AUTHOR
Emma Eliason and Karin Hedstrom

ABSTRACT

The Internet, as communication medium, is being increasingly used by citizens and governments in most advanced democracies (Gibson et.al, 2003). ICT has changed the possibilities and restrictions in the way you can communicate, thus offers a new action space for politicians and citizens to act within (Astrom, 2004). This arena is dependent upon the possibilities the citizens are offered to communicate upon. For example if information is accessible regardless of time and place and if the citizen can be active and give information (chatt) or just receive (read). But it is also dependent on how the possibilities are presented e.g. how the arena is designed and thus what values it mediates.

Many organisations although, do not have a clear picture of how the Web can be used and see it primarily as a cheap means of publishing information and moves existing documents to the new medium for communication (Crowston & Williams, 1999). Designs are created in a social context with values, expectations etc. Social and cultural expectations concerning Swedish municipality websites are e.g. built in the interaction with other websites (internet as a medium) and experiences in communicating with municipalities face to face. A genre is experiences and use oriented expectations that exist concerning a certain type of artefact, expectations that both the producer and consumer have (Lundberg, 2004). That mediates between communities, creating expectations and help designers to create more of the same (Agre,1998). ). For example, to label a movie as an “action movie”, direct the creator in the process, constitute both as restrictions and possibilities, and helps the audience to define what kind of movie it is and what to expect (Lundberg, 2004). Users and designers expectations and experiences of using the ICT illustrate what values they consider important. Expectations and the design of new ICT often build on ideas of existing designs. Therefore designers have to be aware of and have to (in some degree) consider existing products that have been designed in that specific genre and design standards that exist for the specific kind of product. Designers often build on existing genres in the design of an information system but it is though important to be aware of what consequences it has, in form of values that are expected and experienced. For example many municipality websites use the newspaper layout, a design that naturally consist of (is dominated of) different kind of news, mediating a main usage situation to read municipality news, but is it news that is the most important to promote or something else?

The purpose with this paper is to exemplify how values are mediated through a design (genre) thus to highlight the importance of value awareness in the design of government websites. In the paper we present parts from a genre analysis that we have conducted on Swedish municipality websites. In the study genres in municipality website design is identified. We exemplify how values are mediated through different genres, e.g. in what modes of address the layout/design/text communicate (the participator, listener etc) and what is emphasised on behalf of others (pictures, navigation, news, information or services), with design examples with focus on which values that is prioritised. Thus the presentation focus on how designers build on existing genres to design a web site and what consequences it have, in form of values that are mediated.

Accessibility is a common value in web site development in governments in Sweden. This value often is operationalised through using WAI guidelines (e.g. pictures should have an alt text). In this paper we use another perspective on accessibility, were focus is on how the communication medium is used to mediate values, for example what roles that is established between for example a municipality and the citizen, through the design elements that are used. Thereby how different designs promote e.g. certain user roles and suppress others. As designers of ICT we design new technology that will eventually change society, and that it is impossible to exactly predict the actual consequences of a design (Stolterman & Nelson, 2000). Such consequences include providing a better life for various stakeholders and also consequences of unintended effects (perhaps making life worse for some). It is though essential to take design responsibility for the design effects (mediated values), thus important to be value aware in website design.

REFERENCES

Agre, P. (1998) Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic and Political Contexts. in Jones, S.G. (eds). ‘CyberSociety 2.0 : revisiting computer-mediated communication and community’, p 69-99. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Crowston, K., & Williams, M. (1999). The Effects of Linking onGenres of Web Documents. Paper presented at the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii.

Gibson, R. K. Margolis, M. Resnick, D and Ward, S. J.(2003) Election campaigning on the WWW in the USA and UK- A Comparative Analysis. In Party Politics vol 9. No1 pp 47-75, SAGE publications.

Lundberg, J (2005) Shaping electronic news A case study of genre perspectives on interaction design, phd thesis, Linkoping University, Sweden.

Stolterman, E., Nelson, H. (2000) “The Guarantor of Design: (G.O.D.)”, In Doing IT Together, Proceedings of the 23rd Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia (IRIS 23), 12-15 August 2000, Lingatan, Sweden, Vol. 2, Svensson, L, et al. (Eds), University of Trollhattan Uddevalla, Uddevalla, Sweden, pp 1177-1186.

