AUTHOR
Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

ABSTRACT

Information technology has many advantages that can be used for the promotion of ethical competence. It saves time and space, it has an enormous memory storage capacity, it can process and reorganize information fast and reliably, etc. Recent technical developments in particular, which give us the possibility to construct advanced games and simulate the complexity of reality in micro-worlds, may further broaden the spectrum of opportunities and possibilities for support in ethical problem solving and decision making. In this paper our efforts to construct an ethical problem-solving support system and an ethical microworld are presented.

There are, however, certain important issues to consider before building such systems. The confounding of moral values with psychological processes can create many problems and sometimes makes it impossible (Blasi, 1980; Greene et al., 2004; Haidt, 2001; Jackson, 1994; Jaffee & Hyde, 2000). Accordingly, our theoretical basis is that successful information technology tools in ethics are those that are adapted exclusively on psychological problem-solving and decision-making processes.

When we are planning to use information technology tools to support ethical decision making we usually run the risk of disregarding the psychological skill aspects of ethical competence. The classical approach focuses normally on informing about moral philosophy, presenting lists of principles and stakeholder interests, or simply producing moral solutions based on predefined normative values (Collins & Miller, 1992; Gotterbarn & Rogerson, 2002; Pfeiffer, 1999). Creating and using information technology tools based primarily on this classical approach certainly has its strengths, but it also has many weaknesses (Winograd, 1995; Friedman, 2005).Ethical competence can be defined as based on the psychological ability described as autonomy. However, this skill is not so easy to use in real situations. Psychological research has shown that plenty of time and certain conditions are demanded before people can acquire and use the ethical ability of autonomy (Piaget, 1932; Kohlberg, 1985; Schwartz, 2000; Sunstein, 2005). When people face a moral problem they have great difficulties not confusing moral goals, values, feelings and emotions with the decision-making and problem-solving processes and the methods adopted for the solution of the problem. Usually, they do not clearly see the context of the problem nor do they analyze it in the same way they often do with problems of nature. In psychological theory this is described as the moral phase of heteronomy, which in contrast to autonomy, means that the individual does not use functional problem-solving strategies, that is, critical thinking. Autonomous and critical moral thinking is difficult, more difficult than autonomous technical thinking. In the searching to promote ethical competence we need to be assured that the autonomous ethical thinking is indeed stimulated by the support tools we use. Using information technology to support the acquisition and use of ethical autonomy is due to the special qualities and possibilities of this technology.

The use of real life simulations by decision makers may help them to learn easier how to handle morally complex and controversial situations satisfactorily. One way to do this is by connecting the progress of the simulation to the concrete way users treat moral problems rather than to general normative aspects of given solutions. For example, this can be done by incorporating in the simulation the interests, values, feelings, etc, of stakeholders whose reaction may influence the development of the simulation process.

Furthermore information technology tools have great advantages according to the hypothesis of autonomy. Their memory storage capacity is enormous. They are excellent in doing systematic work and analysis of data. Just by using them as a data base or an expert system in the effort to solve a concrete moral problem, the user can get information about certain values and interests, as well as about alternative ways of action, that otherwise might be overlooked. Reminiscence of the diversity, variety and complexity of the actual moral problem could effectively block decision makers’ natural tendency toward heteronomy, and stimulate autonomy.

The paper presents the structure and function of an ethical microworld simulation and of a support system in ethical problem-solving and decision-making. The ethical microworld simulation models realistic scenarios with interacting independent stakeholders. Users of the simulation are triggered to make autonomous decisions in dilemmas arising in the interaction between stakeholders. The goals are to investigate the possible approaches to implement the psychological approach to ethical problem-solving and decision-making, and to stimulate higher ethical competence.

The ethical support system is based on the theory of autonomy. By using it thinking is guided away from heteronomy and toward autonomy. Its basic features are: 1) not allow the user to use the system as a moral authority. 2) not present a ready made set of moral principles and values. 3) help the user to be unconstrained by moral fixations and authorities, 4) help the user to organize and analyze the facts, 5) help the user to weight the relevant values and principles against each other, 6) help the user to solve the moral problem at hand systematically, 7) force the user to motivate his/her decisions in regard to the relevant interests and values.

