CRITICAL INCIDENT JOURNALTopic: Sophia The robots Complicated Truth and why we should be scared1. An incident: Write a real-live very desсrіptive vivid story of your relations with a robot or AI 2. Relational analysis: The relevant topic is explained: Codify the moral decision process and how machines and humans differ and how it relates to your incident above3. Research with proper quotations, regarding robots(sophia OR any other AI), how it affects morality and how it relates to your incident4. The reflection brings all the above together, your incident, relational analysis an research above and draw make and reasoned conclusion on moral decision of a human verse a machine , truth about AI machines and the why we should be afraid of them based on morality5. The reference of the work(should not be counted as a page)
Microsoft Word - 09 Codify the Moral Decision Process Lecture Notes.docx Page 1 09 Codify the Moral Decision Process 1. Introduction 2. The ethical value of the decision (object) 3. The ethical value of the intention (end) 4. The ethical value of the circumstances (circumstances) 5. The overall judgment of an action 6. Ethical Decision Making 7. Corporate ethical decisions 1. Introduction When judging the actions of people we can do it from the outside, as it is done by judges, or from the inside which is what is required in the moral analysis. What is important in ethical analysis is the internal free decision we take. Objectively this decision can be good or evil, but we are the only ones who know whether we were in complete command, awareness of the circumstances and what was our final intention or motive. An action is ethical if it helps to become a better person. In order to know whether a particular action is ethical or not we have to check three things; a) the moral value of the act, b) the moral value of the intention and c) the moral value of the circumstances. We usually do this instantly and without much problem. It is only in difficult cases when we need to study each of these three things in detail. Note that we use “action” for the complete process and “decision” for the moral evaluation of the physical act. In other words: the moral evaluation of the “action” comprises the moral evaluation of the “decision”, “the intention” and the “circumstances”. 2. The ethical value of the decision (object) When a person makes a decision knows what he wants and wants it. The decision is the moral object we are studying, i.e. if it helps us to be better or worse. Any human action has an ethical value; i.e. it can be good, bad, or neutral –indifferent-. The ethical value of a decision has also degrees; it can be extremely good, very good, or simply good. If it is evil it can be extremely evil, very evil, or simply evil. Most books on ethics refer to the ethical value of the decision as its” moral object” or just the “object”. They use this term because it is the objet being studied by the moralist, (this moralist is the subject, who looks at the decision, and the object is what he is looking at, i.e. the moral value of a particular decision we are studying now). It can also be called “object” because its moral value does not depend on us; it is not subjective, therefore it is objective. Nevertheless we prefer not to use this term so as to make clearer the distinction between the physical act (the action) and the decision (free spiritual and therefore internal act). If we drive a car without the consent of the owner, this action can be normally considered theft. Thieves take cars to sell them, but it also can be a meritorious risk if we use it to take a person who had a serious accident to hospital and that particular car was the only means available to save a life. We already know that the morality of a decision depends on whether it helps to become better, or said in different ways: to increase one’s perfection, to get closer to the achievement of one’s final destiny, or to achieve one’s mission in life, or to achieve total happiness. The ethical value of decisions is universal and unchangeable –their moral value is objective- because it is based on human nature. The decisions that perfect us most are those that help us to grow more as a person i.e. to become more virtuous and therefore more human. They make our spirit blend better with our body and be more in control, thus making us happy in a more permanent way. Those “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” Page 2 decisions that destroy our personality more are the ones that go directly against our nature, making us lose control of our will, our senses, and darken our spirituality. These are the ones that make us more animal, more devilish. To put an extreme case, homicide is always wrong, but not all killing of people are homicides. There are accidental killings, and there can be just killings, for example in defence of society or for self defence. One thing is the physical action –the killing of a person- the other the “moral object” which we call the decision. A classic example is to kill by shooting. Shooting and killing is just the physical description of the action, which some people call “the facts”. There could be different ethical decisions depending on the intention of the shooter. It could be a good decision if the shooter is a soldier who kills a terrorist about to blow a block of apartments; it could be a very bad decision if it is a premeditated killing of a rival, or it could be a morally neutral decision if the person killed happens to cross unnoticed behind the targets in a shooting range. In the three cases the man dies as a consequence of the shooting but the intention of the shooter is totally different in each case and what we are judging are not facts but free decisions, which is the realm of ethics, because free decisions are what make us better or worse, what perfects persons. 3. The ethical value of the intention (end) By intention we mean the final intention the agent has (subjective intention). It can also be referred to as the “intent” or final “purpose”. This intention should not be confused with the primary intention of the decision (objective end), which is what gives the act its fundamental moral value. A classical example of “intention” is the legendary Robin Hood. He robed and he knew it. He was a thief. He was forcibly taking property from people. But his secondary aim, so the legend says, was to give part to the poor. The objective moral evaluation of the decision is that it was robbery; the subjective intention was to give part to the poor. To distinguish between the two intentions we can study the case of a surgeon whose patient dies during the operation. The intention of the surgeon is usually to save the life of the patient. This is the objective intention. Nevertheless it may happen that he wants to keep the patient alive just because he will suffer more afterwards, since he wants to get even with him, and he suffers a painful disease. The decision is objectively good, but the action is morally bad, because the intention is evil. The patient lives, but the surgeon has taken an evil decision. This secondary intention is normally referred to as “intention”, “intent” or “purpose” in most manuals. 4. The ethical value of the circumstances (circumstances) We call circumstances (from Latin circum = around + stare = to stay), the other factors that intervene in the ethical appraisal of an action. They either help or make the development of the person difficult, thus changing the moral value of an action, either making bad something good or making big something small. Some of the moral circumstances are: WHO: this is the person who acts. It is not the same to be greeted by a passerby or by the President, or to be asked for a bribe by a constable or by an officer, or if it is a student or a visitor the one disobeying a school authority. TO WHOM: it is not the same to give alms to a drunkard than to an internal displaced person; to insult a colleague than to insult the boss. HOW MUCH: it is not the same to donate Shs 100 or Shs 100,000. WHERE: it is not the same to be affectionate at home or in the street, to steal in a matatu or to steal in a church. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Martin Luther King Jnr. Page 3 MEANS or INSTRUMENTS: it is not the same to console a person by phone or going to the home and doing it personally, to steal with bare hands or using a gun. HOW: it is not the same to go to a party in casual clothes or in a tuxedo; to steal cleanly, or steal destroying many things doing extra harm. WHEN: the time can be little or long, to wait over a sick person for an hour or for days; to do it at night is more meritorious than during the day, to do it in bad times is more meritorious than doing it during holidays. FORSEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: is the knowledge that one has of the collateral benefits or damages the action could cause. A doctor may prescribe a treatment that has the added value of helping the person to be more cheerful and therefore improve his family life. VIABLE ALTERNATIVES: are the other courses of action a person had such as shooting a thief in the legs instead of killing him. WHY: Some books of Ethics state “why” or purpose as a circumstance, when others refer to it as “the intention”. Those who do so, speak of a “special” circumstance which is the “intention” or why. Nevertheless since this circumstance is so important, and it is always present we prefer to consider it separately as explained above. 5. The overall judgment of an action The moral value of a decision is based on its making us better, more human. Any of the three elements of the ethical valuation has to be good for the overall valuation to be good. Classic writers called the decision, the intention and the circumstances the “three fountains” or “three sources” of morality, to indicate that the three are needed to do good. For an action to be good the three elements have to be morally good. One can only safely drink of a well that has three sources if the three bring clean, healthy water; if one of the springs pours poisoned water the well is poisoned, no matter how