首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
相似文献
 共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 15 毫秒
1.
There has been increasing attention in sociology and internet studies to the topic of ‘digital remains’: the artefacts users of social network services (SNS) and other online services leave behind when they die. But these artefacts also pose philosophical questions regarding what impact, if any, these artefacts have on the ontological and ethical status of the dead. One increasingly pertinent question concerns whether these artefacts should be preserved, and whether deletion counts as a harm to the deceased user and therefore provides pro tanto reasons against deletion. In this paper, I build on previous work invoking a distinction between persons and selves to argue that SNS offer a particularly significant material instantiation of persons. The experiential transparency of the SNS medium allows for genuine co-presence of SNS users, and also assists in allowing persons (but not selves) to persist as ethical patients in our lifeworld after biological death. Using Blustein’s “rescue from insignificance” argument for duties of remembrance, I argue that this persistence function supplies a nontrivial (if defeasible) obligation not to delete these artefacts. Drawing on Luciano Floridi’s account of “constitutive” information, I further argue that the “digital remains” metaphor is surprisingly apt: these artefacts in fact enjoy a claim to moral regard akin to that of corpses.  相似文献   

2.
3.
The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis of the notion of artificial moral agent (AMA) and of its impact on human beings’ self-understanding as moral agents. Firstly, I introduce the topic by presenting what I call the Continuity Approach. Its main claim holds that AMAs and human moral agents exhibit no significant qualitative difference and, therefore, should be considered homogeneous entities. Secondly, I focus on the consequences this approach leads to. In order to do this I take into consideration the work of Bostrom and Dietrich, who have radically assumed this viewpoint and thoroughly explored its implications. Thirdly, I present an alternative approach to AMAs—the Discontinuity Approach—which underscores an essential difference between human moral agents and AMAs by tackling the matter from another angle. In this section I concentrate on the work of Johnson and Bryson and I highlight the link between their claims and Heidegger’s and Jonas’s suggestions concerning the relationship between human beings and technological products. In conclusion I argue that, although the Continuity Approach turns out to be a necessary postulate to the machine ethics project, the Discontinuity Approach highlights a relevant distinction between AMAs and human moral agents. On this account, the Discontinuity Approach generates a clearer understanding of what AMAs are, of how we should face the moral issues they pose, and, finally, of the difference that separates machine ethics from moral philosophy.  相似文献   

4.
Robot ethics encompasses ethical questions about how humans should design, deploy, and treat robots; machine morality encompasses questions about what moral capacities a robot should have and how these capacities could be computationally implemented. Publications on both of these topics have doubled twice in the past 10 years but have often remained separate from one another. In an attempt to better integrate the two, I offer a framework for what a morally competent robot would look like (normally considered machine morality) and discuss a number of ethical questions about the design, use, and treatment of such moral robots in society (normally considered robot ethics). Instead of searching for a fixed set of criteria of a robot’s moral competence I identify the multiple elements that make up human moral competence and probe the possibility of designing robots that have one or more of these human elements, which include: moral vocabulary; a system of norms; moral cognition and affect; moral decision making and action; moral communication. Juxtaposing empirical research, philosophical debates, and computational challenges, this article adopts an optimistic perspective: if robotic design truly commits to building morally competent robots, then those robots could be trustworthy and productive partners, caretakers, educators, and members of the human community. Moral competence does not resolve all ethical concerns over robots in society, but it may be a prerequisite to resolve at least some of them.  相似文献   

5.
Whilst some philosophical progress has been made on the ethical evaluation of playing video games, the exact subject matter of this enquiry remains surprisingly opaque. ‘Virtual murder’, simulation, representation and more are found in a literature yet to settle into a tested and cohesive terminology. Querying the language of the virtual in particular, I suggest that it is at once inexplicit and laden with presuppositions potentially liable to hinder anyone aiming to construct general philosophical claims about an ethics of gameplay, for whom assumptions about the existence of ‘virtual’ counterparts to morally salient phenomena may prove untrustworthy. Ambiguously straddling the pictorial and the performative aspects of video gaming, the virtual leaves obscure the ways in which we become involved in gameplay, and particularly the natures of our intentions and attitudes whilst grappling with a game; furthermore, it remains unclear how we are to generalise across encounters with the virtual. I conclude by briefly noting one potential avenue of further enquiry into our modes of participation in games: into the differences which a moral examination of playfulness might make to ethical evaluation.  相似文献   

