Artificial Moral Characters: Constitutional AI and the Challenge of Alignment
This paper examines Constitutional AI through the lens of Aristotelian virtue ethics and 4E cognition in order to clarify how moral practice is transformed under conditions of AI- mediated action. It argues that while constitutionally trained language models exhibit stable, norm-guided behavioral patterns, these regularities do not constitute virtue or moral character in the Aristotelian sense. Virtue remains bound to embodied agency, affectivity, and practical judgment. The concept of Artificial Moral Character is therefore introduced as a heuristic tool for analyzing how human moral commitments are externalized and stabilized within technical systems through design, training, and governance. Drawing on 4E cognition, the paper develops an account of extended morality that shifts ethical attention from character attribution to the configuration of moral environments. Alignment is reframed as an ongoing practice of mediated responsibility rather than a property of artificial agents, highlighting the ethical significance of socio-technical infrastructures in shaping human judgment and accountability.
Kant on Respect (Achtung)
This Element reconstructs Kant’s puzzling statements about the moral feeling of respect (Achtung), which is ‚a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different‘ from all common feelings (4:401n.). The focus is on the systematic position of respect within the framework of Kant’s major works and within the faculties of the human mind. The concept of respect is discussed with regard to (i) the transcendental problem of noumenal causation in Kant’s first Critique; (ii) the practical problem of moral motivation in Kant’s second Critique; (iii) the aesthetic problem of feeling and the dynamic sublime in Kant’s third Critique; and (iv) the problem of moral imputability and education in Kant’s Religion and Metaphysics of Morals. By considering its self-reflective volitional structure, this Element argues for a compatibilist account of the moral feeling of respect, according to which both intellectualist and affectivist interpretations are true.