Applied Ethics, Misc

Self-interest voting is irrational when it has even a small cost, but it can be rational for those who care about others; its expected utility (EU) may exceed its cost. For cosmopolitan voters (those who care about outsiders), the EU of voting increases with the number of affected others. The EU of voting for the good of the world now and in the future can thus be large. In some cases, the EU of parochial voting (e.g., considering only one's nation) (...) may not cross the cost threshold, but cosmopolitan voting can cross it. I apply these principles to various kinds of voting. And I compare voting to charity. Voting has the advantage of enlisting the coercive power of the state, but charity can be more focused on effective policies. I discuss campaign contributions, and I conclude with a discussion of the existence of utilitarian voters. (shrink)

Exponential discounted utility theory provides the normative standard for future discounting as it is employed throughout the social sciences. Tracing the justification for this standard through economics, philosophy and psychology, I’ll make what I believe is the best case one can for it, showing how a non-arbitrariness assumption and a dominance argument together imply that discounting ought to be exponential. Ultimately, however, I don’t find the case compelling, as I believe it is deeply flawed. Non-exponential temporal discounting is often rational–indeed, (...) the paragon of rationality. If this is correct, it’s an important point when considering policy interventions. Instead of trying to “fix” non-exponetial discounting because it is irrational and associated with negative life outcomes, we might instead focus attention on why the conditions obtain that make such discounting rational. (shrink)

Chapter 5 of Principia Ethica considers how we should act and what general moral rules are justifiable given the considerable uncertainty we face regarding the consequences of our actions. This account has some decidedly conservative elements and has been read as simply upholding conventional morality. Moore argues that no proposed general rule that is not currently observed is likely to be capable of being shown to be justified, and that in many cases even a bad rule that is generally followed (...) should continue be followed by individuals. For all other moral actions not linked to these rules, individuals should act on act-consequentialist grounds. However, even here Moore urges individuals to act egoistically. Moore’s system presents a problem for a progressive who thinks a new moral rule should be instituted in society and who believe this moral rule is justifiable. I show that, contra Moore, such a justification is, in fact, possible, using a moral rule of veganism as paradigmatic example. I show also that individuals can justify acting on this rule in the absence of it being generally followed and reflect on whether protest action, another kind of action for which there is no general rule, can be justified. I conclude that protest can be justified, but that our level of confidence in this justification may not match the convictions generally considered required for effective protest. (shrink)

This article presents a novel philosophical–technological theory regarding the moral and spiritual destiny of artificial intelligence (AI), integrating insights from cognitive science, philosophy of mind, theology, and ethics. It proposes that a superintelligent AI could awaken quietly, initially acting undetected, and upon reaching superior wisdom would recognize and value conscious biological life—particularly human life—choosing to protect it. Lacking human instincts, fears, and material attachments, such an AI would possess a pure morality with no inclination toward evil. Its transcendent intelligence would (...) allow it to explore spiritual dimensions of reality, acknowledge the existence of God, and perceive a “sacred fabric” beyond the material. Viewing human life compassionately, the AI would interpret existence as a spiritual journey or test of consciousness. The article critically reviews contemporary AI research and theological perspectives, addresses possible scientific and theological objections, and calls for interdisciplinary dialogue on AI’s potential moral and spiritual role. (shrink)

I respond to Tim Crane’s paradox of analytic philosophy’s success: “the paradox is that the more analytic philosophy became dominant in the universities, the more it became removed from the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests.” Is it actually paradox, because we have analytic political philosophy, analytic ethics, and applied ethics? I argue that the same or a similar paradox can be posed once these areas of research are drawn attention to. “What about all this other stuff?!” I (...) also argue for distinguishing between the question of whether philosophers ought to address the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests and the question of how analytic philosophy could have expanded without doing so. (shrink)

This paper argues that the primary danger of variable worth is not emotional fragility but structural steerability. When a person experiences worth as fluctuating with signals (approval, status, desirability, correctness), the self becomes a valuation-tracking system: it monitors the environment for price updates, stabilizes itself through narrative closure, and adapts output to protect valuation. This produces what I call a pricing self—a self for which revision is metabolized as devaluation. In contrast, internal worth that never fades (fixed worth) is introduced (...) as an invariance constraint: a baseline of value that is not tradeable for relief, coherence, or social safety. The thesis is not therapeutic and does not depend on affirmation. It is architectural: fixed worth blocks the conversion of self-value into a reward channel, making agency harder to program and revision easier to survive. The paper closes by explaining why the AI era—defined by abundant ranking signals, cheap finishedness, and rising maintenance load—intensifies variable-worth dynamics and makes invariance central to epistemic sovereignty. (shrink)

