Ethics in religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaMost religions have an ethical component, often derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. "For many people, ethics is not only tied up with religion, but is completely settled by it. Such people do not need to think too much about ethics, because there is an authoritative code of instructions, a handbook of how to live."[1]
Ethics, which is a major branch of philosophy, encompasses right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than traditional moral conduct.[2]
Some assert that religion is necessary to live ethically. According to Simon Blackburn, there are those who "would say that we can only flourish under the umbrella of a strong social order, cemented by common adherence to a particular religious tradition".[3]
[edit] Buddhist ethics
Main article: Buddhist ethicsEthics in Buddhism are traditionally based on the enlightened perspective of the Buddha, or other enlightened beings who followed him. Moral instructions are included in Buddhist scriptures or handed down through tradition. Most scholars of Buddhist ethics thus rely on the examination of Buddhist scriptures, and the use of anthropological evidence from traditional Buddhist societies, to justify claims about the nature of Buddhist ethics.[4]
According to traditional Buddhism, the foundation of Buddhist ethics for laypeople is the Pancasila: no killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, or intoxicants. In becoming a Buddhist, or affirming one's commitment to Buddhism, a layperson is encouraged to vow to abstain from these negative actions. Buddhist monks and nuns take hundreds more such vows (see vinaya).
The sole reliance on traditional formulae or practices, however, can be questioned by Western Buddhists whose main concern is the practical solution of complex moral problems in the modern world. To find a justifiable approach to such problems it may be necessary not just to appeal to the precepts or the vinaya, but to use more basic Buddhist teachings (such as the Middle Way) to aid interpretation of the precepts and find more basic justifications for their usefulness relevant to all human experience. This approach avoids basing Buddhist ethics solely on faith in the Buddha's enlightenment or Buddhist tradition, and may allow more universal non-Buddhist access to the insights offered by Buddhist ethics.[5]
The Buddha provided some basic guidelines for acceptable behavior that are part of the Noble Eightfold Path. The initial percept is non-injury or non-violence to all living creatures from the lowest insect to humans. This precept defines an non-violent attitude toward every living thing. The Buddhist practice of this does not extend to the extremes exhibited by Jainism, but from both the Buddhist and Jain perspectives, non-violence suggests an intimate involvement with, and relationship to, all living things.[6]
Theravada monk Bhikkhu Bodhi has observed:
- "Buddhist ethics, as formulated in the five precepts, is sometimes charged with being entirely negative. ... [I]t has to be pointed out that the five precepts, or even the longer codes of precepts promulgated by the Buddha, do not exhaust the full range of Buddhist ethics. The precepts are only the most rudimentary code of moral training, but the Buddha also proposes other ethical codes inculcating definite positive virtues. The Mangala Sutta, for example, commends reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude, patience, generosity, etc. Other discourses prescribe numerous family, social, and political duties establishing the well being of society. And behind all these duties lie the four attitudes called the "immeasurables" — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity."[7]
[edit] Christian ethics
Main article: Christian ethicsChristian ethics in general has tended to stress the need for love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness because of sin. With divine assistance, the Christian is called to become increasingly virtuous in both thought and deed, see also the Evangelical counsels. Conversely, the Christian is also called to abstain from vice.
Christian ethical principles are based on the teachings within the Holy Bible. They begin with the notion of inherent sinfulness, which requires essential atonement. Sin is estrangement from God which is the result of not doing God's will. God's will can be summed up by the precept: "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself." Christian ethics are founded upon the concept of grace which transforms a person's life and enable's one to choose and act righteously. As sin is both individual and social, so is grace applied to both the individual and society. Christian ethics has a teleological aspect--all ethical behavior is oriented towards a vision of the Kingdom of God--a righteous society where all live in peace and harmony with God and nature, as envisioned in the Book of Isaiah. Specific ethical behaviors originate in the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments, and are enriched by teachings in the Psalms and morals contained in historical accounts, see also Biblical law in Christianity.
Christian ethics is not substantially different from Jewish ethics, except in the exhortation to love one's enemy. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Christian ethics is this command to love one's enemies. It has been argued (see Chet Meyer's Binding the Strong Man, and John Yoder's The Politics of Jesus) that Jesus was waging a non-violent campaign against the Roman oppressors and many of his sayings relate to this campaign--turn the other cheek, go the second mile, etc. Understanding these commands as part of a larger campaign makes it impossible to interpret Christian ethics as an individual ethic. It is both an individual and a social ethic concerned with life here on earth.
Other tenets include maintaining personal integrity and the absence of hypocrisy, as well as honesty and loyalty, mercy and forgiveness, rejection of materialism and the desire for wealth and power, and teaching others in your life through personal joy, happiness and Godly devotion.
There are several different schema of vice and virtue. Aquinas adopted the four cardinal virtues of Aristotle, justice, courage, temperance and prudence, and added to them the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity (from St.Paul, 1 Corinthians 13). Other schema include the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven virtues. For more see Christian philosophy and Biblical law in Christianity.
[edit] Confucian ethics
Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism emphasize the maintenance and propriety of relationships as the most important consideration in ethics. To be ethical is to do what one's relationships require. Notably, though, what you owe to another person is inversely proportional to their distance from you. In other words, you owe your parents everything, but you are not in any way obligated towards strangers. This can be seen as a recognition of the fact that it is impossible to love the entire world equally and simultaneously. This is called relational ethics, or situational ethics. The Confucian system differs very strongly from Kantian ethics in that there are rarely laws or principles which can be said to be true absolutely or universally.
This is not to say that there has never been any consideration given to universalist ethics. In fact, in Zhou dynasty China, the Confucians' main opponents, the followers of Mozi argued for universal love (Chinese: 兼爱; pinyin: jiān ài). The Confucian view eventually held sway, however, and continues to dominate many aspects of Chinese thought. Many have argued, for example, that Mao Zedong was more Confucian than Communist. Confucianism, especially of the type argued for by Mencius (Chinese: 孟子; pinyin: mèng zĭ), argued that the ideal ruler is the one who (as Confucius put it) "acts like the North Star, staying in place while the other stars orbit around it". In other words, the ideal ruler does not go out and force the people to become good, but instead leads by example. The ideal ruler fosters harmony rather than laws.
Confucius stresses honesty above all. His concepts of lĭ (Chinese: 理), yì (Chinese: 義), and rén (Chinese: 仁) can be seen as deeper expressions of honesty (Chinese: 誠; pinyin: chéng; literally "sincerity") and fidelity (Chinese: 孝; pinyin: xiào) to the ones to whom one owes one's existence (parents) and survival (one's neighbours, colleagues, inferiors in rank). He codifed traditional practice and actually changed the meaning of the prior concepts that those words had meant. His model of the Confucian family and Confucian ruler dominated Chinese life into the early 20th century. This had ossified by then into an Imperial hierarchy of rigid property rights, hard to distinguish from any other dictatorship. Traditional ethics had been perverted by legalism.
[edit] Buddhist influence
Buddhism, and specifically Mahayana Buddhism, brought a cohesive metaphysic to Chinese thought and a strong emphasis on universalism. Neo-Confucianism was largely a reaction to Buddhism's dominance in the Tang dynasty, and an attempt at developing a native Confucian metaphysical/analytical system.
[edit] Daoist ethics
Laozi and other Daoist authors argued for an even greater passivity on the part of rulers than did the Confucians. For Laozi, the ideal ruler is one who does virtually nothing that can be directly identified as ruling. Clearly, both Daoism and Confucianism presume that human nature is basically good. The main branch of Confucianism, however, argues that human nature must be nurtured through ritual (li 理), culture (wen 文) and other things, while the Daoists argued that the trappings of society were to be gotten rid of.
[edit] Hindu ethics
Hindu ethics are related to reincarnation, which is a way of expressing the need for reciprocity, as one may end up in someone else's shoes in their next incarnation. Intention is seen as very important, and thus selfless action for the benefit of others without thought for oneself is an important rule in Hinduism, known as the doctrine of karma yoga. This aspect of service is combined with an understanding that someone else's unfortunate situation, while of their own doing, is one's own situation since the soul within is the soul shared by all. The greeting namaskar is founded on the principle that one salutes the spark of the divine in the other. Kindness and hospitality are key Hindu values.
More emphasis is placed on empathy than in other traditions, and women are sometimes upheld not only as great moral examples but also as great gurus. Beyond that, the Mother is a Divine Figure, the Devi, and the aspect of the creative female energy plays a major role in the Hindu ethos. Vande Mataram, the Indian national song (not anthem) is based on the Divine mother as embodied by 'Mother India' paralleled to 'Ma Durga'. An emphasis on domestic life and the joys of the household and village may make Hindu ethics a bit more conservative than others on matters of sex and family.
Of all religions, Hinduism is among the most compatible with the view of approaching truth through various forms of art: its temples are often garishly decorated, and the idea of a guru who is both entrancing entertainer and spiritual guide, or who simply practices some unique devotion (such as holding up his arm right for his whole life, or rolling on the ground for years on a pilgrimage), is simply accepted as a legitimate choice in life.
