In an era where digital screens are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, Toward an Anthropology of Screens by Mauro Carbone and Graziano Lingua offers a seminal exploration into screens’ crucial functions and profound impact on human culture. This scholarly work dissects the screen’s evolution, anthropological significance and philosophical implications, offering an enlightening narrative on our mediated reality.

This paper argues that the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology provides a principled approach to embedding common values in to AI systems both early and throughout the design process. To do so, it draws on an important case study: the evidence and final report of the UK Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. This empirical investigation shows that the different and often disparate stakeholder groups that are implicated in AI design and use share some common values that can be used to (...) further strengthen design coordination efforts. VSD is shown to be both able to distill these common values as well as provide a framework for stakeholder coordination. (shrink)

The Welfare-Funded Sex Doula Programme is a proposed sexual needs service that advances the sexual citizenship of disabled people by providing specially trained ‘sex doulas’ to meet the various, often complex, sexual needs of disabled people. Conceived as providing disabled individuals with practical sexual support services, the role of the sex doula includes advocacy, counselling, therapy, and practical relief from sexual tension. The programme constitutes a robust, comprehensive, and theoretically cohesive welfare service that seeks to provision access to sexual citizenship (...) for disabled people. -/- Grounded in Aristotelian concepts of flourishing, the programme identifies sexual citizenship as a fundamental basic need and seeks to ensure that disabled people have the opportunity to achieve the same level of sexuality as able-bodied people. Work advancing the programme includes both philosophical and theoretical arguments showing how the programme is justified under several moral frameworks, and claims made therein have resulted in velitation in the literature regarding the potential of such a programme to violate individuals’ negative rights. (shrink)

This paper argues that although moral intuitions are insufficient for making judgments on new technological innovations, they maintain great utility for informing responsible innovation. To do this, this paper employs the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology as an illustrative example of how stakeholder values can be better distilled to inform responsible innovation. Further, it is argued that moral intuitions are necessary for determining stakeholder values required for the design of responsible technologies. This argument is supported by the claim that the (...) moral intuitions of stakeholders allow designers to conceptualize stakeholder values and incorporate them into the early phases of design. It is concluded that design-for-values (DFV) frameworks like the VSD methodology can remain potent if developers adopt heuristic tools to diminish the influence of cognitive biases thus strengthening the reliability of moral intuitions. (shrink)

Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue-based “overflow” arguments, according to which perceptual conscious is rich and does not require cognitive access. Abandoning it also (...) dissociates the rich/sparse debate from the access question. The paper then explores attempts to reformulate overflow theses in ways that don’t require the assumption of limited capacity. Finally, it discusses the problem of relating seemingly non-probabilistic perceptual consciousness to the probabilistic representations posited by the models that challenge conceptions of cognitive access as capacity-limited. (shrink)

This chapter proposed a novel design methodology called Value-Sensitive Design and its potential application to the field of artificial intelligence research and design. It discusses the imperatives in adopting a design philosophy that embeds values into the design of artificial agents at the early stages of AI development. Because of the high risk stakes in the unmitigated design of artificial agents, this chapter proposes that even though VSD may turn out to be a less-than-optimal design methodology, it currently provides a (...) framework that has the potential to embed stakeholder values and incorporate current design methods. The reader should begin to take away the importance of a proactive design approach to intelligent agents. (shrink)

This article explores the potential of Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy of subjectivity as objectivity as a grounding for value sensitive design (VSD) and the design turn in applied ethics. The rapid pace of scientific and technological advancement has created a gap between technical abilities and our moral assessments of those abilities, calling for a reflection on the philosophical tools we have for applying ethics. In particular, applied ethics often presents interconnected problems that require a more general framework for ethical reflection. Lonergan’s (...) philosophy, which emphasizes the importance of selfunderstanding and self‐transcendence in achieving objectivity, can provide a valuable perspective on VSD and the design turn in applied ethics. The article examines how Lonergan’s philosophy can be applied to VSD and the design turn, and how scientific knowledge can be integrated into an ethics of science without reducing it to an external reflection. By adopting Lonergan’s perspective, we can address the ethical challenges arising from scientific and technological advancements while promoting a more holistic approach to applied ethics. (shrink)