REFERENCES

Blasi, A. (1980). Bridging moral cognition and moral action: A critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 1-45.

Collins, W. R. & Miller, K. (1992). A paramedic method for computing professionals. Journal of Systems and Software, 13, 47-84.

Friedman, B. (2005). Value sensitive design and information systems. Available: http://www.ischool.washington.edu/vsd/vsd-and-information-systems.pdf

Gotterbarn, D. & Rogerson, S. (2002). Project Planning Software [Computer software], East Tennessee State University.

Green, J.D., Nystrom, L.E., Engell, A.D., Darey, J.M., Cohen, J.D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44, 389-400.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814-834.

Jackson, J. (1994). Coping with scepticism: About the philosopher’s role in teaching ethical business. Business Ethics: A European Review, 3, 171-173.

Jaffee, S. & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 703-726.

Kohlberg, L. (1985). The Just Community: Approach to moral education in theory and practice. In M. Berkowitz and F. Oser (Eds.), Moral education: Theory and application (pp. 27-87). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.

Pfeiffer, R. S. (1999). Ethics on the job: Cases and strategies. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Schwartz, B. (2000). Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. American Psychologist, 55, 79-88.

Sunstein, C. R. (2005). Moral heuristics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 531-573.

Winograd, T. (1995). Computers, ethics and social responsibility. In D. G. Johnson and H. Nissebaum (Eds.) Computers, Ethics and Social Values (pp. 25-39). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

AUTHOR
Mayumi Hori

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I propose the road map to lead Telework to more advanced and professional working format by Collaborative Telework through building KCC(Knowledge Collaboration Center). As a result, a new working format -e-work focusing on telework- has emerged which has enabled people to choose alternative working styles. Japanese & Korean working women have a serious problem called M-shape curve, which shows labor force participation rates by age group. There are two peaks in aged 21-25 and aged 45-49 and with a bottom in aged 30-34 when they have to take care of their child. The age 25-35 with baby have to decide to chose work or home (childcare). It is difficult to continue working with baby at hard working conditions. In other advanced countries, women need not chose work or home. They can chose work and home also if they wish when they have a baby. Collaborative Telework will be one of the strong solutions and effective for human resource and construct the circumstance of knowledge-based society which shows what the working should be in web2.0 era.

There is a major impact of ICT on working environment. Other conspicuous factors contributing to these changes are the aging of society, the trend toward fewer children, globalization of the economy, and increasing concern about fair corporate competition internationally. All of these megatrends are forcing companies, domestically and internationally, to review and revise some of the traditional employment practices that were the strengths of Japanese companies during the period of high economic growth. Naturally, ICT and the changing social and business environments are having a strong impact on the labor environment. Combined with a generally increased presence of women in the workforce, all of these trends are forcing companies to alter their traditional stance that women should play only a supporting role. Many companies are now seriously exploring the potential of women as integral members of the corporate team. ICT is not merely increased the number of jobs. It is actually creating entirely new types of jobs. As a work option, telework is a “new work format” with enormous potential for revolutionizing conventional work and employment formats. Along with these changes, more women today are better educated than ever before thus willing to build their career resulting in a shift in their attitude toward work. However, there are still few women engaging in high-level decision making processes or utilizing their expertise. Consequently, the rapid growth of the female workforce has increased the interests in the potential of telework as an avenue for Japanese women to fully exercise their capabilities.

Telework still is not a popular working style, although it has made an appearance in the1980s in Japan, The reasons why telework is not so popular in Japan are as follows: first, “face to face” communication is highly valued in Japanese culture, thus working in the office with colleagues is regarded as the best working environment. Secondly, many Japanese have not yet been introduced to this new working style. Thirdly, Japanese decision making is carried out through group-style management, which is one of the prominent features of Japanese management. Majority of teleworkers are often excluded from the decision making process in business as they are hired as a means of outsourcing. They can not take an objective and a comprehensive outlook on the job itself. Although telework has been considered merely as a means of outsourcing in Japan, ICT has increased the potential for its expansion, resulting in the conception of Collaborative Telework. Consequently, as the global economy continues to move further from a manufacturing base more towards a service base in web2.0 era, the demand for Collaborative Telework will grow. Thus, the critical factor becomes a process of determining how to divide and distribute the work by both its nature and quality.

