Reviews Flashcards
Physical Continuity
- Something is the same thing at two different points in time if at both points it is the same material substance
- Objection: Cell Replacement Thought Experiment
Something is the same thing at two different points in time if at both points it is the same material substance
- Humans are the same person if they have the same body
Objection: Cell Replacement Thought Experiment
- How much do you have to change to make a difference person? It is not clear what amount of the physical material has to change, and why a certain point matters more than any other
Locke’s Continuity of Consciousness
- Being the same continuous consciousness is what makes a person the same over time
- Our intuition is that the same person has to be the same substance, but there is reason to doubt this
- This matters because how we reward and punish people depends on the person being the same person over time, with responsibility for past actions and investment in future well-being
Being the same continuous consciousness is what makes a person the same over time
- If your consciousness can be extended back to a past action or thought, and you are aware of it, then you are the same person, the same self
- Consciousness is what relates the actions to the person, regardless of the substances involved
Our intuition is that the same person has to be the same substance, but there is reason to doubt this
- Consciousness can be interrupted by forgetfulness
- Different streams of consciousness are different people
Objection to Locke
- Locke’s argument leads to counter intuitive results
- Common sense tells us it is possible for someone to not remember doing something, but still be the same person as did that thing
- Not remembering what I did when I was 3 years old doesn’t make me a different person than when I was 3
The social groups that you belong to
- Result of a combination of ones own choice and others’ perception
Social Identity
Biological
- Male and female, intersex
Sex
Social
- Man and woman, non-binary, transgender
Gender
about common physical characteristics often held to be inherent
Race
about common ancestry, cultural attachment, linguistic heritage, religious affiliation, etc.
Ethnicity
Biological based views
- Views that claim biological features at birth determine aspects of human life such as social roles, psychology, and behaviour
- Examples: biological determinism of gender, racial naturalism
Problems of biological based views
- Empirical counter-evidence
- Practical problems of restricted potential
Social Constructivist Views
- Social identities are the result of socialization, how people are treated, institutions, or some other social factor
- Examples: social constructivism of gender, racial constructivism, think constructivism, institutional constructivism, interactive kind constructivism
Problems of social constructivist views
- still assumes that there is something shared by all members of the group, fails to take into account cultural and class differences
- gives a problematic normative ideal
Skepticism
- Race and/or gender do not exist or identify anything real in the world
- Often can lead to eliminativism (the concept in question should be discarded)
Problems of skepticism
- People do use these categories
- These identity categories have real, severe impacts on people lives
- Invidious sexual inequalities in the explicit rules and implicit norms governing and structuring social institutions
- Example: women being banned from the Catholic priesthood
Institutional Sexism
Involves interactions between persons that are not governed by explicit rules but that create, constitute, promote, sustain, and/or exploit invidious sexual inequalities (intentionally or not)
Interpersonal Sexism
The psychological mechanisms and tacit beliefs, emotions, and attitudes that create, constitute, promote, sustain, and/or exploit invidious sexual inequalities
Unconscious sexism
Part of racism is the theoretical content, but it also has an element of irrationality
- We have biases that distort our judgment
- This is particularly the case when it is to our advantage to believe something, because it justifies special advantages we gain
This deformation of rationality in judgment, where the person is not just theoretically attached to the proposition about race, but will also hold onto that belief despite counter evidence due to its advantage for them
Racial prejudice
Need to be alert for such prejudice, and take special care if you have evidence that:
a. that you reasoning in a certain domain is distorted by prejudice and
b. that the distortions conform to a pattern that suggests a lack of impartiality
Kantian Ethics
- Characteristics of the act itself are what matter morally
- the good will, rational action done from duty, is the only intrinsic good
- categorical imperative (1 rule, stated 4 ways)
- perfect duties
- imperfect duties
Characteristics of the act itself are what matter morally
- follow duty and rules
Categorical Imperative (1 rule, stated 4 ways)
- Universal law formula
- Humanity formula
Only act on maxims you can universalize
Universal law formula
Treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as means
Humanity formula
If a maxim leads to logical contradication, there is a perfect duty not to do it
Perfect duties
If a maxim leads to a contradiction of the will, there is an imperfect duty not to do it
Imperfect duties
Utilitarianism
- Only consequences matter
- The only intrinsic good is pleasure and freedom from pain
- Greatest happiness principle
- Higher pleasures are more valuable than lower ones
- Each person’s happiness matters equally, the calculation is about the happiness everyone
Greatest happiness principle
- An action is right in proportion to the happiness it promotes, and wrong in proportion to the pain it produces