While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions—that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal (...) of possibilities—Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Seven, "The Moral Artist."]. (shrink)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) have becomes the subject of continuous debate both at national and international levels. Arguments have been proposed both for the development and use of LAWs as well as their prohibition from combat landscapes. Regardless, the development of LAWs continues in numerous nation-states. This paper builds upon previous philosophical arguments for the development and use of LAWs and proposes a design framework that can be used to ethically direct their development. The conclusion is that the philosophical arguments (...) that underpin the adoption of LAWs rather than not, although prima facie insufficient, can be actualized through the proposed Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. Hence, what is proposed is a principled design approach that can be used to embed stakeholder values into a design, encourage stakeholder cooperation and coordination and as a result promote social acceptance of LAWs as a preferable future fact of war. (shrink)

Autonomous weapons systems (AWS), sometimes referred to as “killer robots”, are receiving evermore attention, both in public discourse as well as by scholars and policymakers. Much of this interest is connected with emerging ethical and legal problems linked to increasing autonomy in weapons systems, but there is a general underappreciation for the ways in which existing law might impact on these new technologies. In this paper, we argue that as AWS become more sophisticated and increasingly more capable than flesh-and-blood soldiers, (...) it will increasingly be the case that such soldiers are “in the power” of those AWS which fight against them. This implies that such soldiers ought to be considered hors de combat, and not targeted. In arguing for this point, we draw out a broader conclusion regarding hors de combat status, namely that it must be viewed contextually, with close reference to the capabilities of combatants on both sides of any discreet engagement. Given this point, and the fact that AWS may come in many shapes and sizes, and can be made for many different missions, we argue that each particular AWS will likely need its own standard for when enemy soldiers are deemed hors de combat. We conclude by examining how these nuanced views of hors de combat status might impact on meaningful human control of AWS. (shrink)

This article explores the potential of Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy of subjectivity as objectivity as a grounding for value sensitive design (VSD) and the design turn in applied ethics. The rapid pace of scientific and technological advancement has created a gap between technical abilities and our moral assessments of those abilities, calling for a reflection on the philosophical tools we have for applying ethics. In particular, applied ethics often presents interconnected problems that require a more general framework for ethical reflection. Lonergan’s (...) philosophy, which emphasizes the importance of self-understanding and self-transcendence in achieving objectivity, can provide a valuable perspective on VSD and the design turn in applied ethics. The article examines how Lonergan’s philosophy can be applied to VSD and the design turn, and how scientific knowledge can be integrated into an ethics of science without reducing it to an external reflection. By adopting Lonergan’s perspective, we can address the ethical challenges arising from scientific and technological advancements while promoting a more holistic approach to applied ethics. (shrink)

Carne Coltivata: Etica dell’agricoltura cellulare by Luca Lo Sapio criti-cally explores the ethical, environmental, and cultural ramifications of cellular agricul-ture, mainly cultivated meat. Through a philosophical lens, Lo Sapio evaluates the po-tential of this technology to address ethical concerns tied to traditional meat production, such as animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and health implications. However, the book also critiques the potential cultural and ecological consequences of detaching meat production from traditional agricultural practices. Lo Sapio’s discourse navigates the complex interplay between technological (...) progress and the intrinsic value of natural life processes, urging a balanced consideration of cultivated meat’s implications on glob-al food cultures, food sovereignty, and the sanctity of life. (shrink)

Autonomous weapons systems, often referred to as ‘killer robots’, have been a hallmark of popular imagination for decades. However, with the inexorable advance of artificial intelligence systems (AI) and robotics, killer robots are quickly becoming a reality. These lethal technologies can learn, adapt, and potentially make life and death decisions on the battlefield with little-to-no human involvement. This naturally leads to not only legal but ethical concerns as to whether we can meaningful control such machines, and if so, then how. (...) Such concerns are made even more poignant by the ever-present fear that something may go wrong, and the machine may carry out some action(s) violating the ethics or laws of war. -/- Researchers, policymakers, and designers are caught in the quagmire of how to approach these highly controversial systems and to figure out what exactly it means to have meaningful human control over them, if at all. -/- In Designed for Death, Dr Steven Umbrello aims to not only produce a realistic but also an optimistic guide for how, with human values in mind, we can begin to design killer robots. Drawing on the value sensitive design (VSD) approach to technology innovation, Umbrello argues that context is king and that a middle path for designing killer robots is possible if we consider both ethics and design as fundamentally linked. Umbrello moves beyond the binary debates of whether or not to prohibit killer robots and instead offers a more nuanced perspective of which types of killer robots may be both legally and ethically acceptable, when they would be acceptable, and how to design for them. (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Steven Lukes, one the most eminent critics of methodological individualism. The focus is on Lukes’ interpretation of methodological individualism in terms of linguistic exclusivism (i.e., naive reductionism), the multiple-realization problem, Boudon’s and Elster’s micro-foundationalist approach, ontological individualism, and the rationality of human action.

