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Originally posted by Bytemite:

3) Don't freaking worship humans, it's goddamn creepy.

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If you're going to be so unsmart as to build an android, you'll have to include regular "ethics updates" to reflect changes. And it'd still be contradicted by a hefty portion of humanity because we can never agree on one thing ever.

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The mere thought makes me shudder.

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And I do not refer to the robot rape

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which just... Byte, why??

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Robot rape. :x

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We don't even understand ourselves as a species, fully, and we suck at not harming each other and our environment. Why create something in our image that we likely cannot control, either because it would be physically impossible or because it would be ethically questionable? Something we cannot predict because we can hardly predict ourselves?

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Using force or or coercion to press your beliefs upon another, unwilling - an act I consider somewhere in the same moral range as attempted murder, I'll have you know.

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Originally posted by Wishimay:
Some things should always be wrong.

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Originally posted by Wishimay:
Pour Quoi?

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Mimes

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It is worth noting Asimov didn't object exclusively to "the robot as menace stories" (as he called them) but also the "the robot as pathos stories" (ditto). He thought that robots attaining and growing to self awareness and full independence were no more interesting than robots going berserk and turning against their masters . While he did, over the course of his massive career, write a handful of both types of stories (still using the three laws), most of his robot stories dealt with robots as tools.

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Originally posted by Causal:


I'm assuming that this is in response to my observation that it's interesting that we're basically talking about what is objectively true in morality? I say it's interesting we're doing so because based on my observations of the demographic on FFF.net, I would have guessed that cultural relativism would have been the metaethical theory of choice.

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Originally posted by Cybersnark:
I'm ambivalent on AI; for every human-killing monstrosity, there's a WALL-E, an R2-D2, a Tachikoma, an Autobot, a Doc Hologram, or an Andromeda Ascendant. Machines I'd happily trust with my life.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I read cultural relativism as "different cultures will all have different standards, and so there is no moral objectivity."

This is differentiated from ethnocentricism, which says "my cultural standards are correct."

I would argue that the cultural relativism idea is mostly correct, with a few exceptions. There are a few things that just about every culture finds unacceptable. Killing members of the culture or taking their livelyhood without due cause are big ones.

...

I think my laws still cover some universal moral objectivities despite cultural relativism. ...

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Some things should always be wrong. Theorize that you live in a civilized society.
What things *should* always be wrong to all people?

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Sorry for all this--I just love talking philosophy!

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Originally posted by kpo:
...Specific 'bad' actions, like murder, can be morally grey, or even noble and admirable to an extent, as they do not always have 'bad' motivations (eg. killing in self defence or defence of others).

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Originally posted by kpo:
Yes, but don't think about specific actions, rather what motivates them. Actions motivated by selfish greed, or callous cruelty will always be morally ugly. Actions motivated purely by love or compassion will always be morally beautiful.

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Originally posted by Mendur:

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Originally posted by Cybersnark:
I'm ambivalent on AI; for every human-killing monstrosity, there's a WALL-E, an R2-D2, a Tachikoma, an Autobot, a Doc Hologram, or an Andromeda Ascendant. Machines I'd happily trust with my life.

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Don't know the others well enough to guess.

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In the end, it's the act that matters. Did you harm innocents or didn't you? That's the baseline to me.

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In the end, it's the act that matters. Did you harm innocents or didn't you? That's the baseline to me.

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You may think they're full of shit, but if they truly believe it was *love*, does that make it a beautiful act?

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I would argue that if it's in self-defense, then it's neither murder, nor morally grey. Murder is something like unlawful killing--so I wouldn't even use the word "murder" to describe killing in self-defense.

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As to motivations, I'm not sure that I can agree that an act's moral value is completely attached to the motivation behind it. Suppose Bob believes in an extreme form of corporal punishment that he uses in order to train his children to behave. His motivation, I would argue, is a good one: to train his children to behave. But I would argue that he is at best misguided in that project, if not morally blameworthy. So although his motivations were good, his means were morally blameworthy.

After all, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions!

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Originally posted by kpo:
[B

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As to motivations, I'm not sure that I can agree that an act's moral value is completely attached to the motivation behind it. Suppose Bob believes in an extreme form of corporal punishment that he uses in order to train his children to behave. His motivation, I would argue, is a good one: to train his children to behave. But I would argue that he is at best misguided in that project, if not morally blameworthy. So although his motivations were good, his means were morally blameworthy.

After all, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions!

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Following on from what I said to Mal4prez, I views this kind of rigid belief as a form of 'ideology' (maybe I need a better term). This guy practicing an extreme form of corporal punishment is motivated by his own quite extreme ideology, and worldview; and I would suggest that he must be getting a form of gratification from that. He's approached the question of how to raise his children from a selfish place like, "I know how kids should be raised, I'll show the world..." This kind of douchish standpoint basically. Rather than simply, "I love my kids and am going to try and do the best for them that I can". Am I being unfair to Bob?

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But because he had an abusive father, all he knows in terms of teaching his kids is strict corporal punishment that most would consider abusive. There's no misguided ideology at work, nor secret enjoyment--Bob just doesn't know any other way!

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Incidentally, John Stuart Mill had the opposite problem that you have: he argued that the only thing that counts towards an action's rightness or wrongness was the outcome of that action in terms of happiness.

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