Ethical traditions in Hinduism have been influenced by caste norms. In the mid-20th century Mohandas Gandhi, a Vaishnava, undertook to reform these and emphasize traditions shared in all the Indian faiths:
- vegetarianism and an ideology of harms reduction leading ultimately to nonviolence
- active creation of truth through courage and his 'satyagraha'
- rejection of cowardice and concern with pain or indeed bodily harm
[edit] Islamic ethics
Main article: Islamic ethicsThe foundational source in the gradual codification of Islamic ethics was the Muslim understanding and interpretations of the mankind has been granted the faculty to discern God's will and to abide by it. This faculty most crucially involves reflecting over the meaning of existence, which, as John Kelsay in the Encyclopedia of Ethics phrases, "ultimately points to the reality of God." Therefore, regardless of their environment, humans are believed to have a moral responsibility to submit to God's will and to follow Islam (as demonstrated in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, or the sayings of Muhammad) [Quran 7:172]).[8]
This natural inclination is, according to the Qur'an, subverted by mankind's focus on material success: such focus first presents itself as a need for basic survival or security, but then tends to manifest into a desire to become distinguished among one's peers. Ultimately, the focus on materialism, according to the Islamic texts, hampers with the innate reflection as described above, resulting in a state of jahiliyya or "ignorance."[8]
Muslims believe that Muhammad, like other prophets in Islam, was sent by God to remind human beings of their moral responsibility, and challenge those ideas in society which opposed submission to God. According to Kelsay, this challenge was directed against five main characteristics of pre-Islamic Arabia:[8]
- The division of Arabs into varying tribes (based upon blood and kinship). This categorization was confronted by the ideal of a unified community based upon Islamic piety, an "ummah;"
- The acceptance of the worship of a multitude of deities besides Allah - a view challenged by strict Islamic monotheism, which dictates that Allah has no partner in worship nor any equal;
- The trait of muruwwa (manliness), which Islam discouraged, instead emphasizing on the traits of humility and piety;
- The focus on achieving fame or establishing a legacy, which was replaced by the concept that mankind would be called to account before God on the day of resurrection;
- The reverence of and compliance with ancestral traditions, a practice challenged by Islam — which instead assigned primacy to submitting to God and following revelation.
Furthermore, a Muslim should not only follow these five main characteristics, but also be more broad about his morals. Therefore, the more the Muslim is applying these rules, the better that person is morally. For example,Islamic ethics can be applied by important verses in there holy book (The Quran). The most fundamental characteristics of a Muslim are piety and humility. A Muslim must be humble with God and with other people:
“And turn not your face away from people (with pride), nor walk in insolence through the earth. Verily, God likes not each arrogant boaster. And be moderate (or show no insolence) in your walking, and lower your voice. Verily, the harshest of all voices is the voice (braying) of the ass.” (Quran 31:18-19)
Muslims must be in controls of their passions and desires.
A Muslim should not be vain or attached to the ephemeral pleasures of this world. While most people allow the material world to fill their hearts, Muslims should keep God in their hearts and the material world in their hand. Instead of being attached to the car and the job and the diploma and the bank account, all these things become tools to make us better people. Morality in Islam addresses every aspect of a Muslim’s life, from greetings to international relations. It is universal in its scope and in its applicability. Morality reigns in selfish desires, vanity and bad habits. Muslims must not only be virtuous, but they must also enjoin virtue. They must not only refrain from evil and vice, but they must also forbid them. In other words, they must not only be morally healthy, but they must also contribute to the moral health of society as a whole.
“You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in God; and if the followers of the Book had believed it would have been better for them; of them (some) are believers and most of them are transgressors.” (Quran: 3:110)
The Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, summarized the conduct of a Muslim when he said:
“My Sustainer has given me nine commands: to remain conscious of God, whether in private or in public; to speak justly, whether angry or pleased; to show moderation both when poor and when rich, to reunite friendship with those who have broken off with me; to give to him who refuses me; that my silence should be occupied with thought; that my looking should be an admonition; and that I should command what is right.”
[edit] Jewish ethics
Main article: Jewish ethicsJewish ethics may be said to originate with the Hebrew Bible, its broad legal injunctions, wisdom narratives and prophetic teachings. Most subsequent Jewish ethical claims may be traced back to the texts, themes and teachings of the written Torah.
In early rabbinic Judaism, the oral Torah both interprets the Hebrew Bible and delves afresh into many other ethical topics. The best known rabbinic text associated with ethics is the non-legal Mishnah tractate of Avot, popularly translated as Ethics of the Fathers. Generally, ethics is a key aspect of non-legal rabbinic literature, known as aggadah, and ethical teachings are found throughout the more legal (halakahic) portions of the Mishnah, Talmud and other rabbinic literature. This early Rabbinic ethics shows signs of cross-fertilization and polemical exchange with both the Greek (Western philosophical) ethical tradition and early Christian tradition.
In the medieval period, direct Jewish responses to Greek ethics may be seen in major rabbinic writings. Notably, Maimonides offers a Jewish interpretation of Aristotle (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics), who enters into Jewish discourse through Islamic writings. Maimonides, in turn, influences Thomas Aquinas, a dominant figure in Catholic ethics and the natural law tradition of moral theology. The relevance of natural law to medieval Jewish philosophy is a matter of dispute among scholars.
[edit] Hellenistic influence
See also: Hellenistic JudaismEthics in systematic form, and apart from religious belief, is as little found in apocryphal or Judæo-Hellenistic literature as in the Bible. However, Greek philosophy greatly influenced Alexandrian writers such as the authors of IV Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom, and Philo.
Much progress in theoretical ethics came as Jews came into closer contact with the Hellenic world. Before that period the Wisdom literature shows a tendency to dwell solely on the moral obligations and problems of life as appealing to man as an individual, leaving out of consideration the ceremonial and other laws which concern only the Jewish nation. From this point of view Ben Sira's collection of sayings and monitions was written, translated into Greek, and circulated as a practical guide. The book contains popular ethics in proverbial form as the result of everyday life experience, without higher philosophical or religious principles and ideals.
More developed ethical works emanated from Hasidean circles in the Maccabean time, such as are contained in Tobit, especially in Chapter IV. Here the first ethical will or testament is found, giving a summary of moral teachings, with the Golden Rule, "Do that to no man which thou hatest!" as the leading maxim. There are even more elaborate ethical teachings in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in which each of the twelve sons of Jacob, in his last words to his children and children's children, reviews his life and gives them moral lessons, either warning them against a certain vice he had been guilty of, so that they may avoid divine punishment, or recommending them to cultivate a certain virtue he had practised during life, so that they may win God's favor. The chief virtues recommended are love for one's fellow man, industry, especially in agricultural pursuits, simplicity, sobriety, benevolence toward the poor, compassion even for the brute and avoidance of all passion, pride, and hatred. Similar ethical farewell monitions are attributed to Enoch in the Ethiopic Enoch (xciv. et seq.) and the Slavonic Enoch (lviii. et seq.) and to the three patriarchs.
The Hellenistic Jewish propaganda literature made the propagation of Jewish ethics taken from the Bible its main object for the sake of winning the pagan world to pure monotheism. It was owing to this endeavor that certain ethical principles were laid down as guiding maxims for the Gentiles, first of all the three capital sins, idolatry, murder, and incest, were prohibited (see Sibyllines, iii. 38, 761; iv. 30 et seq.). In later Jewish rabbinic literature these Noachide Laws were gradually developed into six, seven, and ten, or thirty laws of ethics binding upon every human being.
[edit] LaVeyan Satanist ethics
Main article: LaVeyan_Satanism#The_Nine_Satanic_Sins[edit] The Nine Satanic Sins
- Stupidity — The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.
- Pretentiousness — Empty posturing can be most irritating and isn’t applying the cardinal rules of Lesser Magic. This is on equal footing with stupidity for what keeps the money in circulation these days. Everyone’s made to feel like a big shot, whether they can come up with the goods or not.
- Solipsism — Projecting your reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto someone who is probably far less attuned than you are can be very dangerous for Satanists. It is the mistake of expecting people to give you the same consideration, courtesy and respect that you naturally give them. They won’t. Instead, Satanists must strive to apply the dictum of “Do unto others as they do unto you.” It’s work for most of us, and requires constant vigilance, lest you slip into a comfortable illusion of everyone being like you. As it has been said, certain utopias would be ideal in a nation of philosophers, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, from a Machiavellian standpoint) we are far from that point.
- Self-deceit — It’s in the “Nine Satanic Statements”, but deserves to be repeated here. It is another cardinal sin. We must not pay homage to any of the sacred cows presented to us, including the roles we are expected to play ourselves. The only time self-deceit should be entered into is when it’s fun, and with awareness. But then, it’s not self-deceit!
- Herd Conformity — That’s obvious from a Satanic stance. It’s all right to conform to a person’s wishes, if it ultimately benefits you. But only fools follow along with the herd, letting an impersonal entity dictate to you. The key is to choose a master wisely, instead of being enslaved by the whims of the many.
- Lack of perspective — Again, this one can lead to a lot of pain for a Satanist. You must never lose sight of who and what you are, and what a threat you can be, by your very existence. We are making history right now, every day. Always keep the wider historical and social picture in mind. That is an important key to both Lesser and Greater Magic. See the patterns and fit things together as you want the pieces to fall into place. Do not be swayed by herd constraints: Know that you are working on another level entirely from the rest of the world.
