In this philosophical exploration, we investigate the concept of robotic moral environment interaction. The common view understands moral interaction to occur between agents endowed with ethical and interactive capacities. However, recent developments in moral philosophy argue that moral interaction also occurs in relation to the environment. Here conditions and situations of the environment contribute to human moral cognition and the formation of our moral experiences. Based on this philosophical position, we imagine robots interacting as moral environments—a novel conceptualization of human–robot (...) moral interaction with an inherent capacity for moral augmentation. To explicate this idea, we first define moral environments as moral systems providing moral affordances. We then intuit and explicate two constitutive conditions of moral environments: the environment’s moral ambiance and its moral atmosphere and compare them with real-life cases of moral environments—the moral landmarks. Based on these explications, we construct several explanatory cases to illustrate robots interacting as moral environments. Lastly, we set to evaluate the ethical challenges and wider social ramifications of using moral environment robots in the public space. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 1, Page 88-117, March 2022.

Human excellences such as intelligence, morality, and consciousness are investigated by philosophers as well as artificial intelligence researchers. One excellence that has not been widely discussed by AI researchers is practical wisdom, the highest human excellence, or the highest, seventh, stage in Dreyfus’s model of skill acquisition. In this paper, I explain why artificial wisdom matters and how artificial wisdom is possible (in principle and in practice) by responding to two philosophical challenges to building artificial wisdom systems. The result is (...) a conceptual framework that guides future research on creating artificial wisdom. (shrink)

This article contends that certain types of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) are susceptible to Hume’s Law. Hume’s Law highlights the seeming impossibility of deriving moral judgments, if not all evaluative ones, from purely factual premises. If autonomous weapons make use of factual data from their environments to carry out specific actions, then justifying their ethical decisions may prove to be intractable in light of the said problem. In this article, Hume’s original formulation of the no-ought-from-is thesis is evaluated in relation (...) to the dominant views regarding it (viz., moral non-descriptivism and moral descriptivism). Citing the objections raised against these views, it is claimed that, if there is no clear-cut solution to Hume’s is-ought problem that presently exists, then the task of grounding the moral judgements of AWS would still be left unaccounted for. (shrink)

In the present article, I will advocate caution against developing artificial moral agents based on the notion that the utilization of preliminary forms of AMAs will potentially negatively feed back on the human social system and on human moral thought itself and its value—e.g., by reinforcing social inequalities, diminishing the breadth of employed ethical arguments and the value of character. While scientific investigations into AMAs pose no direct significant threat, I will argue against their premature utilization for practical and economical (...) use. I will base my arguments on two thought experiments. The first thought experiment deals with the potential to generate a replica of an individual’s moral stances with the purpose to increase, what I term, ’moral efficiency’. Hence, as a first risk, an unregulated utilization of premature AMAs in a neoliberal capitalist system is likely to disadvantage those who cannot afford ’moral replicas’ and further reinforce social inequalities. The second thought experiment deals with the idea of a ’moral calculator’. As a second risk, I will argue that, even as a device equally accessible to all and aimed at augmenting human moral deliberation, ’moral calculators’ as preliminary forms of AMAs are likely to diminish the breadth and depth of concepts employed in moral arguments. Again, I base this claim on the idea that the current most dominant economic system rewards increases in productivity. However, increases in efficiency will mostly stem from relying on the outputs of ’moral calculators’ without further scrutiny. Premature AMAs will cover only a limited scope of moral argumentation and, hence, over-reliance on them will narrow human moral thought. In addition and as the third risk, I will argue that an increased disregard of the interior of a moral agent may ensue—a trend that can already be observed in the literature. (shrink)