66 - Wong on Confucianism, Robots and Moral Deskilling

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 Notes0:00 - Introduction2:56 - How do robots disrupt our moral lives?7:18 - Robots and Moral Deskilling12:52 - The Folk Model of Virtue Acquisition21:16 - The Confucian approach to Ethics24:28 - Confucianism versus the European approach29:05 - Confucianism and situationism34:00 - The Importance of Rituals39:39 - A Confucian Response to Moral Deskilling43:37 - Criticisms (moral silencing)46:48 - Generalising the Confucian approach50:00 - Do we need new Confucian rituals? Relevant LinksPak's homepage at the University of HamburgPak'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 PakEpisode 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