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From the article: Using Roger Crisp’s arguments for well-being as the ultimate source of moral reasoning, this paper argues that there are no ultimate, non-derivative reasons to program robots with moral concepts such as moral obligation, morally wrong or morally right. Although these moral concepts should not be used to program robots, they are not to be abandoned by humans since there are still reasons to keep using them, namely: as an assessment of the agent, to take a stand or to motivate and reinforce behaviour. Because robots are completely rational agents they don’t need these additional motivations, they can suffice with a concept of what promotes well-being. How a robot knows which action promotes well-being to the greatest degree is still up for debate, but a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches seem to be the best way. The final publication is available at IOS Press through http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-708-5-184
This article aims to explore the moral ideas and experiences that students at Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) have of being a professional with an ‘ethical compass.’Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year Bachelor students divided over four institutions and three different programmes: Initial Teacher Educa- tion, Business Services and Information and Communication Technology. Findings show that students say they strive to be(come) moral professionals, but that they have difficulties recognising and articulating the moral aspects of their professional roles. They seem to lack a moral vocabulary and the moral knowledge to verbalise their aspirations and to provide arguments to explicate or legitimise their moral behaviour. While most students were critical of the support they received from their universities, they indicated that various other role models and (work) experiences did have a strong and positive influence on their moral development. In this article, we reflect on the findings in relation to international empirical research on students’ moral development and highlight the characteristics of UAS students.