Engineered Microbes in Industry and Science: A New Human Relationship to Nature?

Basl, John; Sandler, Ronald

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262019392.003.0006

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…By "very roughly" I mean that the MSP is not a high resolution rendering of the many theories and myriad nuanced arguments about moral status from the moral theory literature. 1 Rather, the objective here is to ground the claim that an intelligent machine could have moral status and to argue how much moral status such a machine merits.…”

Section: Framework For Assessing the Moral Status Of Intelligent Machinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They propose a "schema for definitions of 'morality'" as follows: "…morality is the informal public system that all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse." A public system is: "a system of norms (1) that is knowable by all those to whom it applies and (2) that is not irrational for any of those to whom it applies to follow (Gert 2005: 1 For example, with respect to the anthropocentrism/nonanthropocentrism distinction of Sterba [18], I am not claiming that Sterba would choose moral agency as the threshold for full moral status, nor am I claiming that he would subscribe to my hierarchical-ordering-of-thresholds assumption. Further, his claim that species and ecosystems have moral status may not be captured by region MS in my Figure 1.…”

Section: Moral Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps just for this reason, explanation in terms of an end or telos seems no longer sufficient. According to Basl and Sandler [1], explanation of the etiology of ends is also required: Appeals to teleological organization are a step toward explicating the basis and content of nonsentient organisms' good. However, it is also necessary to provide an explanation for the teleological organization; one that demonstrates that the teleological organization of plants isn't merely imagined.…”

Section: A Good Of Its Ownmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One may object that Basl and Sandler [1] are too loose in allowing anything other than natural selection to count with respect to a function being "selected for." Is there some distinction between artifact and organism that would allow only an organism to have a good of its own?…”

Section: A Good Of Its Ownmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Framework for Grounding the Moral Status of Intelligent Machines

Scheessele

2018

Proceedings of the 2018 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

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I propose a framework, derived from moral theory, for assessing the moral status of intelligent machines. Using this framework, I claim that some current and foreseeable intelligent machines have approximately as much moral status as plants, trees, and other environmental entities. This claim raises the question: what obligations could a moral agent (e.g., a normal adult human) have toward an intelligent machine? I propose that the threshold for any moral obligation should be the "functional morality" of Wallach and Allen [20], while the upper limit of our obligations should not exceed the upper limit of our obligations toward plants, trees, and other environmental entities.

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Section: Framework For Assessing the Moral Status Of Intelligent Machinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Moral Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Good Of Its Ownmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Good Of Its Ownmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Framework for Grounding the Moral Status of Intelligent Machines

Scheessele

2018

Proceedings of the 2018 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

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“…Individualists in environmental ethics had an interest in ruling out the attribution of interests to artifacts (cars, computers, and the like), and so requiring a causal history involving natural selection seemed to accomplish this goal. For an example of this reasoning in environmental ethics and a discussion of some of the problems that result from it, see Basl and Sandler (2013). 24 See, for example, Gould (1997).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited

McShane

2014

ateliers

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While holist views such as ecocentrism have considerable intuitive appeal, arguing for the moral considerability of ecological wholes such as ecosystems has turned out to be a very difficult task. In the environmental ethics literature, individualist biocentrists have persuasively argued that individual organisms—but not ecological wholes—are properly regarded as having a good of their own . In this paper, I revisit those arguments and contend that they are fatally flawed. The paper proceeds in five parts. First, I consider some problems brought about by climate change for environmental conservation strategies and argue that these problems give us good pragmatic reasons to want a better account of the welfare of ecological wholes. Second, I describe the theoretical assumptions from normative ethics that form the background of the arguments against holism. Third, I review the arguments given by individualist biocentrists in favour of individualism over holism. Fourth, I review recent work in the philosophy of biology on the units of selection problem, work in medicine on the human biome, and work in evolutionary biology on epigenetics and endogenous viral elements. I show how these developments undermine both the individualist arguments described above as well as the distinction between individuals and wholes as it has been understood by individualists. Finally, I consider five possible theoretical responses to these problems.Quoique les perspectives holistes telles que l’écocentrisme exercent un attrait intuitif considérable, affirmer la considérabilité morale des touts écologiques comme des écosystèmes s’est avéré une tâche très difficile. Dans la littérature en éthique de l’environnement, certains biocentristes individualistes ont argumenté de manière persuasive qu’un organisme individuel, mais pas un tout écologique, peut correctement être considéré comme possédant son propre bien. Dans le présent article, nous réexaminons ces arguments et soutenons qu’ils sont voués à l’échec. Ce travail est divisé en cinq parties. Premièrement, nous nous penchons sur certains des problèmes que pose le changement climatique pour les stratégies de conservation de l’environnement et affirmons que ces problèmes fournissent de bonnes raisons pragmatiques pour lesquelles chercher une meilleure compréhension du bien-être des touts écologiques. Deuxièmement, nous décrivons les a priori théoriques de l’éthique normative qui sous-tendent les arguments contre l’holisme. Troisièmement, nous réexaminons les arguments de biocentristes individualistes appuyant l’individualisme et rejetant l’holisme. Quatrièmement, nous explorons de récents travaux en philosophie de la biologie sur le problème de l’unité de sélection du biome humain en médecine et des éléments épigénétiques et viraux endogènes en biologie évolutionniste. Nous montrons en quoi ces conceptions minent à la fois les arguments individualistes susmentionnés et la distinction entre l’individu et le tout tel que compris par les individualistes. Finalement, nous considérons cinq rép...

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The Traces of Nature; or: The Value of Hybrid Nature

Pellegrino

2021

Springer Geography

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Engineered Microbes in Industry and Science: A New Human Relationship to Nature?

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

A Framework for Grounding the Moral Status of Intelligent Machines

A Framework for Grounding the Moral Status of Intelligent Machines

Individualist Biocentrism vs. Holism Revisited

The Traces of Nature; or: The Value of Hybrid Nature

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