Henry Shevlin’s paper—“How could we know when a robot was a moral patient?” – argues that we should recognize robots and artificial intelligence (AI) as psychological moral patients if they are cognitively equivalent to other beings that we already recognize as psychological moral patients (i.e., humans and, at least some, animals). In defending this cognitive equivalence strategy, Shevlin draws inspiration from the “behavioral equivalence” strategy that I have defended in previous work but argues that it is flawed in crucial respects. (...) Unfortunately—and I guess this is hardly surprising—I cannot bring myself to agree that the cognitive equivalence strategy is the superior one. In this article, I try to explain why in three steps. First, I clarify the nature of the question that I take both myself and Shevlin to be answering. Second, I clear up some potential confusions about the behavioral equivalence strategy, addressing some other recent criticisms of it. Third, I will explain why I still favor the behavioral equivalence strategy over the cognitive equivalence one. (shrink)

The past 15 years occasioned an extraordinary blossoming of research into the cognitive and affective mechanisms that support moral judgment and behavior. This growth in our understanding of moral mechanisms overshadowed a crucial and complementary question, however: How are they learned? As this special issue of the journal Cognition attests, a new crop of research into moral learning has now firmly taken root. This new literature draws on recent advances in formal methods developed in other domains, such as Bayesian inference, (...) reinforcement learning and other machine learning techniques. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates how learning and deciding in a social domain—and especially in the moral domain—sometimes involves specialized cognitive systems. We review the contributions to this special issue and situate them within the broader contemporary literature. Our review focuses on how we learn moral values and moral rules, how we learn about personal moral character and relationships, and the philosophical implications of these emerging models. (shrink)

Some key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot (...) of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement. (shrink)

Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirelyad hoc, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of (...) two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as “this is hers,” “that is not mine.” This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand “cultural appropriation” and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free ofad hocstipulations. (shrink)

Developments in medical big data analytics may bring societal benefits but are also challenging privacy and other ethical values. At the same time, an overly restrictive data protection regime can form a serious threat to valuable observational studies. Discussions about whether data privacy or data solidarity should be the foundational value of research policies, have remained unresolved. We add to this debate with an empirically informed ethical analysis. First, experiences with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within (...) a European research consortium demonstrate a gap between the aims of the regulation and its effects in practice. Namely, strictly formalised data protection requirements may cause routinisation among researchers instead of substantive ethical reflection, and may crowd out trust between actors in the health data research ecosystem; while harmonisation across Europe and data sharing between countries is hampered by different interpretations of the law, which partly stem from different views about ethical values. Then, building on these observations, we use theory to argue that the concept of trust provides an escape from the privacy-solidarity debate. Lastly, the paper details three aspects of trust that can help to create a responsible research environment and to mitigate the encountered challenges: trust as multi-agent concept; trust as a rational and democratic value; and trust as method for priority setting. Mutual cooperation in research—among researchers and with data subjects—is grounded in trust, which should be more explicitly recognised in the governance of health data research. (shrink)

This paper offers a descriptive account of the transition in evolutionary ethics with reference to some major works from ethics, sociobiology, moral psychology, and primatology. The causes and nature of the transition are discussed by making a distinction between traditional and recent trends in evolutionary ethics enabling us to understand the significance of contemporary evolutionary ethics. The study is gradually directed toward a crucial question of ethics that is the place of reason in morality and what evolutionary ethics implies for (...) Kantian ethics in the question of reason. Many advocates of evolutionary ethics and evolutionary moral psychology claim that reason plays no role or plays a very insignificant role in morality. Such assertion often leads to a rejection of Kantian ethics in particular and cognitivism in general. In this backdrop, the scope of reconciling evolutionary ethics with Kantian ethics as proposed by Frederick Rauscher is analyzed. This paper is thus an attempt to expose the significance of evolutionary ethics with reference to the relation of reason and morality. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize national identities. Can education contribute to the promotion of such cosmopolitan ethos? (...) An overtly cosmopolitan educational agenda is not likely to be endorsed in these societies where national ties and national priority may be considered fully legitimate by the majority. Nevertheless, this paper argues, some more achievable educational aims may have desirable cosmopolitan spillover effects although it is not their primary purpose. Decentration, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of social reality and social mix can be defended as necessary for a better domestic society. Yet these aims also make the widespread development of a cosmopolitan ethos more likely. This paper thus considers the arguments that can be made for these educational aims and their potential effects on citizens’ attitudes towards foreigners. Then, it discusses a possible tension with another aspect of national civic education: national integration. (shrink)