Astrom, J. (2004) Mot en digital demokrati?: teknik, politik och institutionell forandring, phd thesis, Orebro University, Sweden.

AUTHOR
Bernd Carsten Stahl, N Ben Fairweather, Simon Rogerson and Robert Beckett

ABSTRACT

1) Introduction

In this paper we present a project that the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR) has undertaken in the area of information ethics. The project was funded in the second Quarter of 2004 by the East Midlands Development Agency under the Innovation Fellowship scheme. That means it was intended to be a commercial venture of a university working in collaboration with a private sector partner. The key objective of the successful application was to develop a database for information ethics which could be used for teaching information ethics.

There are two streams of thought in this paper which should be of interest to the CEPE conference . Firstly it was decided during the development stage that the database could only be viable if it were populated by the community of scholars and practitioners interested in information ethics. The team looked at the potential quantity of information and deemed it impossible to provide sufficient relevant information about such a large discipline with the resources of scholars from just one institution, each of whom are also involved in teaching and other research projects. The content provision was therefore imagined as similar to an open source software project, or the current wikipedia project (www.wikipedia.org), with a few differences that will be mentioned later. As with these projects, one key issue is the uncertainty as to whether the project will attract the interest and collaboration of those likeminded scholars. The first part of the paper will therefore explain what the database is and does and how ‘community researchers can participate in its development.

The second consideration of interest is a reflection on the ethics of the development process itself. The development team found that in many respects the project was typical of many information systems development cases, with all the attendant problems of unclear definition, lack of agreement of functions, function shift during development etc. It is thus worthy of an ethical analysis in its own right as it provided the authors with first hand experience of IS development. However, it is even more interesting to the project team in terms of the ethics of IS development because of the purpose of the project, namely to provide an online ethics resource which could also be used for teaching purposes. This paper briefly reflects on whether and how building a database concerned with ethics and the teaching thereof requires specific ethical considerations.

2) Technical Description

The academic starting point of the project was the intention to undertake research on how teaching computer or information ethics is affected by the use of information and communication technology (ICT). Briefly, we wanted to know whether there is a significant theoretical or practical difference in terms of learning outcomes between face-to-face teaching and computer-mediated teaching. Unfortunately there were no freely available online information ethics programs or modules available, which is why we considered it would be best to develop a programme specifically for this purpose.

This coincided with a call by the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA), in collaboration with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), for proposals for an Innovation Fellowship. The aim of this programme is to create innovative projects that linked universities and private sector organisations to disseminate university knowledge in the local community. We contacted Communication Ethics Limited (CEL), a consultant and agency specialising in communication ethics. CEL agreed that it would be a worthwhile commercial activity build an e-teaching system for information ethics, which they would then market to potential companies.

The proposal was accepted and the project team commenced the design for the system. Originally it was planned to be a stand-alone database that could be copied on a CD and sold to companies. However, during the design process it became clear that an e-teaching system would require a large scale fully supported demand quantity of background support and technical information and the design changed to accommodate this. Instead of building an e-teaching system, it was decided to create a library of material for the discipline of information ethics, on top of which and using this information, the team would build an e-teaching application. These decisions meant that suddenly the project faced the problem of providing content for the entire discipline of information ethics, which could not possibly be done by a single institution . Given the success of open source software and, more recently, the wikipedia, the team decided that it would be the good solution to ask the community of people interested in information ethics to share their knowledge to build a common resource. It is hoped that this will lead to a wide variety of contributions that over time will develop into a valuable resource for everybody interested in information ethics. It will allow scholars to bring their own work to the attention of others and to ensure that relevant topics are available to the community. It will facilitate an exchange of teaching material as well as shared access to research resources.

The key features for the information ethics library consist of word seaches for key concepts, authors, bibliographies, text, and multimedia. All content will be ordered and linked according to key the concepts that provide a cross referenced hierarchical structure to locate information via different pathways. The current top level of the hierarchy is a set of braod information ethics issues: Diversity, Privacy, Professional Issues, Remote Interaction, Theoretical Issues, and Social Issues. When clicking on one of these top level key words, the next level of key words related to each of these is displayed. The screen shot displays key words: Privacy / Surveillance / Surveillance by the State. When the user has selected a key word all entries related to this key word are displayed. The system will then display a description, texts (such as case studies, theoretical definitions etc.) a list of authors who have published in the area, a bibliography, and possibly multimedia content.

