scholarly journals The Epistemological and the Moral/Political in Epistemic Responsibility: Beginnings and Reworkings in Lorraine Code’s Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Koggel
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility

This is the first paper in the invited collection. Koggel starts with Code’s first book to record the key objections she raises against traditional and mainstream epistemological accounts. They are the sort of objections that will thread their way through all her work and be important to the development of feminist epistemology. I will then introduce, summarize, and discuss the work Code does on virtue ethics in Epistemic Responsibility and speculate on why she abandons this path in the rest of her work. Code uses virtue ethics and, specifically, virtues of the intellect, to frame an account of moral responsibility that I find interesting, promising, and still relevant to the contemporary revival of virtue ethics and to feminist epistemology more generally.

No Character or Personality

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Harman
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Personality Theory

Abstract:Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley and Batson experiments have to do with such character traits as obedience and punctuality cannot help to explain the relevant differences in the way people behave in different situations. His appeal to personality theory fails, because, as an intellectual academic discipline, personality theory is in shambles, mainly because it has been concerned with conceptions of personality rather than with what is true about personality. Solomon’s rejection of Doris’s claims about the fragmentation of character is at odds with the received view in social psychology. Finally, he is mistaken to think that rejecting virtue ethics implies rejecting free will and moral responsibility.

scholarly journals Understanding responsibility in Responsible AI. Dianoetic virtues and the hard problem of context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihaela Constantinescu ◽  
Cristina Voinea ◽  
Radu Uszkai ◽  
Constantin Vică
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Design Ethics ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractDuring the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial Intelligence. Despite this conceptual richness, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what Responsible AI entails on both conceptual and practical levels. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethical dimension of responsibility in Responsible AI with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role for the concept of moral responsibility. The paper starts by highlighting the important difficulties in assigning responsibility to either technologies themselves or to their developers. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to moral responsibility are then contrasted, as we explore how they could inform debates about Responsible AI. We highlight the limits of the former ethical approaches and build the case for classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. We show that two building blocks of Aristotle’s ethics, dianoetic virtues and the context of actions, although largely ignored in the literature, can shed light on how we could think of moral responsibility for both AI and humans. We end by exploring the practical implications of this particular understanding of moral responsibility along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers.

A Better Approach

Prejudice ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174-192
Author(s):  
Endre Begby
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility

But maybe the relation between morality and epistemology runs in the opposite direction, and it is the range of our epistemic responsibility which constrains the range of our moral responsibility. Initially, this may seem like an unwelcome thought. To the contrary, this chapter argues that it can serve to empower victims of prejudice seeking redress. Moral responsibility is a multi-dimensional concept: while it is plausible that ascriptions of moral blame track ascriptions of epistemic responsibility, other forms of moral liability do not. Drawing on insights from tort law and discrimination law, this chapter argues that victims’ claims to have been wronged in no way depends on their ability to demonstrate that their victimizers were positioned to know that their actions were wrong. This frees victims of prejudice from the substantial burden of having to show that prejudiced believers are—universally, or in any specific case—epistemically irrational in believing as they do.

Virtue Ethics and Moral Responsibility: Confucian Conceptions of Moral Praise and Blame

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 381-399
Author(s):  
Yong Huang
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Great Ease ◽  
Moral Praise

This essay discusses how Confucianism can deal with two related issues of virtue ethics and moral responsibility: praise and blame. We normally praise a person because the person has done something difficult, but a virtuous person does the virtuous things effortlessly, delightfully, and with great ease. Thus the question arises regarding whether such actions are indeed praiseworthy. We can blame a person for doing something wrong only if the person does it knowingly. However, according to virtue ethics, anyone who has genuine moral knowledge acts virtuously, and anyone who does not act virtuously, or acts viciously, only because the person does not have the genuine moral knowledge. Thus the question arises regarding whether such actions are blameworthy.

