WalterB Online

WalterB Online

Programmable Moral Agents

Abstract

People are baffled by their own behavior. They do not understand how or why they make their judgements and perform their acts. They want to appeal to some external cause, a deus ex machina, which motivates and operates them, but that requires making a duality of one's single self.

We are just exactly who we are, and behave accordingly, which removes the sense of bafflement.

In reviewing the Web Statistics for my sites, I was pleased to see that people are being referred to them from philosophical queries (usually by Google). It looks like the hackers, trolls, robots, pornographers, criminals and advertisers have largely given up on me and my web sites. (I routinely refer those sorts of people to abuse control services, the FBI and similar agencies.) It is difficult in writing to express the delight I feel in being a counter-party to a meaningful discussion, or the satisfaction in being a source of information, unblighted by the din of advertising, tribal wars, rites of passage, etc. It is like hearing the symphony at last, after years of being mobbed by noise makers.

The most common queries pointing to my site concern the nature of Ethical Subjectivism. My version of this philosophy is explained in Ethics as Social Conscience. Those interested in the subject should read my book, and also related articles in the Wikkipedia and Stanford University's philosophy site. There is no Subjectivist United Front or Ethical Subjectivist Union, probably because, by definition of the subject, it is subjective. What each moral agent believes to be ethical is locked up in its Mind, which I analogize to living on a desert island. Thus, getting an overview of the subject involves reviewing a lengthy bibliography.

The recent query which interests me most is 'what makes people (moral agents) obey social norms?' Since I concluded in the Ethics book that ethics could not be based on individuals, even though individuals make judgements and act morally or otherwise, ethics had to have a social basis. My problem was to connect the individual with society, which is also reflected in that query. Without positing the reality of society, I believe it is acceptable to posit that individuals have a need for society. That is, whether or not there is any "real" existence outside one's Mind, I and all the people I imagine behave as if society exists and, most importantly, human beings need society. Real or imagined, Homo sapiens is a gregarious species.

The answer to the query is straightforward enough: in the proverbial Gouldian manner, it is hiding right in front of us. People are taught to obey social norms, starting with the very first breath and ending with the last. Our training in social behavior is both subtle and forceful. Above all, it is ubiquitous. Everything we do, even when we do it alone, ultimately has some social reference and impact. Taken together, individual behaviors constitute Culture, the pattern of behavior common in a given society. Culture includes social norms explicitly and implicitly. Culture is what we are taught at our mother's breast and forever after.

Why do we obey social norms? Because we are taught to obey, and it is very difficult to think or act otherwise. We are motivated to obey because we have a biological need to socialize with others of our kind. As Aristotle said, 'man is a social animal.'

What I add to Aristotle is man is a programmable social animal. I introduced normative networks to explain how that programming comes about in a nearly invisible manner. It seems mysterious that people obey social norms until one sees what is right before one's eyes.

Posted 03/25/2008 10:24:21 AM Last update: 03/25/2008