Moral sensitivity and the limits of artificial moral agents

Bibliographic Data

ID21703335
AuthorsJoris Graff (0000-0001-5946-2056, Utrecht University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume26
Issue1
Publication date2024-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthics and Information Technology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1388-1957 • E-ISSN: 1572-8439
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10676-024-09755-9
OpenAlexW4392132727
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

Machine ethics is the field that strives to develop ‘artificial moral agents’ (AMAs), artificial systems that can autonomously make moral decisions. Some authors have questioned the feasibility of machine ethics, by questioning whether artificial systems can possess moral competence, or the capacity to reach morally right decisions in various situations. This paper explores this question by drawing on the work of several moral philosophers (McDowell, Wiggins, Hampshire, and Nussbaum) who have characterised moral competence in a manner inspired by Aristotle. Although disparate in many ways, these philosophers all emphasise what may be called ‘moral sensitivity’ as a precondition for moral competence. Moral sensitivity is the uncodified, practical skill to recognise, in a range of situations, which features of the situations are morally relevant, and how they are relevant. This paper argues that the main types of AMAs currently proposed are incapable of full moral sensitivity. First, top-down AMAs that proceed from fixed rule-sets are too rigid to respond appropriately to the wide range of qualitatively unique factors that moral sensitivity gives access to. Second, bottom-up AMAs that learn moral behaviour from examples are at risk of generalising from these examples in undesirable ways, as they lack embedding in what Wittgenstein calls a ‘form of life’, which allows humans to appropriately learn from moral examples. The paper concludes that AMAs are unlikely to possess full moral competence, but closes by suggesting that they may still be feasible in restricted domains of public morality, where moral sensitivity plays a smaller role

Moral disengagement · Sociology · Engineering · Free Will and Agency · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology

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