IX—Equal Opportunity: A Unifying Framework for Moral, Aesthetic, and Epistemic Responsibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Kay Nelkin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Moral Domain ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

Abstract On the one hand, there seem to be compelling parallels to moral responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness in domains other than the moral. For example, we often praise people for their aesthetic and epistemic achievements and blame them for their failures. On the other hand, it has been argued that there is something special about the moral domain, so that at least one robust kind of responsibility can only be found there. In this paper, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework for locating responsible agency across domains, thereby capturing and explaining more of our actual practices. The key, I argue, is to identify the right conditions for being morally accountable, which I take to be a matter of having an opportunity of a good enough quality to act well. With this account in hand, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework that allows us to recognize parallels across domains, even as it points the way to important differences among them.

scholarly journals “I Said Something Wrong”: Transworld Obligation in Yesterday

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-164
Author(s):  
Steven Gimbel ◽  
Thomas Wilk
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Moral Intuition ◽  
Saul Kripke ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Similar Question ◽  
Rigid Designators ◽  
Naming And Necessity

Danny Boyle's film Yesterday (2019) is a contemporary morality play in which the main character, Jack Malik, a failing singer-songwriter, is magically sent to a different possible world in which the Beatles never existed. Possessing his memory of the Beatles’ catalogue in the new possible world, he is now in sole possession of an extremely valuable artifact. Recording and performing the songs of the Beatles and passing them off as his own, he becomes rich, famous, and deeply unhappy. Once he confesses his wrong-doing, however, he is redeemed and his life becomes wonderful. The presupposition that underlays the plot is that in claiming authorship of the songs of the Beatles in a world in which the Beatles never existed, he is acting immorally. But on what theoretical grounds can this intuitive judgment be justified? Can one plagiarize work for which there is no author in one's world? Saul Kripke, in Naming and Necessity, dubs terms that refer in all possible worlds to be “rigid designators” and considers the metaphysics necessary to support them. In this case, it is not reference but moral responsibility that is invariant under changes of possible world and so we must ask a similar question for “rigid obligators.” We argue that a virtue ethics approach is the only way to support the foundational moral intuition.

WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, and Other Stories Wikipedia Tells Us: A Feminist Critique of Wikipedia’s Epistemology

2020 ◽  
pp. 016224392092478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Menking ◽  
Jon Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Structural Support ◽  
Alternative Set

Wikipedia has become increasingly prominent in online search results, serving as an initial path for the public to access “facts,” and lending plausibility to its autobiographical claim to be “the sum of all human knowledge.” However, this self-conception elides Wikipedia’s role as the world’s largest online site of encyclopedic knowledge production. A repository for established facts, Wikipedia is also a social space in which the facts themselves are decided. As a community, Wikipedia is guided by the five pillars—principles that inform and undergird the prevailing epistemic and social norms and practices for Wikipedia participation and contributions. We contend these pillars lend structural support to and help entrench Wikipedia’s gender gap as well as its lack of diversity in both participation and content. In upholding these pillars, Wikipedians may unknowingly undermine otherwise reasonable calls for inclusivity, subsequently reproducing systemic biases. We propose an alternative set of pillars developed through the lens of feminist epistemology, drawing on Lorraine Code’s notion of epistemic responsibility and Helen Longino’s notion of procedural objectivity. Our aim is not only to reduce bias, but also to make Wikipedia a more robust, reliable, and transparent site for knowledge production.

Prejudice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Endre Begby
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Current Concern ◽  
Epistemic Blame ◽  
Ethical Responsibilities

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense defective? No doubt, many of them will be false. Some will also be harmful. But many philosophers further argue that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by culpably violating our epistemic responsibilities. Moreover, it is assumed that we are morally responsible for the harms that our prejudiced beliefs cause only because, in forming these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. This book argues that these common convictions are false and misguided. It shows in detail that there can be plenty of epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief. Moreover, it argues that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to give content to ethical responsibilities. In particular, this would unreasonably burden victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, this book develops an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. In support of this view, the book offers a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, it develops a systematic platform for “non-ideal epistemology” which would apply also to a wide range of other socio-epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more.

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