Sean Welsh
The Problem of Right and Wrong
This article addresses two questions:
1. What is a moral decision?
2. How would an artifact (i.e. a robot or AI) make one?
The first question is philosophical: a matter of moral theory.
The second is technical: a matter of practical engineering.
Philosophical analysis of the theoretical problem of practical action (moral theory) informs software design. Software design informs moral theory.
As Lewin (1943) puts it: “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.”
A Solution to the Problem of Right and Wrong
My solution to the problem of right and wrong, succinctly stated, consists of five steps.
To make a moral decision an artifact can:
- Draw…
The Charge was going fine without Parliament. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the UK, was talking stoutly about getting a “better deal” from Brussels and removing the Irish backstop, which was the part of Theresa May’s deal with the EU that hard-line Brexiteers hated the most. His gambit was to prorogue Parliament to silence those pesky Remainers and run out the clock by simply surviving. A “no deal” Brexit is the default option of the Lisbon Treaty.
Alas, the Charge met withering political cannon fire. A Conservative defected to the centrist Liberal Democrats and Johnson lost his one-seat majority…
Two weeks before Theresa May became the second Prime Minister of the UK to resign because of Brexit, a fly on the wall documentary screened on the BBC.
Brexit Behind Closed Doors depicts Guy Verhofstadt and the five other members of the EU Parliament’s Brexit steering group in various meetings over the two years of the Article 50 notice period. Perhaps the most interesting meetings are those with Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator. Overall, it is fascinating viewing.
Much reaction to the documentary in the UK was hostile. Brexiteers deplored the “contempt” towards the UK displayed by some…
After years of acrimonious debate, the Brexit endgame has arrived. With the clock ticking down, and the EU disinclined to give an extension unless the British give a good answer to the question, “What for?” a final decision on Brexit has to be made in the coming days. Alternatively, a decision on the referendum procedure that would be used to make this decision has to be made. Mindful of this, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, is pushing towards her preferred result with commendable ruthlessness.
She is right to do so.
Many argue the Brexit decision procedure was flawed from…
