IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021 - 95

Credit: Image licensed by Ingram Publishing
powerfully enhance the capabilities of natural minds and
wills must understand what is meant by " artificial " and
" natural. " For this pair of notions stands as a fundamental
dichotomy at the very beginning of Western thinking [4].
When speaking of " technology, " we are actually using the
ancient Greek word for " artificially created " -techne.
" Artificial things [here: tools enabled by AI and IF], according
to Aristotle, are indeed characterized by the fact that they
themselves consist ofa 'what' and a 'what of,' " explains the
philosopher Robert Spaemann (1927-2018) and continues:
" Their 'how' and 'why' is not in them, but in the person
who made them or use them. A natural thing, on the other
hand, is characterized by the fact that their 'what' and 'towhat-end'
in itself fall into one. Its end is the form of the
thing itself, hence the notion of entelecheia: I carry the end
within me " [5].
In contrast to the natural mind and will of persons,
cognitive and volitive assistance systems are technical,
i.e., artificially created things, and not natural entelechies
according to this strand of thought. This contradicts
emerging ideologies that consider " conscious perception "
and " responsible will " as artifacts of suboptimal information
processors called " humans " to be replaced by allegedly
" objective " and " unbiased " AIs.
Any attempt to clarify the role of ethics in the military
use of AI and IF must, therefore, keep two branches of
mutually complementary knowledge in a proper balance.
1. For knowledge itself is power. Francis Bacon's
(1561-1626) famous statement on achieving power
as the meaning of all knowledge marks the very
beginning of the modern project.1 At the latest since
the advent of AI in defense, however, powerful
technology may turn against humanity by using it
irresponsibly or for unethical purposes. This, admittedly,
age-old problem is acute with instrumental
knowledge in its specific manifestation as AI and
makes the modern crisis as visible as in spotlight. In
addition, the Baconian paradigm has a tendency to
1The phrase ipsa scientia potestas est occurs in Sir Francis Bacon's
Meditationes Sacrae (1597) and was made popular in the work
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who was a secretary to
Bacon as a young man.
JULY 2021
instrumentalize even human beings as " stimulusresponse
machines according to a biocybernetic
Image of Man " [6] with severe consequences for
their status as legal subjects. " Nothing is as decisive
for the style of a legal age as the Image of Man to
which it is oriented, " observed Gustav Radbruch
(1878-1949), one of the most influential legal philosophers
of the 20th century on the eve of a tyranny.
According to this line of thought, a society,
which sociologically standardizes man and reduces
him to what is empirically observable, will sooner
or later manifest this Image ofMan in the law established
by the sovereign. For law is nothing but
" coagulated politics " [7]. Thoughtfully, the political
philosopher J€urgen Habermas (b. 1929) has warned
of a possibly " derailing modernization, " which
could very well erode the kind of solidarity on which
the democratic state and the international community
of states, without being able to legally
enforce it, are dependent [8].
2. Since there is an Ecology ofMan to be taken into
account, ethically guiding knowledge of the nature of
persons, and their proper ends must complement
Bacon's knowledge. " Man too has a nature that he
must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will, "
reminded Benedict XVI (b. 1927), the parliamentarians
in the German Bundestag. " Man is not merely
self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself.
He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his
will is rightly ordered ifhe respects his nature, listens
to it and accepts himselffor who he is, as one who did
not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true
human freedom fulfilled " [9]. In view of these
insights, AI in defense must serve the Common Good
of a nation or coalitions of nations as it is discovered
in the natural order as its " moral ecosystem. " If a
" nation's will " [10] aligns itself with partisan interests,
which deny universal inalienable rights in conformity
with the nature ofpersons, we might still speak of
" government by the people, " but it cannot be said to be
" of the people " or " for the people " [11], paraphrasing
Abraham Lincoln's (1809-1865) phrase sketching the
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
95
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021