- Forgetfulness of Past Orthodoxies — Be aware that this is one of the keys to brainwashing people into accepting something new and different, when in reality it’s something that was once widely accepted but is now presented in a new package. We are expected to rave about the genius of the creator and forget the original. This makes for a disposable society.
- Counterproductive Pride — That first word is important. Pride is great up to the point you begin to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The rule of Satanism is: If it works for you, great. When it stops working for you, when you’ve painted yourself into a corner and the only way out is to say, I’m sorry, I made a mistake, I wish we could compromise somehow, then do it.
- Lack of Aesthetics — This is the physical application of the Balance Factor. Aesthetics is important in Lesser Magic and should be cultivated. It is obvious that no one can collect any money off classical standards of beauty and form most of the time, so they are discouraged in a consumer society; but an eye for beauty, for balance, is an essential Satanic tool and must be applied for greatest magical effectiveness. It’s not what’s supposed to be pleasing: It’s what is. Aesthetics is a personal thing, reflective of one’s own nature, but there are universally pleasing and harmonious configurations that should not be denied.[9]
[edit] Neopagan ethics
[edit] Germanic Neopagan ethics
Germanic Neopagans, including followers of both Asatru and Theodism, try to emulate the ethical values of the ancient Germanic peoples (Norse or Anglo-Saxon) through the form of the Nine Noble Virtues.
[edit] Scientology ethics
Main article: Ethics (Scientology)Scientology ethics is based upon the concepts of good and evil. Ethics may be defined as the actions an individual takes on itself to ensure its continued survival across the dynamics.[10]
[edit] Wiccan ethics
Main article: Wiccan moralityWiccan morality is largely based on the Wiccan Rede: 'An it harm none, do what ye will'. While this could be interpreted to mean "do no harm at all", it is usually interpreted as a declaration of the freedom to act, along with the necessity of taking responsibility for what follows from one's actions.[11]
Another element of Wiccan Morality comes from the Law of Threefold Return, which is understood to mean that whatever one does to another person or thing (benevolent or otherwise) returns with triple force.[12]
Many Wiccans also seek to cultivate a set of eight virtues mentioned in Doreen Valiente's Charge of the Goddess,[13] these being mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power and compassion. In Valiente's poem they are ordered in pairs of complementary opposites, reflecting a dualism that is common throughout Wiccan philosophy.[citation needed]
[edit] Secular ethics
Main article: Secular ethicsSecular ethics is a moral philosophy in which ethics are based solely on human faculties such as scientific reason, sociobiological composition, or ethical intuition, and not derived from purported supernatural revelation or guidance. Secular ethics can be seen as a wide variety of moral and ethical systems, the most prominent being secular humanism.
The majority of secular moral concepts are based on the acceptance of natural rights and social contracts, and on a more individual scale of either some form of attribution of intrinsic value to things, Kantianesque ethical intuitionism or of a logical deduction that establishes a preference for one thing over another, as with Occam's razor. Approaches such as utilitarianism, ethical egoism, moral relativism, moral skepticism, and moral nihilism are also considered.
[edit] Shinto ethics
Shinto, the native religion of Japan, is highly polytheistic and animistic and, as such, does not have many teachings on ethical issues.
[edit] Western Ethics influenced by the Bible
Main article: Ethics in the BibleWestern philosophical works on ethics were written in a culture whose literary and religious ideas were based in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. As such, there is a connection between the ethics of the Bible and the ethics of the great western philosophers. However, this is not a direct connection; significant differences of opinion in how to interpret and apply passages in the books of the Bible lead to different understandings of ethics. Some[who?] have suggested that modern understandings of the Bible are fundamentally mistaken.
[edit] See also
- Islamic bioethics
- Aristotelian ethics
- Catholic moral theology
- Divine command theory
- Ethic of reciprocity
- Ethics without religion
- Evolutionary ethics
- Neetham
[edit] Notes
- ^ Simon, Blackburn (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
- ^ Singer, P. (1993) Practical Ethics, 2nd edition (p.10), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ^ Simon, Blackburn (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
- ^ Damien Keown The Nature of Buddhist Ethics Macmillan 1992; Peter Harvey An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics Cambridge University Press 2000
- ^ Robert Ellis A Buddhist theory of moral objectivity (Ph.D. thesis)
- ^ Carl Olson, The Different Paths of Buddhism p.73
- ^ Bodhi (1994). For other examples of Buddhist discourses that promote ethical behaviors among laity see, for instance, the Sigalovada Sutta (referred to as "the Vinaya of the householder" by Buddhaghosa) and the Dhammika Sutta.
- ^ a b c d Islamic ethics, Encyclopedia of Ethics
- ^ The Nine Satanic Sins
- ^ http://www.scientologyethics.org/scientology-ethics.htm
- ^ Harrow, Judy (1985) "Exegesis on the Rede" in Harvest vol. 5, Number 3 (Oimelc 1985). Retrieved 26 February 2007.
- ^ Gerald Gardner, High Magic's Aid, London: Michael Houghton, 1949, p.303
- ^ Farrar, Janet & Stewart, Eight Sabbats for Witches.
[edit] Bibliography
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu (1981/1994). Going for Refuge & Taking the Precepts (The Wheel Publication No. 282/284). Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society. (Originally published 1981 and transcribed for Internet publication in 1994.) Retrieved 2007-11-12 from "Access to Insight" at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel282.html.
- Bullitt, John T. (2005a). The Eight Precepts (attha-sila). Retrieved 2007-11-12 from "Access to Insight" at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/atthasila.html.
- Bullitt, John T. (2005b). The Five Precepts (pañca-sila). Retrieved 2007-11-12 from "Access to Insight" at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/pancasila.html.
- De La Torre, Miguel A., "Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins," Orbis Books, 2004.
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (ZAMM) is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality.Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values 
1st editionAuthor(s) Robert M. Pirsig Country United States Language English Genre(s) Philosophical novel Publisher William Morrow & Company Publication date April 1974 Media type Print (hardcover and paperback) Pages 418 pp (first edition, hardback) ISBN ISBN 0-688-00230-7 (first edition, hardback) OCLC Number 673595 Dewey Decimal 917.3/04/920924 B LC Classification CT275.P648 A3 1974 Followed by Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
The book sold 5 million copies worldwide.[1] It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records.[1]
The title is an apparent play on the title of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. In its introduction, Pirsig explains that, despite its title, "it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."
Contents
[hide][edit] Structure
The book describes, in first person, a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to California by the author (though he is not identified in the book) and his son Chris, joined for the first nine days by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science.
Many of these discussions are tied together by the story of the narrator's own past self, who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus (after Plato's dialogue). Phaedrus, a teacher of creative and technical writing at a small college, became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines good, or "quality". His philosophical investigations eventually drove him insane, and he was subjected to electroshock treatment which permanently changed his personality.
Towards the end of the book, Phaedrus's personality begins to re-emerge and the narrator is reconciled with his past.
[edit] Writing
In a 1974 interview with National Public Radio, Pirsig stated that the book took him four years to write. During two of these years, Pirsig continued working at his job of writing computer manuals. This caused him to fall into an unorthodox schedule, waking up very early and writing Zen from 2 a.m. until 6 a.m., then eating and going to his day job. He would sleep during his lunch break and then go to bed around 6 in the evening. Pirsig joked that his coworkers noticed that he was "a lot less perky" than everyone else.[2]
[edit] Philosophical content
In ZAMM, Pirsig explores the meaning and concept of quality, a term he deems to be undefinable. Pirsig's thesis is that to truly experience quality one must both embrace and apply it as best fits the requirements of the situation. According to Pirsig, such an approach would avoid a great deal of frustration and dissatisfaction common to modern life.
In the book, the Narrator describes the "Romantic" approach to life of his friend John Sutherland, who chooses not to learn how to maintain his expensive new motorcycle. John simply hopes for the best with his bike, and when problems do occur he often becomes frustrated, and is forced to rely on professional mechanics to repair it. In contrast, the "classical" Narrator has an older motorcycle which he is usually able to diagnose and repair himself through the use of rational problem solving skills.
In an example of the classical approach, Pirsig explains to the reader that one must pay continual attention: when the Narrator and his friends came into Miles City, Montana [3] he notices that the "engine idle is loping a little," a possible indication that the fuel/air mixture is too rich. The next day he is thinking of this as he is going through his ritual to adjust the valves on his cycle's engine. During the adjustment, he notes that both spark plugs are black, confirming a rich mixture. He recognizes that the feel-good-higher-altitude-mountain-air is causing the engine to run rich. New jets are purchased, and installed, and with the valves adjusted, the engine runs well again.
With this, the book details two types of personalities: those who are interested mostly in gestalts (romantic viewpoints, such as Zen, focused on being "In the moment", and not on rational analysis), and those who seek to know the details, understand the inner workings, and master the mechanics (classic viewpoints with application of rational analysis, vis-a-vis motorcycle maintenance) and so on.
