Download EECS 690

EECS 690
March 31
Purpose of Chapter 4
• The authors mean to address the concern
that many might have that the concepts of
morality and ethics just simply cannot be
made to apply to (ro)bots.
• They hint at some arguments made by
opponents and hint at some answers.
These arguments and answers can be
made more explicit.
GOFAI
• GOFAI, pronounced ‘Goofy’, is an
acronym for Good Old-Fashioned AI used
by its detractors. Searle, though a
detractor, uses the term ‘Strong AI’.
• We will address the specifics of Searle’s
objection on Friday, as it fits better into
that section, though pages 57-58 allude to
it.
Cartesian Dualism
• Descartes famously argued for a position that has since
been dubbed ‘substance dualism’. This position argues
that minds are composed of a different fundamental
substance than bodies, amenable to entirely different
means of investigation and understanding.
• If Descartes is right, then an empirical science of the
mind is impossible. However, due primarily to its inability
to satisfactorily explain mind/body interactions,
substance dualism is as thoroughly abandoned as any
idea in philosophy. Despite this abandonment, many
positions in the philosophy of mind turn out to be, on
examination, clever restatements of substance dualism.
Property Dualism
• Despite the similarity in name to the
Cartesian position, property dualism is a
horse of a different color.
• Property dualists accept physicalism (the
idea that a science of mind needs posit
only ordinary matter) but maintain that
adequate explanation of mental events
does not bottom out in descriptions of
physical states.
“A Special Property”
• Some property dualists might use their
position to argue that there is some
special property that emerges from human
brains that software or digital hardware
systems cannot duplicate. There is
nothing in the general idea of property
dualism that requires one to take this
further position, though some do (notably
Searle).
Determinism and Ethics
• Here is the intuitive idea that Wallach and
Allen refer to in this section:
• There are several things necessary for
ethical behavior, and causal determinism
prohibits these things from obtaining:
– A moral agent must be able to have chosen
otherwise than she did.
– The moral agent must be ultimately
responsible for her decisions
Determinism and (Ro)bots
• Whether the previous is true, the fact that (ro)bots are
deterministic systems is uncontroversial. Even systems
that incorporate pseudo-randomness are in effect
deterministic. This is an assumption that we make when
designing and building them.
• So to maintain that (ro)bots could have the terms ‘moral’
or ‘ethical’ applied to them, we may (1) deny that morality
requires what is specified on the previous slide, (2) deny
that determinism makes impossible what is specified on
the previous slide, or (3) deny that the alternative to
determinism is coherent.
(1) These are not necessary for
Morality
A moral agent must be able to have chosen otherwise than she did.
(AP)
The moral agent must be ultimately responsible for her decisions
(UR)
- For AP: Consider Martin Luther, “Here I stand, I can do no other”.
Whatever he is doing here, he is not trying to duck responsibility.
Also consider what has come to be called a “Frankfurt style”
example. John sits in a (unbeknownst to John) locked room,
and decides to stay in the room rather than leave it. It seems it
is still a morally relevant decision, even if no AP exists.
- For UR: Consider Biff, who learns of morality by reading Mill’s
“Utilitarianism” and lives strictly by that teaching. Has this made
Biff necessarily amoral?
(2) UR and AP are not prohibited by
determinism (properly understood)
• AP: In order for people to anticipate
consequences at all, a large amount of
determinism is required, and the ability of
persons to navigate in the causal chain of events
is what gives us what we call ‘choice’.
• UR: What is means to be responsible for a
choice is to be situated in a causally appropriate
way to some observed effect, so UR requires at
least a large amount of determinism.
The Intelligibility Problem
• It is a common intuition that determinism is incompatible
with responsibility, but does indeterminism do any
better?
• Consider AP: In an indeterministic system, things could
have been other than they are, but ipso facto are out of
anyone’s control.
• Consider UR: In an indeterministic system one thing
follows another for no determinate reason at all. Is doing
something for no reason at all what we call having
responsibility?
• Even in systems that posit very isolated instances of
indeterminism, the problem is a microcosm of the above
two concerns.