Gran parte della letteratura riguardante l’uso dell’intelligenza artificiale (IA) sul posto di lavoro, in particolare nell’ambito dell’assistenza infermieristica e dei servizi di cura, si è concentrata sui problemi etici che insorgono a valle della sua implementazione o per ragioni puramente speculative. Concentrarsi sull’IA come artefatto separato dal suo design e dai suoi progettisti rende l’assistenza infermieristica e la cura, come qualsiasi altro settore, in gran parte impotente nei confronti degli impatti dell’IA. Per questo motivo, la focalizzazione sul design e su (...) come progettare rispettando valori e professionalità dei professionisti e degli operatori sanitari è di massima importanza. Sono state proposti vari approcci per raggiungere questo obiettivo, come la progettazione partecipata, la progettazione universale, la progettazione inclusiva e la progettazione orientata ai valori. Nonostante i vantaggi di questi approcci più consolidati, nessuno di essi si concentra sulle narrazioni e le metafore sottostanti che guidano e influenzano come l’IA viene percepita e quindi impatta il lavoro dei professionisti. Questo lavoro esamina brevemente un approccio complementare, ovvero l’IA centrata sull’essere umano (HCAI), che propone nuove narrazioni di potenziamento e miglioramento per gli utenti, piuttosto che narrazioni di sostituzione. Se i professionisti spingono per l’adozione di tale approccio e nuove narrazioni, possono aumentare, piuttosto che abdicare, la loro responsabilità sul posto di lavoro e aumentare la loro capacità di fornire cure adeguate. (shrink)

Prometheus has grown four years older since its last and highly controversial special issue, published in 2017 on the Shaken Baby Debate. But, as always, Prometheus is committed to open discussion and dissemination of scientific research, regardless of the potential backlash or controversy that may ensue from such a venture, a venture that is at the core of authentic scholarship. Since the beginning of 2020, the world has changed irrevocably, making once-held norms seem obsolete in favour of new ways of (...) being in the world and new technologies emerging to face these new ways of living. Although it has been a long-held insight in the philosophy of technology that technical systems are carriers of values, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made manifest how these values, and their incarnations in sociotechnical systems, can likewise change. Prometheus has, since its inception, danced in tandem with the critical interpretations, theories, and methods for understanding innovation, and how innovations fundamentally impact and are impacted by the world in which they emerge and are situated. For this reason, Steffen Steinert, Tristan de Wildt, and I chose to guest edit this special issue on designing for value change and chose Prometheus as its home. (shrink)

Various approaches have emerged over the last several decades to meet the challenges and complexities of anticipating and responding to the potential impacts of emerging technologies. Although many of the existing approaches share similarities, they each have shortfalls. This paper takes as the object of its study Anticipatory Ethics for Emerging Technologies (ATE) to technology assessment, given that it was formatted to address many of the privations characterising parallel approaches. The ATE approach, also in practice, presents certain areas for retooling, (...) such as how it characterises levels and objects of analysis. This paper results from the work done with the TechEthos Horizon 2020 project in evaluating the ethical, legal, and social impacts of climate engineering, digital extended reality, and neurotechnologies. To meet the challenges these technology families present, this paper aims to enhance the ATE framework to encompass the variety of human processes and material forms, functions, and applications that comprise the socio-technical systems in which these technologies are embedded. (shrink)

I present an account of the passage of time and the present in relativistic spacetimes, and I defend these views against recent criticism by Oliver Pooley and Craig Callender.

Recent theorists of cultural studies have noticed the emergence of metamodernity as an ideal type, categorized by an oscillation between postmodern deconstructivism and modern idealism, into a form of transcendentalism. I argue in this chapter that this type of transcendentalism, informed by the historical American Transcendentalist Movement, is the emerging ideal called “Transhumanism.” I use a case study of five Japanese anime to demonstrate how transhumanist, metamodernist, and transcendental thinking often recur in key core plot points and narratives found within. (...) I further suggest that meditation on the major themes in these anime, especially those of metamodernity and transhumanism, is necessary if we are to understand our place in the world today and into the future. -/- The final version of this paper can be found in Anime, Philosophy, and Religion, Ed. Hayashi and Anderson, by Vernon Press. See "external links" for how to order the whole volume, the final version is also available on google books (see link). -/- A previous version of this paper was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Paper Award 2023, Southwestern Sociological Association. (shrink)

Much traditional moral theory supposes that morality is primarily a matter of law or principle apprehended as something external to the moral agent and binding that agent in a manner that is contrary to inclination. If this were not so, morality would be superfluous. Nevertheless, in this essay I maintain that the appearance of an opposition between morality and inclination is simply an artifact of human sinfulness, which alienates us from our true nature as rational beings.