6.
Floridi’s ontocentric ethics is compared with Spinoza’s ethical and metaphysical system as found in the Ethics. Floridi’s is a naturalistic ethics where he argues that an action is right or wrong primarily because the action does decrease the ?entropy’ of the infosphere or not. An action that decreases the amount entropy of the infosphere is a good one, and one that increases it is a bad one. For Floridi, ?entropy’ refers to destruction or loss of diversity of the infosphere, or the total reality consisting of informational objects. The similarity with Spinoza is that both philosophers refer to basic reality as a foundation for normative judgments. Hence they are both ethical naturalists. An interpretation of both Floridi and Spinoza is offered that might begin to solve the basic problems for any naturalistic ethics. The problems are how a value theory that is based on metaphysics could maintain normative force and how normative force could be justified when there appear to be widely differing metaphysical systems according to the many cultural traditions. I argue that in Spinoza’s and presumably in Floridi’s system, there is no separation between the normative and the natural from the beginning. Normative terms derive their validity from their role in referring to action that leads to a richer and fuller reality. As for the second problem, Spinoza’s God is such that He cannot be fully described by mere finite intellect. What this translates to the contemporary situation of information ethics is that there are always bound to be many different ways of conceptualizing one and the same reality, and it is the people’s needs, goals and desires that often dictate how the conceptualizing is done. However, when different groups of people interact, these systems become calibrated with one another. This is possible because they already belong to the same reality.  相似文献   

7.
Information and communication technology (ICT) has changed the lives of people at the operative level; it is less clear in what ways and to what extent it has changed the way people feel and develop as human beings. We create excellent means, but are we feeling better and getting better, and by what criteria should we evaluate our progress? Operative power is needed for the human progress, but it is not enough. In this article we consider the traditional values of knowledge, goodness (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics) as the criteria of human progress, and how our embrace of ICT has affected our advance toward these values. We round up our discussion with reflections on aspects of human nature that lead people along the ways of knowledge, goodness, and beauty, and also those that hinder such advancement.  相似文献   

8.
Ethical pluralism and global information ethics   总被引:2,自引:1,他引:1  
A global information ethics that seeks to avoid imperialistic homogenization must conjoin shared norms while simultaneously preserving the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. I argue that a global information ethics may fulfill these requirements by taking up an ethical pluralism – specifically Aristotle’s pros hen [“towards one”] or “focal” equivocals. These ethical pluralisms figure centrally in both classical and contemporary Western ethics: they further offer important connections with the major Eastern ethical tradition of Confucian thought. Both traditions understand ethical judgment to lead to and thus require ethical pluralism – i.e., an acceptance of more than one judgment regarding the interpretation and application of a shared ethical norm. Both traditions invoke notions of resonance and harmony to articulate pluralistic structures of connection alongside irreducible differences. Specific examples within Western computer and information ethics demonstrate these pluralisms in fact working in praxis. After reviewing further resonances and radical differences between Western and Eastern views, I then argue that emerging conceptions of privacy and data privacy protection laws in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand in fact constitute a robust, pros hen pluralism with Western conceptions. In both theory and in praxis, then, this pluralism thus fulfills the requirement for a global information ethics that holds shared norms alongside the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples.  相似文献   

9.

Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performance—what a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineers’ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. ‘How safe is safe enough?’ prompts further questions: ‘safe enough for what?’ and ‘safe enough for whom?’