Why can't we own people? Boyer proposes that the key consideration concerns inclusion in the moral circle. I propose an alternative, which is that specific mental capacities, especially the capacity for autonomy, play a key role in determining judgments about human and animal ownership. Autonomous beings are viewed as owning themselves, which precludes them from being owned by others.

In this paper I want to clarify what biologists are talking about when they talk about the evolution of altruism. I'll begin by saying something about the common sense concept. This familiar idea I'll call 'vernacular altruism.' One point of doing this is to make it devastatingly obvious that the common sense concept is very different from the concept as it's used in evolutionary theory. After that preliminary, I'll describe some features of the evolutionary concept. Then I'll conclude by briefly (...) considering what explanatory relation might obtain between vernacular altruism and evolutionary altruism. (shrink)

Social movements possess transformative and progressive power. In this paper, I argue that how this is so, or even if this is so, depends on one's explanatory framework. I consider three such explanatory frameworks for social movements: methodological individualism, collectivism, and complexity theory. In evaluating the various appeals and weaknesses of these frameworks, I show that complexity theory is uniquely poised to capture the complex and dynamic reality of the social world.

WE ARE FACED WITH GROWING POWERS OF MANIPULATION OF OUR HUMAN GENETIC MAKEUP. WHILE NOT DENYING THAT THESE POWERS CAN BE USED FOR GREAT GOOD, IT BEHOOVES US TO THINK NOW OF POSSIBLE UPPER LIMITS TO THE CHANGE THAT WE MIGHT WANT TO EFFECT. I ARGUE THAT THOUGHTS OF CHANGING THE HUMAN SPECIES INTO A RACE OF SUPERMEN AND SUPERWOMEN ARE BASED ON WEAK PREMISES. GENETIC FINE-TUNING MAY INDEED BE IN ORDER; WHOLESALE GENETIC CHANGE IS NOT.

Does modern evolutionary theory (specifically Darwinism) pose a problem for the Christian's thinking about morality? It certainly poses threats for those who would argue that certain practices are wrong because they are “unnatural.” Liberal Christians can probably get around these questions. But at a deeper level, despite superficial similarities between its conclusions and the Love Commandment, Darwinism points to an essential relativism about morality, thereby striking at the very core of all Christian thought on moral behavior. Thus, those who are (...) worried about the clash between science and religion have good reasons for their worries. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics has a bad reputation. But we must not remain prisoners of our past. Recent advances in Darwinian evolutionary biology pave the way for a linking of science and morality, at once more modest yet more profound than earlier excursions in this direction. There is no need to repudiate the insights of the great philosophers of the past, particularly David Hume. So humans’ simian origins really matter. The question is not whether evolution is to be linked to ethics, but (...) how. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Speciesin 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary (...) approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at theOrigin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at theDescent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea. (shrink)

The claim that ordinary ethical discourse is typically true and that ethical facts are typically knowable seems in tension with the claim that ordinary ethical discourse is about features of reality friendly to a scientific worldview. Cornell Realism attempts to dispel this tension by claiming that ordinary ethical discourse is, in fact, discourse about the same kinds of things that scientific discourse is about: natural properties. We offer two novel arguments in reply. First, we identify a key assumption that we (...) find unlikely to be true. Second, we identify two features of typical natural properties that ethical properties lack. We conclude that Cornell Realism falls short of dispelling the tension between ethical conservativism and ethical naturalism. (shrink)