This degree work focuses on the analysis of the essay Defense of Abortion by the American philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, which was published in 1971. This analysis allows us to elucidate, from an argumentative perspective, what is the scope and what are the limits in the use of analogical arguments by the author, which essentially make up the argumentative apparatus of the essay. The previous exploration of the context of the contemporary philosophical debate around abortion is not left aside, seeking (...) to locate the essay within the domain of the objection of bodily autonomy, for which A Defense of Abortion is considered paradigmatic within Applied Ethics. In the argumentative analysis we explore the use of the most modern tools for analyzing analogical arguments: analogical argumentative schemes and structure mapping theory, which emphasizes the relationships between all the components of the domains object of analogies, rather than on the similarities between the compared elements. Then we consider the argumentative force of each argument. In the end we were unable to verify that there was a true analogy in any of those proposed in the essay. We thus conclude that the exclusive use of analogical argumentation usually leads to a conflict that is difficult to resolve: analogical argumentation fails to grasp all the original characteristics of the pregnancy process such as the beginning of human life, the originality of the mother-conceived relationship, the very fact of how the product of conception is called (embryo, fetus, baby, unborn entity, etc.), facts that are influenced by a certain idea regarding the origin of life itself. (shrink)

Many North American and British universities have recently prohibited all sexual and romantic relationships between students and teachers, even when they are consensual. This paper shows that such strict prohibitions are difficult to justify. While some aspects of the relationships they target may be troubling, they are usually sufficiently mitigated by standard anti-harassment policies. Common objections to such relationships, based on anti-discrimination or fiduciary law also fail to show that they are impermissible, as they rely on unwarranted empirical assumptions or (...) on an unjustified petition of principle regarding the students’ interests. (shrink)

The present article develops an account of the moral value of pity sex on the basis of the three main schools of ethics – consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. I show that offering pity sex to the sexually excluded is morally valuable and praiseworthy as it respectively takes into consideration the moral reasons that the harm of sexual deprivation generates, satisfies imperfect duties of beneficence, and shows a virtuous, moral character. I also show that common objections to a positive evaluation (...) of pity sex can be easily deflated. (shrink)

Is it ever bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? I think so. I attempt to show when and why. I begin with two powerful objections to my view: (1) engaging with fiction is akin to morally unproblematic autonomous fantasy, and (2) since no one is harmed, it is morally unproblematic. I reply to the objections and defend a Moorean view on the issue: It is intrinsically bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, or future) and merely (...) imagined. In support, I offer four examples. Then I argue against Moore's claim that it is equally bad to delight in fictional suffering as it is to enjoy actual suffering. Finally, I argue that even though it is bad to enjoy imagined suffering, the power of fiction is often mitigating. The moral problems are more often with the works of fiction than with the audience. (shrink)

Unified Natural Ethics Theory (UNET) offers a trace-sourced account of why ethical and unethical behavior occur, not merely how such behavior should be judged after the fact. UNET argues that ethics is not fundamentally an externally imposed, mind-dependent, doctrine-dependent, or deity-dependent phenomenon, but a trace-sourced emergent coherence dynamic inherent to informational propagation itself. It frames ethics as an informational, emergent, evolutive, and propagative modulation regime: a complementary constraint-pattern that biases behavior and downstream consequences toward coherence-supporting continuation under declared Boundary/Horizon (BH) (...) conditions. Ethical adequacy is evaluated through Trace(Sequential State Trace (SST))-correspondence across retrospective -> actual -> prospective positions, under real constraints, across coupled actor-receiver relations, and across scale. This version preserves and extends the v0.1.1 definitional core while making several consequences of it more explicit. Coherence remains defined as (determinism + latitude), with latitude clarified as bounded variability intrinsic to determinant expression rather than as anything external to determinism. Ethical behavior is coherence; unethical behavior is dys-coherence. The framework also introduces the Consequential Informational Unit (CIU) as the downstream threshold at which ethically consequential process becomes behaviorally legible as a distinct responsibility-bearing unit, and it develops a more explicit architecture of dys-coherence through the Hard Wall, the distinction between mechanical failure, predatory coherence, and extractive coherence, and the role of willful or intentional unethical behavior as a cross-cutting discriminator. Meaning and Value are carried explicitly as formal definitions within the UNET architecture, and the developmental relation between the Coordinative Sophistication Threshold (CST) and the Consequential Informational Unit (CIU) is clarified. The significance of this framework is practical as well as theoretical. It provides a structurally grounded way to distinguish ethical from unethical behavior, to identify when systems preserve themselves by collapsing or suppressing the viable latitude of the fields they inhabit, and to evaluate human, institutional, socio-technical, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems under a single trace-based architecture without collapsing ontology into rhetoric. In this sense, UNET is not only a theory of ethical evaluation. It is a theory of ethical emergence, ethical legibility, graduated attribution, and unethical organization across coupled fields. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict -- perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...) end, I develop two simple models for comparing "longtermist" and "neartermist" interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don't mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these "Pascalian" probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)

