The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen

Published in 2010 by W. W. Norton, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen is Appiah's most surprising philosophical contribution — an empirical inquiry into the mechanism by which societies actually change their moral practices. Through three historical case studies — the end of dueling in nineteenth-century Britain, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, and the collapse of footbinding in early-twentieth-century China — Appiah demonstrates that moral arguments, however correct, rarely produce moral change on their own. Change occurs when the practice in question comes to be seen as a source of shame rather than merely as a violation of ethics. The shift from wrong to dishonorable is the engine of transformation, because dishonorable implicates identity: to continue the practice is to become a certain kind of contemptible person. The book's framework, applied to AI, identifies the cultural transformation the technology industry requires: not more arguments about responsibility but