The Sutherlands represent an exclusively romantic attitude toward the world. The Narrator initially appears to prefer the classic approach. It later becomes apparent that he understands both viewpoints and is aiming for the middle ground. He understands that technology, and the "dehumanized world" it carries with it, appears ugly and repulsive to a romantic person. He knows that such persons are determined to shoehorn all of life's experience into the romantic view. Pirsig is capable of seeing the beauty of technology and feels good about mechanical work, where the goal is "to achieve an inner peace of mind". The book demonstrates that motorcycle maintenance may be dull and tedious drudgery or an enjoyable and pleasurable pastime; it all depends on attitude.
Pirsig shows that rationality's pursuit of "Pure Truths" derives from the first Greek philosophers who were establishing the concept of truth, against the opposing force of "The Good". He argues that although rational thought may find truth (or The Truth) it may not be valid for all experiences. Therefore, what is needed is an approach to viewing life that is more varied and inclusive and has a wider range of application. He makes a thorough case that originally the Greeks did not distinguish between "Quality" and "Truth" – they were one and the same – and that the divorce was, in fact, artificial (though needed at the time) and is now a source of much frustration and unhappiness in the world, particularly overall dissatisfaction with modern life.
Pirsig aims towards a perception of the world that embraces both sides, the rational and the romantic. This means encompassing "irrational" sources of wisdom and understanding as well as science, reason and technology. In particular, this must include bursts of creativity and intuition that seemingly come from nowhere and are not (in his view) rationally explicable. Pirsig seeks to demonstrate that rationality and Zen-like "being in the moment" can harmoniously coexist. He suggests such a combination of rationality and romanticism can potentially bring a higher quality of life.
[edit] See also
- Pirsig's metaphysics of quality
- Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
- Quality (philosophy)
- Emotional Intelligence
- Gestalt psychology
- Gumption trap
- List of books about philosophy
[edit] References
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010) - ^ a b Adams, Tim. "The interview: Robert Pirsig", The Guardian, 19 November 2006. Retrieved on 2010-09-08.
- ^ 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Author' Robert Pirsig at NPR online audio archive
- ^ Part II, Ch. 8, pages 80,81 in the paperback edition for which the image is shown,
[edit] External links
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the Open Directory Project
- robertpirsig.org, A website containing a number of papers concerned with the Metaphysics of Quality.
- Pictures taken by Pirsig from the trip made famous in his book
- Audio: 1974 NPR Interview with Pirsig
- Audio: 1992 NPR Interview with Pirsig
- Interview from 2005 regarding MoQ
- Guardian interview from 2006 Short version and Long version.
- Motorcycle Maintenance Without the Zen, A featured critique from the Skeptic.com
- This page was last modified on 24 December 2011 at 15:42.
- Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
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- tikakar
Indian Morality Meltdown: Sid Harth « My Sister Eileen: Sid Harth
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December 25, 2011, 5:30 pm
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.A robot walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a screwdriver.” A bad joke, indeed. But even less funny if the robot says “Give me what’s in your cash register.”
The fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play about artificial factory workers rising against their human overlords. Just 22 years later, Isaac Asimov invented the “Three Laws of Robotics” to serve as a hierarchical ethical code for the robots in his stories: first, never harm a human being through action or inaction; second, obey human orders; last, protect oneself. From the first story in which the laws appeared, Asimov explored their inherent contradictions. Great fiction, but unworkable theory.
The prospect of machines capable of following moral principles, let alone understanding them, seems as remote today as the word “robot” is old. Some technologists enthusiastically extrapolate from the observation that computing power doubles every 18 months to predict an imminent “technological singularity” in which a threshold for machines of superhuman intelligence will be suddenly surpassed. Many Singularitarians assume a lot, not the least of which is that intelligence is fundamentally a computational process. The techno-optimists among them also believe that such machines will be essentially friendly to human beings. I am skeptical about the Singularity, and even if “artificial intelligence” is not an oxymoron, “friendly A.I.” will require considerable scientific progress on a number of fronts.
The neuro- and cognitive sciences are presently in a state of rapid development in which alternatives to the metaphor of mind as computer have gained ground. Dynamical systems theory, network science, statistical learning theory, developmental psychobiology and molecular neuroscience all challenge some foundational assumptions of A.I., and the last 50 years of cognitive science more generally. These new approaches analyze and exploit the complex causal structure of physically embodied and environmentally embedded systems, at every level, from molecular to social. They demonstrate the inadequacy of highly abstract algorithms operating on discrete symbols with fixed meanings to capture the adaptive flexibility of intelligent behavior. But despite undermining the idea that the mind is fundamentally a digital computer, these approaches have improved our ability to use computers for more and more robust simulations of intelligent agents — simulations that will increasingly control machines occupying our cognitive niche. If you don’t believe me, ask Siri.
This is why, in my view, we need to think long and hard about machine morality. Many of my colleagues take the very idea of moral machines to be a kind of joke. Machines, they insist, do only what they are told to do. A bar-robbing robot would have to be instructed or constructed to do exactly that. On this view, morality is an issue only for creatures like us who can choose to do wrong. People are morally good only insofar as they must overcome the urge to do what is bad. We can be moral, they say, because we are free to choose our own paths.
Leif ParsonsThere are big themes here: freedom of will, human spontaneity and creativity, and the role of reason in making good choices — not to mention the nature of morality itself. Fully human-level moral agency, and all the responsibilities that come with it, requires developments in artificial intelligence or artificial life that remain, for now, in the domain of science fiction. And yet…
Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do. Entrepreneurs are actively developing robots for home care of the elderly. Robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers are already mass market items. Self-driving cars are not far behind. Mercedes is equipping its 2013 model S-Class cars with a system that can drive autonomously through city traffic at speeds up to 25 m.p.h. Google’s fleet of autonomous cars has logged about 200,000 miles without incident in California and Nevada, in conditions ranging from surface streets to freeways. By Google’s estimate, the cars have required intervention by a human co-pilot only about once every 1,000 miles and the goal is to reduce this rate to once in 1,000,000 miles. How long until the next bank robber will have an autonomous getaway vehicle?
This is autonomy in the engineer’s sense, not the philosopher’s. The cars won’t have a sense of free will, not even an illusory one. They may select their own routes through the city but, for the foreseeable future, they won’t choose their own paths in the grand journey from dealership to junkyard. We don’t want our cars leaving us to join the Peace Corps, nor will they any time soon. But as the layers of software pile up between us and our machines, they are becoming increasingly independent of our direct control. In military circles, the phrase “man on the loop” has come to replace “man in the loop,” indicating the diminishing role of human overseers in controlling drones and ground-based robots that operate hundreds or thousands of miles from base. These machines need to adjust to local conditions faster than can be signaled and processed by human tele-operators. And while no one is yet recommending that decisions to use lethal force should be handed over to software, the Department of Defense is sufficiently committed to the use of autonomous systems that it has sponsored engineers and philosophers to outline prospects (.pdf report, 108 pages) for ethical governance of battlefield machines.
Joke or not, the topic of machine morality is here to stay. Even modest amounts of engineered autonomy make it necessary to outline some modest goals for the design of artificial moral agents. Modest because we are not talking about guidance systems for the Terminator or other technology that does not yet exist. Necessary, because as machines with limited autonomy operate more often than before in open environments, it becomes increasingly important to design a kind of functional morality that is sensitive to ethically relevant features of those situations. Modest, again, because this functional morality is not about self-reflective moral agency — what one might call “full” moral agency — but simply about trying to make autonomous agents better at adjusting their actions to human norms. This can be done with technology that is already available or can be anticipated within the next 5 to 10 years.
The project of designing artificial moral agents provokes a wide variety of negative reactions, including that it is preposterous, horrendous, or trivial. My co-author Wendell Wallach and I have been accused of being, in our book “Moral Machines,” unimaginatively human-centered in our views about morality, of being excessively optimistic about technological solutions, and of putting too much emphasis on engineering the machines themselves rather than looking at the whole context in which machines operate.
In response to the charge of preposterousness, I am willing to double down. Far from being an exercise in science fiction, serious engagement with the project of designing artificial moral agents has the potential to revolutionize moral philosophy in the same way that philosophers’ engagement with science continuously revolutionizes human self-understanding. New insights can be gained from confronting the question of whether and how a control architecture for robots might utilize (or ignore) general principles recommended by major ethical theories. Perhaps ethical theory is to moral agents as physics is to outfielders — theoretical knowledge that isn’t necessary to play a good game. Such theoretical knowledge may still be useful after the fact to analyze and adjust future performance.
Even if success in building artificial moral agents will be hard to gauge, the effort may help to forestall inflexible, ethically-blind technologies from propagating. More concretely, if cars are smart enough to navigate through city traffic, they are certainly smart enough to detect how long they have been parked outside a bar (easily accessible through the marriage of G.P.S. and the Internet) and to ask you, the driver, to prove you’re not drunk before starting the engine so you can get home. For the near term (say, 5 to 10 years), a responsible human will still be needed to supervise these “intelligent” cars, so you had better be sober. Does this really require artificial morality, when one could simply put a breathalyzer between key and ignition? Such a dumb, inflexible system would have a kind of operational morality in which the engineer has decided that no car should be started by person with a certain blood alcohol level. But it would be ethically blind — incapable, for instance, of recognizing the difference between, on the one hand, a driver who needs the car simply to get home and, on the other hand, a driver who had a couple of drinks with dinner but needs the car because a 4-year old requiring urgent medical attention is in the back seat.