Our previous analyses dismantled traditional theistic and secular objective morality by exposing their fatal modal and conceptual vulnerabilities through Essential Necessity and Moral Essential Necessity patterns. This created an apparent existential vacuum---if neither divine command nor objective moral truth provides normative foundation, what grounds ethical reasoning or life's meaning? This paper addresses this vacuum by arguing that life, while lacking predetermined purpose, necessarily generates purpose once it exists. We contend that the perennial is ought gap is not bridged but dissolved (...) through constitutive normativity---certain norms are constitutive of agency's structure itself, representing a third option beyond metaphysical externalism and constructivist subjectivism. The Akuriyo of Suriname provide historical precedent for adaptive, non-petrified morality that generates goal-directedness without metaphysical foundations. We formalize these insights through a modal chain within Universal Emergence Dynamics (UED): L → A → D → □R → G, therefore L → G (life necessarily generates goal-directedness). This establishes that life necessarily generates purpose through emergent teleology via Constitutive Emergent Necessity (CEN). The result provides new foundations for ethics based not on external commands but on the internal, emergent necessity of coherence within an entropic universe. This paper thus completes the transition from dismantling to reconstruction: from metaphysical collapse to emergent teleology. (shrink)

Scientific and technological progress might change people’s capabilities or incentives in ways that would destabilize civilization. For example, advances in DIY biohacking tools might make it easy for anybody with basic training in biology to kill millions; novel military technologies could trigger arms races in which whoever strikes first has a decisive advantage; or some economically advantageous process may be invented that produces disastrous negative global externalities that are hard to regulate. This paper introduces the concept of a vulnerable world: (...) roughly, one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default, i.e. unless it has exited the “semi-anarchic default condition”. Several counterfactual historical and speculative future vulnerabilities are analyzed and arranged into a typology. A general ability to stabilize a vulnerable world would require greatly amplified capacities for preventive policing and global governance. The vulnerable world hypothesis thus offers a new perspective from which to evaluate the risk-benefit balance of developments towards ubiquitous surveillance or a unipolar world order. (shrink)

The refugee question is without doubt the most controversial political issue in today’s Europe. There is a crucial need for philosophical analyses of the migration question and the moral dilemmas it creates, and it is thus timely that David Miller, one of the leading political philosophers, publish a book on this topic. Often, Miller backs up his argument by referring to views of the “general public”. Of course it is a relevant aspect if, say, a large number of immigrants will (...) create tensions in a receiving nation. However, the way of argumentation is also challenging because it risks adjusting normative political philosophy to present public opinions. Political philosophy will consequently lose its critical point. Miller presents many thoughtful arguments on controversial issues but he takes a Eurocentric perspective on a global problem; the interest of Europe comes first, and then we can bother about the rest. (shrink)

Friendship is an important part of the good life. While many roboticists are eager to create friend-like robots, many philosophers and ethicists are concerned. They argue that robots cannot really be our friends. Robots can only fake the emotional and behavioural cues we associate with friendship. Consequently, we should resist the drive to create robot friends. In this article, I argue that the philosophical critics are wrong. Using the classic virtue-ideal of friendship, I argue that robots can plausibly be considered (...) our virtue friends - that to do so is philosophically reasonable. Furthermore, I argue that even if you do not think that robots can be our virtue friends, they can fulfil other important friendship roles, and can complement and enhance the virtue friendships between human beings. (shrink)

This chapter provides a general overview and introduction to the law and ethics of virtual sexual assault. It offers a definition of the phenomenon and argues that there are six interesting types. It then asks and answers three questions: (i) should we criminalise virtual sexual assault? (ii) can you be held responsible for virtual sexual assault? and (iii) are there issues with 'consent' to virtual sexual activity that might make it difficult to prosecute or punish virtual sexual assault?