  相似文献   

10.
Can we build ‘moral robots’? If morality depends on emotions, the answer seems negative. Current robots do not meet standard necessary conditions for having emotions: they lack consciousness, mental states, and feelings. Moreover, it is not even clear how we might ever establish whether robots satisfy these conditions. Thus, at most, robots could be programmed to follow rules, but it would seem that such ‘psychopathic’ robots would be dangerous since they would lack full moral agency. However, I will argue that in the future we might nevertheless be able to build quasi-moral robots that can learn to create the appearance of emotions and the appearance of being fully moral. I will also argue that this way of drawing robots into our social-moral world is less problematic than it might first seem, since human morality also relies on such appearances.  相似文献   

11.
《普罗米修斯》2012,30(4):311-326
This paper aims to improve understanding of how innovations are diffused through combining perspectives on the adoption and consumption of innovation. The literature on the adoption of innovation mainly examines issues such as technical functionalities, utility and personality factors. In contrast, research on the consumption of innovation is concerned with the context and meaning of consumer decisions and the values that underlie them. The paper is conceptual and uses Weber’s categories of meaning in action to argue the value of combining the primarily ‘rational’ innovation adoption literature with the more ‘emotive’ consumption literature. By reference to the consumption of hybrid cars, we show how the innovation adoption literature can be valuably supplemented by an understanding of what consumers of innovation do, why they do it and what doing it means to them. We argue that this combination provides a more holistic understanding of how innovations diffuse and has implications for those delivering, using and researching innovation.  相似文献   

12.
Central to the ethical concerns raised by the prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots are issues of responsibility. In this paper we examine different conceptions of autonomy within the discourse on these robots to bring into focus what is at stake when it comes to the autonomous nature of military robots. We argue that due to the metaphorical use of the concept of autonomy, the autonomy of robots is often treated as a black box in discussions about autonomous military robots. When the black box is opened up and we see how autonomy is understood and ‘made’ by those involved in the design and development of robots, the responsibility questions change significantly.  相似文献   

13.
In this essay, a new approach to the ethics of emerging information technology will be presented, called anticipatory technology ethics (ATE). The ethics of emerging technology is the study of ethical issues at the R&D and introduction stage of technology development through anticipation of possible future devices, applications, and social consequences. In the essay, I will first locate emerging technology in the technology development cycle, after which I will consider ethical approaches to emerging technologies, as well as obstacles in developing such approaches. I will argue that any sound approach must centrally include futures studies of technology. I then present ATE and some applications of it to emerging information technologies. In ATE, ethical analysis is performed at three levels, the technology, artifact and application levels, and at each levels distinct types of ethical questions are asked. ATE analyses result in the identification and evaluation of a broad range of ethical issues that can be anticipated in relation to an emerging information technology. This ethical analysis can then be used for ethical recommendations for design or governance.  相似文献   

14.
In the mid-1990s, the Internet rapidly changedfrom a venue used by a small number ofscientists to a popular phenomena affecting allaspects of life in industrialized nations. Scholars from diverse disciplines have taken aninterest in trying to understand the Internetand Internet users. However, as a variety ofresearchers have noted, guidelines for ethicalresearch on human subjects written before theInternet's growth can be difficult to extend toresearch on Internet users.In this paper, I focus on one ethicalissue: whether and to what extent to disguisematerial collected online in publishedaccounts. While some people argue thatvulnerable human subjects must always be madeanonymous in publications for their ownprotection, others argue that Internet usersdeserve credit for their creative andintellectual work. Still others argue thatmuch material available online should betreated as ``published.' To attempt to resolvethese issues, I first review my own experiencesof disguising material in research accountsfrom 1992 to 2002. Some of the thorniestissues emerge at the boundaries betweenresearch disciplines. Furthermore, manyhumanities disciplines have not historicallyviewed what they do as human subjects research. Next, I explore what it means to do humansubjects research in the humanities. Inspiredby issues raised by colleagues in thehumanities, I argue that the traditional notionof a ``human subject' does not adequatelycharacterize Internet users. A useful alternatemental model is proposed: Internet users areamateur artists. The Internet can be seen as aplayground for amateur artists creatingsemi-published work. I argue that thisapproach helps make some ethical dilemmaseasier to reason about, because it highlightskey novel aspects of the situation,particularly with regard to disguisingmaterial. Finally, I conclude by proposing aset of practical guidelines regardingdisguising material gathered on the Internet inpublished accounts, on a continuum from nodisguise, light disguise, moderate disguise, toheavy disguise.  相似文献   

