The development of increasingly intelligent and autonomous technologies will eventually lead to these systems having to face morally problematic situations. This gave rise to the development of artificial morality, an emerging field in artificial intelligence which explores whether and how artificial systems can be furnished with moral capacities. This will have a deep impact on our lives. Yet, the methodological foundations of artificial morality are still sketchy and often far off from possible applications. One important area of application of artificial (...) systems with moral capacities is geriatric care. The goal of this article is to afford the methodological foundations for artificial morality, i.e., for implementing moral capacities in artificial systems in general, and to discuss them with respect to an assistive system in geriatric care which is capable of moral learning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFew would argue against the importance of ethics in early childhood teacher preparation and practice. However, arguing for something in principle does not always lead to action. The purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the need for a sharper applied focus on ethics in early childhood education than that which currently exists. A context for professional ethics in early childhood education is outlined, a case highlighting specific ethical considerations is presented, and, finally, concerns and insights are discussed. (...) The discussion is anchored in professional ethical codes and the literature on teacher preparation and ethics education. (shrink)

Moral theories, such as the variations on virtue ethics, deontological ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism, are expected – inter alia – to explain the basic orientation of morality, give us principles and directives, justify those, and thereby guide our actions. I examine some functions and characteristics of the extant moral theories from a moral metatheoretical point of view, in order to clarify the generally assumed rivalry between them. By thinking of moral theories in analogy to languages it is argued that different (...) moral theories are neither simply competing nor simply complementary; their respective orientations justify using them, in virtue of the problems they help to solve. But even if considerations about the functionality of a theory and the context in which it is created play an important role, they can neither be sufficient to determine these theories’ relations to one other nor for choosing between them. The challenge is to set criteria for the quality of a moral theory on a moral metatheoretical level and, in particular, to make room for future views on morality. (shrink)

One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with people and other systems. The computing research community has made efforts to design artificial agents capable of doing tasks the way people do, tasks requiring cognitive mechanisms such as planning, decision-making, and learning. The application domains of such software agents are evident nowadays. Humans are experiencing the inclusion of artificial agents in their environment as (...) unmanned vehicles, intelligent houses, and humanoid robots capable of caring for people. In this context, research in the field of machine ethics has become more than a hot topic. Machine ethics focuses on developing ethical mechanisms for artificial agents to be capable of engaging in moral behavior. However, there are still crucial challenges in the development of truly Artificial Moral Agents. This paper aims to show the current status of Artificial Moral Agents by analyzing models proposed over the past two decades. As a result of this review, a taxonomy to classify Artificial Moral Agents according to the strategies and criteria used to deal with ethical problems is proposed. The presented review aims to illustrate (1) the complexity of designing and developing ethical mechanisms for this type of agent, and (2) that there is a long way to go (from a technological perspective) before this type of artificial agent can replace human judgment in difficult, surprising or ambiguous moral situations. (shrink)

In his paper ‘A libertarian case for mandatory vaccination’, Jason Brennan argues that even libertarians, who are very averse to coercive measures, should support mandatory vaccination to combat the harmful disease outbreaks that can be caused by non-vaccination. He argues that libertarians should accept the clean hands principle, which would justify mandatory vaccination. The principle states that there is a (sometimes enforceable) moral obligation not to participate in collectively harmful activities. Once libertarians accept the principle, they will be compelled to (...) support mandatory vaccination. In my paper, I argue that the cases Brennan uses to justify this principle are disanalogous to the case of non-vaccination and that they are not compelling to libertarians. The cases Brennan offers can be explained by a libertarian using the individual sufficiency principle: which states that if an individual’s action is sufficient to cause harm, then there is a (sometimes enforceable) moral obligation not to carry out that action. I argue that this principle is more appropriate to Brennan’s examples, and more appealing to the libertarian, than the clean hands principle. In order to get libertarians to accept the clean hands principle, I present a modified version of one of Brennan’s cases that is analogous to the case of non-vaccination. Using this case, I argue that whether the clean hands principle will justify mandatory vaccination is dependent on whether the herd immunity rate in a given population is approaching a threshold after which a collective risk of harm will be imposed onto others. (shrink)