Felix S. H. Yeung

Previous research on moral dilemmas has mainly focused on decisions made under conditions of probabilistic certainty. We investigated the impact of uncertainty on the preference for action (killing one individual to save five people) and inaction (saving one but allowing five people to die) in moral dilemmas. We reported two experimental studies that varied the framing (gain vs loss), levels of risk (probability of gain and loss) and levels of ambiguity (imprecise probability information) in the choice to save five individuals by sacrificing one. We found that participants preferred actions with uncertainty (risk/ambiguity) over inaction. Specifically, we found that participants preferred actions with precise probability information (risk) over inaction, and they preferred actions with modest or high levels of ambiguity over actions with precise probabilities, especially when moral dilemmas had a loss frame. We also observed commission bias in Study 2. We discussed the implications for research in moral decision-making.

With the increasing degrees A.I.s and machines are applied across different social contexts, the need for implementing ethics in A.I.s is pressing. In this paper, we argue for a pluralist hybrid model for the implementation of moral A.I.s. We first survey current approaches to moral A.I.s and their inherent limitations. Then we propose the pluralist hybrid approach and show how these limitations of moral A.I.s can be partly alleviated by the pluralist hybrid approach. The core ethical decision-making capacity of an A.I. based on the pluralist hybrid approach consists of two systems. The first is a deterministic algorithm system that incorporates different moral rules for making explicit moral decisions. The second is a machine learning system that calculates the value of the variables required by the application of moral principles. The pluralist hybrid system is better than the existing proposals as (i) it better addresses the moral disagreement problem of the top-down approach by including different moral principles, while (ii) it reduces the opacity of ethical decision-making compared with a bottom-up system by implementing explicit moral principles for moral decision making.

If critical theory is meant to be the “ruthless criticism of all that exists”, on what basis can critical theory ground its evaluative claims without being self-defeating? Is there a normative ground on which critique can stand? For Jürgen Habermas, critical theory has a ground embedded in the normative logic of communicative interactions. On the contrary, for Michel Foucault, critique can stand on no ground: critique is the refusal of any given ground and the opening up of possibilities for “thinking and acting differently.” In this dissertation, I will show that a reconsideration of the Habermas-Foucault debate can be helpful for elucidating the normative foundations and the tasks of critical theory. Given the incommensurability of Habermas’s and Foucault’s positions, this elucidation aims to forge a non-assimilatory synthesis between them. Juxtaposing Habermas’s emphasis on moral universality and the participant’s perspective with Foucault’s focus on objectivating problematization, I will suggest that, taken in isolation, their critical theories are inadequate, and a ‘synthesis’ of their respective positions can be found in a “critical conception of participatory normativity.” This conception of normativity, which is in some sense outlined in the critical theories of Theodor Adorno and Judith Butler, will offer a way of understanding the normative foundations of critical theory.