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Distributed Morality: Externalizing Ethical Knowledge in Technological Artifacts

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Abstract

Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks when they are in presence of incomplete information and possess a diminished capacity to act morally. Many external things, usually inert from the moral point of view, can be transformed into the so-called moral mediators. Hence, not all of the moral tools are inside the head, many of them are shared and distributed in “external” objects and structures which function as ethical devices.

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Correspondence to Lorenzo Magnani.

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Magnani, L., Bardone, E. Distributed Morality: Externalizing Ethical Knowledge in Technological Artifacts. Found Sci 13, 99–108 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-007-9116-5

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