Moral Philosophy

Introduction

When I first identified Moral Philosophy as a topic for conversations, I was not sure how much we would have to talk about. I am curious what readers will contribute. But let me suggest topics from Let’s Get Civil that belong here.

Moral Development. Yes we have Kohlberg’s research and we will use it, remind ourselves to avoid tribal and organizational moral reasoning and work to achieve universal moral reasoning and principles.

But what tools do we have. Teleological reasoning and our morally grounded purposes prevail. Metaphysical reasoning has a place and the skill of working with syllogisms. And of course, we have seen that the Golden Mean can be a powerful tool. I did not talk about Kant’s Moral Imperative in this book, but it will certainly become useful. But those are the tools. What are the issues.

Economic Justice is its own topic as is Women’s Reproductive Rights. What else? Clearly, we must address moral arguments regarding global climate change and the moral responsibility we all have to fix it. There will be no coping with global climate change except as an exercise in self-deception and indifference which will lead to global disaster. What are the moral issues? What are the moral arguments? We must provide leadership in addressing these questions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) actually presents two very different moral issues. The most obvious deals with AI in the workplace and its impact on jobs, employment, and the quality of life for a huge percentage of our population. That topic rightly belongs with Economic Justice as long as we all acknowledge that Economics is a social science and as such it cannot reach full development without both full cognitive development and full moral development. We can discuss the strictly moral issues regarding AI and morality, but we must apply what we develop in Economic activity in cooperation with economists and both capitalist and socialist enterprises.

The other critical moral issue presented by AI has to do with the science of AI, the scientific pursuit of superintelligence. A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence that far surpasses that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. AI researchers in both China and the United States vie for leadership in this work. It is a kind of arms race. Our concern is that we know that full intellectual development consists of both cognitive development and moral development. And we know that scientists do not have the intellectual tools needed to define or pursue moral development. The obvious threat is that these scientists will develop superintelligent agents that have no conscience, no ability to tell right from wrong. There is no sense wringing our hands about scientists. Many AI scientists worry about the moral development of superintelligent agents. The problem is that there is no work being done in moral philosophy that can help the scientists. That is where we come in. We will lead the way for the full moral development of AI.

And of course, there is another issue we referred to throughout Let’s Get Civil: Law. All laws are moral laws. More specifically, all laws have a moral dimension tho them. Some laws are morally mature, others are morally immature, incompetent. We will talk about law and morality and we will bring new tools to the discussion. First, we will not abandon this conversation and responsibility to philosophers of law. We will do mature public moral philosophy to lay the moral groundwork for laws. And we will pay attention to legal principles and history. And we will use social science to inform our laws, and possibly even more important, we will use social science to test the hypotheses of our laws: what we believe our laws will do for society. And once the laws are implemented, we will use social science to track their impact, describe and evaluate it. By integrating mature public moral philosophy, law, and social science; we make all three better.

The more fully developed our public moral philosophy becomes, the more we will contribute to solving moral challenges in the public square. It will be important, exciting work.