James Haller Moor (November 2, 1942 â September 11, 2024) was an American ethicist and moral philosopher, and is especially known for his pioneering work in computer ethics. He spent most of his career at Dartmouth College, where he was the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy.
Moor studied mathematics at the Ohio State University, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1965. He went on to study philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he obtained a masters' degree. He worked as a teaching fellow at Findlay College before embarking on further studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where he earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science in 1972. His thesis titled Computer Consciousness was supervised by Wesley C. Salmon. Moor joined Dartmouth College in the same year as an assistant professor in philosophy. He became an associate professor in 1978 and a professor in 1985. Moor's 1985 paper entitled "What is Computer Ethics?" established him as one of the pioneering theoreticians in the field of computer ethics. Since 2009 at Dartmouth, Moor was the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, a title he held until his death.
Moor was the editor-in-chief of Minds and Machines (2001-2010), a peer-reviewed academic journal covering artificial intelligence, philosophy, and cognitive science.
Moor's research includes study in philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and logic. He has also written extensively on the Turing Test. In a 2009 paper, Moor listed four kinds of robots in relation to ethics. A machine can be more than one type of agent.
Moor has criticised Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics saying that if applied thoroughly they would produce unexpected results. He gives the example of a robot roaming the world trying to prevent harm from all humans.