Cílem článku je prozkoumat otázku po epistemickém statusu morálních intuic. Empirické výzkumy na poli morální psychologie ukazují, že intuice hojně využíváme při morálním hodnocení. Spoléháme se na ně však i jako morální filosofové při testování našich teorií – má-li některá normativní teorie proti-intuitivní důsledky, chápeme to jako její vadu a vice versa. V článku se snažím zodpovědět otázku, zda je taková praxe odvolávání se na morální intuice jako na evidenci ospravedlnitelná – je morální intuice spolehlivým epistemickým kanálem? Nejprve se budu (...) opírat o příbuznou debatu zaměřenou na epistemické intuice, představím tzv. restrikcionistickou výzvu a vysvětlím, z jakého důvodu se zaměřuji na morální intuice. V následující sekci předložím dle mého názoru nejsilnější linii útoku na epistemickou spolehlivost morálních intuic – argument z intuitivní nestability. Dříve jsme nevycházeli z úžasu nad zprávami o masivních rozdílech mezi námi Zápaďany a obyvateli exotických krajin, kterými nás ze svých terénních výzkumů zásobovali etnografové a antropologové. Dnes to jsou především morální psychologové a experimentální filosofové, kteří nás udivují ještě více odhalováním značné variability v intuicích – tentokrát však nejen mezi civilizovanými a domorodými lidmi, nýbrž i v srdci naší vlastní kultury. V další části tak předložím jednoduchou typologii intuitivní nestability a představím v současnosti již značně rozsáhlý soubor dat, který dokumentuje právě tuto neblahou vlastnost morálních intuic. Na jejich základě pak ve finální sekci dospěji k závěru, že morální intuice nejsou schopné dostát epistemickým nárokům, které klademe na jiné informační zdroje (např. smyslové vnímání), a jako takové nemohou sehrávat svou domnělou evidenční roli. V úplném závěru předložím předběžné poznámky týkající se možnosti využívat morálních intuic spíše jako zdroje motivace a za tím účelem navrhnu obrátit filosofickou praxi testování normativních teorií naruby. (shrink)

According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings suggesting that intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy that largely tell against this assumption. To advance the debate, we present the most comprehensive experimental study of intuitive expertise in ethics to date, which tests five well- known biases of (...) judgment and decision-making among expert ethicists and laypeople. We found that even expert ethicists are affected by some of these biases, but also that they enjoy a slight advantage over laypeople in some cases. We discuss the implications of these results for the expertise defence, and conclude that they still do not support the defence as it is typically presented in (moral) philosophy. (shrink)

Neuroethics is typically conceived of as consisting of two traditions: the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of moral judgment. However, recent work has sought to draw philosophical and ethical implications from the neuroscience of moral judgment. Such work, which concernsnormative moral neuroscience(NMN), is sufficiently distinct and complex to deserve recognition as a third tradition of neuroethics. Recognizing it as such can reduce confusion among researchers, eliminating conflations among both critics and proponents of NMN.This article identifies and unpacks some of (...) the most prominent goals, characteristic assumptions, and unique arguments in NMN and addresses some of the strongest objections NMN faces. The paper synthesizes these considerations into a set of heuristics, or loose discovery principles, that can help overcome obstacles in and attenuate resistance to NMN. These heuristics may simultaneously help identify those projects in NMN that are most likely to be fruitful and help fortify them. (shrink)

Critical reflection on the available neuropsychological evidence suggests that the roles of emotion and reason in moral judgment may not be distinct. This casts significant doubt on our current understanding of moral judgment, and therefore also on all philosophical theories based on that understanding. Most notably, it raises doubts about both sentimentalism and rationalism, which historically have often been treated as exclusive and exhaustive theories regarding the nature of moral concepts. As an alternative, I endorse pluralism with regard to the (...) emotional and rational nature of moral concepts. (shrink)