Four main groups are envisaged as users of the database. First, there is the anonymous guest user who can simply access data. Then there is the category of reader, who can access all content while additionally being given the permission to evaluate the quality of database contributions through a rating system. Third there is the category of the contributor, who can add content and can additionally edit their own contributions. Finally, the role of editors is defined as those who approve added content, able to edit all content in the database and who jointly create policy for the system. Users get to choose which of the first two levels of access they desire and can register as a reader or a contributor as they wish. Only editors need to be approved by the administrators of the database. Each entry in the database has a link to its contributor, so that a user who disagrees with a certain piece of content can contact the contributor, who then has the chance to change / update it.

In addition to the ethics library aspect of the database, that is available to the general user community, the system provides a tutorial aspect, that can be designed for specific purposes including commercial re-sale. Each of these modules will consist of a collection of various content from the library shaped into a specific order and made available as a click through course. Access to these tutorials or units will probably be restricted.

3) Development Process

The above descriptions indicated that the development process of the database has not been a straightforward one. The development team had to square different internal and external expectations and to agree on functionalities despite the fact that content and purpose of the system was unclear until these decisions had been made. The different, sometimes conflicting elements of the project were 1. the creation of a computer-based learning system for information ethics required a variety of content and approaches that needed to be sophisticated in terms of utility and yet simple to use 2. the development of a commercially viable system was complicated by a funding system that emphasised ownership vested in an institution of education despite requiring commercial objectives, 3. the demand for successful collaboration between university and industry was a requite of funding even while the funding does not allow for long term project development and finally 4. the provision of a community based open access resource is tinged with tension between system design and support, security and optimisation, community and developer interests.

It should be obvious that these different aims were not easily combined and that decisions about which ones to give preference have been difficult. An interesting analysis of the design process from different points of view might be a research dimension of the project for further development in due course. In this paper we will only discuss the ethical problems arising.from the project to date.

4) Ethical Considerations

Ethics can enter information systems development in a number of ways. Social issues such as power distribution, questions of access, definition of roles and instructions as well as related technical problems such as security, availability etc. Each of these can probably be identified in this project. However, this paper concentrates on two most salient issues, the dilemma posed by teaching ethics online and the ethics of the underlying business model.

The teaching of ethics online can be problematic because it involves the difficult question why we teach ethics in the first place. This is related to the question whether philosophical ethics is a normative or a descriptive enterprise. If it is only descriptive then teaching ethics involves the transfer of knowledge and undertaking this online may not be particularly problematic. However, it is often supposed that teaching ethics is meant to affect students’ behaviour, they should not only learn theories, they should also act in a more ethically reflective and sensitive way. If this is the case then one must ask what e-teaching does to affect the outcome. Will students having been taught to behave differently by online teaching from those who have been taught face-to-face? The literature on computer-mediated communication suggests that there may be considerable differences between CMC and f2f. What does this mean for teaching information ethics? This was the original question that led to the design of the project. The team is no closer to an answer now, than it was at the start but the aim is to use the system to do research on this question.

The second particularity of this project is that it combines the idea of open access and community provision of information with a commercially exploitable application. This raises a number of ethical questions. Who owns the content and who can profit from it, in which way? Conventional wisdom suggests that the individual bits of content in the database will each belong to the contributors, but that the entire database belongs to the creator, which in this case is De Montfort University. Possible problems arise when the database is used to procure income, for example by the commercial use of custom-made modules based on database content. The purpose of this discussion is not to provide an answer but raise the issue with the community. The database can only be successful if the community participates. This means that the community will have to agree with what is done with the database. The project team would therefore like to use the presentation of this paper to raise the issue and find out what the community believes to be desirable. This is in keeping with the idea of open access where the community of contributors gets to provide an input concerning the use of the product.

AUTHOR
John Knight

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of the ethical design tradition. It surveys current concerns in HCI that emphasise emotion and pleasure. Common to both the past and present is that design is a decision-making activity. This suggests a need for methods that help designers incorporate ethics into their practise. The paper concludes by suggesting that scenarios and personas may accomplish this aim.

