The business knowledge investment: building architected information
The business knowledge investment: building architected information
What computers still can't do: a critique of artificial reason
What computers still can't do: a critique of artificial reason
Ethics of Information Management
Ethics of Information Management
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know
Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know
Limits to the Autonomy of Agents
Proceedings of the 2008 conference on Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy
An emotional model for a guide robot
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans - Special issue on model-based diagnostics
Ethics and Information Technology
The Functional Morality of Robots
International Journal of Technoethics
On the Moral Equality of Artificial Agents
International Journal of Technoethics
College Students, Piracy, and Ethics: Is there a Teachable Moment?
International Journal of Technoethics
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In modern technical societies computers interact with human beings in ways that can affect moral rights and obligations. This has given rise to the question whether computers can act as autonomous moral agents. The answer to this question depends on many explicit and implicit definitions that touch on different philosophical areas such as anthropology and metaphysics. The approach chosen in this paper centres on the concept of information. Information is a multi-facetted notion which is hard to define comprehensively. However, the frequently used definition of information as data endowed with meaning can promote our understanding. It is argued that information in this sense is a necessary condition of cognitivist ethics. This is the basis for analysing computers and information processors regarding their status as possible moral agents. Computers have several characteristics that are desirable for moral agents. However, computers in their current form are unable to capture the meaning of information and therefore fail to reflect morality in anything but a most basic sense of the term. This shortcoming is discussed using the example of the Moral Turing Test. The paper ends with a consideration of which conditions computers would have to fulfil in order to be able to use information in such a way as to render them capable of acting morally and reflecting ethically.