Value pluralists see themselves as philosophical grown-ups. They profess to face reality as it is and accept resultant pessimism, while criticising their monist rivals for holding on to the naïve idea that the right, the good and the beautiful are ultimately harmonisable with each other. The aim of this essay is to challenge this self-image of value pluralists. Notwithstanding its usefulness as a means of subverting monist dominance, I argue that the self-image has the downside of obscuring various theoretical positions (...) that do not fall into either the pluralist or monist camp. Yet such positions do exist, as shown by my discussion of Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. Near contemporaries of the pioneering value pluralist Isaiah Berlin, the pair, just like him, sought to be realistic about the lived experiences of political disasters and moral disorientation in the twentieth century. Moreover, they shared with Berlin a keen interest in real-world moral dilemmas, which seemed to them to have made traditional morality obsolete. But the three thinkers’ perspectives on ‘reality’ hardly converged, and neither Camus nor Arendt became a value pluralist as a result of their reflections on moral dilemmas. This, however, by no means indicates the pair’s immaturity. Rather, it shows that there is more than one way of observing fidelity to our actual experience and that value pluralists’ commitment to realism and resultant pessimism is not as uniquely mature as they would have us believe. (shrink)

Trolley cases are widely considered central to the ethics of autonomous vehicles. We caution against this by identifying four problems. Trolley cases, given technical limitations, rest on assumptions that are in tension with one another. Furthermore, trolley cases illuminate only a limited range of ethical issues insofar as they cohere with a certain design framework. Furthermore, trolley cases seem to demand a moral answer when a political answer is called for. Finally, trolley cases might be epistemically problematic in several ways. (...) To put forward a positive proposal, we illustrate how ethical challenges arise from mundane driving situations. We argue that mundane situations are relevant because of the specificity they require and the scale they exhibit. We then illustrate some of the ethical challenges arising from optimizing for safety, balancing safety with other values such as mobility, and adjusting to incentives of legal frameworks. (shrink)

According to the doctrine of double effect(DDE), there is a morally significantdifference between harm that is intended andharm that is merely foreseen and not intended.It is not difficult to explain why it is bad tointend harm as an end (you have a ``badattitude'' toward that harm) but it is hard toexplain why it is bad to intend harm as a meansto some good end. If you intend harm as a meansto some good end, you need not have a ``badattitude'' toward (...) it. I distinguish two ways inwhich you can treat something that is yourchosen means to your ends. You can pursue yourends directly, and treat X as a mere means thatyou pursue for the sake of your end. Or you canpursue your ends indirectly, and treat X as a``plan-relative end'' that you pursue for its ownsake. I argue that much of the time we pursueour ends indirectly, and treat our means asplan-relative ends. There are significantanalogies between intending harm as an end, andintending harm as a plan-relative end. So,under certain circumstances, it is morallyworse to intend harm as a means or an end thanto foresee bringing about the same amount of harm. (shrink)

A number of companies including Google and BMW are currently working on the development of autonomous cars. But if fully autonomous cars are going to drive on our roads, it must be decided who is to be held responsible in case of accidents. This involves not only legal questions, but also moral ones. The first question discussed is whether we should try to design the tort liability for car manufacturers in a way that will help along the development and improvement (...) of autonomous vehicles. In particular, Patrick Lin’s concern that any security gain derived from the introduction of autonomous cars would constitute a trade-off in human lives will be addressed. The second question is whether it would be morally permissible to impose liability on the user based on a duty to pay attention to the road and traffic and to intervene when necessary to avoid accidents. Doubts about the moral legitimacy of such a scheme are based on the notion that it is a form of defamation if a person is held to blame for causing the death of another by his inattention if he never had a real chance to intervene. Therefore, the legitimacy of such an approach would depend on the user having an actual chance to do so. The last option discussed in this paper is a system in which a person using an autonomous vehicle has no duty of interfering, but is still held responsible for possible accidents. Two ways of doing so are discussed, but only one is judged morally feasible. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article critiques contemporary applications of the computational metaphor, popular among Silicon Valley technologists, that views individuals and culture through the lens of computer and information systems. Taken literally, this metaphor has become entrenched as a quasi-religious ideology that obscures the moral and political-economic gatekeeping power of technology elites. Through an examination of algorithmic processing applications and life-logging devices, the authors highlight the inequitable consequences of the tendency, in popular media and marketing rhetoric, to collapse the distinctions between processing and (...) judgment, storage and memory. Such distinctions are necessary for an ethical development of more equitable digital environments. (shrink)

