Dewey's Ethics of Moral Principles and Deliberation: Extending IEEE's Ethics Initiative for Adaptive Instructional Systems

This paper proposes an expansion of the classical ethical foundations as laid out by the IEEE’s Global Initiative on the Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems that are of particular relevance for developers and interested parties concerned with establishing standards to inform the design and implementation of adaptive instructional systems. Ethically Aligned Design [1] argues for the value of integrating the following ethical traditions into either autonomous and intelligent systems public awareness campaigns or engineering or science education programs: virtue ethics, deontological ethics, utilitarian ethics, and ethics of care. Though these traditions cover a broad spectrum of important considerations, they lack specificity for adaptive instructional systems. We argue that an alternative, more manageable and particularly relevant framework should be considered: Dewey’s notion of the ethics of moral principles and deliberation. Following from this framework, we also argue for the need to explore education of ethical thinking and related skills through the medium of adaptive instructional systems.