15.
近年来,参与实验作为STS中新出现的研究方法受到了广泛的关注。在方法层面,参与实验吸收了行动者-网络理论(ANT)等研究成果对实践的关注,挑战了现有公众参与科学模式囿于议程、代表权、共识等概念的困境,将公众参与科学引向对日常活动中物质实践的定制和分析。在理论层面,参与实验区分了ANT、存在论政治学等“经验化”存在论方案,试图在STS中建立一种“实验化”的存在论方案。“实验化”研究突破了“经验化”研究的方法论框架,但其存在论地位仍显模糊。本研究讨论了德勒兹与拉图尔对伦理问题的不同思考,指出了两者在伦理学上不同的存在论立场可以成为解释“实验化”和“经验化”之间对立根源的思想线索。在此思想线索的基础上,诉诸“遭遇中的生成”将为“实验化”存在论方案提供一条区分于“经验化”的立足之途,从而为在“公众参与科学”中促发更多具备可行性的实践方案提供一种可能的理论前提。  相似文献   

16.
This essay describes a new ethical theory that has begun to coalesce from the works of several scholars in the international computer ethics community. I call the new theory ‚Flourishing Ethics’ because of its Aristotelian roots, though it also includes ideas suggestive of Taoism and Buddhism. In spite of its roots in ancient ethical theories, Flourishing Ethics is informed and grounded by recent scientific insights into the nature of living things, human nature and the fundamental nature of the universe – ideas from today’s information theory, astrophysics and genetics. Flourishing Ethics can be divided conveniently into two parts. The first part, which I call ‚Human-Centered FE,’ is focused exclusively upon human beings – their actions, values and characters. The second part, which I call ‚General FE,’ applies to every physical entity in the universe, including humans. Rather than replacing traditional ‚great ethical theories,’ Flourishing Ethics is likely to deepen and broaden our understanding of them.  相似文献   

17.
This paper builds on the growing literature in 'postcolonial technoscience' by examining how science and ethics travel in transnational HIV research. I use examples of two controversial US-funded studies of mother-to-child transmission in Africa as case studies through which to explore quandaries of difference and inequality in global health research. My aim is not to adjudicate the debates over these studies, but rather to raise some questions about transnational research, science, and ethics that often get lost in public controversies over the moral status of such trials. Using interviews conducted with American and Ugandan HIV researchers as well as relevant material published in the popular and medical press, I argue that debates over research practice and the conditions under which practices are deemed ethically legitimate or questionable reflect the challenges faced by African researchers seeking to participate in global health science. In doing so, I show how questions of scientific legitimacy and authority are played out in debates over who decides what constitutes 'the normal' in human biological research and who can legitimately 'speak for Africa' regarding the ethics of research design and practice. I conclude that researchers from'resource-poor settings' must often walk a tightrope between claims of difference from the global North and assertions of sameness, in which a claim too forceful in either direction can undermine the ethical--and thus scientific--legitimacy of their research.  相似文献   