It is within our current capacities to build machines that are able to determine, based on real-time information about current traffic conditions and access to actuarial tables, how likely it is that this situation might lead to an accident. Of course, this only defers the ethical question of how to weigh the potential for harm that either option presents, but a well-designed system of human-machine interaction could allow for a manual override to be temporarily logged in a “black-box” similar to those used on airplanes. In case of an accident this would provide evidence that the person had taken responsibility. Just as we can envisage machines with increasing degrees of autonomy from human oversight, we can envisage machines whose controls involve increasing degrees of sensitivity to things that matter ethically. Not perfect machines, to be sure, but better.
Where’s the challenge, a software engineer might ask? Isn’t ethical governance for machines just problem-solving within constraints? If there’s fuzziness about the nature of those constraints, isn’t that a philosophical problem, not an engineering one? Besides, why look to human ethics to provide a gold standard for machines? My response is that if engineers leave it to philosophers to come up with theories that they can implement, they will have a long wait, but if philosophers leave it to engineers to implement something workable they will likely be disappointed by the outcome. The challenge is to reconcile these two rather different ways of approaching the world, to yield better understanding of how interactions among people and contexts enable us, sometimes, to steer a reasonable course through the competing demands of our moral niche. The different kinds of rigor provided by philosophers and engineers are both needed to inform the construction of machines that, when embedded in well-designed systems of human-machine interaction, produce morally reasonable decisions even in situations where Asimov’s laws would produce deadlock.
This essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center.)
Colin Allen directs the Program in Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is Provost Professor of Cognitive Science and History and Philosophy of Science. He works on animal cognition, philosophical foundations of cognitive science and computing applications for philosophy.
The Future of Moral Machines
By COLIN ALLENThe fictional theme of robots turning against humans is older than the word itself, which first appeared in the title of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play about artificial factory workers rising against their human overlords. Just 22 years later, Isaac Asimov invented the “Three Laws of Robotics” to serve as a hierarchical ethical code for the robots in his stories: first, never harm a human being through action or inaction; second, obey human orders; last, protect oneself. From the first story in which the laws appeared, Asimov explored their inherent contradictions. Great fiction, but unworkable theory.
Machines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do.
The neuro- and cognitive sciences are presently in a state of rapid development in which alternatives to the metaphor of mind as computer have gained ground. Dynamical systems theory, network science, statistical learning theory, developmental psychobiology and molecular neuroscience all challenge some foundational assumptions of A.I., and the last 50 years of cognitive science more generally. These new approaches analyze and exploit the complex causal structure of physically embodied and environmentally embedded systems, at every level, from molecular to social. They demonstrate the inadequacy of highly abstract algorithms operating on discrete symbols with fixed meanings to capture the adaptive flexibility of intelligent behavior. But despite undermining the idea that the mind is fundamentally a digital computer, these approaches have improved our ability to use computers for more and more robust simulations of intelligent agents — simulations that will increasingly control machines occupying our cognitive niche. If you don’t believe me, ask Siri.
This is why, in my view, we need to think long and hard about machine morality. Many of my colleagues take the very idea of moral machines to be a kind of joke. Machines, they insist, do only what they are told to do. A bar-robbing robot would have to be instructed or constructed to do exactly that. On this view, morality is an issue only for creatures like us who can choose to do wrong. People are morally good only insofar as they must overcome the urge to do what is bad. We can be moral, they say, because we are free to choose our own paths.
Leif ParsonsMachines are increasingly operating with minimal human oversight in the same physical spaces as we do. Entrepreneurs are actively developing robots for home care of the elderly. Robotic vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers are already mass market items. Self-driving cars are not far behind. Mercedes is equipping its 2013 model S-Class cars with a system that can drive autonomously through city traffic at speeds up to 25 m.p.h. Google’s fleet of autonomous cars has logged about 200,000 miles without incident in California and Nevada, in conditions ranging from surface streets to freeways. By Google’s estimate, the cars have required intervention by a human co-pilot only about once every 1,000 miles and the goal is to reduce this rate to once in 1,000,000 miles. How long until the next bank robber will have an autonomous getaway vehicle?
This is autonomy in the engineer’s sense, not the philosopher’s. The cars won’t have a sense of free will, not even an illusory one. They may select their own routes through the city but, for the foreseeable future, they won’t choose their own paths in the grand journey from dealership to junkyard. We don’t want our cars leaving us to join the Peace Corps, nor will they any time soon. But as the layers of software pile up between us and our machines, they are becoming increasingly independent of our direct control. In military circles, the phrase “man on the loop” has come to replace “man in the loop,” indicating the diminishing role of human overseers in controlling drones and ground-based robots that operate hundreds or thousands of miles from base. These machines need to adjust to local conditions faster than can be signaled and processed by human tele-operators. And while no one is yet recommending that decisions to use lethal force should be handed over to software, the Department of Defense is sufficiently committed to the use of autonomous systems that it has sponsored engineers and philosophers to outline prospects (.pdf report, 108 pages) for ethical governance of battlefield machines.
Joke or not, the topic of machine morality is here to stay. Even modest amounts of engineered autonomy make it necessary to outline some modest goals for the design of artificial moral agents. Modest because we are not talking about guidance systems for the Terminator or other technology that does not yet exist. Necessary, because as machines with limited autonomy operate more often than before in open environments, it becomes increasingly important to design a kind of functional morality that is sensitive to ethically relevant features of those situations. Modest, again, because this functional morality is not about self-reflective moral agency — what one might call “full” moral agency — but simply about trying to make autonomous agents better at adjusting their actions to human norms. This can be done with technology that is already available or can be anticipated within the next 5 to 10 years.
The project of designing artificial moral agents provokes a wide variety of negative reactions, including that it is preposterous, horrendous, or trivial. My co-author Wendell Wallach and I have been accused of being, in our book “Moral Machines,” unimaginatively human-centered in our views about morality, of being excessively optimistic about technological solutions, and of putting too much emphasis on engineering the machines themselves rather than looking at the whole context in which machines operate.
In response to the charge of preposterousness, I am willing to double down. Far from being an exercise in science fiction, serious engagement with the project of designing artificial moral agents has the potential to revolutionize moral philosophy in the same way that philosophers’ engagement with science continuously revolutionizes human self-understanding. New insights can be gained from confronting the question of whether and how a control architecture for robots might utilize (or ignore) general principles recommended by major ethical theories. Perhaps ethical theory is to moral agents as physics is to outfielders — theoretical knowledge that isn’t necessary to play a good game. Such theoretical knowledge may still be useful after the fact to analyze and adjust future performance.
Even if success in building artificial moral agents will be hard to gauge, the effort may help to forestall inflexible, ethically-blind technologies from propagating. More concretely, if cars are smart enough to navigate through city traffic, they are certainly smart enough to detect how long they have been parked outside a bar (easily accessible through the marriage of G.P.S. and the Internet) and to ask you, the driver, to prove you’re not drunk before starting the engine so you can get home. For the near term (say, 5 to 10 years), a responsible human will still be needed to supervise these “intelligent” cars, so you had better be sober. Does this really require artificial morality, when one could simply put a breathalyzer between key and ignition? Such a dumb, inflexible system would have a kind of operational morality in which the engineer has decided that no car should be started by person with a certain blood alcohol level. But it would be ethically blind — incapable, for instance, of recognizing the difference between, on the one hand, a driver who needs the car simply to get home and, on the other hand, a driver who had a couple of drinks with dinner but needs the car because a 4-year old requiring urgent medical attention is in the back seat.
It is within our current capacities to build machines that are able to determine, based on real-time information about current traffic conditions and access to actuarial tables, how likely it is that this situation might lead to an accident. Of course, this only defers the ethical question of how to weigh the potential for harm that either option presents, but a well-designed system of human-machine interaction could allow for a manual override to be temporarily logged in a “black-box” similar to those used on airplanes. In case of an accident this would provide evidence that the person had taken responsibility. Just as we can envisage machines with increasing degrees of autonomy from human oversight, we can envisage machines whose controls involve increasing degrees of sensitivity to things that matter ethically. Not perfect machines, to be sure, but better.
~~~
Does this talk of artificial moral agents overreach, contributing to our own dehumanization, to the reduction of human autonomy, and to lowered barriers to warfare? If so, does it grease the slope to a horrendous, dystopian future? I am sensitive to the worries, but optimistic enough to think that this kind of techno-pessimism has, over the centuries, been oversold. Luddites have always come to seem quaint, except when they were dangerous. The challenge for philosophers and engineers alike is to figure out what should and can reasonably be done in the middle space that contains somewhat autonomous, partly ethically-sensitive machines. Some may think the exploration of this space is too dangerous to allow. Prohibitionists may succeed in some areas — robot arms control, anyone? — but they will not, I believe, be able to contain the spread of increasingly autonomous robots into homes, eldercare, and public spaces, not to mention the virtual spaces in which much software already operates without a human in the loop. We want machines that do chores and errands without our having to monitor them continuously. Retailers and banks depend on software controlling all manner of operations, from credit card purchases to inventory control, freeing humans to do other things that we don’t yet know how to construct machines to do.Where’s the challenge, a software engineer might ask? Isn’t ethical governance for machines just problem-solving within constraints? If there’s fuzziness about the nature of those constraints, isn’t that a philosophical problem, not an engineering one? Besides, why look to human ethics to provide a gold standard for machines? My response is that if engineers leave it to philosophers to come up with theories that they can implement, they will have a long wait, but if philosophers leave it to engineers to implement something workable they will likely be disappointed by the outcome. The challenge is to reconcile these two rather different ways of approaching the world, to yield better understanding of how interactions among people and contexts enable us, sometimes, to steer a reasonable course through the competing demands of our moral niche. The different kinds of rigor provided by philosophers and engineers are both needed to inform the construction of machines that, when embedded in well-designed systems of human-machine interaction, produce morally reasonable decisions even in situations where Asimov’s laws would produce deadlock.
