Mildly revised reprint of material extracted from an article appearing in Human Rights Review (2012).

Insofar as artificial intelligence is to be used to guide automated systems in their interactions with humans, the dominant view is probably that it would be appropriate to programme them to maximize (expected) utility. According to utilitarianism, which is a characteristically western conception of moral reason, machines should be programmed to do whatever they could in a given circumstance to produce in the long run the highest net balance of what is good for human beings minus what is bad for (...) them. In this essay, I appeal to values that are characteristically African––but that will resonate with those from a variety of moral-philosophical traditions, particularly in the Global South––to cast doubt on a utilitarian approach. Drawing on norms salient in sub-Saharan ethics, I provide four reasons for thinking it would be immoral for automated systems governed by artificial intelligence to maximize utility. In catchphrases, I argue that utilitarianism cannot make adequate sense of the ways that human dignity, group rights, family first, and (surprisingly) self-sacrifice should determine the behaviour of smart machines. (shrink)

The article highlights the potential that African and Black Philosophy can contribute towards the debates on human dignity. It facilitates a three-way philosophical conversation among the Western, African, and Black conceptions of human dignity. It is motivated by the skepticism in the African and Black approaches to ethics that reject the view that some ontological capacity can ground intrinsic value, or human dignity. The article distinguishes the merit-based (the African and Black Philosophy) from the capacity-based approaches (the Western philosophy) to (...) human dignity. In light of the comparisons among the three theories of human dignity, the article identifies three important lessons for moral-political philosophy. First, the Western conception of human dignity needs to explain and justify grounding of value on a descriptive feature. Secondly, the Black conception of dignity is a version of virtue-based account of it, which places a prime on resistance and struggle against domination. Finally, the capacity-based approach seems to have moral-theoretic advantages in dealing with issues in bioethics, environmental ethics, and political philosophy, which the African and Black conceptions of human dignity seems not to have. (shrink)

Representing a spectrum of intellectual concerns and methodological commitments in religious ethics, the contributors to this focus issue consider and assess the advantages and disadvantages of the shift in recent comparative religious ethics away from a rootedness in moral theory toward a model that privileges the ethnography of moral worlds. In their own way, all of the contributors think through and emphasize the meaning, importance, and place of normativity in recent comparative religious ethics.