Robot Ethics: A View from the Philosophy of Science

Robot ethics is a branch of applied ethics which endeavours to isolate and analyse ethical issues arising in connection with present and prospective uses of robots. These issues span human autonomy protection and promotion, moral responsibility and liability, privacy, fair access to technological resources, social and cultural discrimination, in addition to the ethical dimensions of personhood and agentivity. This chapter examines distinctive roles that epistemological and methodological reflections on robotics play in ethical inquiries on robotics. In particular, reflections of this sort on models of robot-environment interactions and on models of learning robotic systems are brought to bear on the analysis of autonomy and responsibility issues in robot ethics.