This paper delves into the intersection between Kant’s moral theory and evolutionary perspectives on personhood. It explores how Kant’s emphasis on rationality in moral agency aligns with ...evolutionary studies on the development of moral behaviors. By examining the transcendental implications of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI) and the evolutionary origins of moral agency, this study aims to illuminate the link between Kant’s conception of moral agency and personhood. Additionally, it investigates how Kant’s call for CI resonates with evolutionary insights on the adaptive nature of social cooperation in human societies. Through this analysis, we seek to deepen our understanding of the cognitive, social dimensions of moral agency and moral status within the framework of Kant’s moral theory and evolutionary perspectives on personhood.
Market participants, such as producers and audiences, often use a list of categories to label, evaluate, or promote products. Extant category research focuses overwhelmingly on a category's social ...properties and connectivity to explain why a category is used to describe a product. However, categories often cluster together, and little is known about how this clustering affects the appearance of a category in the description of a product. In this article, we define the easily reproducible clustering of categories as a category bundle and develop a novel measurement, bundle congruence, to measure the fitness of the category bundle. We argue that audiences employ bundle congruence to choose or exclude categories. In markets in which audiences dominate product categorization, a category's bundle congruence in a product's descriptions increases the probability that it is used for the product. Moreover, the overall bundle congruence of a product elevates the economic returns of the focal product. Our arguments are supported by an empirical analysis of feature films produced in North America. This study not only enriches the understanding of the bundle structure of the category system but also provides a novel explanation of why category spanning remains ubiquitous, despite the findings of previous studies, which assert that category-straddling products are prone to be punished financially.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that ideas give us the rule for organising experience and ideals serve as archetypes or standards against which one can measure copies. Further, he states ...that ideas and ideals can be practical. Understanding how precisely these concepts should function presents a challenging and understudied philosophical puzzle. I offer a reconstruction of how ideas and ideals might be practical in order to uphold, to my mind, a conceptually worthy distinction. A practical idea, I argue, is best understood as a reference to the categorical imperative (and its various formulations), which guides conduct directly as a rule. A practical ideal, by contrast, I think is a substrate that serves two functions: one that (a) helps us gauge moral deficiencies and another that (b) reveals the potential for moral improvement. In response to well-grounded sceptical concerns, I argue that ideals are indirectly practical in that they ground the possibility to recognise moral states of affairs and be moral in the first place.
Social robots—such as autonomous vehicles, service robots, or healthcare robots—are designed to support tasks in a broad range of human activities. However, these robots face moral dilemmas because ...they must make decisions that may do good for one human but potentially inflict harm on another. We argue that Kant's categorical imperative provides a framework for algorithm-based moral decision-making. By systematically addressing ethical concerns from the outset in the development of the algorithms that steer social robots, their designers can help ensure that such robots promote the well-being of individuals, communities, and society. We conclude that those involved in the development of social robots need to embed ethics into their design and functioning. The solutions to the ethical dilemmas we advance in this paper can help improve the adoption and impact of social robots. The presented insights contribute to research, practice, and policy.
•Social robots face moral dilemmas because they must decide whom to do good/harm.•Kant's categorical imperative provides a framework for algorithm-based moral decision-making.•Algorithms based on maxims can ensure that such robots promote the well-being.•Development of social robots need to embed ethics into their design and functioning.
Rousseau and Kant on Freedom Ender-Arvid, Sven
SHS Web of Conferences,
2023, Letnik:
161
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Kantian moral philosophy can be understood as a continuation and improvement of Rousseau’s contractualism. The continuation entails the distinction between two concepts of freedom (freedom from ...instinct and normative freedom). By using this distinction, Kant manages to define withmore precision the object of moral philosophy and to clarify the purpose behind his reasoning. This is the improvement. To validate the central argument of this thesis, the purpose of the justification and the methodological means of Rousseau’s Second
Discourse
are reconstructed in the first section. The purpose of the justification consists in supporting the normative basis (as normative freedom) for the
Contrat Social
. The methodological means consists in a hypothetical developmental history of the human being. Rousseau shows only that this history can only be narrated when the freedom of the human being (as freedom from instinct) is presupposed. Thus the purpose of justification is missed. In the second section I show that Kant uses these two concepts of freedom to determine the object of moral philosophy. Kant distinguishes in his writings between human choice (
Willkür
) and the pure will (
Wille
). In the light of this distinction, practical norms must be understood in the form of imperatives.Additionally, this distinction makes it possible to point out the validity of practical norms. These must be unconditional and therefore categorical imperatives. On this basis, the actual goal justifying moral philosophy can be stated as follows: How are categorical imperatives to be justified?
The problem of AI alignment has parallels in Kantian ethics and can benefit from its concepts and arguments. The Kantian framework allows us to better answer the question of what exactly AI is being ...aligned to, what are the problems of alignment of rational agents in general, and what are the prospects for achieving a state of alignment. Having described the state of discussions about alignment in AI, I will reformulate them in Kantian terms. Thus, the process of alignment is captured by the concept of enlightenment, and for the final state of alignment in Kant’s lexicon there is the concept of the “kingdom of ends.” I will argue that the discourse of alignment and the Kantian ethical program 1) are devoted to the same general end of harmonizing the thinking and acting of rational agents, 2) encounter similar difficulties, well known in the Kantian discussions with its comparatively longer history, and 3) for a number of reasons lying on the side of humanity, do not have and, despite the hopes and attitudes of some participants in the AI discussions, will not have a theoretically rigorous, harmonious and practically implementable, conflict-free solution – alignment will remain a regulative idea in the Kantian sense, but will not become a reality.