The concept of Collaborative Telework is to build a society where diversity is embraced and creativity appreciated, thereby allowing workers to pursue their mission in a coordinated manner. Collaborative Telework, which transcends the boundaries of traditional telework, may play a significant role in realizing this harmonized vision of a knowledge -based society. It generates innovative ways to make effective use of human resources of both in-house and outside staffing with ICT. Better managing human resources may enable in-house teleworkers to promote and maintain their mental and physical health. Additionally, deconstructing the existing structure of an organization by adopting telework would permit the viewing of the system and its internal relationships within the organization. This encourages the discovery of new connections to be drawn between different branches of the organization of same or different ontological levels. By doing so, they will be able to allocate financial and human resources appropriately and avoid bottlenecks. What is more, through efficient coordination and collaboration, organizations will be able to share the know-how and the expertise that each worker possesses. The Collaborative Telework requires one to work toward common goals with other members of the group who have perspectives other than one’s own. It can also assist group members in creating a shared new value and understanding.

In a knowledge-based society, personal knowledge is required to transform into organizational knowledge for the benefit of business, administrative activities and. Collabolative Telework is designed as knowledge-creation system, which enables and encourages people with different expertise in different regions to collaboratively exchange their know-how and knowledge to positively affect policies and decision-making processes. In addition, it is required to be accompanied with knowledge-Creation Center (KCC), which is called. KCC serves to manage and solve problems systematically by sharing, exchanging and learning knowledge, skills, experiences among collaborative teleworker.

AUTHOR
David Sanford Horner

ABSTRACT

In this paper I will present a range of ethical challenges which confront us in dealing with claims about the future impacts of radically new, potentially disruptive technologies. Jim Moor has stated that we need ‘better ethics’ to deal with the problems of emerging technologies (Moor 2005). I have argued elsewhere for a radical scepticism towards the claim of forecasters and futurologists that ‘policy vacuums’, for example in the case of nanotechnology, might be filled by anticipating them (Horner 2005a). Our knowledge and beliefs about the future are constrained, for example, by the effects of imperfect information, the Oedipus effect, discontinuity effects, and revenge effects (Horner 2004).

In spite of the immense obstacles to what we might reasonably claim to know with any certainty nanotechnology continues to be promoted as, for example, ‘a key technology for the future of Europe’. ‘New technologies, including nanotechnology, may provide a part of the answer of how to create alternative life styles for the population that will be in harmony with the planet (Saxl 2005, p.6). No mean claim! Two key ethical areas are often highlighted: military and medical applications. Just over a quarter of the US nanotechnology research budget in 2005 was consumed by the Department of Defence. Other ethical issues are raised by the vision of a ‘nanomedicine’ devoted not merely to ameliorative medical treatment but to the improvement of human performance. Could nanotechnology be the gateway to a new Eugenics? The future-oriented literature on nanotechnology variously conceives it as ranging from revolutionary to incremental, from the scientifically possible to the impossible, from the deterministic to the indeterminate, and ranges from the pessimistic to optimistic regarding consequences (Horner, 2005b). The outcomes are undecided yet there is a sense of definiteness about benefits as about ethical concerns.

But it seems to me there are two areas of general ethical concern which need to be addressed or taken into account in any framework of anticipatory moral assessment. Firstly there are questions about just when is it ethical to forecast or make knowledge claims about the future i.e. the ethics of forecasting? Certainly a knowledge claim about say the consequences of nanomedicine may turn out to be mistaken without being necessarily ethically improper. But a forecast may only be properly made if it is made on the basis of sufficient knowledge, experience and evidence. It must surely be improper if those conditions are lacking (Toulmin, 1969, p.183). Similarly the frailty of our grasp upon the future raises the paradox of moral luck (Williams, 1981). If the success or otherwise of our (moral) decisions is contingent and unforeseeable, dependent on events beyond our control, then results may be a matter of luck. In other words if the outcomes are beyond our knowledge and control then we can’t be held responsible for them. But it is a central plank of moral theory that moral agency and judgement must be immune to luck. Finally, forecasts often serve other functions which might be described as ‘the ‘performative’ or ideological. Prophecy is often a species of ‘moral futurism’: it will be so therefore it ought to be so (Popper 1977, p.205).

