The Normative Thought of Charles S. Peirce

Seven: Self-Control, Values, and Moral Development: Peirce on the Value-driven Dynamics of Human Morality

The chapter first shows that self-control is a constitutive feature of human rationality. Second, it argues that the flexibility of logical self-control is how human rationality contributes to an individual person's ability to make morally responsible decisions about values. Third, it discusses how controlled abstractions contribute to a person's development by means of moral self-control. Finally, it concentrates on the relation between cognitive autonomy and the moral status of being a person. It argues that cognitively autonomous artificial intelligence systems would land us in a moral dilemma that we are well advised to avoid.