te wees, is nie ʼn noodsaaklike voorvereiste daarvoor om ʼn morele agent te kan wees nie. Verder voer ek aan dat, terwyl masjiene in die toekoms morele pasiënte mag wees, hulle beslis morele agente sal wees (of selfs alreeds is). Daar word dikwels aangevoer dat masjiene nie eens agente kan wees nie, wat nog van morele agente. Ek voer egter aan dat hierdie siening ʼn verstaan van “agentskap” voorveronderstel wat op ongeregverdige metafisiese aannames berus, selfs in die geval van die mens se agentskap. Ek bespreek hierdie tekortkominge en stel dan ʼn meer geloofwaardige siening van agentskap voor, een wat terselfdertyd ook ruimte laat vir masjienagentskap. Terwyl sommige denkers toegee dat masjiene wel agente kan wees, hou hulle steeds vol dat masjiene te kort skiet as morele agente, siende dat hulle nie oor die nodige fenomenele vermoëns beskik nie. Hierdie vereiste word egter deur die “anderverstandsprobleem” ondermyn—ons kan doodeenvoudig nie vasstel of enigiemand anders (hetsy mens of masjien) oor sulke fenomenele vermoëns besit nie. Teenoor sulke intensionele verstane van morele agentskap stel ek dan ʼn funksionalistiese verstaan, wat terselfdertyd ook ruimte laat vir masjiene as morele agente. My bevindinge impliseer dat ons in die toekoms ons in situasies sal bevind waarvoor geen mens moreel verantwoordelik is nie, maar ʼn masjien wel. Hierdie verantwoordelikheid word nie beïnvloed deur die masjien se kapasiteit om gestraf te word nie.Master

The origin and evolution of a recent agricultural weed: population genetic diversity of weedy populations of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) in Spain and France

The recurrent evolution of crop-related weeds during agricultural history raises serious economic problems and challenging scientific questions. Weedy forms of sunflower, a species native from America, have been reported in European sunflower fields for a few decades. In order to understand their origin, we analysed the genetic diversity of a sample of weedy populations from France and Spain, and of conventional and ornamental varieties. A crop-specific maternally inherited marker was present in all weeds. At 16 microsatellite loci, the weedy populations shared most of their diversity with the conventional varieties. But they showed a large number of additional alleles absent from the cultivated pool. European weedy populations thus most probably originated from the unintentional pollination of maternal lines in seed production fields by wild plants growing nearby, resulting in the introduction of crop-wild hybrids into the farmers’ fields. The wide diversity and the low population structure detected were indicative of a multiplicity of introductions events rather than of field-to-field propagation. Further studies are required to understand the local evolutionary dynamics of a weedy population, and especially the respective roles of crop-to-weed gene flow and selection in the fate of an initial source of crop-wild hybrids