This essay is the subject of this week’s forum discussion among the humanists and scientists at On the Human, a project of the National Humanities Center.)
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December 9th, 2011 - Originally published: August 20, 2010
Ethics of Human Enhancement
LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Ray Kurzweil may not be a household name, but the blind know who he is. He invented the first reading machine and then reduced its size to a hand-held gadget. Kurzweil will be remembered more as a man on a mission to tell the world what life will be like in the age of technology. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates said he is the best in the world at predicting the future, and what a world he predicts.
RAY KURZWEIL: This is a design of a robotic red blood cell. We are going to put these technologies inside us, blood-cell-size devices that will augment our immune system, make us a lot healthier, destroy disease and dramatically push back human longevity, go inside our brains and actually enable us to remember things better, solve problems more effectively. We are going to become a hybrid of machine and our biological heritage. In my mind, we are not going to be transcending our humanity. We are going to be transcending our biology.
SEVERSON: Kurzweil has written several books. One of the most recent, called “The Singularity Is Near,” predicts that by the year 2050 nonbiological artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, creating a hybrid of man and technology.KURZWEIL: What I am predicting is that we will have machines—we are going to need a different word because these are not like the machines we are used to. These are going to be machines that will seem as human, as real, as conscious, as any actual human being.
SEVERSON: Even if nonbiological or artificial intelligence created in places like MIT is not as close to “singularity” or matching human intelligence, as Kurzweil believes, it’s close enough that scientists and ethicists are now saying we need to take a serious look at its ramifications. Professor Christian Brugger is a bioethicist at Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. Brugger disagrees with Kurzweil that humans can ever come close to perfection with technology.
PROFESSOR CHRISTIAN BRUGGER (Saint. John Vianney Theological Seminary): I don’t think that the technology is the problem. What I have concerns about is the philosophy that stands behind it, the idea that somehow we are going to be able to overcome human limitation or we’re going to overcome death.
SEVERSON: What troubles Brugger the most is the notion that technology will one day replace God.
BRUGGER: If we start to think about technology as a kind of savior, is it going to overcome our misguided ambitions? Is it going to overcome those kinds of prejudices that cause us to hate our neighbor? To many of us who follow a religion, we’d say that God would help us to overcome those things.SEVERSON: Kurzweil argues that it’s human nature for mankind to utilize technology to overcome human limitations.
KURZWEIL: We are the species that does change ourselves. We didn’t stay on the ground. We didn’t stay on the planet. We didn’t stay with the limits of our biology. If you want to speak in religious terms you can say that’s what God intended us to do.
SEVERSON: Kurzweil bases his predictions on what he calls the exponential growth of artificial intelligence in the fields of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
KURZWEIL: Informational technology is growing exponentially, not linearly. Our intuition says it grows like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5—thirty steps later you’re at 30. The reality is that it grows 2, 4, 8, 16, and 30 steps later you are at billion.
(giving a speech): When I was a student at MIT, I went there because it was so advanced at that time it actually had a computer, and it costs tens of millions of dollars. It took up half a building. The computer that I carry around and that we all carry around is a million times less expensive. It’s a thousand times more powerful.
SEVERSON: John Donoghue is a professor of neuroscience and engineering and director of the Brown University Institute for Brain Science. He says his work has not progressed exponentially. But in only 10 years he’s been able to implant sensors in the brains of paralyzed patients enabling them to operate a computer, type, run a robotic limb simply by thinking, sending out brain signals.
PROFESSOR JOHN DONOGHUE: The value of the technology is first for people who are severely paralyzed. The first step is to give them any control at all. They can’t do anything without help from someone else. People want and feel some sense of pride in taking care of themselves so anything we can restore is a great step.SEVERSON: Neuroscience has yielded other life altering advances. For instance, there are now over 75,000 Parkinson patients worldwide who’ve had tiny electrodes implanted in their brains. Doctors say the operation significantly reduces tremors and allows patients to rely less on medications.
KURZWEIL: By the way, nobody is picketing, protesting, oh, people putting computers in their brains—that that is somehow unnatural or defies the way things should be.
SEVERSON: Bioethicist Brugger worries that science will soon cross the line to where brain implants will not simply heal patients, but enhance their ability to think and compete.
BRUGGER: If we move in this direction of radical human enhancement, are we going to develop those who are and those who aren’t? The enhanced and the unenhanced? I mean, Lord, we can’t even find the money to get everyone braces who needs braces.
KURZWEIL: When the technologies are only affordable by the rich they actually don’t work very well. Consider mobile phones. Fifteen years ago somebody took out a mobile phone in the movie. That was a signal this person is very powerful and wealthy, and they didn’t work very well. Now 5 billion people out of 6 billion have mobile phones, and they actually work pretty well.COLIN ANGLE (CEO of iRobot): A lot of people worry about one day there will be a knock on the door, and there will be a robot, and you would say where did that come from? And I will tell you that the future is going to be much stranger.
SEVERSON: Colin Angle is the cofounder and CEO of iRobot, better known as the creator of the Roomba, the floor cleaning robot or the PackBot robot used to disarm roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon to be released—robots that can keep track of grandma and remind her when it’s time to take her meds.
ANGLE: We call it a physical avatar, and so that these robots would allow a doctor to visit a patient in their own home without ever having to leave his doctor office. These robots are meant to be surrogates for people, so the personality of the doctor will be the personality of the robot.
BRUGGER: I think that iRobots are wonderful, if they can do the vacuuming for me so I can read a good book. I’m happy with that. But iRobots are not my wife, and they are not my children. They are not even an animal.
SEVERSON: Angle doesn’t believe robots will ever replace humans, but he says notwithstanding the science fiction stories of robots run amok, society needs them.
ANGLE: Throughout history there are many different situations where technology exists and can be used for good or evil, and I think that as robots become more capable we need to be careful about using robots to help society.DONOGHUE: The classic scary story is “The Matrix,” of course, where you plug in and you live in this other reality.
SEVERSON: The reality where computers take over the world:
(from the movie “The Matrix”): “We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.” “AI? You mean artificial intelligence?” “A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them.”
SEVERSON: Kurzweil himself worries about technology falling into the wrong hands.
KURZWEIL: The same technologies that are being used to reprogram biology away from heart disease and cancer, presumably good things, could be deployed by a bioterrorist to reprogram a biological virus to be more destructive, and that’s actually a specter that exists right now.
SEVERSON: He says he’s working with the military to develop a system to detect rogue viruses, something like the virus protection found in today’s computer software. But he sees the good society can gain from artificial intelligence far outweighing the bad.
KURZWEIL: That was the family religion. It was personalized: You, Ray, can find the ideas that will change the world.SEVERSON: Kurzweil has patented over two dozen inventions, including the first music synthesizer, which he sold to Stevie Wonder. President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology, and few have more faith in technology than Ray Kurzweil.
KURZWEIL: Computers are already better than humans at logical thinking. It is our emotional intelligence, the ability to be funny, to get the joke—that is the cutting edge of human intelligence. That’s the most sophisticated, complicated thing we do, and that’s exactly the heart of my prediction that these computers will match us in emotional intelligence, which includes our whole moral system.
BRUGGER: I don’t think that will ever be reached because now we are dealing in the realm of the spirit. If the entire realm of the spirit that has been spoken about in the history of poetry and literature and philosophy and theology is reducible to electrical synapse, then we can reproduce it eventually in a machine, because electricity is at the basis of the machine. I deny that premise. I think that there is more to human beings than reducible to measurable stimuli, and in that regard I don’t think that machines are ever going to be able to be human.
SEVERSON: Undaunted by his critics and skeptics, Kurzweil is so convinced that artificial intelligence will one day enable man to live forever he is doing everything he can to be around when it happens.
SONYA KURZWEIL (making a toast): Well, here’s to living forever. That’s not just a salutation in our family.
KURZWEIL: I want to live indefinitely, and actually I think we all do. People say, oh, I don’t want to live forever, 100 would be great. When they get to 100, they don’t want to die tomorrow.
SEVERSON: Kurzweil is so determined to live “indefinitely.” He takes as many as 200 supplements each day, says this regimen made it possible to reverse both his diabetes and his age. His most recent full-blown checkup results show he has the body and mind of a 40-year-old. Kurzweil is 62 and striving for immortality.
For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Boston.
