66 - Wong on Confucianism, Robots and Moral Deskilling




   Philosophical Disquisitions show

Summary: In this episode I talk to Dr Pak-Hang Wong. Pak is a philosopher of technology and works on ethical and political issues of emerging technologies. He is currently a research associate at the Universitat Hamburg. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Twente in 2012, and then held academic positions in Oxford and Hong Kong. In 2017, he joined the Research Group for Ethics in Information Technology, at the Department of Informatics, Universitat Hamburg. We talk about the robotic disruption of morality and how it affects our capacity to develop moral virtues. Pak argues for a distinctive Confucian approach to this topic and so provides something of a masterclass on Confucian virtue ethics in the course of our conversation. You can download the episode here or listen below. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Stitcher and a range of other podcasting services (the RSS feed is here). Show Notes 0:00 - Introduction 2:56 - How do robots disrupt our moral lives? 7:18 - Robots and Moral Deskilling 12:52 - The Folk Model of Virtue Acquisition 21:16 - The Confucian approach to Ethics 24:28 - Confucianism versus the European approach 29:05 - Confucianism and situationism 34:00 - The Importance of Rituals 39:39 - A Confucian Response to Moral Deskilling 43:37 - Criticisms (moral silencing) 46:48 - Generalising the Confucian approach 50:00 - Do we need new Confucian rituals? Relevant Links Pak's homepage at the University of Hamburg Pak's Philpeople Profile "Rituals and Machines: A Confucian Response to Technology Driven Moral Deskilling" by Pak "Responsible Innovation for Decent Nonliberal Peoples: A Dilemma?" by Pak "Consenting to Geoengineering" by Pak Episode 45 with Shannon Vallor on Technology and the Virtues #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe to the newsletter