This is an updated version of one section of my essay "Objections to Dualism" prepared for presentation at the 2019 Mountain-Pacific SCP Conference in Las Vegas, April 6-7, 2019.

The author considers the model-theoretic character of proofs and disproofs by means of attempted counterexample constructions, distinguishes this proof format from formal derivations, then contrasts two approaches to semantic tableaux proposed by Beth and Lambert-van Fraassen. It is noted that Beth's original approach has not as yet been provided with a precisely formulated rule of closure for detecting tableau sequences terminating in contradiction. To remedy this deficiency, a technique is proposed to clarify tableau operations.

This is a companion to an earlier essay, "An Argument for Dualism from the Lived Experience of Time," in which I argue that our lived experience of being in space is best accounted for on a substance dualist ontology of the experiencing subject and a 3-dimensionalist account of time. Such an account excludes the metaphysical possibility of 4-dimensionalism as a literal, descriptive account of noumenal time inasmuch as it is incompatible with facts we know with greater certainty than any scientific (...) theory. (shrink)

Since its inception, the trolley problem has sparked a rich debate both within and beyond moral philosophy. Often used as a primer for students to begin thinking about moral intuitions as well as how to distinguish between different forms of moral reasoning, the trolley problem is not without its uses in very practical, applied field like engineering. Often thought of as unrealistic by technically-oriented engineers, trolley cases in fact, help us to think about moral responsibility in a high tech world. (...) This chapter explores the usefulness of trolley-like thinking within the realm of responsible innovation and discusses how despite the inherent issues with trolley scenarios, they remain nonetheless an indispensable tool for helping us to explore ways to maximize our moral responsibility in innovation. (shrink)

2022 UPDATE: The approach of this paper has been updated and developed further in the author’s 2021 book _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_. The book is available both in a printed edition (under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6 from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers) and an Open Access eBook edition (available through Philpapers under the book’s title and other philosophy online archives). ●●●●● The author distinguishes between the “information-oriented” approach of conservative, traditional philosophy, and an approach to (...) philosophy as “conceptual therapy.” The former emphasizes scholarship, textual explication and criticism, and, in general, a knowledge of the views of traditional thinkers. Philosophy as conceptual therapy, on the other hand, seeks an improvement of intellectual skills, and fosters a therapy for concepts and, by inference, a therapy for thinkers. The major concern of the paper is to argue that the traditional information-oriented approach to philosophy does not help its students effectively to develop intellectual skills, and that a conception of philosophy as conceptual therapy can provide a valuable contribution to the teaching and to the subject-matter of philosophy. (shrink)

While J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and other creations enthrall readers through immersive adventures and captivating characters, a deeper understanding of the author’s faith unlocks a new dimension of appreciation. Tolkien declared his works “fundamentally religious and Catholic,” but their subtle nuances often escape surface-level readings. Delving into his faith journey unveils crucial threads woven into the very fabric of his narratives. -/- In the expansive corpus of literature dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien, his faith has often been overshadowed (...) by the towering legacies of Middle-earth. Holly Ordway’s Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography is a seminal work that meticulously unravels the interplay between Tolkien’s devout Catholicism and his literary creations. Ordway, the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, brings to the fore a long-neglected dimension of Tolkien’s life—his spiritual journey. -/- Ordway’s biography distinguishes itself through its rigorous exploration of Tolkien’s spiritual development, from his environment to the profound Catholic faith he maintained throughout his life. Ordway delves into the complexities of Tolkien’s life, including the pivotal moments that shaped his religious beliefs and, by extension, his literary work. The biography is not merely a chronological recounting of events but a deep, thematic exploration of the influence of faith on Tolkien’s creativity. Ordway’s scholarship shines in her ability to weave together Tolkien’s letters, unpublished works, and the socioreligious context of his time, offering readers a holistic view of the man behind Middle-earth. Ordway’s balanced approach further enriches the narrative. She neither critiques nor endorses Tolkien’s religious beliefs but presents them with an academic rigor that allows readers to form their interpretations. This objectivity is crucial for the work’s target academic audience, providing a foundation for further scholarship in Tolkien studies and the study of literature and religion. (shrink)