Secondly, there are questions about forecasting ethics i.e. just how values will change in the future. We cannot simply assume that our current moral assessments will continue to obtain. The values and moral vocabulary that we do in fact have are the outcome of, and have evolved to meet, past human predicaments. The application of moral concepts and principles to new situations shaped by radical new technologies may be a matter of decision rather than definition; decisions which cannot be made before the event. Just how can we know what future generations may or may not value? It is difficult to see how we might address our moral obligations to future people if we really are unable to forecast accurately the consequences of the adoption of radical technologies (Parfit 1985). This value uncertainty is linked to the ways in which in retrospect our moral assessments change (Grayling 1997). Moral values change over time and those who promote revolutionary conceptions of technological change (‘the nanotechnological revolution’) in particular suggest that values often shift quite rapidly. The emergence of new facts and events change our valuations – the defeasibility of past moral judgements. Our current understanding of the potential and moral implications of ‘nanobots’ may change radically in the light of new threats or opportunities.

The argument of this paper is that any ‘better ethics’ needs to take into account both the problems of the ethics of forecasting and the forecasting of ethics and the need to take seriously the problem of ‘moral ignorance’ in thinking about the future.

REFERENCES

GRAYLING, A.C. (1997) The future of moral values. London: Phoenix.

HORNER, D.S. (2004) The error of futurism: prediction and computer ethics. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society. January 2004, 32, (7).

HORNER, D.S. (2005a) Policies for a ‘nanosociety’: Can we learn now from our future mistakes? In: G. Collste, S.O. Hansson, S. Rogerson and T.W. Bynum, eds. Looking back to the future: The ETHICOMP Decade 1995 – 2005. 12th – 15th September 2005, Linköping University, Sweden [CD-ROM]. Linköping: Centre for Applied Ethics, Linköping University.

HORNER, D.S. (2005b) Anticipating ethical challenges: Is there a coming era of nanotechnology? Ethics and Information Technology, 7, pp.127 – 138.

MOOR, J. (2005) Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies. Paper presented at Ethics of New Information technology. International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry, July 17 – 19, 2005, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.

PARFIT, D. (1985) Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

POPPER, K. (1977) The Open Society and its enemies: Volume 2 Hegel and Marx . London: Routledge.

SAXL, O. (2005) Nanotechnology – a key technology for the future of Europe. [Report] Institute of Nanotechnology, UK, for the European Commission Expert Group on Key Technologies for Europe, July 2005.

TOULMIN, S. (1969) The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WILLIAMS, B. (1981) Moral luck: philosophical papers 1973 – 1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

AUTHOR
Lawrence M. Hinman

ABSTRACT

We are entering the third generation of web searching, and—like all new generations—it raises new ethical issues that the older generation must confront. This paper offers a preliminary consideration of some of the ethical issues raised by the development of the semantic web and the search techniques that will allow us to access it. Among those issues is a profound reframing of the balance between global and local frames of reference, especially as this is reflected in the development of W3C’s Web Ontology Language (OWL).

Localization dominated the first generation of web searching, which principally took the form of informal guides and content directories such as one found in the early days of Yahoo. Typically, such guides were specific to a certain locale or country, or at least specific to a particular set of issues. Often they were limited by the linguistic competence of their creators, and they occurred at a time when machine-based translation was in its infancy and more prone to produce baby talk than adult prose.

The second generation of web searching began when search engine technology began to emerge in its current form: massively arrayed computing power, storage capacity beyond the wildest dreams at the beginning of the web, and sophisticated web crawlers, spiders, and bots of all species that actively and increasingly accurately were able to retrieve, store, and index the material on the web. With the addition of sophisticated algorithms to establish the relative prominence of particular pages and site, this technology was brought to near perfection by Google and its competitors. This was, moreover, an intrinsically global technology, particularly with the advent of increasingly sophisticated translation technology. (Interestingly, Google has emerged as one of the international leaders in the development of new translation software. News@Nature.com, 7 November 2006) Once the translation barrier was crossed, there was no reason in principle that we could not have truly universal search engines, accessing all information on the web, regardless of language.

