Ethics and the Anthropocene Crisis: On the Moral Consideration of Nature

Technology is responsible for major systemic changes within the global financial sector. This sector has already developed into a comprehensive network of mutually connected people and computers. Algorithms play a crucial role within this network. An algorithm is in essence merely a set of instructions developed by one or more people with the intention of having these instructions performed by a machine such as a computer in order to realize an ideal result. As part of a development in which we as human beings have ever higher expectations of algorithms and these algorithms become more autonomous in their actions, we cannot avoid including possibilities in these algorithms that enable ethical or moral considerations. To develop this ethical or moral consideration, we need a kind of ethical framework that can be used for constructing these algorithms. With the development of such a framework we can start to think about what we as human beings consider to be a moral action executed by algorithms that support actions and decisions of interconnected and self-organizing machines. This chapter explores an ethical framework for interconnected and self-organizing moral machines.

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Environmental Ethics

10.1093/oso/9780198748960.003.0008 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147-168

Author(s):

Thaddeus Metz

Keyword(s):

Environmental Ethics ◽

Moral Status ◽

Moral Theory ◽

Moral Consideration ◽

Intrinsic Properties ◽

Communal Relationship

This chapter begins Part III, which argues that the relational moral theory of rightness as friendliness is a strong competitor to Western principles in many applied ethical contexts. Chapter 8 articulates and defends a novel, relational account of moral status, according to which an entity is owed moral consideration roughly to the degree that it is capable of being party to a communal relationship. One of its implications is that many animals have a moral status but not one as high as ours, which many readers will find attractive, but which utilitarianism and Kantianism cannot easily accommodate. Relational moral status also grounds a promising response to the ‘argument from marginal cases’ that animals have the same moral status as incapacitated humans: even if two beings have identical intrinsic properties, they can differ in the extent to which they can relate and hence differ in their degree of moral status.

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Moral Consideration of Plants

Ein transdisziplinäres Panoptikum ◽

10.1007/978-3-658-31797-3_7 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 85-93

Author(s):

Caroline Stankozi

Keyword(s):

Moral Consideration

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Animals and ethics

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-l004-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

James Rachels

Keyword(s):

Moral Consideration ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Nonhuman Animals ◽

Human Use ◽

Traditional Doctrine

Does morality require that we respect the lives and interests of nonhuman animals? The traditional doctrine was that animals were made for human use, and so we may dispose of them as we please. It has been argued, however, that this is a mere ‘speciesist’ prejudice and that animals should be given more or less the same moral consideration as humans. If this is right, we may be morally required to be vegetarians; and it may turn out that laboratory research using animals, and many other such practices, are more problematic than has been realized.

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Sympathy for Dolores: Moral Consideration for Robots Based on Virtue and Recognition

Philosophy & Technology ◽

10.1007/s13347-019-0341-y ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 9-31 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Massimiliano L. Cappuccio ◽

Anco Peeters ◽

William McDonald

Keyword(s):

Moral Consideration

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Encountering ethics through design: a workshop with nonhuman participants

AI & Society ◽

10.1007/s00146-020-01088-7 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Anuradha Reddy ◽

Iohanna Nicenboim ◽

James Pierce ◽

Elisa Giaccardi

Keyword(s):

Social Context ◽

User Experience ◽

Intelligent Systems ◽

Active Role ◽

Moral Consideration ◽

Autonomous Behavior

Abstract What if we began to speculate that intelligent things have an ethical agenda? Could we then imagine ways to move past the moral divide ‘human vs. nonhuman’ in those contexts, where things act on our behalf? Would this help us better address matters of agency and responsibility in the design and use of intelligent systems? In this article, we argue that if we fail to address intelligent things as objects that deserve moral consideration by their relations within a broad social context, we will lack a grip on the distinct ethical rules governing our interaction with intelligent things, and how to design for it. We report insights from a workshop, where we take seriously the perspectives offered by intelligent things, by allowing unforeseen ethical situations to emerge in an improvisatory manner. By giving intelligent things an active role in interaction, our participants seemed to be activated by the artifacts, provoked to act and respond to things beyond the artifact itself—its direct functionality and user experience. The workshop helped to consider autonomous behavior not as a simplistic exercise of anthropomorphization, but within the more significant ecosystems of relations, practices and values of which intelligent things are a part.

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Avoidance of Killing

10.1093/med/9780190277000.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Robert M. Veatch ◽

Amy Haddad ◽

E. J. Last

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Human Life ◽

Withholding Treatment ◽

Moral Consideration ◽

Withdrawing Treatment ◽

Beneficial Outcome

Avoidance of killing is a moral consideration that arises in health care controversies involving the notions that human life is sacred or that killing is morally wrong. Pharmacists may find themselves in positions where they must reconcile the idea that generally killing is a harm to be avoided based on the principle of nonmaleficence with the idea that death might be perceived by a particular patient as a beneficial outcome. This chapter explores the principle of avoidance of killing, highlights differences between active, merciful killing and decisions to forgo treatment, and discusses the concept of proportionality. The cases presented involve topics such as withholding treatment and withdrawing treatment and direct versus indirect killing.

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