The prospective introduction of autonomous cars into public traffic raises the question of how such systems should behave when an accident is inevitable. Due to concerns with self-interest and liberal legitimacy that have become paramount in the emerging debate, a contractarian framework seems to provide a particularly attractive means of approaching this problem. We examine one such attempt, which derives a harm minimisation rule from the assumptions of rational self-interest and ignorance of one’s position in a future accident. We contend, (...) however, that both contractarian approaches and harm minimisation standards are flawed, due to a failure to account for the fundamental difference between those ‘involved’ and ‘uninvolved’ in an impending crash. Drawing from classical works on the trolley problem, we show how this notion can be substantiated by reference to either the distinction between negative and positive rights, or to differences in people’s claims. By supplementing harm minimisation with corresponding constraints, we can develop crash algorithms for autonomous cars which are both ethically adequate and promise to overcome certain significant practical barriers to implementation. (shrink)

Altruistic self-sacrifice is rare, supererogatory, and not to be expected of any rational agent; but, the possibility of giving up one's life for the common good has played an important role in moral theorizing. For example, Judith Jarvis Thomson (2008) has argued in a recent paper that intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice suggest that something has gone wrong in philosophical debates over the trolley problem. We begin by showing that her arguments face a series of significant philosophical objections; however, our project (...) is as much constructive as critical. Building on Thomson's philosophical argument, we report the results of a study that was designed to examine commonsense intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice. We find that a surprisingly high proportion of people judge that they should give up their lives to save a small number of unknown strangers. We also find that the willingness to engage in such altruistic self-sacrifice is predicted by a person's religious commitments. Finally, we show that folk-moral judgments are sensitive to agent-relative reasons in a way that diverges in important ways from Thomson's proposed intuitions about the trolley problem. With this in mind, we close with a discussion of the relative merits of folk intuitions and philosophical intuitions in constructing a viable moral theory. (shrink)

To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals' responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

: To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation and a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

In the trolley problem, a well-known moral dilemma, the intuitive process is believed to increase deontological judgments, while deliberative reasoning is thought to promote utilitarian decisions. Therefore, based on the dual-process model, there seems to be an attempt to save several lives at the expense of a few others in a deliberative manner. This study examines the validity of this argument. To this end, we manipulate decision-making time in the standard trolley dilemma to compare differences among 119 Japanese female undergraduates (...) under three conditions: intuitive judgment, deliberative judgment, and judgment after a group discussion. The current results demonstrate that utilitarian judgments decreased from 52.9% in the intuition condition to 43.7% in the deliberation condition and 37.0% after the discussion. Additional analysis suggests that the decrease in utilitarian judgments may be related to psychological unwillingness to assume responsibility for the lives of others rather than to an increase in deontological judgments. Finally, these results are discussed from an adaptationist perspective. (shrink)

This discussion attempts to show that the elusive solution to the trolley problem lies hidden in the solution to another perennial problem in moral philosophy: the ducking puzzle. The key to solving the ducking puzzle is an important, but overlooked, exception to our obligation not to harm others, an exception for , which, it is argued here, is also the key to solving the trolley problem.

Can someone be reasonable or justified in accepting a specific moral judgment not based on the prior acceptance of a general exceptioness moral principle, where acceptance of a general principle might be tacit or implicit and might not be expressible in language? This issue is an instance of a wider issue about direct or transductive inference. Developments in statistical learning theory show that such an inference can be more effective than alternative methods using inductive generalization and so can be reasonable. (...) This result carries over to moral transduction, although it is a difficult empirical issue whether people actually engage in any sort of transduction, including moral transduction. (shrink)

In the last half century, decision theory has had a deep influence on moral theory. Its impact has largely been beneficial. However, it has also given rise to some problems, two of which are discussed here. First, issues such as risk-taking and risk imposition have been left out of ethics since they are believed to belong to decision theory, and consequently the ethical aspects of these issues have not been treated in either discipline. Secondly, ethics has adopted the decision-theoretical idea (...) that action-guidance has to be based on cause–effect or means–ends relationships between an individual action and its possible outcomes. This is problematic since the morally relevant connections between an action and future events are not fully covered by such relationships. In response to the first problem it is proposed that moral theory should deal directly and extensively with issues such as risk-taking and risk imposition, thereby intruding unabashedly into the traditional territory of decision theory. As a partial response to the second problem it is proposed that moral theorizing should release itself from the decision-theoretical requirement that the moral status of an action has to be derivable from the consequences (or other properties) that are assignable to that action alone. In particular, the effects that an action can have in combination with other actions by the same or other agents are valid arguments in an action-guiding moral discourse, even if its contribution to these combined consequences cannot be isolated and evaluated separately. (shrink)

