Volume 5, Issue 1, 2024
Paul Dumouchel
Pages 151-167
https://doi.org/10.5840/jcp202411655
Moral Machines
Most approaches to artificial moral agents (AMAs) apparently take it for granted that a machine could be moral. However, to think that the categories of morality or immorality apply to machines seems like a category mistake. This paper inquires into the conditions necessary for a machine to be moral. In order to do this, it first addresses the question what is a machine? It then argues that a form of agency is characteristic of machines in contradistinction of other technical objects and that given their particular characteristics as machines artificial agents fail to satisfy one of the basic pre-conditions of moral agents. In conclusion, I ask what would be necessary for an artificial agent to be a moral agent.