EECS 690

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EECS 690

• April 22

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Approaches to incorporating ethics into software

• Deontic Logic
• Analogical Reasoning
• Casuistry
• Disobedience Conditions

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Deontic Logic

• This is a kind of logic whose rules of operation
  instantiate the rules of a duty-based ethical
  system. These systems are capable of constructing
  proofs in deontic logic.
• This is not an autonomous application, and is
  entirely top-down, but it could be a very
  effective kind of decision support tool, and
  could be a good place to start.

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Limitations

• Deontic logic, more than any other type of logic,
  is dependent on the content represented by its
  symbols. Proofs in deontic logic look much like
  proofs in any other modal logic, but arguments in
  deontic logic look peculiarly unuseful.
• This is probably not a prospect for making a
  genuine moral system, but it may be a necessary
  skill for any top-down implementation.

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Analogical Reasoning

• This is and has always been a powerful tool in
  the philosophers arsenal.
• The idea is that by constructing or identifying a
  case that people are clear about and in agreement
  about, and comparing its relevant similarities to
  cases we are undecided about, we can make up our
  minds about the undecided or difficult cases.
  (There are many examples of this reasoning
  everywhere.)

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Casuistry

• Casuistry is the rigorous application of case
  studies to tease out general commonalities in the
  way that certain cases are treated.
• This approach has been interesting to see develop
  in practical ethics curricula. Case studies are
  a very important way of teaching ethical
  practices.
• As a DST, this approach looks very promising
  indeed.

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The Ross Model

• Duties stemming from one's own previous
  actions     1. fidelity - duty to fulfill
  (explicit and implicit) promises/agreements into
           which one has entered     2. reparation
  - duty to make up for wrongful acts previously
  done to others
• Duties stemming from the previous actions of
  others     3. gratitude - duty to repay others
  for past favors done for oneself
• Duties stemming from the (possibility of) a
  mismatch between persons' pleasure or happiness
  and their "merit"     4. justice - duty to
  prevent or correct such a mismatch
• Duties stemming from the possibility of improving
  the conditions of others with respect to virtue,
  intelligence, or pleasure     5. beneficence -
  duty to improve the conditions of others in these
  respects
• Duties stemming from the possibility of improving
  one's own condition with respect to virtue or
  intelligence     6. self-improvement - duty to
  improve one's own condition in these respects
• Special duty to be distinguished from the duty of
  beneficence     7. nonmaleficence - duty not to
  injure others

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Casuistry and value pluralism

• This kind of approach does a great job in making
  formal statements about what conditions seem to
  warrant the preference of one value over another.
  
• Conflicts between legitimate values represent the
  heart of many of our most difficult ethical
  disputes.

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Limitations of Casuistry/Analogical Reasoning

• We have yet to build a system which parses
  relevant similarity in a sufficiently humanlike
  way.
• DSTs which are largely dependent on these
  methods by necessity have no autonomy, but this
  requires that the persons using the DST have a
  fair level of ethical training themselves.

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Disobedience Conditions

• To have a moral machine is in some ways to have a
  machine that will disobey under suitable
  conditions.
• To go further, and provide cues to the user of
  when the machine needs to prioritize its goals is
  a really nice step toward incorporating machines
  into legitimate moral communication. (See
  example pp.134-135)
• Explicit disobedience conditions, as opposed to
  implicit ones, could have a great impact on
  public perception of computing technology, and
  could change the way society interacts with
  computing technology.