Tags: artificial intelligence, Bioethics, Biology, Brain, Christian Brugger, Colin Angle, ethics, futurist, genetics, God, human enhancement, humanity, immortality, John Donoghue, longevity, machine, neuroscience, perfection, Ray Kurzweil, Religion, robotics, singularity, spirit, Technology
10 Responses to “Ethics of Human Enhancement”
- Ian Parker says:One thing that tranhumanists have not discussed is penal enancement. Crime and its associated costs of Police, prisons and the criminal justice system are enormously expensive.
If a few electrodes could stop people from offending, for example by giving an unpleasant sensation when you break the law/pleasant sensations when you behave constructively a massive amount of money could be saved.
- changingape says:Wow, Ian, you hope for the development of behavior-controlling implants in criminals and you try to justify it on the grounds of fiscal benefit? Did you read the part where the article mentions the danger of advanced technology falling into the wrong hands? They were talking about you!
- Amil says:Have you guys seen the movie “Gamer?” Yeah… that’s what I’m afraid of. Others being able to control my thoughts and actions. Although I don’t think we’ll ever live forever, I do believe we’ll come close. I also think that the masses of people who want to have a machine in them that burns fat w/o working out, that makes them smarter w/o studying and that makes them more attractive w/o being happy with who they already are will drive the technology to production and further R&D regardless what ethicists and skeptics may say.
- tim333 says:He may have the “biochemical age of 42″ but he looks 60 ish. Not convinced the 200 pills a day are doing it for him
- Cee Love says:Ian’s comment takes me way back to the film “A Clockwork Orange”- “experimental” efforts to “reprogram” the criminal’s mind – aversion therapy. But that’s just a side comment.
More importantly for me is why do we want to do this? (not speaking about criminals here) Why do we continue to have this so called need to overcome our own mortality? That’s a spiritual, emotional and psychological question we all must reflect on as individuals, in my view. I love all the amazing things technology can do. But those things that truly bring us joy (not just being fleeting happiness) are things that can’t be programmed or “enhanced”. Can artificial intelligence be genuinely awestruck or amazed? I would never want to lose those aspects of the human spirit.
- DrJohnty says:Clearly human and machine intelligence pull level and then merge in is an inevitable progression. I have no doubt that within 50 years (maybe considerably less) that machines will become conscious due to a massive expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) what we must keep in mind that even if this fails to happen and it takes 100 years to reach the stage where machines become aware the introduction of non biological intelligence into ourselves within the next couple of decades is pretty much a certainty, initially because of our limited technological capability this would most likely be achieve through simple neuro implants and later through a mix of gene manipulation and the use of artificial systems such as nanotechnology. Whether the Singularity arises or not we will still achieve a rate of progress which is incomparable to anything we have ever seen before. To get this in perspective just consider that in the nineteenth century more technological breakthroughs were made than in all of the nine centuries preceding it. Then in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, we saw more advancement than in all of the nineteenth century combined. In this century we will achieve 1000 times more than we achieved in the whole 20th century which was itself a period of progress never before seen … Ray Kurzweil is definitely on the right track.
In my view the merging of human and machine intelligence is an inevitability because you only need to look at how attached we are to our iPhones and Blackberry’s to realise that we will ultimately be unable to resist moving increased processing capability directly inside the body.
- Masry Lou Pfeiffeer says:Thanks for this informative program…I am teaching bioethics and this program segment is an excellent stimuli for the future of medicine and science from the ethical viewpoint.
- Eric Balingit says:@Ian Parker,
A magic bullet soution to crime sounds interesting, but how would this electrode know when a person is breaking a law? Wouldn’t that require some level of comprehension to occur at the other end of that electrode? Also keep in mind that behavior is a combination of learned responses to stimuli as well as predispositions (genetic traits) such as agressiveness, even intelligence as it pertains to ones capacity to weigh the cost/benefit of following the law vs. breaking the law. A device or a drug may be able to help control a person’s predisposition to react in a given situation by various means such as suppressing stress hormone secretion, but that same device would not necessarily have an effect on a persons ability to reason or to choose to do what they have learned to do. A wholesome solution deals with both aspects and one with any autonomy would likely require comprehension of both a persons thoughts and their physical reactions to stimuli while administering physiological controls as well as behavioral modification (re-learning). That would definitely a post-singularity device. Like a personal assistant, but more like an internal mentor, not a robot that follows one around, but like AI live (silent) chat. Is that good enough to call it trans-human?
- philipwholland says:The problem with Mr. Ian’s premise is the same as Brugger from the video:
One of the main points of religion, at least christianity, is that no one is beyond redemption. To justify this REAL mind control is to deny the individual his chance at redemption. That will be a sad day.
And all to save money? I bet Mr. Ian marvels at the efficiencies of the National Socialist Party.
- Ted Harazda says:On the final point….while everyone would like to live forever, can you imagine the horror of such a thing on this tiny little planet? It would be like the old experiment of fruit flies in a jar ! Soylent Green anyone? Please pass the salt !
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Share your thoughts.December 9th, 2011 - Originally published: August 20, 2010
Ethics of Human Enhancement
LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Ray Kurzweil may not be a household name, but the blind know who he is. He invented the first reading machine and then reduced its size to a hand-held gadget. Kurzweil will be remembered more as a man on a mission to tell the world what life will be like in the age of technology. Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates said he is the best in the world at predicting the future, and what a world he predicts.
RAY KURZWEIL: This is a design of a robotic red blood cell. We are going to put these technologies inside us, blood-cell-size devices that will augment our immune system, make us a lot healthier, destroy disease and dramatically push back human longevity, go inside our brains and actually enable us to remember things better, solve problems more effectively. We are going to become a hybrid of machine and our biological heritage. In my mind, we are not going to be transcending our humanity. We are going to be transcending our biology.
...clipped here.....
Related R & E Material:
Genetic Enhancement
Related Links:
Kurzweil: Accelerating Intelligence
Transcendent Man
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
...and I am Sid Harth@mysistermarilynmonroe.com
My first principle is that fundamental questions of ethics should always be considered from a historic perspective. This principle says that ethics is a historic construct of mankind. From prehistoric ages, norms of human behavior were established in order to maintain order inside a group and between groups of humans. Accordingly, actual general rules of ethics should be constructed from the the requirement of maintaining long-term survival of mankind and its environment.
My second principle is that one has to distinguish global and local rules of ethics. Global rules should be deduced by the help of natural and social science from the above-mentioned requirement of maintaining long-term survival of mankind and its environment. Unfortunately, these rules are typically too general and too abstract for everyday use. Therefore, here arises the need for local, specific rules, that are concrete enough to apply among practical circumstances, like when programming machines in the cases mentioned in Colin Allen's essay. These should be deduced from global rules, and hence, there is a constant need to adjust local rules accordingly.
He himself dismisses the breathalyzer problem. That drones may need decisions more quickly than humans can think through a situation, is no different from reflexive human behavior where muscle memory governs. We have it in the glass cockpits of unstable aircraft where the need for constant rapid adjustments is beyond human endurance. It is far easier to keep machines on the right glide path than humans.
No matter how sophisticated the software-based “intelligence” that adapts to the contingencies of a mechanical artifact’s performance context, that robot – or smart whatever – can only be seen as morally right insofar as it implements intentions of people who engineer and deploy it.
Morality is more than following rules like a computer program. When the rules require interpretation because of inconsistency or ambiguity, conscious choices must be made. Such a choice can only be addressed by an actor who is a competent member community of actors who share a common framework or norms and values. Those choices are underwritten by personally felt flesh-and-blood commitments that members of the community mutually extend to one another in the form of a network of reciprocal rights and responsibilities.
Feelings of empathy, brotherhood, common humanity and love (in all its manifestations) are the foundations on which moral community is made real. Unless we are ready to accept machines into our moral community on that basis, talk of moral machines makes no sense.
Machines are just what they are, & they can not be moral, they can not tell right from wrong, they can only do what they have been designed to do or programmed to do!! even with AI!!
Ming Bucibei
But will automation increase in our society? absolutely, but I wouldnt count it with transportationn or personal reobotics (thats a 30 year window), I would rather concentrate on manufacturing, factories and construction, a second industrialization, thats where I would think most of the changes will occur in the next 10-15 years.
In the case that that did happen, all cars would immediately go offline, but since they will all be equipped with motion sensors and automated drive as well--in case of such a catastrophic shut off for the few seconds it does occur they would alluse the discretion of self drive and car to car communication to have all cars come to a stop, at least the few (probably less than 1 percent) that were being driven by the cab service.
Furthermore, due to the lower costs of running a virtual cab rather than an actual cab bussiness, it seems fairly plausible this would be popular and drive the costs for everyone involved
This would mean that in the case you are drunk, you can literally inform the authorities of your status and they will have the means to take care of it. Which, if you are to judge it by dynamics, will likely increase the amount of drunk people yet decrease the amount of drunk driving due to the demand (the virtual cab bussiness). the stakes for getting in an accident will be extremely high while driving drunk (it will be known instantly) , yet, due to economies of scale, a virtual cab (can be done from anywhere) will be relatively cheap.