In a recent article, Madelaine Ley evaluates the future of work, specifically robotised workplaces, via the lens of care ethics. Like many proponents of care ethics, Ley draws on the approach and its emphasis on relationality to understand ethical action necessary for worker wellbeing. Her paper aims to fill a research gap by shifting away from the traditional contexts in which care ethics is employed, i.e., health and care contexts and instead appropriates the approach to tackle the sociotechnicity of robotics (...) and how caring should be integrated into non-traditional contexts. This paper comments on that of Ley’s, making the case that the author does, in fact, achieve this end while still leaving areas of potential future research open to buttressing the approach she presents. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

This paper examines a largely unrecognized mental disorder that is essentially a disability of values. It is their daily contact with this pathology that leads many university liberal arts faculty to demoralization. The deeply rooted disparity between the world of the traditional liberal arts scholar and today’s college students is not simply a gulf across which communication is difficult, but rather involves a pathological impairment in the majority of students that stems from an exclusionary focus on work, money, and the (...) acquisition of things. It is argued that this state of mind constitutes a self-disabling mental illness, which for a society becomes pathological ideology, and for the individual takes the form of clinical narcissism. (shrink)

In 1966 Gene Roddenberry, then a relatively unknown TV writer, created what was to become a cultural sensation. From cell phones and tablets, to MRI machines and medical jet injectors, Star Trek has undoubtedly anticipated much of the technology that we take for granted today. Moreover, the disagreements, fights and jokes between Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) were expertly crafted for dramatic impact. But I’m not writing this to confess to (...) you my obsessive infatuation with the Star Trek universe. Instead I want to discuss how the beliefs and practices of Vulcans like Spock are similar to those of the Stoic school of philosophy. (shrink)

John Dewey was the dominant voice in American philosophy through the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the nascent years of the Cold War. With a professional career spanning three generations and a profile that no public intellectual has operated on in the U.S. since, Dewey's biographer Robert Westbrook accurately describes him as "the most important philosopher in modern American history." In this superb and engaging introduction, Steven Fesmire begins with a chapter on Dewey’s life and works, before discussing (...) and assessing Dewey's key ideas across the major disciplines in philosophy; including metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, educational philosophy, social-political philosophy, and religious philosophy. This is an invaluable introduction and guide to this deeply influential philosopher and his legacy, and essential reading for anyone coming to Dewey's work for the first time. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Four, "Ethics Reconstructed."]. (shrink)

Two fundamentally distinct approaches to the teaching of philosophy are contrasted: On the one hand, there is the “information-oriented” approach which has dominated classrooms and which emphasizes the understanding of historically important philosophical works. On the other hand, there is the “cognitive skills” approach. The two approaches may be distinguished under the headings of ‘knowing that’ as opposed to ‘knowing how’. This paper describes and discusses four perspectives relating to the teaching of cognitive skills: (i) the discovery-oriented approach, (ii) Piagetian (...) learning cycles, (iii) protocol analysis, and (iv) conceptual therapy. The latter approach reflects the author’s interest in helping students to develop “therapeutic” skills that enable them to identify and eliminate concepts which they employ in their thinking and which are incompatible with their own presuppositional bases and are therefore self-refuting. ●●●●● -/- 2022 UPDATE: The approach of this paper has been updated and developed further in Appendix II, "Epistemological Intelligence," of the author’s 2021 book _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_. The book is available both in a printed edition (under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6 from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers) and an Open Access eBook edition (available through Philpapers under the book’s title and other philosophy online archives). (shrink)

Subtitled "The Lazy Gambler's Guide to Choosing a Religion," this essay presents an account of Pascal's Wager that avoids most of the major traditional objections to Pascal's appeal to self-interest as an incentive to the investigation of Christian evidences. I then turn to what I call "the Lazy Objection" to the wager, which claims that there are too many religions all of which can make a similar appeal and argue that this is simply false. I conclude that, considered as a (...) rhetorical strategy, the Wager is really a Challenge, one we decline at our peril. (shrink)

