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Ethics for Cognitive Assemblages: Who’s in Charge Here?

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Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism

Abstract

Most of the world’s work in developed countries is now done through cognitive assemblages, collectivities comprised of humans, nonhumans, and computational media in which cognition, agency, and intentionality are distributed among many actors and agents. Yet there are alarmingly few ethical frameworks appropriate for cognitive assemblages; traditionally, most have centered solely on humans as individuals without taking cognitive media into account. This essay aims to sketch a landscape of current approaches, evaluate them, and discuss their implications. Among the issues considered are how to account for responsibility when an algorithm is involved; the harms specific to cognitive assemblages and how best to mitigate them; whether algorithms can be designed to evolve ethical norms and behaviors; and whether computational agents might themselves deserve ethical consideration. The chapter aims to highlight the urgent necessity of developing ethical frameworks for cognitive assemblages and indicate which directions seem the most promising.

I wish to thank Vivek Nullur for help with bibliographic resources for this chapter, and to Louise Amoore for giving me permission to cite from her book Cloud Ethics (2021) before it was officially published.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    N. Katherine Hayles

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  1. N. Katherine Hayles
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Correspondence to N. Katherine Hayles .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Stefan Herbrechter

  2. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Ivan Callus

  3. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Manuela Rossini

  4. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Marija Grech

  5. University of Southampton, Winchester, UK

    Megen de Bruin-Molé

  6. Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher John Müller

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Hayles, N.K. (2022). Ethics for Cognitive Assemblages: Who’s in Charge Here?. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_11-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_11-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42681-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42681-1

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