P. M. Asaro: What should We Want from a Robot Ethic? G. Tamburrini: Robot Ethics: A View from the Philosophy of Science B. Becker: Social Robots - Emotional Agents: Some Remarks on Naturalizing Man-machine Interaction E. Datteri, G. Tamburrini: Ethical Reflections on Health Care Robotics P. Lin, G. Bekey, K. Abney: Robots in War: Issues of Risk and Ethics J. Altmann: Preventive Arms Control for Uninhabited Military Vehicles J. Weber: Robotic warfare, Human Rights & The Rhetorics of Ethical Machines T. (...) Nishida: Towards Robots with Good Will R. Capurro: Ethics and Robotics. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change poses a direct and imminent threat to the stability of modern society. Recent reports of the probable consequences of climate change paint a grim picture; they describe a world environmentally much less stable than the world to which we have become accustomed. As we begin to adapt to our changing climate, we will need to identify new sources for the stability necessary for a flourishing society. I suggest that this stability should come from the ideals of the (...) good life we seek to promote when we focus on capabilities, on the substantial freedoms humans need to flourish. These ideals serve as a stable foundation for well-being in a time of great environmental and social instability; they should serve as guides for our policies, practices and institutions. I conclude by appealing to capabilities as a means of integrating well-being into our adaptation strategies, and show how doing so may well provide a way of formulating a powerful moral justification for adaptation strategies appropriate for both the developed and the developing world. (shrink)

There are at least three things we might mean by "ethics in robotics": the ethical systems built into robots, the ethics of people who design and use robots, and the ethics of how people treat robots. This paper argues that the best approach to robot ethics is one which addresses all three of these, and to do this it ought to consider robots as socio-technical systems. By so doing, it is possible to think of a continuum of agency that lies (...) between amoral and fully autonomous moral agents. Thus, robots might move gradually along this continuum as they acquire greater capabilities and ethical sophistication. It also argues that many of the issues regarding the distribution of responsibility in complex socio-technical systems might best be addressed by looking to legal theory, rather than moral theory. This is because our overarching interest in robot ethics ought to be the practical one of preventing robots from doing harm, as well as preventing humans from unjustly avoiding responsibility for their actions. (shrink)

Robots today serve in many roles, from entertainer to educator to executioner. As robotics technology advances, ethical concerns become more pressing: Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society--and ethics--change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting (...) with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. The contributors then turn to human-robot emotional relationships, examining the ethical implications of robots as sexual partners, caregivers, and servants. Finally, they explore the possibility that robots, whether biological-computational hybrids or pure machines, should be given rights or moral consideration. Ethics is often slow to catch up with technological developments. This authoritative and accessible volume fills a gap in both scholarly literature and policy discussion, offering an impressive collection of expert analyses of the most crucial topics in this increasingly important field. (shrink)

This study deals with an underexplored area of the emerging technologies debate: robotics in the healthcare setting. The author explores the role of care and develops a value-sensitive ethical framework for the eventual employment of care robots. Highlighting the range of positive and negative aspects associated with the initiative to design and use care robots, it draws out essential content as a guide to future design both reinforcing this study’s contemporary relevance, and giving weight to its prescriptions. The book speaks (...) to, and is meant to be read by, a range of disciplines from science and engineering to philosophers and ethicists. (shrink)

Roboethics is the recent offshoot of computer ethics that pays special attention to the alterations that need to be made to computer ethics when we give the computer mobility and a means to interact directly in the human environment. The closely related field of machine morality explores how ethical systems and behaviors may be programmed into social robotics applications. As robots move from the factory floor into our homes and work lives, they stand to change key aspects of the way (...) our lives are lived. In order to be successful, these machines must be programmed with the ability to navigate the human life world without committing ethical faux pas or moral outrage. Thus, the roboethicist is tasked not only with critiquing the attempts of robots engineers to achieve the integration of these machines into our life world, but also, and more importantly, with suggesting means of achieving better results than what is presently on offer. (shrink)

This essay furthers debate about the burgeoning science of Probabilistic Event Attribution (PEA) and its relevance to imminent climate policy decisions. It critically examines Allen Thompson and Friederike Otto’s recent arguments concerning the implications of PEA studies for how the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policy framework should be revised during the 2016 ‘review and decision.’ I show that their contention that PEA studies cannot usefully inform decision-making about adaptation policies and strategies is misguided and argue that (...) the current UNFCCC treaty, the “Paris Agreement,” supersedes their proposed revision. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in ecology is relatively new. Standard texts in the philosophy of biology pay little or no attention to ecology (though Sterelny and Griffiths 1999 is an exception). This is in part because the science of ecology itself is relatively new, but whatever the reasons for the neglect in the past, the situation must change. A good philosophical understanding of ecology is important for a number of reasons. First, ecology is an important and fascinating branch of biology with distinctive (...) philosophical issues that arise from its study. Second, ecology is only one small step away from urgent political, ethical, and management decisions about how best to live in an apparently increasingly-fragile environment. Third, philosophy of ecology, properly conceived, can contribute directly to both our understanding of ecology and help with its advancement. Philosophy of ecology can thus be seen as part of the emerging discipline of “biohumanities”, where biology and humanities disciplines together advance our understanding and knowledge of biology (Stotz and Griffiths forthcoming). In this paper, we focus primarily on this third role of the philosophy of ecology and consider a number of places where philosophy can play an important role in ecology. In the process, we.. (shrink)