Technologies cannot simply be understood as neutral tools or instruments; they embody the values of their creators and may unconsciously reinforce systematic patterns of inequality, discrimination, and oppression. -/- Technology Ethics shows how responsible innovation can be achieved. Demonstrating how design and philosophy converge, the book delves into the intricate narratives that shape our understanding of technology – from instrumentalist views to social constructivism. Yet, at its core, it champions interactionalism as the most promising and responsible narrative. Through compelling examples (...) and actionable tools, this book unravels the nuances of these philosophical positions tailored to foster responsible innovation and thoughtful design. As our everyday lives further intertwine with technology, understanding and implementing these design principles becomes not just beneficial, but essential. -/- This concise and accessible introduction is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of technology, engineering ethics, science and technology studies, human-machine communication, as well as policymakers. (shrink)

A combined psychological-epistemological study of the human blocks that stand in the way of the recognition of the sentience and legal rights of non-human animals. This is a German translation of the original paper, "Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights: Psychological and Conceptual Blocks," published by the Lewis and Clark law journal, Animal Rights, in 2002.

A reply to commentators -- Jake Beck, Nico Orlandi and Aaron Franklin, and Ian Phillips -- on our paper "Does perceptual consciousness overflow cognitive access?".

I mostly agree with most of what Paul Moser has said in his books in the Philosophy of Religion. The views he has defended are a needed corrective to the evidentialist paradigm in the philosophy of religion. At the same time, his development of his central ideas has resulted in views that are, somewhat idiosyncratic and extreme. In this essay I hope to present a different articulation of those ideas, also defensible from within a Christian perspective, that preserves their central (...) thrust without being so extreme. (shrink)

This is an imagined dialogue between one of the more famous skeptics regarding moral attribution, Thrasymachus, and an imagined Socrates who, through the convenient miracle of time travel, returns to Athens after exposure to contemporary metaethics, now a devoted and formidable quasi-realist expressivist. The dialogue focuses on the characterization of moral conflict and moral justification available to the expressivist, and the authors attempt to lay out the distinctive strengths and weaknesses of the expressivist view.

Robotization is an increasingly pervasive feature of our lives. Robots with high degrees of autonomy may cause harm, yet in sufciently complex systems neither the robots nor the human developers may be candidates for moral blame. John Danaher has recently argued that this may lead to a retribution gap, where the human desire for retribution faces a lack of appropriate subjects for retributive blame. The potential social and moral implications of a retribution gap are considerable. I argue that the retributive (...) intuitions that feed into retribution gaps are best understood as deontological intuitions. I apply a debunking argument for deontological intuitions in order to show that retributive intuitions cannot be used to justify retributive punishment in cases of robot harm without clear candidates for blame. The fundamental moral question thus becomes what we ought to do with these retributive intuitions, given that they do not justify retribution. I draw a parallel from recent work on implicit biases to make a case for taking moral responsibility for retributive intuitions. In the same way that we can exert some form of control over our unwanted implicit biases, we can and should do so for unjustifed retributive intuitions in cases of robot harm. (shrink)

A short paper presented before the Fellows of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions during the academic year 1969-70, with an Introductory Note written nearly 50 years later. The paper describes the author's enduring personal philosophical precept; it is also an implicit encomium to individuals whose psychology establishes a dependable bridge between their rational convictions and their conduct.

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved voluntarily (...) as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Preventive vaccination can protect not just vaccinated individuals, but also others, which is often a central point in discussions about vaccination. To date, there has been no systematic study of self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination. This article has two major goals: first, to examine and distinguish between self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination, especially with regard to vaccinating for the sake of third parties, and second, to explore some ways in which this approach can help to clarify and guide (...) vaccination debates and policy. I propose conceiving of vaccination in terms of three basic elements: the vaccination decision-maker, the vaccine recipient and the primary beneficiary. I develop a taxonomy based on the relations between these elements to distinguish four kinds of vaccination: self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic and indirect. I finally discuss the case of human papillomavirus vaccine regulation for men and women to show how each kind of vaccination is associated with and raises specific ethical questions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

“What is appreciation?” is a basic question in the philosophy of art, and the analogy between appreciating a work of art and getting a joke can help us answer it. We first propose a subjective account of aesthetic appreciation (I). Then we consider jokes (II). The difference between getting a joke and not, or what it is to get it right, can often be objectively articulated. Such explanations cannot substitute for the joke itself, and indeed may undermine the very power (...) of the joke to evoke an appropriate response. Sometimes the discourse of art critics can have a similar effect. We therefore explore the analogy between getting jokes and appreciating works of art (III), and find it unexpectedly strong. Finally (IV), we consider Wittgensteinian grounds for thinking as we do, considering the language game of joke-telling, the relevance of seeing aspects, and giving reasons. (shrink)