The British writer John Wyndham (1903–1969) explored societal effects of surprising or mystical events. A paradigmatic example is _The Midwich Cuckoos_ (1957), which portrays identical-looking children born without sexual intercourse. I propose a reading strategy that focuses on the fictional spatial order and analyses how the construction of the children’s otherness interferes with the village’s demarcation. Furthermore, I interpret the mysterious pregnancies as a reference to basic embryo research in the 1950s – cloning. Finally, I scrutinize Wyndham’s negotiation of utilitarianism (...) throughout the novel and his critique of truly utilitarian decisions that are based on constructions of Otherness. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making research has centered on Rest’s framework that represents a rational, nonaffective model for ethical decision making. However, research in human cognition suggesting a “dual-processing” framework, composed of both rational and affective components, has been relatively ignored in the ethical decision-making literature. Examining dual-processing literature, it seems affect might be an important factor in decision making when a person’s mood is congruent with the task or situational context frame. Given that ethical decisions are serious and complex tasks, it is (...) proposed here that inducing a negative affective state might produce mood congruence, reinforce the salience of emotion for ethical decision makers, and lead to differences in decision processing. Evidence is presented documenting differences in the decisions made by ethical decision makers in a negative affective state as compared to those in either a positive or neutral affective state. (shrink)

In den moralphilosophischen Debatten der letzten Jahrzehnte spielen die sogenannten Trolley-Fälle eine große Rolle. Sie kommen zum Einsatz in Diskussionen der Frage, welcher Schaden Personen im Rahmen medizinischer oder politischer Maßnahmen zugefügt werden darf, und in Diskussionen darüber, welches die richtige normative Moraltheorie ist. Allerdings kritisieren viele Philosophinnen und Philosophen diese Gedankenexperimente wegen ihrer Konstruiertheit, Künstlichkeit, Abstraktheit und ihrer Lebensferne. In diesem Beitrag werden die Einwände eines prominenten Kritikers, Allen Wood, diskutiert. Er attestiert den Trolley-Gedankenexperimenten neben den genannten Punkten außerdem, (...) dass sie moralisch nicht neutral sind, indem sie uns mit einem rhetorischen Trick dazu bringen, bestimmte Faktoren für moralisch relevant zu halten. Wood fordert deshalb, dass man auf die Verwendung dieser Gedankenexperimente in der praktischen Philosophie verzichten solle. Ich werde seine Einwände entkräften, dann aber zeigen, dass er dennoch einen wunden Punkt nennt: Die Trolley-Fälle sind aufgrund der vorgegebenen Antwortoptionen in der Hinsicht nicht moralisch neutral, dass sie voraussetzen, dass die Anzahl der zu rettenden Menschen moralisch relevant ist. Sie eignen sich daher nicht, um ebendiese Behauptung zu begründen. Dieser Mangel kann aber durch eine Modifikation der Gedankenexperimente behoben werden; ein vollständiger Verzicht auf derartige Gedankenexperimente ist also entgegen Woods Ansicht nicht notwendigerweise geboten. (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or (...) “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

No one has done more over the past four decades to draw attention to the importance of, and attempt to solve, a particularly vexing problem in ethics—the Trolley Problem—than Judith Jarvis Thomson. Though the problem is originally due to Philippa Foot, Thomson showed how Foot’s simple solution would not do and offered some solutions of her own. No solution is uncontroversial and the problem remains a thorn in the side of non-consequentialist moral theory. Recently, however, Thomson has changed her mind (...) about the problem. She no longer thinks she was right to reject Foot’s solution to it. I argue that, though illuminating, Thomson’s current take on the Trolley Problem is mistaken. I end with a solution to the problem that I find promising. (shrink)

A principle that many have found attractive is one that goes by the name “'Ought' Implies 'Can'.” According to this principle, one morally ought to do something only if one can do it. This essay has two goals: to show that the principle is false and to undermine the motivations that have been offered for it. Toward the end, a proposal about moral obligation according to which something like a restricted version of 'Ought' Implies 'Can' is true is floated. Though (...) no full-fledged argument for this proposal is offered, that it fits with a rather natural and intuitive picture of the structure of morality and seems to explain certain salient features of the debate over whether the principle is true, goes some way toward recommending it. (shrink)