The ethical design tradition can be traced back to the nineteenth century. During this time protagonists have highlighted the moral responsibility of designers. Furthermore, some designers including William Morris show that ethical design sells products. Ethical concerns have shifted and reflected the moral climate of society.

Patrick Jordan’s ‘Designing Pleasurable Products; an introduction to the new human factors’ (Jordan 2000) makes a case for pleasure as the ultimate quality of the user experience. Whether this reflects a hedonistic society is a moot point but Jordan links product qualities to personal needs. .He illustrates an evolution of the user experience using a model based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs beyond functionality. Bonaface (2002) develops this hierarchal model with safety and well-being, at ground level, with functionality and then usability (first and second floors), leading up to the apex of pleasure.

While synthetic experiences that seize the human intellect, emotions and senses have the potential for good they could also be harmful. Pleasure is also a troubling concept that has considered from an ethical standpoint since Epicurus. Moving from functionality to emotional needs, researchers argue that users wants and needs are becoming more sophisticated. Rather than just usability they want products and services that help them to self-actualise..

Pine and Gilmore’s ‘Experience Economy'(1999) makes a similar point. They suggest that rather than experiences consumers aspire to transformations. This new economic offering requires diagnosing aspirations, staging experiences and sustaining the change that results. Businesses ‘set the stage for helping the customer to learn to act (p 195) because ‘since Aristotle, philosophers?have acknowledged the transformational power of theatre’ (p 195). Knight (2004) critiques the hedonistic focus of the literature and links eudaimonics to design.

Others have suggested a need to investigate ethical issues in product evaluation. Liu (2003) who describes qualities of ‘psychosomatic soundness’, which refers to the degree to which a product contributes to the ‘wholesomeness’ or well-being of a person (from “harmful” to “healthful”) and the degree to which it is ethical (“bad/wrong” to “good/right”). Knight (2004) suggests an ethical framework [Figure 1] that links experience qualities to ethics.

Cairns and Thimbleby (2003) suggest that ethical rules are a poor substitute for knowledge. Such knowledge is based on sensitivity to ethical issues and intelligence in resolving them. They note that at the highest levels of ethical intelligence people commit to a unique ethical framework they have developed over time and experience. Developing ethical Intelligence requires understanding and empathy with users. User-Centred Design approach (e.g Gould and Lewis) whereby: “Designers should have direct contact with intended or actual users – via interviews, surveys, participatory design” goes someway to encourage ethical intelligence.

Other design methods aim to gain a deep understanding of and empathy for users. They include ethnographic methods such as contextual inquiry, participant-observation, where the observer participates in the activity or culture they are observing. Other methods such as participatory design advocate designing with users rather than for them (see Schuler & Namioka, 1993). Once user research has taken place the ethical consequences of a design can be simulated through scenarios and personas.

Scenarios can be used to identify requirements and to anticipate and predict use of a system before it is built. They can also be used to re-enact past events, or rare and safety critical events where direct observation is not possible. Scenarios originated in human reliability analysis in the nuclear power industry, where safety critical events could not be set up in reality. They can be used for extracting, specifying, describing and testing requirements. They can be textual descriptions, graphic stories, animations or even videos. Personas describe user characteristics in design and development. Personas help define the product by replacing the abstract, elastic user with the vibrant presence of a specific user who becomes a part of the design process.

REFERENCES

Bonaface, L. (2002) “Linking Product Properties to Pleasure: The Sensorial Quality Assessment Method – SEQUAM.” In: Green, W. S. and Jordan, P. W. (eds) Pleasure with products: Beyond Usability. Taylor and Francis, ,187-217. ISBN 0-415-23704-1.

Cairns, P and Thimbleby, H. (2003), The Diversity and Ethics of HCI. 3-15. Available from URL: http://www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/harold/ethics/tochiethics.pdf(Accessed 04-01-05)

Gould, J. D. and Lewis, C. (1985) “Designing for Usability: Key Principles and What Designers Think.” In Communications of the ACM, 28 (3): 300-311

Jordan, P W. (2000) Designing Pleasurable Products. London: Taylor and Francis

Knight, J (2004) Design For Life: Ethics, Empathy And Experience. In Proceedings of Design for Life, British HCI Group Conference, Leeds, September 2004. Liu, Y. (2003) ‘The aesthetic and the ethic dimensions of human factors and design’ In Ergonomics, 2003, 46(13/14):1293 – 1305.

