Android arete: Toward a virtue ethic for computational agents |
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| Authors: | Kari Gwen Coleman |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall, E-370, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6T 1Z1 |
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| Abstract: | Traditional approaches to computer ethics regard computers as tools, andfocus, therefore, on the ethics of their use. Alternatively, computer ethicsmight instead be understood as a study of the ethics of computationalagents, exploring, for example, the different characteristics and behaviorsthat might benefit such an agent in accomplishing its goals. In this paper,I identify a list of characteristics of computational agents that facilitatetheir pursuit of their end, and claim that these characteristics can beunderstood as virtues within a framework of virtue ethics. This frameworkincludes four broad categories – agentive, social, environmental, and moral– each of which can be understood as a spectrum of virtues rangingbetween two extreme subcategories. Although the use of a virtue frameworkis metaphorical rather than literal, I argue that by providing a frameworkfor identifying and critiquing assumptions about what a `good' computer is,a study of android arete provides focus and direction to the developmentof future computational agents. |
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| Keywords: | android arete computer ethics robot software agent softbot virtue ethics |
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