18.
This paper pertains to research works aiming at linking ethics and automated reasoning in autonomous machines. It focuses on a formal approach that is intended to be the basis of an artificial agent’s reasoning that could be considered by a human observer as an ethical reasoning. The approach includes some formal tools to describe a situation and models of ethical principles that are designed to automatically compute a judgement on possible decisions that can be made in a given situation and explain why a given decision is ethically acceptable or not. It is illustrated on three ethical frameworks—utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics and the Doctrine of Double effect whose formal models are tested on ethical dilemmas so as to examine how they respond to those dilemmas and to highlight the issues at stake when a formal approach to ethical concepts is considered. The whole approach is instantiated on the drone dilemma, a thought experiment we have designed; this allows the discrepancies that exist between the judgements of the various ethical frameworks to be shown. The final discussion allows us to highlight the different sources of subjectivity of the approach, despite the fact that concepts are expressed in a more rigorous way than in natural language: indeed, the formal approach enables subjectivity to be identified and located more precisely.  相似文献   

19.
To what extent should humans transfer, or abdicate, “responsibility” to computers? In this paper, I distinguish six different senses of ‘responsible’ and then consider in which of these senses computers can, and in which they cannot, be said to be “responsible” for “deciding” various outcomes. I sort out and explore two different kinds of complaint against putting computers in greater “control” of our lives: (i) as finite and fallible human beings, there is a limit to how far we can acheive increased reliability through complex devices of our own design; (ii) even when computers are more reliable than humans, certain tasks (e.g., selecting an appropriate gift for a friend, solving the daily crossword puzzle) are inappropriately performed by anyone (or anything) other than oneself. In critically evaluating these claims, I arrive at three main conclusions: (1) While we ought to correct for many of our shortcomings by availing ourselves of the computer's larger memory, faster processing speed and greater stamina, we are limited by our own finiteness and fallibility (rather than by whatever limitations may be inherent in silicon and metal) in the ability to transcend our own unreliability. Moreover, if we rely on programmed computers to such an extent that we lose touch with the human experience and insight that formed the basis for their programming design, our fallibility is magnified rather than mitigated. (2) Autonomous moral agents can reasonably defer to greater expertise, whether human or cybernetic. But they cannot reasonably relinquish “background-oversight” responsibility. They must be prepared, at least periodically, to review whether the “expertise” to which they defer is indeed functioning as he/she/it was authorized to do, and to take steps to revoke that authority, if necessary. (3) Though outcomes matter, it can also matter how they are brought about, and by whom. Thus, reflecting on how much of our lives should be directed and implemented by computer may be another way of testing any thoroughly end-state or consequentialist conception of the good and decent life. To live with meaning and purpose, we need to actively engage our own faculties and empathetically connect up with, and resonate to, others. Thus there is some limit to how much of life can be appropriately lived by anyone (or anything) other than ourselves.  相似文献   

20.
In an increasingly globalized and hyper connected business environment, using knowledge strategically is often critical for competitive performance. This article is motivated to illuminate the notion of strategic knowledge management (SKM) in organizations. In this regard, executives need to develop an informed understanding of what types of organizational knowledge (and how much) can be ‘structured’ and/or allowed to ‘proliferate’ in order to sustain both work productivity and innovation capacity toward a harmonious conceptualization of strategic knowledge in their organizations. This conceptual paper is based on analysing certain exemplars of why organizations need to put greater emphasis on the equivalence between codification and personalization in the context of strategic knowledge management. Our explanations on managing strategic knowledge through different examples provide insights and pitfalls that organizations must be aware of and are as follows. Firstly, we argue that an exclusive emphasis on codification or personalization runs the risk of ‘knowledge structuration’ or ‘knowledge proliferation’ respectively in an organization’s strategic knowledge management. Secondly, executives should continuously realize the need to emphasize on equivalence (or congruence) between codification and personalization aspects of SKM in order to keep enduring work productivity and innovation capacity in organizations. Thirdly, we argue that SKM initiatives that prodigiously focus on either codification or personalization can lead to pitfalls despite plenty of managerial interventions. We further believe that our proposed ideas will be worthwhile considerations for executives/leaders responsible for strategy, IT and innovation divisions of the organization to determine whether its organization’s knowledge engine is running smoothly, and if not, where to direct their energy to yield long term and robust outcomes.  相似文献   

设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号