Ethical Systems

This book will help researchers and engineers in the design of ethical systems for robots, addressing the philosophical questions that arise and exploring modern applications such as assistive robots and self-driving cars. The contributing authors are among the leading academic and industrial researchers on this topic and the book will be of value to researchers, graduate students and practitioners engaged with robot design, artificial intelligence and ethics.

Slavery, lynching and capital punishment were interwoven in the United States and by the mid-twentieth century these connections gave rise to a small but well-focused reform movement. Biased and perfunctory procedures were replaced by prolonged trials and appeals, which some found messy and meaningless; DNA profiling clearly established innocent persons had been sentenced to death. The debate over taking life to protect life continues; this book is based on a hugely popular undergraduate course taught at the University of Texas, and is ideal for those interested in criminal justice, social problems, social inequality, and social movements. This book is an excerpt from a larger text, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?, http://www.routledge.com/9780415892476/

Explaining how ubiquitous computing is rapidly changing our private and professional lives, Ethical IT Innovation: A Value-Based System Design Approach stands at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and management and integrates theories and frameworks from all three domains.The book explores the latest thinking on computer ethics, inc

In this book two ethical systems are described in the language of mathematics. Ordinarily mathematics is thought to be a science of quantity. Indeed, manipulation of quantities constitutes much of mathematics. Elementary applied mathematics deals with reckoning and measurement, where concrete quantities are objects of attention, such as counting sheep or weighing corno But the operations on these quantities are performed with the help of symbols, from which concrete referents have been 'abstracted out': 3 + 5 = 8 regardless of whether the symbols stand for numbers of sheep or tons of corno Thus, the first principle that exhibits the power of mathematics is abstraction. It is one ofthe three pillars on which the edifice of mathematics rests. Another pillar is precision. Ordinarily, man communicates by words. W ords serve communication to the extent that they refer to things, events, states of affairs, feelings of the speaker, and so on. These are the meanings attributed to words. Communication is successful to the extent that the meanings coded upon words by the speaker correspond to the meanings decoded by the hearer. As is weH known, the degree ofthis correspondence varies enormously in different contexts of discourse and with the back grounds or attitudes of the speakers and hearers. Mathematics is a language in which the meanings ofthe symbols (the 'words' ofthis language) are absolutely precise. This precision is achieved by abstraction. Abstract terms are defined by their relations to other terms and by nothing else.