A person drives her well‐maintained car cautiously and alertly to the movies. Freak circumstances send the car out of control. It veers in the direction of a pedestrian whom it will kill unless she, or a third party, blows it up with a grenade. Whether the driver is liable to be thusly killed polarizes debates about the ethics of self‐defense. But debaters frequently conflate the questions of whether and by what means the driver is liable to be killed. The paper (...) separates these questions: it argues the driver's liability to lethal harm need not entail her liability to the grenade. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical pitfalls and challenges that non-ethicists, such as researchers and programmers in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, face when building moral machines. Whether ethics is “computable” depends on how programmers understand ethics in the first place and on the adequacy of their understanding of the ethical problems and methodological challenges in these fields. Researchers and programmers face at least two types of problems due to their general lack of ethical knowledge or expertise. (...) The first type is so-called rookie mistakes, which could be addressed by providing these people with the necessary ethical knowledge. The second, more difficult methodological issue concerns areas of peer disagreement in ethics, where no easy solutions are currently available. This paper examines several existing approaches to highlight the ethical pitfalls and challenges involved. Familiarity with these and similar problems can help programmers to avoid pitfalls and build better moral machines. The paper concludes that ethical decisions regarding moral robots should be based on avoiding what is immoral in combination with a pluralistic ethical method of solving moral problems, rather than relying on a particular ethical approach, so as to avoid a normative bias. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behavior in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate in philosophy about whether it is morally permissible to harm one person in order to prevent a greater harm to others and, if not, what is the moral principle underlying the prohibition. Hypothetical moral dilemmas are used in order to probe moral intuitions. Philosophers use them to achieve a reflective equilibrium between intuitions and principles, psychologists to investigate moral decision-making processes. In the dilemmas, the harms that are traded off are almost always deaths. However, the (...) moral principles and psychological processes are supposed to be broader than this, encompassing harms other than death. Further, if the standard pattern of intuitions is preserved in the domain of economic harm, then that would open up the possibility of studying behaviour in trolley problems using the tools of experimental economics. We report the results of two studies designed to test whether the standard patterns of intuitions are preserved when the domain and severity of harm are varied. Our findings show that the difference in moral intuitions between bystander and footbridge scenarios is replicated across different domains and levels of physical and non-physical harm, including economic harms. (shrink)

Hypothetical trolley problems are widely used to elicit moral intuitions, which are employed in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments. The scenarios used are outlandish, and some philosophers and psychologists have questioned whether the judgments made in such unrealistic and unfamiliar scenarios are a reliable basis for theory-building. We present two experiments that investigate whether differences in moral judgment due to the role of the agent, previously found in a standard trolley scenario, persist when (...) the structure of the problem is transplanted to a more familiar context. Our first experiment compares judgments in hypothetical scenarios; our second experiment operationalizes some of those scenarios in the laboratory, allowing us to observe judgments about decisions that are really being made. In the hypothetical experiment, we found that the role effect reversed in our more familiar context, both in judgments about what the actor ought to do and in judgments about the moral rightness of the action. However, in our laboratory experiment, the effects reversed back or disappeared. Among judgments of what the actor ought to do, we found the same role effect as in the standard hypothetical trolley scenario, but the effect of role on moral judgments disappeared. (shrink)

Normative theories can be useful in developing descriptive theories, as when normative subjective expected utility theory is used to develop descriptive rational choice theory and behavioral game theory. questions are also the essence of theories of moral reasoning, a domain of higher mental processing that could not survive without normative considerations.

This article discusses the regulation of artificial intelligence from a Jewish perspective, with an emphasis on the regulation of machine learning and its application to autonomous vehicles and machine learning. Through the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as well as Golem legends from Jewish folklore, we derive several basic principles that underlie a Jewish perspective on the moral and legal personhood of robots and other artificially intelligent agents. We argue that religious ethics in general, and Jewish ethics in particular, (...) show us that the dangers of granting moral personhood to robots and in particular to autonomous vehicles lie not in the fact that they lack a soul-or consciousness or feelings or interests-but because to do so weakens our own ability to develop as fully autonomous legal and moral persons. Instead, we argue that existing legal persons should continue to maintain legal control over artificial agents, while natural persons assume ultimate moral responsibility for choices made by artificial agents they employ in their service. In the final section of the article we discuss the trolley dilemma in the context of governing autonomous vehicles and sketch out an application of Jewish ethics in a case where we are asking Artificial Intelligence to make life and death decisions. Our novel contribution is two-fold; first, we bring a religious approach to the discussion of the ethics of Artificial Intelligence which has hitherto been dominated by secular Western philosophies; second, we raise the idea that artificial entities who are trained through machine learning can be ethically trained in much the same way that human are-through reading and reflecting on core religious texts. This is both a way of ensuring the ethical regulation of artificial intelligence, but also promotes other core values of regulation, such as democratic engagement and user choice. (shrink)

