Institutional Facts and AMAs in Society

Abstract

Which moral principles should the artificial moral agents, AMAs, act upon? This is not an easy problem. But, even harder is the problem of identifying and differentiating the elements of any moral event; and then finding out how those elements relate to your preferred moral principle, if any. This is because of the very nature of morally relevant phenomena, social facts. As Searle points out, unlike the brute facts about physical world, the ontology of the facts about social reality -which he calls institutional facts- is subjective and they exist within a social environment. The appropriate way to learn these facts is by interaction. But, what should this interaction be like and with whom, especially in the case of artificial agents, before they become ‘mature’? This implies that we are to face a very similar problem like raising a child.