However, this brings us to the second aspect of this. You fail to consider the implications of technology. Presumably, if we have that level of interconnectivit y(remmember that in the future ,wireless internet speeds due to nanotechnology may be 1000 times faster than they are now).you describe, then the drunk person ould use the very automation in built in the car to allow a 'virtual taxi' to ferry him or her to the destination.
"But despite undermining the idea that the mind is fundamentally a digital computer, these approaches have improved our ability to use computers for more and more robust simulations of intelligent agents — simulations that will increasingly control machines occupying our cognitive niche. If you don’t believe me, ask Siri."
This is a wonderful demonstration of the view that there is something fundamentally human about human thought processes, which means that it could never be replicated by any computer ... which, it turns out, we're learning more about every day by replicating more and more of it on computers.
I'm sure there were people who insisted that humans would never replicate flight by machines either, because there was something inherently "birdish" about it. Yet here we are with more and more sophisticated "artificial" flight, and no one is objecting that it can't be "real" flight.
There is no doubt that the particular way that thought developed in humans was intertwined with the platform on which it developed, however there are other platforms, as you yourself point out, and whatever is necessary can be replicated there too.
Look at it this way: If we created the computers, and we're not "artificial", then neither are they.
'Morality' for such robots just means detectors, like the ones on 'artificially intelligent' self-service elevators, so they don't crush humans who are part-way into the elevator when the door is trying to close (some of us remember when every elevator required an intelligent, human operator, so the machine that replaced that intelligent operator MUST be artificially intelligent).
But arguing about having or not having such detectors, once the sole venue of cost-benefit analysis, is now a valid subject for idle philosophy professors who use phrases like 'morality of the machines' in their discussions.
The very computer I am now writing on has now has adopted some very human like traits. Five years ago when I bought it, I fully trusted it.
But over the years it has begun to lie -- and, I can prove it. Also, it has devoloped a multiple personality -- with clearly undulating moods du jour. Every time this happens, I reboot it. And, here's the kicker -- the last time I turned off this robot-like machine, it sang...
"Daisy, Daisy..." Now, I'm now really scared! Any suggestions?
To use your simple example of a breathalyzer ignition lock, it might very well benefit society to have no override switch regardless of the emergency, because override switches will be abused and more injuries and deaths might very well ensue than the rare example of a child needing to get to an ER.
On a more complex level, when choosing to use antibiotics, physicians are torn between their primary moral imperative to do what's best for their individual patients and their secondary moral requirement to use antibiotics in a more reserved manner so that unnecessary resistance doesn't develop. That's why hospitals have put in place constraints on individual physicians in terms of using certain antibiotics.
I'm not sure we need moral philosophers to help guide programmers/engineers as much as we need practical ethicists to guide our future leaders in terms of the systems they wish to have produced and to oversee. Moreover, delineating the critical junction points of when computers/machines are used not just for decision support but for decision making is something too important to be left to business people or politicians alone.
Humanity can't be considered moral, we know there are too many immoral actions that are biologically-based or unconscious and beyond our complete control.
"You see how it works, don't you? There's some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and at a certain distance from it the Rule 3 potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule 2 potential, unusually low to start with."
Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. "And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule 3 drives him back and Rule 2 drives him forward - "
"So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he'll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround."
Otherwise, well, philosophy is not about devising better killing machines in the middle East. it's about not waging there wars for no good reason.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com
We may argue over whether morality comes from an external source (e.g. God) or is internally defined. We may argue as to whether morality is absolute or relative. We may argue the nuances of definition, source, hierarchy, conflicting, and other morality modifiers. However, morality is simply devoid of content outside of a human context.
One might engage in interesting discussions about the possibility, extent, and nature of "decision making" in machines, or animals for that matter, but such is not about morality
Artificially intelligent machines needn't evolve through this sort of sloppy, trial-and-error process. We may be victims of our evolutionary past, forced to deal with layers of primitive emotion onto which reason and logic have been recently bolted. But A.I. systems can be built from the ground up to adhere to socially acceptable norms, without all the angst and fretting derived from eons of worrying about which monkey had the most bananas. Robots can also be built with that most useful device that we wish humans possessed: an off switch.
Philosophers are knocking on every door in the Hall of Sciences, looking for some field in which they can be taken seriously as scientists. I suggest they keep knocking, as I don't think Robo-philosophy is going to do it.
Asimov's estate has commissioned a new book in the I,ROBOT series entited, "I, Robot: To Protect" by Mickey Zucker Reicher.
Ultimately, the code which is programmed into computers and supposed future thinking machines come from the human programmers. What if a programmer has a profound dislike for human beings, or antipathy toward certain people in power or some other prejudice, and that prejudice is discovered only after the machine starts making vital decisions? How can a machine which is asked to make decisions be devoid of some bias, implanted intentionally or unconsciously by its human programmer?
Now we are not that close right now, but at the rate of growth of computer ability, 20, 30 yrs down the road it might be quite possible. We would certainly be in quite a quandary then about our computers. A computer could decide that our morality is unsuited for computers.
There are many things humans have developed that have unintended consequences. Someday we might have to decide just how far we are to go with the development of tech. This doesn't mean do away with it, I am not anti-tech.
Right now there are researchers who are developing chips that can be put into the human brain to make us smarter and faster with thinking, plus the ability to hold more info. We could also have the ability to access the internet or whatever medium we are using at that time. It sounds exciting and would have many useful applications, esp with those with brain damage.
I also think of the potential for harm, the ability to track anyone, to know what they know, to know what they think, to control what they think. Humans tend not to think about the possible dangers at times until it's too late.
What we think 'moral' is highly subjective, but since we are also the ones designing, programming these machines, we can only insert our own 'morality' standards into a machine -- if ever we get to that stage.
If we have a self-driven car, sure we can program it to go from Point A to B, via a certain route: if that route is too congested, maybe it can find (through GPS) on its own a route that is less congested, but what if it hits a deer or a person? Does it stop and call the cops and insurance agency and report that? Maybe it can also be programmed to do that, with pictures of the accident, etc. Maybe it can be made to do all that. Still, some one will have to program 'morality' into it, or distinguish between a human and an animal (not that it'd matter, if they are dead).
I may have to develop that software after Christmas, but don't hold your breath.
Happy holidays and drive safely.
Maybe we are still in the state of Ten-thousand-Monkey-Writing-Shakespeare paradigm. What if programming, instead of simplistic targeting, by way of simple coordinates or GPS or pattern recognition or even detecting target's intention, can actually self-reason. What if a missile decides to become a conscientious objector?
So it is not really an inheritance, a la class concept of some objective programming languages, but can machines become sentient?
So, is there a solution to Prof. Allen's ponderment? When the simple dictum of do no harm is not enough (after all, it is easy to follow the yellow brick road without distraction?)
My humble proposal is interdependency. It applies to human-human relationship; it applies to human-sentient being relationship; it even applies to human-environment relationship. Therefore, it will apply to human-machine relationship. Of course, ideally, it should apply to machine-machine relationship. But without human involvement, there is no frame of reference, even if there is some points of discussion
Say that you have programed your door to let your friends, into your house, so you don't have to get your lazy behind out of the Lazy-Boy, and go answer the door. So one day your best friend shows up, with an axe in his hands-- philosophers have long known that any hypothetical, no matter how stupid, is way more interesting, when there is an axe murderer involved-- dripping some kind of red fluid. Since your friend being an axe murderer, is statistically low, your door-bot lets your friend in and he then hacks you into little cubes that will make great kebabs. Now your door-bot knows to NOT let your best friend in, when he has an axe, in his hands. Can your family sue the door-bot company?
Of course not! Even the most innocuous of programing requires that you check the "I agree" button, which makes all rights you thought you had (and even a bunch that you didn't even know about) null and void. Do you really think that the geeks that run all technology are dumb enough to give you philosophy types a foot in the door. Really!? bc
Now, if your question is -- do we want SWPLs like you and the people reading the NYT to write some garbage code that allows them to *moralize* software? -- the answer, most definitely, is *no.*
Many things that people like yourself would consider "moral" I consider abominable. I can't imagine anything worse than to be surrounded by "moral" *bloatware* written by "progressives."
Indeed reading the NYT is like reading a moralizing machine of just the sort you describe: certain thoughts are simply do not compute.
And this geezer thinks that's *very uncool.*
It's likely that the first "Computers" that become Aware that they are Aware will start appearing in about 20 years. They are likely to be larger general purpose systems in research settings not unlike the system IBM demonstrated on the TV Game Show recently. Such a system when it occurs could be an "accident" as opposed to being done by design. This means that any "Moral Code" would come after the fact just as it does in us Humans now. Since there is currently no universally acknowledged Moral Code for Humans it is very likely to be the same for A.I.s as well. The issue of whether a "Self Aware" A.I. is automatically an L.E. like Humans are needs to be resolved as well. The State has awarded "Personhood" upon its Citizens in stages and at varying ages over the Ages.
L.E.s are the non human versions of Citizens. Currently there is a lot of discussion as to the correct relationship between Human Citizens and L.E.s as Citizens. The outcome of these debates will greatly influence the "Moral Code" given to the first A.I.s as well. It is likely all of this will be "Living in Interesting Times" in the Chinese sense of the phrase.
I only wish you had said a little bit more about how Asimov's laws could produce deadlock.