Bernd Carsten Stahl

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Bernd Carsten Stahl
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(No Transcript)
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Ethics and Morality

• The German Approach
• Deontology as the foundation of ethics
• Morality as practice, ethics as theory
• Reason as the basis of ethics
• Representatives Kant and Habermas
• The French Approach
• No final foundation (such as reason)
• Duty is not the central idea
• Ethics aims as the good life, moral rules
  enforces freedom
• Representatives Montaigne and Ricoeur

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Responsibility

• Social construct of ascription
• Ascribes an object to a subject
• Aims to promote the good life
• Other relevant dimensions
• Authority
• Type (moral, role, legal,)
• Temporal dimension (ex ante ex post)
• Reflexive vs transitive ascription
• Excuses / Exemptions

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Problems of Responsibility

• Conditions
• Freedom
• Causality
• Power
• Personal qualities
• Subject
• Individual / collective
• Machines as subjects
• Object
• Uncertainty / risk / contingency
• Side effects
• Collective effects

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Reflective Responsibility

• Commonalities of responsibility
• Openness (procedure and outcome)
• Affinity to action (implies manifest results)
• Consequentialism (good life consequences count)
• Reflective responsibility
• Applies responsibility to itself is the use of
  responsibility responsible is it open, does it
  lead to action, promote the good life?
• Requires a formal approach
• Normative and factual claims are debated
  simultaneously
• Overcomes the problems of responsibility
  ascriptions

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Consequences of Reflective Responsibility

• Theoretical consequences
• Clarity of the notion
• Pragmatism in ascriptions
• Modesty of aims
• Recognition of constructivist / constructionist
  nature
• Acceptance of inevitability
• Prudence / phronesis
• Accommodates uncertainty
• Mediates theory and practice ethics and morality

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Consequences of Reflective Responsibility

• Realisability
• Accountability
• Institutions
• Imputation
• Discourse ethics
• Stakeholder approach

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Pros and Cons of Reflective Responsibility

• Disadvantages
• Practical realisability
• Risk of failure
• Unclear ethical evaluation of outcome of
  ascription
• Advantages
• Mediates ethics and morality
• Facilitates normative and factual discussions
• Realises inevitability of ascriptions and
  attempts to optimise them
• Offers a formal, procedural, and realisable
  approach to info ethics

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