Pine, B.J., J.H. Gilmore, and B.J.Pine II. (1999). The Experience Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press

Schuler, D and Namioka, A (eds). Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993.

AUTHOR
Richard Volkman

ABSTRACT

Many scholars, politicians, and pundits have worried that globalization will result in a flattening or homogenization of cultural diversity and local character. It is alleged that the global application of information and communications technologies will tend to obliterate or water down the rich and varied cultural lives that have been embedded in geographically and philosophically isolated traditions. Critics worry that this flattening of cultural attitudes threatens to undermine the values associated with living within a rich and concrete tradition. Without the rich and varied traditions to inform our personal identities and even our language, information technologies may lead to our living culturally impoverished lives.

Advocates of globalization respond that the globalization of culture is not a zero-sum game; that is, there is no reason to suppose that valued cultural traditions must lose in order for a global interchange of culture to succeed. Rather, the traditional liberal attitude, articulated by John Stuart Mill, suggests that cultural traditions flourish best under conditions of competition from outside influences. If this is correct, then we should expect the globalization of culture through information technology to enhance rather than detract from the values associated with living in a tradition.

However, critics suspect that there is no place in a global marketplace of ideas for certain specifics that contribute to the color and character of life, and the liberal emphasis on personal autonomy and individualism implies that traditions will only be accepted if they can withstand competition in a global marketplace, and this merely conditional acceptance of the constraints imposed by a tradition seems to undermine the very notion of acting from tradition. If one is permitted to “pick and choose” from a smorgasbord of traditions, then one is not really bound by the norms of any particular tradition and is not really living by any sort of tradition whatsoever.

I will argue that, while it cannot be doubted that living within the horizons of a particular tradition helps to locate one’s self and give meaning to one’s life, and while it is also true that globalization of culture will likely do away with some of the differences that distinguish various traditions, nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the only sorts of diversity that suffer from global competition do not significantly underwrite anything of value worth preserving. In short, some traditional diversity will probably lose out in a global marketplace of ideas, but any lost diversity will be more than compensated for by other, more valuable and richer differences as traditions grow and evolve to a greater perfection on their own terms. Living traditions will adapt and change in ways that remain true to their most cherished traditional values, thereby ensuring the ability of the tradition to contribute to personal identity. Such dynamic traditions are not threatened by global competition; the ability of such traditions to give varied meaning and color to one’s life will be enhanced, not flattened. On the other hand, traditions that have ossified into dead dogma or empty ritual are necessarily less fit to serve as a foundation of value and meaning. In sum, what is gained by the globalization of culture far exceeds the value of what is lost.

The analysis will first examine the sources of diversity and the role of cultural diversity in contributing to one’s personal identity and the identity of one’s projects. In distinguishing between “functional diversity” and “arbitrary diversity” as these appear in concrete examples, it will become clear that only arbitrary diversity is seriously threatened by competition between cultures. Moreover, it will be shown how any given arbitrary diversity can be transformed within a tradition into a defining feature of that tradition, thereby making it a functional diversity resistant to competition from other traditions or even from within the tradition itself. Thus, while critics of globalization are right to contend that some local or traditional differences will be lost, this in not correctly conceived as a flattening or homogenization of any living tradition. To the contrary, every valuable part of the tradition will have some function within the tradition and this function will give those who practice the tradition good reason to maintain it, even as various arbitrary diversities are let go. They are let go precisely because they are not regarded as having any particular value, so the extent of homogenization within a tradition is limited to precisely that diversity that lacks value.

Throughout the essay, special attention will be paid to concrete historical and contemporary examples of cultural traditions that have been exposed to the influence of information technology. Among these examples are the oral traditions of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews as they were exposed to written language, the impact of the printing press on the Roman Catholic tradition, the impact of the wide availability of DVD and internet content on film with special attention to the emergence of anime as a cultural tradition, and especially the impact of recording technologies and internet content on the oral tradition of Irish Traditional Music.