To be sure, there remained an important local function even in this picture. The process of importing already-existing information into the web for the first time continued to be a primarily local enterprise, the undertaking of nations, ethnic and tribal groups, scholarly societies, etc. This will continue to be the case in the foreseeable future. Indeed, as cell-phone-based searching becomes increasingly common, there will be even greater incentives to make local information available on-line. Even such a massive and ambitious project as Google Scholar seems to be focusing primarily (at least initially) on English language works. Interestingly, in its German version (http://scholar.google.de), one finds a greater sensitivity to the protection of information, a sensitivity that reflects both German law and German sensibilities in this area.

Certain political factors have also contributed to keeping searches localized. China has been the most widely publicized case. Not only have Chinese officials successfully sought to limit results available to local Chinese residents, but they have in several high profile cases sought to use search histories to track down dissidents. Nor is China the only country where this is the case. A number of Middle Eastern countries seek to limit search results available to their citizens both on political grounds and also on moral grounds (pornography, gambling, etc.).

In 2001, Tim Berners-Lee published his seminal article on the semantic web in Scientific American. Although a semantic web was part of Berners-Lee’s vision of the web since 1994, it is only recently that such a web seems within our technological reach. The traditional web, the one with which we are so familiar, was fundamentally organized as a series of documents, or clusters of documents, that human beings could access individually. First and foremost, the current web has become a massive collection of pages that individuals can look at, read, study, listen to. What has been missing, according to Berners-Lee and others, has been a structure of meaning within which these individual bits of information contained in documents could be embedded in a more meaningful and useful way. This is the underlying vision of a semantic web.

The movement toward a semantic web is, in many ways, a movement toward globalization, at least in format and ontology. The pressure for a semantic web comes from many forces, at least some of which are associated with globalization in other areas. Business, commerce, trade, and travel all become easier on a global level if there is a common semantics governing the exchange of information across the web. Such exchange becomes far easier if there is a framework for describing resources that is shared by all the participants in the exchange, and for this we need a Resource Description Framework (RDF) which is then able to provide Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs), which contains the possible characteristics of particular kinds of objects and thereby facilitates easy ranging across a set of data that would otherwise not be recognizable by a computer as being of the same type. This provides the beginnings of a universal framework within which all the bits of information on the web can be situated.

One of the most interesting conflicts internal to this developing set of standards concerns ontologies, and this controversy bears directly on the issue of “Glocalisation.” In order to see this more clearly, we can divide ontologies into two categories: top-down and bottom-up. Top-down ontologies are currently being established in many areas of the natural sciences, such as genomics and epidemiology, where there is a great need for the rapid and accurate and continual exchange of information across traditional geographical and political boundaries. Such ontologies typically resonate with, and reinforce, movements toward globalization. Folksonomies, the contrasting approach to data structuring is called provide much more emphasis on what could be called indigenous classificatory systems. These are rooted in the ways in which particular communities structure or tag their data, and as such are much friendlier to the “local” aspect of “Glocalisation.”

REFERENCES

Berners-Lee, t., J. Hendler, and O. Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” Scientific American, May 2001, pp. 34–43.

Berners-Lee, T., R.T. Fielding, and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax,” IETF RFP 3986 (standards track), Internet Eng. Task Force, Jan. 2005; http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt.

Introna, Lucas D. and Helen Nissenbaum (2000) “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters”, The Information Society, Vol. 16, No.3, 1-17.

Machill, M., Welp, C., eds. Wegweiser im Netz: Qualität und Nutzung von Suchmaschinen. Bielefeld: Verlag Bertelsman Stiftung, 2003.

Shadbolt, Nigel, Wendy Hall, and Tim Berners-Lee, “The Semantic Web Revisited,: IEEE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS (MAY/JUNE 2006), 96-101.

