Raul Hakli

In this paper, we ask how ‘cognitive extenders’, based on AI technology, affect their users’ status as moral agents and the moral evaluation of their actions. We study how ‘AI-extenders’ can either enhance or diminish their users’ moral agency. On the one hand, they can broaden the scope of agential features and on the other hand, they can undermine the agent’s autonomy and lead to decreased responsibility. Our focus is on moral agency and responsibility of the AI-extended human being as a hybrid, coupled system. Assuming standard conditions for responsible agency, we will look at specific cases where the extender would make a difference to the agent’s moral status. The thought-experimental extenders we are dealing with are enabled by already existing technologies. The obvious motivation behind the exercise is that these devices might be useful for people suffering from psychiatric conditions complicating the expression of their moral agency. We analyze the moral status of AI-extended agents as coupled systems and argue that the functioning of an AI-extender can make a difference to an agent’s fitness to be held morally responsible. This should be considered in the responsible design and development of AI-extenders.

The book includes both essential classics and buried treasures that have not yet received the attention they deserve.The papers of the collection cover a time span of 30 years and thanks to that the collection provides a historical perspective into the development of the field, and into the development of one of the main positions in particular. The collection also provides insights that are still viable and worthy of further scrutiny and development, and in virtue of this the collection functions as an inspiring source for those engaged in the debates of the field today.

People sometimes think in terms of ‘we’ referring to a group they belong to. When making decisions, they frame the decision problem as: ‘What should we do?’ instead of ‘What should I do?’.We study one particular approach to such ‘we-reasoning’, economist Michael Bacharach’s theory of ‘team reasoning’, and relate it to philosopher Raimo Tuomela’s distinction between ‘Imode’ reasoning and ‘we-mode’ reasoning.We argue that these theories complement each other: Tuomela’s philosophical theory provides a conceptual framework augmenting Bacharach’s theory, and Bacharach’s mathematical results support Tuomela’s view on the irreducibility of the we-mode to the I-mode. We-mode reasoning can explain some kinds of human cooperative behaviour left unexplained by standard game theory. Standard game theory is not wellequipped to deal with we-mode reasoning but it can be extended by the methods developed by Bacharach. However, we argue that both standard game theory and Bacharach’s theory require more attention to the information-sharing stages that precede actual decision making, and we describe a stage-based model of we-reasoning.

I will study the concept of solidarity by looking at patterns of practical reasoning leading to behaviour that can be taken to exemplify solidarity. By studying which kinds of premisses are necessary for taking the motivation to display solidarity, in contrast to altruistic or moral motivation, I try to find necessary conditions for solidarity. I will argue that practical reasoning leading to solidary behaviour is a form of we-reasoning in which some of the premisses are in first person plural form and attribute actions or attitudes to a collective. If this is correct, solidarity is a group concept, and intentional solidary behaviour presupposes identification with a group where others have shared goals or interests. This distinguishes solidary motivation and behaviour from altruistic or moral motivation and behaviour.

The aim of this paper is to present a philosophically inspired list of minimal requirements for social agency that may serve as a guideline for social robotics. Such a list does not aim at detailing the cognitive processes behind sociality but at providing an implementation-free characterization of the capacities and skills associated with sociality. We employ the notion of intentional stance as a methodological ground to study intentional agency and extend it into a social stance that takes into account social features of behavior. We discuss the basic requirements of sociality and different ways to understand them, and suggest some potential benefits of understanding them in an instrumentalist way in the context of social robotics.

Background:The surge in the development of social robots gives rise to an increased need for systematic methods of assessing attitudes towards robots.Aim:This study presents the development of a questionnaire for assessing attitudinal stance towards social robots: the ASOR.Methods:The 37-item ASOR questionnaire was developed by a task-force with members from different disciplines. It was founded on theoretical considerations of how social robots could influence five different aspects of relatedness.Results:Three hundred thirty-nine people responded to the survey. Factor analysis of the ASOR yielded a three-factor solution consisting of a total of 25 items: “ascription of mental capacities”, “ascription of socio-practical capacities”, and “ascription of socio-moral status”. This data was further triangulated with data from interviews (n = 10).Conclusion:the ASOR allows for assessment of three distinct facets of ascription of capacities to social robots and offers a new type of assessment of attitudes towards social robots. It appeared that ASOR not only assesses ascription of capacities to social robots but it also gauged overall positive attitudes towards social robots.

This anthology is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The book presents eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with “social” robots – robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. It features cutting edge research in philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics that examines in which sense such robots can be said to be “social” and how human social relations will change when we interact with robots at work and at home. Connecting research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology, the authors address all topics that are currently at the forefront of discussion. They offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions; investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine; discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality; clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms and share commitments; whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions; and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans.

We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions of an agent fit to be held morally responsible, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. We employ Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility to argue that even if robots were to have all the capacities required of moral agency, their history would deprive them from autonomy in a responsibility-undermining way. We will also study whether humans and technological artifacts like robots can form hybrid collective agents that could be morally responsible for their actions and give an argument against such a possibility.

In philosophical action theory there is a wide agreement that intentions, often understood in terms of plans, play a major role in the deliberation of rational agents. Planning accounts of rational agency challenge game- and decision-theoretical accounts in that they allow for rationality of actions that do not necessarily maximize expected utility but instead aim at satisfying long-term goals. Another challenge for game-theoretical understanding of rational agency has recently been put forth by the theory of team reasoning in which the agents select their actions by doing their parts in the collective action that is best for the group. Both planning and team reasoning can be seen as instances of a similar type of reasoning in which actions are selected on the basis of an evaluation of a larger unit than an individual’s momentary act. In recent theories of collective agency, both planning and team reasoning have been defended against orthodox game theory, but, interestingly, by different authors: Raimo Tuomela has defended team reasoning in his theory of group agency, but he ignores temporally extended planning in this context. Michael Bratman has extended his theory of planning to the case of shared agency, but he does not seem to see a role for team reasoning in understanding shared intentional activities. In this paper, we argue that both accounts suffer from this one-sidedness. We aim to combine the main insights of Tuomela’s we-mode approach and Bratman’s planning approach into a fruitful synthesis that we think is necessary for understanding the nature of group agency.

This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. The contributors present cutting edge research that examines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members of human societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"? Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? How will human social relations change when we interact with robots at work and at home? The authors of this volume explore these questions from the perspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions, investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality. Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms, whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform joint actions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, and how will such new commitments and practices change our regional cultures? The authors connect research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology. The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightful answers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us to shape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change of the beginning 21st century.

Francesco Guala has written an important book proposing a new account of social institutions and criticizing existing ones. We focus on Guala’s critique of collective acceptance theories of institutions, widely discussed in the literature of collective intentionality. Guala argues that at least some of the collective acceptance theories commit their proponents to antinaturalist methodology of social science. What is at stake here is what kind of philosophizing is relevant for the social sciences. We argue that a Searlean version of collective acceptance theory can be defended against Guala’s critique and question the sufficiency of Guala’s account of the ontology of the social world.

We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions for agents fit to be held responsible in a normative sense, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. On the basis of Alfred R. Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility it can be argued that even if robots were to have all the capacities usually required of moral agency, their history as products of engineering would undermine their autonomy and thus responsibility.