Normative theories can be useful in developing descriptive theories, as when normative subjective expected utility theory is used to develop descriptive rational choice theory and behavioral game theory. “Ought” questions are also the essence of theories of moral reasoning, a domain of higher mental processing that could not survive without normative considerations.

Is ethics a computable function? Can machines learn ethics like humans do? If teaching consists in no more than programming, training, indoctrinating… and if ethics is merely following a code of conduct, then yes, we can teach ethics to algorithmic machines. But if ethics is not merely about following a code of conduct or about imitating the behavior of others, then an approach based on computing outcomes, and on the reduction of ethics to the compilation and application of a set (...) of rules, either a priori or learned, misses the point. Our intention is not to solve the technical problem of machine ethics, but to learn something about human ethics, and its rationality, by reflecting on the ethics that can and should be implemented in machines. Any machine ethics implementation will have to face a number of fundamental or conceptual problems, which in the end refer to philosophical questions, such as: what is a human being (or more generally, what is a worthy being); what is human intentional acting; and how are intentional actions and their consequences morally evaluated. We are convinced that a proper understanding of ethical issues in AI can teach us something valuable about ourselves, and what it means to lead a free and responsible ethical life, that is, being good people beyond merely “following a moral code”. In the end we believe that rationality must be seen to involve more than just computing, and that value rationality is beyond numbers. Such an understanding is a required step to recovering a renewed rationality of ethics, one that is urgently needed in our highly technified society. (shrink)

Reliance on intuitive and emotive responses is widespread across many areas of bioethics, and the current debate on biotechnological human enhancement is particularly interesting in this respect. A strand of “bioconservatives” that has explicitly drawn connections to the modern conservative tradition, dating back to Edmund Burke, appeals explicitly to the alleged wisdom of our intuitions and emotions to ground opposition to some biotechnologies or their uses. So-called bioliberals, those who in principle do not oppose human bioenhancement, tend to rely on (...) rational arguments and to see intuitions and emotions mostly as sources of biases. This approach often translates into shifting the burden of proof onto bioconservatives and challenging them to provide arguments against the proposed enhancement to back what bioliberals perceive as merely intuitive, emotive, and irrational reactions. -/- In this article, I am going to show that the methodological divide between bioliberals and bioconservatives is less significant than at first glance it appears to be and less significant than it is often taken to be. I will do so by defending two theses. The first is that reliance on intuitions and emotions is not a prerogative of bioconservatives: bioliberals have their typical intuitions and emotive responses and are for this reason exposed to potential biases in the same way as bioconservatives are. The second thesis is that reliance on intuitions and emotions is not necessarily antithetic to reason and rationality. This latter thesis has been philosophically defended with particular reference to the debate on biotechnologies, while the former is perhaps more controversial and more difficult to accept—at least for bioliberals. In both cases, I will support the claims by drawing on resources from the field of moral psychology and the sciences of the mind and, particularly, by applying to some positions in the enhancement debate recent findings about the role of intuitions and emotions in human moral assessment. This new empirically informed perspective holds promises for solving the methodological controversy between bioconservatives and bioliberals, thus enabling proper dialogue and debate between the two sides. (shrink)

The ethical dilemma of whether autonomous vehicles should protect the passengers or pedestrians when harm is unavoidable has been widely researched and debated. Several behavioral scientists have sought public opinion on this issue, based on the premise that EDs are critical to resolve for AV adoption. However, many scholars and industry participants have downplayed the importance of these edge cases. Policy makers also advocate a focus on higher level ethical principles rather than on a specific solution to EDs. But conspicuously (...) absent from this debate is the view of the consumers or potential adopters, who will be instrumental to the success of AVs. The current research investigated this issue both from a theoretical standpoint and through empirical research. The literature on innovation adoption and risk perception suggests that EDs will be heavily weighted by potential adopters of AVs. Two studies conducted with a broad sample of consumers verified this assertion. The results from these studies showed that people associated EDs with the highest risk and considered EDs as the most important issue to address as compared to the other technical, legal and ethical issues facing AVs. As such, EDs need to be addressed to ensure robustness in the design of AVs and to assure consumers of the safety of this promising technology. Some preliminary evidence is provided about interventions to resolve the social dilemma in EDs and about the ethical preferences of prospective early adopters of AVs. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of an otherwise similar state of affairs. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume ([1739] 1978) writes forcefully of this.

