Aristotle's Ethics and Moral Responsibility. By JavierEcheñique. Pp. 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, £55.00.

AbstractDuring the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial Intelligence. Despite this conceptual richness, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what Responsible AI entails on both conceptual and practical levels. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethical dimension of responsibility in Responsible AI with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role for the concept of moral responsibility. The paper starts by highlighting the important difficulties in assigning responsibility to either technologies themselves or to their developers. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to moral responsibility are then contrasted, as we explore how they could inform debates about Responsible AI. We highlight the limits of the former ethical approaches and build the case for classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. We show that two building blocks of Aristotle’s ethics, dianoetic virtues and the context of actions, although largely ignored in the literature, can shed light on how we could think of moral responsibility for both AI and humans. We end by exploring the practical implications of this particular understanding of moral responsibility along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers.

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John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press1998. Pp. viii + 277.

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1080/00455091.2002.10716532 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 587-606 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Paul Russell

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

John Martin Fischer ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Mark Ravizza ◽

And Control

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Zdolność reagowania na racje a odpowiedzialność moralna

Roczniki Filozoficzne ◽

10.18290/rf21694-21 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 69 (4) ◽

pp. 467-496

Author(s):

John Martin Fischer ◽

Marcin Iwanicki ◽

Joanna Klara Teske

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Moral Psychology ◽

John Martin Fischer ◽

Cambridge University

Przekład na podstawie: „Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility”, w: Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, red. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 81–106; przedruk w: John Martin Fischer, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 63–83. Przekład za zgodą Autora. Autor przedstawia model odpowiedzialności moralnej oparty na faktycznej sekwencji i pojęciu zdolności reagowania na racje, a następnie przeprowadza analogię między tym modelem a opracowanym przez Roberta Nozicka modelem wiedzy opartej na faktycznej sekwencji, oraz wprowadza pojęcie semikompatybilizmu.

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Aristotle's Ethics

Classics ◽

10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0079 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Thornton Lockwood

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Well Being ◽

Nicomachean Ethics ◽

Human Soul ◽

Treasure Trove ◽

Human Good ◽

Linguistic Practices ◽

Aristotle's Ethics ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (EN) is the first part of what Aristotle calls “a philosophy of human things” (EN X.9.1181b15), one which finds its completion in Aristotle’s Politics (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Aristotle’s Politics). (Throughout this article, references to Ethics or EN are to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; for the relationship of the Nicomachean Ethics to Aristotle’s other ethical writings, including the Eudemian Ethics (EE), see Relationship between the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics.) The work inaugurates the study of “ethics” as an independent discipline, albeit a discpline which is broader than modern notions of morality, which is primarily practical rather than theoretical, and which is the companion study to politics. The Ethics sets as its goal the understanding of the human good, or eudaimonia, which Aristotle describes as “an activity of the soul in accord with virtue” (I.7.1098a16–17). Its analyses range over the nature of the human soul, the notion of moral responsibility, the ethical and intellectual qualities—called virtues—that are perfections of the nonrational and rational parts of the soul, ways in which reason and desire are unified and in conflict, the nature of pleasure, and the various kinds of friendship that contribute to the human good. Although the work includes a treasure trove of passages that paint a picture of 4th-century Greek social and linguistic practices, the work’s most lasting significance has been its articulation of a philosophical vocabulary and framework to address many of the central questions concerning human well-being.

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