Miguel González

Is ethics a computable function? Can machines learn ethics like humans do? If teaching consists in no more than programming, training, indoctrinating… and if ethics is merely following a code of conduct, then yes, we can teach ethics to algorithmic machines. But if ethics is not merely about following a code of conduct or about imitating the behavior of others, then an approach based on computing outcomes, and on the reduction of ethics to the compilation and application of a set of rules, either a priori or learned, misses the point. Our intention is not to solve the technical problem of machine ethics, but to learn something about human ethics, and its rationality, by reflecting on the ethics that can and should be implemented in machines. Any machine ethics implementation will have to face a number of fundamental or conceptual problems, which in the end refer to philosophical questions, such as: what is a human being (or more generally, what is a worthy being); what is human intentional acting; and how are intentional actions and their consequences morally evaluated. We are convinced that a proper understanding of ethical issues in AI can teach us something valuable about ourselves, and what it means to lead a free and responsible ethical life, that is, being good people beyond merely “following a moral code”. In the end we believe that rationality must be seen to involve more than just computing, and that value rationality is beyond numbers. Such an understanding is a required step to recovering a renewed rationality of ethics, one that is urgently needed in our highly technified society.

An engineer who becomes an educator in a school of software engineering has the mission to teach how to design and construct software systems, therein applying his or her knowledge and expertise. However, due to their engineering background, engineers may forget that educating a person is not the same as designing a machine, since a machine has a well-defined goal, whilst a person is capable to self-propose his or her own objectives. The ethical implications are clear: educating a free person must leave space for creativity and self-determination in his or her own discovery of the way towards personal and professional fulfillment, which cannot consist only in achieving goals selected by others. We present here an argument that is applicable to most fields of engineering. However, the dis-analogy between educating students and programming robots may have a particular appeal to software engineers and computer scientists. We think the consideration of three different stages in the educational process may be useful to engineers when they act as educators. We claim that the three stages are essential to engineering education. In particular, education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached. Moreover, mentoring is incompatible with an educational assessment framework that considers the goals of the engineer are always given by others. In our view, then, an integral education is not only beyond programming the behavior of students, but also beyond having them reach those given goals.

Among the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based ethics, as opposed to rule-based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals such as software engineers. But naïve consequentialism is intellectually too weak to serve as a practical guide in the profession. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of ethics such as the ACM/IEEE’s, we advocate for a more solid position in the ethical education of software engineers, which we call ‘moderate deontologism’, that takes into account both rules and consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pays an adequate consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. In order to educate responsible professionals, however, this position should be complemented with a pedagogical approach to virtue ethics.

Esta investigación ha sido motivada con la intención de analizar las ejecuciones morfológicas en dos grupos de niños procedentes de dos ambientes sociales y educativos diferentes. Concretamente, un grupo de niños-as procede de un ambiente socioeducativa de clase media (n=33) y otro grupo con desventaja medioambiental, de un ambiente social de clase baja (n=34), estando sus edades comprendidas entre 7 años y 6 meses, y 9 años. Los niños-as respondieron a un conjunto de subpruebas morfológicas, unas inventadas y otras reales: las primeras estaban destinadas a medir la capacidad para aplicar reglas morfológicas inventadas sin carga léxicosemántica específica, no estando mediatizadas por aprendizajes anteriores;…

In this paper we shall consider how the globalization of media has destroyed the metaphysical link between the nation as political entity the nation cultural unit, a link which was postulated by the Romantic philosophical tradition and that at the same time has been deeply engrained in the common sense idea of national identity. The paper has three sections. In the first one we consider the two meanings of the concept "nation" and show that their possible aiffinity is only understandable taking into account the relevance of the spatial and temporal determinations of existence. We deal with such kinds of determination in the second section; finally, m the third one we suggest that the political and cultural dynamics of the current intemational order have subverted those determinations and have fostered a new vision of existence in convergence with the so-called American way of life and, by the same token, weakened the traditional idea of nation.

En el presente trabajo, el autor analiza el concepto de mal radical propuesto por Kant en La religión dentro de los límites de la razón y lo compara con el concepto teológico de pecado original, poniendo especial énfasis en los planteamientos desarrollados por Lutero en La disputación de Heidelberg. La tesis central del trabajo señala que a las concepciones contrapuestas de ambos autores en relación al pecado original y a la justificación subyace una preocupación común de orden existencial por el destino del hombre.