Sparck-Jones, K. “What’s New about the Semantic Web? Some Questions,” SIGIR Forum, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004. http://www.acm.org/sigir/forum/2004D/sparck_jones_sigirforum_2004d.pdf .

Watts, D.J.,P.S. Dodds, and M.E.J. Newman, “Identity and Search in Social Networks,” Science, vol. 296, 2002, pp. 1302–1305.

AUTHOR
Himma Kenneth Einar

ABSTRACT

The idea of agency is conceptually associated with the idea of being something capable of doing something that counts as an act. Agents are intentional beings that perform acts and hence do things. People and dogs are both capable of performing acts; people are, while dogs are not, rational agents because only people can deliberate on reasons, but both seem to be agents. In contrast, trees are not agents; trees grow leaves, but growing leaves is not something that happens as the result of an act on the part of the tree.

One can distinguish natural agents from artificial agents. Some agents are natural in the sense that their existence can be explained by purely biological processes and states; people and dogs are natural agents insofar as they exist in consequence of biological reproductive capacities – and are hence biologically alive. Some agents might be artificial in the sense that they are manufactured by intentional agents out of pre-existing materials that are external to the manufacturers; such agents are artifacts. Highly sophisticated computers might be artificial agents; they are clearly artificial and would be artificial agents if they satisfy the criteria for agency.

Although only an agent can be a moral agent, agency is different from moral agency. The idea of moral agency is conceptually associated with the idea of being accountable for one’s behavior. To say that one’s behavior is governed by moral standards and hence that one has moral duties or moral obligations is to say that one’s behavior should be guided by and hence evaluated under those standards. Something subject to moral standards is accountable (or morally responsible) for its behavior under those standards.

These are comparatively uncontroversial conceptual claims (i.e., claims about the content of the concept). As Routledge Encyclopedia of Encyclopedia explains the notion, “[m]oral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality.” According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “a moral agent [is] one who qualifies generally as an agent open to responsibility ascriptions.”

It is generally thought that, at the most general level, there are two capacities necessary and jointly sufficient for moral agency. The first capacity is the capacity to freely choose one’s acts. The idea here is that, at the very least, one must be the direct cause of one’s behavior in order to be characterized as freely choosing that behavior; something whose behavior is directly caused by something other than itself has not freely chosen its behavior. If, for example, A injects B with a drug that makes B so uncontrollably angry that B is helpless to resist it, then B has not freely chosen his or her behavior. Only an agent can be a moral agent – and, indeed, only a free agent.

The second capacity necessary for moral agency is related to rationality. As traditionally expressed, the capacity is knowledge of right and wrong; someone who does not know the difference between right and wrong is not a moral agent and not appropriately censured for her behaviors. This is, of course, why we do not punish people with severe cognitive disabilities like a psychotic condition that interferes with the ability to understand the moral character of her behavior.

This requires a number of capacities. First, and most obviously, it requires a minimally adequate understanding of moral concepts like “good,” “bad,” “obligatory,” “wrong,” and “permissible” and thus requires the capacity to form and use concepts. Second, it requires an ability to grasp at least those moral principles that we take to be basic – like the idea that it is wrong to intentionally cause harm to human beings unless they have done some sort of wrong that would warrant it (which might very well be a principle that is universally accepted across cultures). Third, it requires the ability to identify the facts that make one rule relevant and another irrelevant. For example, one must be able to see that pointing a loaded gun at a person’s head and pulling the trigger implicates such rules. Finally, it requires the ability to correctly apply these rules to certain paradigm situations that constitute the meaning of the rule. Someone who has the requisite ability will be able to determine that setting fire to a person is morally prohibited by the rule governing murder.

While the necessary conditions for moral agency as I have described them do not explicitly contain any reference to consciousness, it is reasonable to think that each of the necessary capacities presuppose consciousness. The idea of accountability, which is central to the meaning of “moral agency,” is sensibly attributed only to conscious beings. It seems irrational to praise or censure something that isn’t conscious – no matter how otherwise sophisticated its computational abilities might be. Praise, reward, censure, and punishment are rational responses only to beings capable of experiencing conscious states like pride and shame.

