scholarly journals Robots as Ideal Moral Agents per the Moral Responsibility System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dane Leigh Gogoshin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Perfect Score ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Responsibility System ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

Contrary to the prevailing view that robots cannot be full-blown members of the larger human moral community, I argue not only that they can but that they would be ideal moral agents in the way that currently counts. While it is true that robots fail to meet a number of criteria which some human agents meet or which all human agents could in theory meet, they earn a perfect score as far as the behavioristic conception of moral agency at work in our moral responsibility practices goes.

scholarly journals The Ethical Importance of Close Relationships

Etyka ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Joanna Iwanowska
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The People ◽  
Narrative Truth ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Way

The main task of this paper is to draw a normative picture of close interpersonal bonds and demonstrate why they are ethically relevant and important. I start by showing that the notion of ‘close relationships’ is a notion in its own right—overlapping with but not reducible to the notion of ‘love,’ ‘friendship,’ or ‘kinship.’ Then, I go on to discuss particular features of close relationships. I start with consensuality, reciprocity, persistence in time. After that, I move on to non-instrumental treatment and the mutual sharing of responsibility, which is connected with treating the interests of the close other as one’s own. Another features I discuss are truthfulness in the way we narrate our autobiographical stories, openness to the close other’s co-creation of our narrative truth, and the readiness to co-create the narrative truth of the close other in return. Finally, I focus on trust; I show that the kind of trust which is characteristic of close relationships is connected with particular competences that a person should manifest in order to be a trustworthy close-relationship partner. From the fact that no person is morally infallible, it can be inferred that we need to depend on competent others in order to take full respon­sibility for ourselves as moral agents (we need to be inter-responsible). The people we choose to be in close relationships with are precisely such competent others; they are the guardians and the co-authors of our moral agency and our narrative identity.

scholarly journals Robot Responsibility and Moral Community

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dane Leigh Gogoshin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Moral Rule ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Foregone Conclusion

It is almost a foregone conclusion that robots cannot be morally responsible agents, both because they lack traditional features of moral agency like consciousness, intentionality, or empathy and because of the apparent senselessness of holding them accountable. Moreover, although some theorists include them in the moral community as moral patients, on the Strawsonian picture of moral community as requiring moral responsibility, robots are typically excluded from membership. By looking closely at our actual moral responsibility practices, however, I determine that the agency reflected and cultivated by them is limited to the kind of moral agency of which some robots are capable, not the philosophically demanding sort behind the traditional view. Hence, moral rule-abiding robots (if feasible) can be sufficiently morally responsible and thus moral community members, despite certain deficits. Alternative accountability structures could address these deficits, which I argue ought to be in place for those existing moral community members who share these deficits.

scholarly journals Transcriptivism: An ethical framework for modern linguistics

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Tyler Kibbey
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Do No Harm ◽  
Descriptive Ethics ◽  
New Framework

Descriptivism is a methodologically efficacious framework in the discipline of linguistics. However, it categorically fails to explicitly account for the moral responsibilities of linguists, as moral agents. In so doing, descriptivism has been used as a justification for indifference to instances and systems of linguistic violence, among other moral shortcomings. Specifically, many guidelines for descriptive ethics stipulate that a linguist “do no harm” but do not necessarily require the linguist to prevent harm or mitigate systems of violence. In this paper, I delineate an ethical framework, transcriptivism, which is distinct from research ethics and covers the line of philosophical inquiry related to questions of the moral agency of linguists and their moral responsibility. The potential for this new framework is demonstrated through a case study of conflicting Tennessee language ideologies regarding gender-neutral pronoun usage as well as an analysis of misgendering as an act of linguistic violence.

Obesity and Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Moral Indignation ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Moral Blame ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores whether obese individuals are morally responsible for their condition of obesity. The main argument is that some who are classified as obese are exempt from moral responsibility for two possible reasons. Either food situationism may interfere with an individual’s capacity to detect the moral considerations that favor healthy eating. Or, structural inequalities may interfere with an individual’s capacity to act on moral considerations that favor healthy eating. The account of situated moral agency employed here makes it possible to resist the false dichotomy of saying that either all obese individuals are morally responsible for being obese or that they are exempt from responsibility altogether. If moral exemptions apply in the way suggested, then a large number of individuals who are obese do not deserve to be the targets of moral blame, nor do they deserve the moral indignation that is sometimes directed toward them.

scholarly journals Silence as Complicity: Elements of a Corporate Duty to Speak Out Against the Violation of Human Rights

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Wettstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Corporate Responsibility ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Duty To Protect ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights.

scholarly journals The Problem of the First Belief: Group Agents and Responsibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Onni Hirvonen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Group Agents

AbstractAttributing moral responsibility to an agent requires that the agent is a capable member of a moral community. Capable members of a moral community are often thought of as moral reasoners (or moral persons) and, thus, to attribute moral responsibility to collective agents would require showing that they are capable of moral reasoning. It is argued here that those theories that understand collective reasoning and collective moral agency in terms of collective decision-making and commitment – as is arguably the case with Christian List and Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency – face the so-called “problem of the first belief” that threatens to make moral reasoning impossible for group agents. This paper introduces three possible solutions to the problem and discusses the effects that these solutions have in regard to the possibility of attributing moral responsibility to groups.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

Moral Responsibility, Socially Embedded

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Herzog
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Face ◽  
Moral Theorizing ◽  
The Impact

This chapter asks whether we can hold on to the picture of the morally responsible subject as we knew it in the face of evidence from social psychology about the impact of contexts on human behaviour. Some theorists have taken this to present a major challenge to moral theorizing. However, the chapter argues that, while we should acknowledge the malleability of human behaviour, we should not give up the notion of responsible agency. Rather, we need to broaden our theoretical horizon in order to include individuals’ co-responsibility for the contexts in which they act. This argument is a general one, but it is of particular relevance for organizations: it is our shared responsibility to turn them into contexts in which moral agency is supported rather than undermined.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

scholarly journals The Enduring Greatness: The Mahāpuruşha Paradigm—An Indian Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110008
Author(s):  
Maharaj K. Raina
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Positive Direction ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Indian Perspective ◽  
Relative Concept ◽  
The Way

Greatness, a relative concept, has been historically approached in different ways. Considering greatness of character as different from greatness of talents, some cultures have conceptualized greatness as an expression of human spirit leading to transcending existing patterns and awakening inner selves to new levels of consciousness, rising above times and circumstances, and to change the direction of human tide. Individuals characterized by such greatness working with higher selves, guided by moral and ethical imperatives, and possessing noble impulses of human nature are considered to be manifesting spiritual greatness. Examining such greatness is the goal of this article. Keeping Indian tradition in focus, this article has studied how greatness has been conceptualized in that particular tradition and the way in which life and times have shaped great individuals called Mahāpuruşha who exhibited extraordinary moral responsibility relentlessly in pursuit of their visions of addressing contemporary major issues and changing the direction of human life. Four Mahāpuruşha, who possessed such enduring greatness and excelled in their thoughts and actions to give a new positive direction to human life, have been profiled in this article. Suggestions have also been made for studies on moral and spiritual excellence to help realize our true human path and purpose.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document