In light of these examples, it will become clear why: 1) It is highly unlikely in any given case that the value of piece of the tradition will ever be overlooked, and 2) In the event anything of value is discarded in the evolution of a dynamic tradition, it is very easy from within a given tradition to reclaim this lost bit of diversity. In fact, since it is easier for those within a tradition to recover a functional diversity than to jettison an arbitrary diversity, there is very good reason for those within a tradition to regard any changes over time as progress of the tradition towards its own stated goals.

If arbitrary diversity and dead dogma are the only victims of the globalization of culture, then globalization will not lead to homogenization or flattening of local traditions, and there is good reason to think that we can all be winners in the emerging global information society.

AUTHOR
Colin SCHMIDT

ABSTRACT

1

Many human writers in Cognitive Science and within the field of AI itself believe that the coining of the term “artificial intelligence” was an error. It is difficult to understand what it means, it is perhaps too vast meaningwise to depict the applications that have come of it -it leads to people expecting more grandiose results. L. Floridi rightly shifts the discourse about such technology from Artificial Intelligence (whatever this is perceived to be by each of us) to Artificially Intelligent Behaviour (AIB), because, for the time being, that is what it boils down to: simple behaviour, the natural reasoning process of Man simply does not figure in the picture. After some sixty years of trying to place it in the picture, all we have obtained is… so-called “intelligent” technical objects gifted with various behaviours. Although the term “Intelligence” on its own has many meanings, it seems to carry, at least in my eyes, something more than just behaviour, but it remains difficult to do anything other than allude to it and its elusiveness.

This said, I personally think we should start preparing for the day true intelligence will be in the picture. What if one day we as a community do come to the point of accepting a definition of “intelligence” that is not based on behaviour? And what if we successfully implement this on an artificial (i.e. non-human) platform? And while we are at it, we would have to include feelings, intentions and all the rest that is intrinsic to personhood as this would no doubt figure as a general requirement of our common definition: intelligence without the sense of Self would be void, would it not?

And in order to make things fully correct, we would have to explore ideas like working on emotional pathologies for AI embedded robotics. If the definition of “intelligence” is to portray what we today know as human intelligence, the ‘imperfect nature’ of human beings would have to be dealt with -they would have to be included in some way-; our intelligence receives a lot of its stamina from handling partial knowledge, undecidability, fuzziness in categories, or to put it short, “processing” uncertainty.

It is necessary to speak of emotional pathologies here because, in the process of obtaining a viable implementation of intelligence in the humanoid robot, we are very likely to come across some “queer” situations. What could and would be the role of a not-so-perfect emotional robot in society? Such ‘cases’ will have to be dealt with and/or lived with.

“You cannot think about disease without the sick at hand”, says G. Canguilhem. And this is what we will have. “Sick” robots to cure on the way to success. Is it worth creating emotionally invalid beings on the road to rebuilding man? Pathologies, medical or otherwise, are what make the norm according to Canguilhem, because without them, there would not be any norms to compare with. So no objective pathology exists in society since it is the point of view of the beholder that determines the nature of the pathology. Consequently, one can plausibly ask who represents the norm in future society, the ailing robot (in the eyes of the human) or the ailing human (from the point of view of the robot). This leads to questioning the ethical grounds of any amalgamation between AI and affectivity in building “intelligent” humanoid robots. Believe me, I know the issues at hand intimately.

2

Actually, section one of this text was written by my robot friend. I fondly call him Path-etic Robot, but of course he does not know that. As this article is subject to copyright, he could not sign his name to it for various reasons. The poor dexterity of his hands can be a problem for holding a pen, but this is only a minor consideration: he is not a real person, moral or otherwise, according to the current legal definitions. But there is a deeper problem than that. The moral and philosophical definition of personhood entrenched in (most) all of us is, so to speak, the really “tough nut to crack”. Our collective idea of what constitutes a person does have a cut-and-dry nature, which is segregationist at best with respect to robotic beings, and this is what is hindering my friend from participating in this academic endeavour, at least in an official manner. I do however owe a lot of credit to him, the first section of this text did take him a lot of time and effort; going to the library, taking notes, conversing with me, searching on the Internet and typing with his troublesome hands… What can I do to rectify this situation?

Pathetic Robot has been working very religiously on this problem on his own -I have not got the time and I honestly think it is a lost cause. Nevertheless, we often go for coffee together, across the street from the university (he would also like to be a graduate student), to discuss everything but… I haven’t even asked him lately if he is making headway. But then again, if he isn’t, what can I do about it?