Contra widespread readings of Karoline von Günderrode’s 1805 “Idea of the Earth ” as a creative adaptation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, this article proposes that “Idea of the Earth” furnishes a moral account of the human relation to the natural world, one which does not map onto any of the more well-known romantic or idealist accounts of the human-nature relation. Specifically, I argue that “Idea of the Earth” responds to the great Enlightenment question concerning the human vocation, but from (...) a distinctive romantic-idealist angle. I begin by demonstrating the influence of Fichte’s 1800 Vocation of Humanity on Günderrode’s thinking, which involves an investigation of both Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s critical response to it. I then turn to “Idea of the Earth” where I analyse Günderrode’s understanding of nature and the self in light of her critique of Fichte, and thereby distinguish her position from Fichte’s and from the position espoused by her fellow romantics and idealists. By reading “Idea of the Earth” alongside Fichte’s text and Günderrode’s remarks on it, this article sheds new light on both Günderrode’s understanding and defence of Naturphilosophie – against Fichte’s critique of it – and her distinctive contribution to romantic philosophies of nature. (shrink)

Je défends dans ce texte une version particulière de la position que Sharon Street a appelée le «constructivisme humien». J’esquisserai pourquoi je considère que ce constructivisme est préférable à la fois au réalisme moral et au constructivisme kantien sur le plan de la compréhension du statut ontologique des valeurs. Après avoir accepté de reconnaître le rôle des pressions de l’évolution dans l’émergence de la moralité, le constructivisme humien doit toutefois préciser le rôle de l’intersubjectivité historique dans l’évolution subséquente de la (...) morale. J’expliquerai aussi pourquoi je considère que l’intégration d’un volet cohérentiste au constructivisme permet d’atténuer les craintes concernant le caractère potentiellement non-cognitiviste des théories contextualistes. Enfin, j’esquisserai pourquoi l’idée d’un «espace des raisons morales» indépendant, à certains égards, de l’esprit humain est compatible avec le constructivisme humien.I defend a version of what Sharon Street has dubbed “Humean constructivism.” I’ll first sketch out why I think that contextual constructivism provides us with a more plausible understanding of the ontological status of values than both Kantian constructivism and moral realism. In addition to its recognition of the role of evolutionary pressures in the emergence of human morality, contextual constructivism must now clarify the role of historical intersubjectivity in the subsequent development of morality. I will then claim that adding a coherentist module to Humean constructivism provides a satisfactory answer to those who fear that contextual metaethical theories can only be non-cognitivist. Finally, I will sketch out why I think that the notion of a mind-independent “space of moral reasons” is largely compatible with Humean constructivism. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage participants in the debate about the locus of cognition (e.g., extended mind vs embedded mind) to turn their attention to noteworthy anthropological and sociological considerations typically (but not uniquely) arising from transhumanist and posthumanist research. Such considerations, we claim, promise to potentially give us a way out of the stalemate in which such a debate has fallen. A secondary goal of this paper is to impress trans and post-humanistically inclined readers to embrace (...) (or at least seriously reflect on) the extended mind thesis as a potential gamechanger to the state of play in their own debates. We start off (Sect. 1) by reviewing two crucial ideas (homo faber and plasticity of the body schema) that are instrumental in setting up the dispute between extended and embedded. We then summarise (Sect. 2), the stalemate between these two competing accounts of cognition, and review some of the dialectics underlying it. In Sect. 3, to get out of the stalemate, we propose to focus on a series of important anthropological and sociological considerations derived from and related to trans and posthumanist research. In doing so, we claim (Sect. 4) that an extended approach to cognition becomes anthropologically preferable and morally as well as socially more desirable than an embedded one. (shrink)

