Moral Agency, Moral Responsibility, and Artifacts: What Existing Artifacts Fail to Achieve (and Why), and Why They, Nevertheless, Can (and Do!) Make Moral Claims upon Us

Abstract

This paper follows directly from an earlier paper where we discussed the requirements for an artifact to be a moral agent and concluded that the artifactual question is ultimately a red herring. As before, we take moral agency to be that condition in which an agent can appropriately be held responsible for her actions and their consequences. We set a number of stringent conditions on moral agency. A moral agent must be embedded in a cultural and speci¯cally moral context and embodied in a suitable physical form. It must be, in some substantive sense, alive. It must exhibit self-conscious awareness. It must exhibit sophisticated conceptual abilities, going well beyond what the likely majority of conceptual agents possess: not least that it must possess a well-developed moral space of reasons. Finally, it must be able to communicate its moral agency through some system of signs: A \private" moral world is not enough. After reviewing these conditions and pouring cold water on recent claims for having achieved \minimal" machine consciousness, we turn our attention to a number of existing and, in some cases, commonplace artifacts that lack moral agency yet nevertheless require one to take a moral stance toward them, as if they were moral agents. Finally, we address another class of agents raising a related set of issues: autonomous military robots.

First-person representations and responsible agency in AI

“…In particular, several recent writers have focused their attention on the question whether artificial systems can be held morally responsible for their activity (Coeckelbergh, 2020 ; Parthemore & Withby, 2014 ; Stahl, 2006 ; Sullins, 2006 ). Often, when the agent of a morally significant action is an adult human being, we hold them responsible for the action itself and its outcomes.…”

Truly Autonomous Machines Are Ethical

“…Autonomy is often associated with responsibility, in the AI as well as philosophical literature (e.g., Asaro 2016, Matheson 2012, Parthemore and Whitby 2014. The rise of autonomous machines therefore raises the possibility that they, rather than a human designer, will be responsible for their actions.…”

The Unified Conceptual Space Theory: an enactive theory of concepts

“…The relationship between concepts and consciousness I discuss elsewhere (Parthemore & Whitby, 2013, 2012; Parthemore, 2011a). 8 It should be apparent that, given my approach to concepts, I see theories of concepts and theories of consciousness as closely intertwined; it is difficult to imagine offering a theory of consciousness that does not address the conceptually structured nature of that consciousness: for no one, it seems (excepting perhaps the panpsychists), 9 would deny that conscious thought is so structured.…”

“… 20. At the same time, details of that algorithm, along with its empirical application, lie outside the scope of this paper; instead, see Parthemore and Whitby (2012, 2013) and Parthemore and Morse (2010); Parthemore (2011a). As the references show, the algorithm and its software implementation – in the form of a mind-mapping program – continue to evolve, just as they predict any conceptual framework (and any concept within that framework) should continue to evolve.…”