In 2017, the German ethics commission for automated and connected driving released 20 ethical guidelines for autonomous vehicles. It is now up to the research and industrial sectors to enhance the development of autonomous vehicles based on such guidelines. In the current state of the art, we find studies on how ethical theories can be integrated. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no framework for motion planning has yet been published which allows for the true implementation of any practical (...) ethical policies. This paper makes four contributions: Firstly, we briefly present the state of the art based on recent works concerning unavoidable accidents of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and identify further need for research. While most of the research focuses on decision strategies in moral dilemmas or crash optimization, we aim to develop an ethical trajectory planning for all situations on public roads. Secondly, we discuss several ethical theories and argue for the adoption of the theory “ethics of risk.” Thirdly, we propose a new framework for trajectory planning, with uncertainties and an assessment of risks. In this framework, we transform ethical specifications into mathematical equations and thus create the basis for the programming of an ethical trajectory. We present a risk cost function for trajectory planning that considers minimization of the overall risk, priority for the worst-off and equal treatment of people. Finally, we build a connection between the widely discussed trolley problem and our proposed framework. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that scholars such as John Braithwaite and Lode Walgrave rely on fictions when presenting their utopian vision of restorative justice. Three claims in particular are shown to be fictitious. Proponents of restorative justice maintain, first, that the offender and the victim voluntarily attend the restorative conference. Second, that the restorative conference enables the offender and the victim to take on active responsibility. Third, that the reparatory tasks on which the parties agree should not be understood (...) in terms of the intentional infliction of harm. These fictions, so I argue, are not merely a mistake, but instead serve an important function: the various parties need to believe that they adequately capture the reality of the restorative conference as they are more likely to acquiesce if they believe the fictions to be true. I conclude that the fictions are the driving force within the restorative endeavour. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe prohibition against the first use of force is defeasible, but under what conditions? Proponents of preventive war, both classical and contemporary, suggest that potential threats suffic...

This paper problematises the notions of public or common good as weighed against individual sovereignty in the context of medical research by focusing on genetic research. We propose the notion of collective good as the good of the particular collective in which the research was conducted. We conducted documentary and interview-based research with participant representatives and research leaders concerned with participant involvement in leading genetic research projects and around two recent genetic data controversies: the case of the UK Wellcome Sanger (...) Institute, accused of planning unauthorised commercialisation of African DNA samples, and the case of the company Genuity Science, which planned genetic research on brain tumour samples in Ireland with no explicit patient consent. We advocate for greater specificity in circumscribing the collective to which genetic research relates and for greater efforts in including representatives of this collective as research coleaders in order to enable a more inclusive framing of the good arising from such research. Such community-based participant cogovernance and coleadership in genetic research is vital especially when minorities or vulnerable groups are involved, and it centrally requires community capacity building to help collectives articulate their own notions of the collective good. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the implications of the uncodifiability thesis for principlism as a pluralistic and non-absolute generalist ethical theory. In this regard, I begin with a brief overview of W.D. Ross’s ethical theory and his focus on general but defeasible prima facie principles before turning to 2) the revival of principlism in contemporary bioethics through the influential work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress; 3) the widespread adoption of specification as a response to the indeterminacy of abstract (...) general principles and the limitations of balancing and deductive approaches; 4) the challenges raised to fully specified principlism by the uncodifiability thesis and 5) finally offer a defense of the uncodifiability thesis against various critiques that have been raised. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it will kill one. But little attention has been paid to whether the reasons that ground a permission to divert thereby ground a duty to divert. This paper defends the Requirement Thesis, which holds that one is, ordinarily, required to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming for the sake of others. Cases (...) in which we have lesser-evil justifications of harming for the sake of others are rescue cases. Ordinarily, an agent is under a duty to rescue unless doing so imposes too great a cost on her, or violates someone else's rights. When neither of these defeating conditions obtain, one is required to rescue even if this involves causing harm to innocent people. (shrink)