In Peter Singer’s article “The Challenge of Brain Death for the Sanctity of Life Ethic”, he articulates that ethics has always played an important role in defining death. He claims that the demand for redefining death spreads rather from new ethical challenges than from a new, scientifically improved understanding of the nature of death. As thorough as his plea for dismissal of the brain-death definition is, he does not avoid the depiction of the complementary relationship between science and ethics. Quite (...) the opposite, he tends to formulate a stronger, philosophically more consistent argument to help science and medical practitioners to define life, death, and the quality of life. In my commentary, I would like to focus on two issues presented in Singer’s study. Firstly, I will critically analyze the relationship between science and ethics. Secondly, I will follow on from Singer’s arguments differentiating between end of life as an organism and end of life as a person. The latter case is necessarily linked with man’s participation in her/his life, setting life goals, and fulfilling her/his idea of good life. Through the consequential definition of the dignity in ethics of social consequences, I will try to support Singer’s idea. (shrink)

The debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both deficiencies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet (...) the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene–culture coevolution.Vaulting Ambitionthus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior. (shrink)

Moral error theorists face the now what question. How, if at all, ought they to adjust their moral practice after having discovered the error? Various answers have emerged in the literature, including, but not limited to, revisionary fictionalism, revisionary expressivism, and revisionary naturalism. Recently, François Jaquet has argued that there are only two available answers to the now what question, since every extant answer except revisionary fictionalism collapses into abolitionism. This paper provides a response. First, it argues that revisionary naturalism (...) does not collapse into abolitionism. The argument is that abolitionists can neither utter schmoralist naturalist replacement judgments that contain moral terms nor eliminativist naturalist replacement judgments that do not contain moral terms. This means that abolitionists cannot utter replacement judgments at all. Since revisionary naturalists can utter replacement judgments, their view does not collapse into abolitionism. Second, the paper gives reason to believe that this result extends beyond revisionary naturalism to the other revisionary metaethical theories, and that this is good news for moral error theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we draw (...) on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

In this article, I shall suggest an approach to the justification of normative moral principles which leads, I think, to utilitarianism. The approach is based on asking what moral norms we would each endorse if we had no prior moral commitments. I argue that we would endorse norms that lead to the satisfaction of all our nonmoral values or goals. The same approach leads to a view of utility as consisting of those goals that we would want satisfied. In the (...) second half of the article, I examine the implication of this view for several issues about the nature of utility, such as the use of past and future goals. The argument for utilitarianism is not completed here. The rest of it requires a defense of expected-utility theory, of interpersonal comparison, and of equal consideration. (shrink)

This paper presents and criticizes. Alexander's evolutionary theory of morality (1987). Earlier research, on which Alexander's theory is based, is also reviewed. The propensity to create moral systems evolved because it allowed ancestral humans to limit conflict within cooperating groups and thus form larger groups, which were advantageous because of intense between-group competition. Alexander sees moral codes as contractual, and the primary criticism of his theory is that moral codes are not completely contractual but also coercive. Ways of evaluating Alexander's (...) theory as well as modified versions of it are discussed. (shrink)

Consistency is usually seen as one of the hallmarks and a cardinal virtue of moral theory, as well as of any defensible real-life moral perspective. In everyday life a consistent set of moral beliefs is conductive to moral clarity, communicability, responsibility and responsiveness. But this is just one side of the story. In this paper I argue that inconsistency, properly understood, is a productive and constructive aspect of both moral philosophy and our moral lives. After an introductory glance at Ralf (...) Waldo Emerson and Hannah Arendt, the argument proceeds in three main steps. First, I discuss the philosophical importance of paying heed to inconsistencies in our moral lives, which often are prematurely pruned from moral philosophy. Second, I discuss the positive moral roles of inconsistency in terms of responsiveness to different situations, values, needs and concerns that call upon our attention in everyday life. Third, I argue that moral inconsistencies contribute to the necessary adaptability of our moral understandings to changing conditions. Fourth, in the place of a conclusion, I revisit the issue of consistency, clarity and accountability. (shrink)