- Greatest happiness for the greatest number of people
Higher pleasures are more valuable than lower ones
- Those an expert judge would choose
Each person’s happiness matters equally, the calculation is about the happiness everyone
- Equal consideration and agent neutrality
Objection of Utilitarianism 1
- Pleasure and pain is not a worthy intrinsic good for humans
Objection of Utilitarianism 2
- The standard of utilitarianism is too high for humanity
Objection of Utilitarianism 3
Utilitarian thinks the answer to moral dilemmas is obvious, when its not
Objection of Utilitarianism 4
- Utilitarianism can be used to justify horrific acts
Virtue Ethics
- The focus of morality is on the development of certain dispositions and character traits
- The intrinsic good is eudaimonia/flourishing
- Acting in the right way, at the right time, with knowledge, through rational choice, and with an unshakable character
The focus of morality is on the development of certain dispositions and character traits
- Its about the kind of person you are
The intrinsic good is eudaimonia/flourishing
- This is the soul’s activity that expresses virtue
Virtue results from:
- Habituation
- Finding teachers and exemplars
- The Doctrine of the mean: virtue is the mean between vices of excess (too much) and deficiency (too little)
Feminist Ethics
- Critiquing other approaches to ethics
- Not about one single thinker, but a community of knowledge production
- Reason vs. emotion
- Public vs. private
- Self vs. relationships
- Emphasizes paying attention to emotion, relationships, context, etc in moral decisions
Reason vs, emotion
- Need to move away from abstract, universal principles in favour of contextual, embodied relations and using desirable moral emotions like caring
Public vs. private
- The private/household life cannot be separate from social and political factors
- Need to thing about idealized private relations in our public ethical relations
Self vs. relationships
- Need to move away from atomistic towards relational theories of the self
Care ethics pays attention to three main topics:
- Dependence and need
- Valuing emotions
- Particulars, not abstractions
Held’s view related to care ethics
Care is both a practice and a value
Care as a practice or activity
- Shows us how to respond to needs and why we should, building appropriate trust and concern
- Should express the caring relations that bring persons together in ways that are increasingly morally satisfactory, and transform people in increasingly morally admirable ways
Care as a value
- Moral considerations related to care and its absence should be used to evaluate persons
- Caring is a social relation, not an individual disposition or state like benevolence
Tools of applied ethics
- Identify what premises is being used to
- Analogies
- Causal claim (what action or person had what effect)
Identify what premises is being used to
- to make it clear why a particular value judgment (should, ought, good, bad, right, wrong) combines with a particular fact
help to clarify and support argument in applied ethics but showing similarities to situation where we think we know what to do
Can challenge whether the analogy is an accurate one
Analogies
(What action or person had what effect) are important for determining moral responsibility, which is a key part of ethical judgment
Causal claim
Three main Categories of Ethical Concerns
- Ethical obligations of and to society as a whole
- Ethical obligations people who create and design AI
- Ethical obligations people have to the AI they design and create
Domain Restricted AI:
AI designed for a particular task or domain with human-equivalent or superior performance, and can react to unanticipated situations around that domain
a) Transparency
b) Predictability
c) Minimizing manipulation
d) Moral responsibility
Want to be able to defect biases and other problems, and discover why certain results occur and how to fix them
Transparency
Want to be able to predict what an AI will do in a context, so we can optimize and plan our lives when interacting with it
Predictability
Want to avoid ability to exploit weaknesses and fool the AI
Minimizing manipulation
Want to know who to blame when things go wrong
Moral responsibility
AI designed to able to do everything and anything humans do as well as humans or better
Artificial General Intelligence
AI designed to able to do everything and anything humans do as well as humans or better
a) Safety and Ethical Problems
b) Do AIs have moral status?
c) Exotic properties
d) Superintelligence
- Can build in rules and requirements, but this only works if the AI understands those rules the way we expect it to
Safety and Ethical Problems
Do AI have moral status
- If two beings have the same functioning and conscious experience, and differ only in what they are made of or how they came to exist, they have the same moral status
- Based on the problem of marginal cases
Problem of Marginal Cases Moral Status:
P1: If something has capacity X, then that thing has moral status
P2: If X is something that all humans have, then some animals will have it as well
P3: If X is something that only humans have, then some humans will not have it
C: Either all or only humans have moral status, not both
Humans without certain capabilities that are viewed as typical of humans are referred to as marginal humans
Can replace “animals in this argument with “AI” and have similar results
Capacities and characteristics that have never existed before in anything creates new ethical problems we have never encountered before
Exotic properties
If AI becomes smarter than any human ever could be, understanding them will be beyond us, and it is likely they will have a different ethics
Superintelligence