This paper will explore the issue of whether consciousness is a necessary condition for moral agency and, if so, what this tells us about the possibility of artificial agents that are moral agents in the sense that they are properly held accountable for their behavior. The essay will begin with an analysis of the concepts of agency, artificial agency, natural agency, and moral agency. It will continue with a meta-ethical analysis of the properties something must have to be accountable for its behavior and hence to be a moral agent. It will then consider the issue of whether consciousness is implicitly presupposed by these conditions. Finally, the essay ends with an application of the preceding analysis to the question of whether computers or artificial agents can be moral agents.

The substance and methodology of this essay is fairly characterized as multi-disciplinary, drawing together elements from conceptual analysis, meta-ethics, information ethics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of computing. It will also draw on some of the existing literature on artificial and moral agency. The paper seeks to shed light on important moral problems that will arise as computing technologies become ever more complex, powerful, and sophisticated.

AUTHOR
KAMEDA Hideaki, SUMITA Tomofumi, SHIMAZAKI Masahito

ABSTRACT

International market competition intensified, and a Japanese company, manufacturing industry in particular rebuilt personnel system to achieve corporate strategy while globalization advanced after 1990’s, and many companies were able to go ahead through introduction of personnel system to advocate the principle of result.

However, after the bubble collapses, they have been pointing out a short-term point of achievements to happen to expect the principle of result excessively or motivation down of an employee with it as a problem of a company organization.

However, as a result of having performed reflection of the principle of result that a Japanese company is excessive, it may be said that the present age is the times when long-term result is demanded from both an employee and a company not together short-term result.

And, in a Japanese company, they reconsider a way of thinking of human resources development.

They thought that a person of object of education should have selected, or thought that an employee had responsibility of ability development.

However, in late years the thought changes somewhat, and they think human resources development to be necessary I stand in a long-term field of vision, and to wrestle in responsibility of a company again.

It may be said that a key for both a company and an employee to achieve result to the maximum together hangs for the management of a middle manager of each place of work.

However, from a result of slimming and personnel reduction of management, a middle manager comes to carry a role as employment as a playing manager while performing a conventional role to say with a manager of a place of work.

In other words, as for them, it is expected duties improvement, subordinate upbringing, the achievement of duties aim and the management of the routine that said and new problem discovery and solution, vision construction, systems design and the management of the innovation that said as a role of a middle manager at the same time while oneself is in charge of some of a theme of a place of work same as a subordinate.

Therefore we think that playing manager who　have network ability to have many human networks, to transmit and receive much information, and to install cooperation of a person concerned with speedily, have been expected.

A company is fixing a new education system for ability development to cope with the principle of result., and　considers ability development to perform for a middle manager too.

However, there is human network construction as a problem of the personnel training that cannot support by a conventional ability development program. Construction of an unofficial network represented as a new trial to solve it by an off site meeting and cross function team is regarded as important.

We think that an unofficial network solves what a check between members thought about for communication by conventional IT and distrust and a saying evil produced.

In addition, it is thought that an unofficial network becomes basic as for us as the place where a place of exchange of necessary information and the new problem formation are performed so that a manager accomplishes a role.

We applied SEC-CIS combination model that quoted an SECI model so that construction of an unofficial network considered a background regarded as important and considered a process of network construction in managers in an off site meeting.

In other words S (socialization)→ E(externalization) → C(combination) and a process to say and the information addressee who expressed information an information sender as for the communication thought about us when I applied an SECI model to interpret the dispatch / reception of information between members in an off site meeting when it was divided expressed information into C(combination) → I(internalization) → S(socialization) which did internalization and a process to say.

Then　ｍembers understand to some extent such as duties of a partner and one’s thought and sense of values for a company organization, home or a local action in the background belonging to the person information 　because they have already performed self-introduction of long time each other.

Therefore a person receiving information can understand a process of S → E → C that a partner sending information to expresses information deeply.

In addition, we thought that we could come to send information while assuming what kind of process an addressee reached C → I → S by when an information sender sent information.

We thought about the process with a valuable process for relations of a member to turn from relations of a check and an opposition of distrust into relations of cooperation.

And we examined a direction of the new management by network construction and examined an ideal method of new education system for ability development.