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Article 5892 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: AI and morality
Message-ID: <1992May25.162355.18755@news.media.mit.edu>
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Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1992May13.174643.17539@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992May13.235259.17200@news.media.mit.edu> <TODD.92May25213537@ai13.elcom.nitech.ac.jp>
Date: Mon, 25 May 1992 16:23:55 GMT
Lines: 56

In article <TODD.92May25213537@ai13.elcom.nitech.ac.jp> todd@juno.elcom.nitech.ac.jp writes:
>
[discussion deleted]
>
>Essentially, my point is that moral systems are largely not determined
>by logic, although there is a deal of lip service in that direction.
>Morality (IMO) is determined by a society's interaction with it's
>environment (survival, successful interaction with other societies
>and individuals, etc.)
>
>(I do not want to debate the abortion issue here, but offer it
>as an example of an issue that is obviously not black and white,
>since effectively the law must determine up to what point in a
>pregnancy abortions are allowable. It is more like a continuity
>of possibilities, yet people get polarized to one of two strange
>attractors, either for or against.  I believe they do this based
>on some minimization of overall wrong-doing or harmony maintenance, 
>rather than through some consistent, logic-based determination.  
>Only then do we rationalize to convince others -and ourselves- of 
>the chosen position. I personally can respect someone with either 
>viewpoint.)
>
[more deleted]

>Todd Law
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Nagoya Institute of Technology,
>Itoh Laboratory,			"Be excellent to each other."
>todd@juno.elcom.nitech.ac.jp
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good point.  The question of "respecting someone" is an equally
complex matter, because I suppose that this, too, must be "based
>on some minimization of overall wrong-doing or harmony maintenance,
>rather than through some consistent, logic-based determination."

And this raises new issues: how does a person-inside-a-culture
represent the amount of wrongness or disharmony, and how to proceed to
"minimize" it?  If we try to formulate, I think we see that this
doesn't by itself solve the problem; in fact when we *discuss* ethics,
we end up talking less about how right or wrong is each item, and more
about how to do the sums; is it all right to kill a dozen attackers
from a misinformed mob in order to save your own life, etc.

So in my view, we try to set out along such a path but eventually, we
each find that the meta-calculations become too baffling; the
minimization turns out to be infeasible, the heuristics too
undependable.  And the solution?  Usually, to give up on figuring it
all out, and coming to depend on some collection of social inventions
in which we pass the buck to leaders who seem wiser than us, or the
texts of sacred books, etc., -- who (or which) appear to provide
sufficiently coherent sets of heuristics for making these decisions.

.