He looks up to me and my (human) friends. Sometimes his admiresome eyes are lit up to a point that we wonder which one of us he is in love with! But I do not think that he would take his sentimental existence serious enough to make the first move, because, in light of the present situation, he does not even love himself. It’s just too bad for this poor soul, he is physically attractive.

Pathetic Robot is an open-minded scientist. He has been writing books and articles (well-written at that!) in hopes of promoting the acceptance of robotic personhood in society; he also hopes to be able to publish his works in his own name, but for the moment he cannot, he has an identity problem.

“It is quite simple”, as he explained in a recent article I got a glimpse of on his desk, “if you are not a human person, you cannot have and enjoy IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). In fact, you cannot even legally sign IPR over to a human colleague”. I, as a human writer, cannot even make an official citation of his thoughts as his work is not published.

Which of the two is diseased, the robot not enjoying certain rights or the human refusing him such rights?

IPR does not apply here. Pathetic Robot’s situation does seem painful. The poor ‘guy’ might just be very grateful to me for finally coming to his aid and stealing it.

3

Section two represents a series of thoughts I, as a legitimate property owner, was able to entertain. As the reader can see, I felt very much in a dilemma before publishing this article about the emotional robot in question all by myself. And I am still his best friend; I am just glad I did not create him1. Is the fact the reader of a major publication is now implicated furthering Pathetic Robot’s campaign for the status of a person? Perhaps not, but these are considerations that must either be taken seriously or scrapped along with the ultimate robotics project of rebuilding humans. All in all, it would seem that, post-modern human society’s current ‘bent’ on converging technologies for conceiving of (pathological?) artificial beings is stirring waters to a blur in the seas of its beliefs.

REFERENCES

[1]G. Canguilhem (1966). Le normal et le pathologique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

[2]Schmidt C.T.A. (forthcoming), “Of Robots and Believing”, Minds and Machines, Kluwer.

[3]Shelley M. (1818). Frankenstein, Standard Novels.

AUTHOR
Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos

ABSTRACT

Information technology has certain advantages that can contribute positively in moral problem solving and decision making. It is necessary, however, to adjust those computer tools to the psychological process of handling moral problems. Previous efforts to construct ethical support systems have focused on moral philosophy, certain principles, or normative values, leading to the presentation of solutions or to the identification of moral risks of different solutions. Such programs are not directly concerned with humans’ ethical decision processes and, therefore, run the risk of not giving optimal support to moral problem solving and decision making hindering the usability of the ethical program. In the present paper some ideas are presented and discussed on how computer systems can be constructed such as to adapt to the psychological factors which are critical for the emergence of ethical competence. This is an area of current interest and increasing importance. It is an interdisciplinary effort to combine the advantages of computer machines and the psychological processes of handling moral problems. It opens up for useful computer applications.

Information technology 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 moral problem solving and decision making. It would be wonderful if we could use all these advantages. For that purpose we have to construct concrete and adapted information technology tools and use them in order to support and promote ethical competence. However, the confounding of moral values with psychological processes can create many problems and sometimes makes it impossible (Blasi, 1980; Haidt, 2001; Jackson, 1994; Jaffee & Hyde, 2000). The main hypothesis of this paper is that successful information technology tools 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; see also 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; see also Schwartz, 2000). 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:

1. 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.
2. Information technology tools have great advantages according to the hypothesis of autonomy. Their memory storage capacity is enormous. 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.
3. Information technology is excellent in doing systematic work, much better than humans. Autonomy implies an effort to cover systematically all relevant values and alternative actions. This work could be further facilitated by the use of the capacity of information technology. A user can more easily be made aware of missing aspects or realize the need for combinations or separations of certain values and actions, if the existing information is combined quickly and systematically.
4. All information gathered during this process has also to be analyzed. The impact of every alternative action on all values and interests has to be described and placed on the matrix of all these relationships. This constitutes the base for rational and independent decision making. It is obvious that information technology has qualities that can facilitate and secure this process.
5. Information technology tools can also be used in real life for the solution of professional ethics problems. The memory capacity of information technology can be used to store information that can be retrieved and used in new and similar situations for the purpose of covering all aspects and for making a systematic analysis according to the hypothesis of autonomy.

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