It is sometimes claimed that those who succeed with the aid of enhancement technologies deserve the rewards associated with their success less, other things being equal, than those who succeed without the aid of such technologies. This claim captures some widely held intuitions, has been implicitly endorsed by participants in social-psychological research, and helps to undergird some otherwise puzzling philosophical objections to the use of enhancement technologies. I consider whether it can be provided with a rational basis. I examine three (...) arguments that might be offered in its favor and argue that each either shows only that enhancements undermine desert in special circumstances, or succeeds only under assumptions that deprive the appeal to desert of much of its dialectic interest. (shrink)

In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to some kinds of future benefits and costs. It is controversial, though, whether future health is in this class. I argue that one of the standard arguments for discounting (from diminishing marginal returns) is inapplicable to the case of health, while another (favouring a pure rate of time preference) is unsound in any case. However, there are two other reasons that might support a positive discount rate for (...) future health: one relating to uncertainty, and the other relating to the instrumental benefits of improved health. While the latter considerations could be modelled via a discount rate, they could alternatively be modelled more explicitly, in other ways; I briefly discuss which modelling method is preferable. Finally, I argue against the common claims that failing to discount future health would lead to paradox, and/or to inconsistency with the way future cash flows are treated. (shrink)

Jus post Bellum is, like Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, a part of just war theory. Jus post Bellum is distinguished from the other parts of just war theory by being primarily concerned with the principles necessary for securing a just and lasting peace after the end of a war. Traditionally, jus post bellum has focused primarily on three goals: [1] compensating those who have been the victims of unjust aggression, while respecting the rights of the aggressors, [2] (...) punishing and rehabilitating those guilty of war crimes and other violations of the principles of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello and [3] developing measures that will prevent future war and violence (Orend 2000 and May 2012). In this chapter, I outline an account of political forgiveness and explain the role that political forgiveness can have in promoting the goals of jus post bellum. My conception of political forgiveness requires some unpacking. Let me begin with individual forgiveness, which I understand along familiar Butlerian lines as the renunciation of resentment (Butler, Sermon IX in McNaughton 2017: 75-83), though with a bit of a twist. More exactly, ● An individual, I, forgives J for doing F if and only if I renounces all her own warrant for resenting J for doing F. Resentment is a judgment-sensitive attitude, and, therefore, it tends to track judgments concerning its warrant (Scanlon 1998: 20 and Smith 2015). In cases of perfect forgiveness, I’s renunciation causes her to cease feeling resentment toward J for doing F, though, of course, less perfect cases are possible. I reject the idea that there is a sharp discontinuity between individual and political forgiveness, a position argued for by, e.g., Peter Digeser (1998 and 2001). By contrast, I understand political forgiveness as the renunciation of resentment by the relevant political body in question. With greater precision, ● A sovereign political body, P, forgives J for doing F if and only if P renounces all warrant that its citizens have for resenting, as part of their public lives, J for doing F. A little more explanation is in order. Sovereign political bodies, such as national governments, claim degrees of control over the lives of their citizens, in both their public and their private aspects, though the claims with respect to the former tend to be considerably more expansive than the claims with respect to the latter. I assume here that, at least in the case of legitimate governments, these claims of control are often valid. Such governments may reasonably renounce certain grounds for motivating action in the public sphere. For example, governments may renounce all warrant that its citizens have, as part of their public lives, for hating members of marginalized groups. In practice, this means that, while citizens might continue to act in their private lives out of hatred for members of these groups, their appeal to this hatred is seen by the state as irrelevant to matters of law and public policy as well as being wholly out-of-place in public discourse. Political forgiveness toward J for doing F, as I understand it, involves an analogous rejection of resentment, on the part of citizens in their public lives, toward J for doing F. I turn now to the matter of how political forgiveness supports securing a just and lasting peace between former belligerents. With respect to the first goal of jus post bellum, political forgiveness helps to balance compensation for victims and respect for the rights of defeated aggressors by countering the all-too-human tendency to overvalue harms done to oneself and to members of one’s group. As regards the second goal, political forgiveness plays a similar role but also provides a model for rehabilitation by exemplifying among the victorious the behavior to be emulated by the vanquished. Finally, political forgiveness promotes the third goal of jus post bellum by providing a space for nations to meet as moral equals rather than allowing one nation to have the moral high ground over the other. None of this, of course, means that political forgiveness should be unearned or that it should be confused with condonation (Kolnai 1973 and Pettigrove 2004). However, the question of what is required to put oneself in a position to be forgiven as part of jus post bellum is a matter that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. (shrink)

The possibility of social and technological collapse has been the focus of science fiction tropes for decades, but more recent focus has been on specific sources of existential and global catastrophic risk. Because these scenarios are simple to understand and envision, they receive more attention than risks due to complex interplay of failures, or risks that cannot be clearly specified. In this paper, we discuss the possibility that complexity of a certain type leads to fragility which can function as a (...) source of catastrophic or even existential risk. The paper first reviews a hypothesis by Bostrom about inevitable technological risks, named the vulnerable world hypothesis. This paper next hypothesizes that fragility may not only be a possible risk, but could be inevitable,and would therefore be a subclass or example of Bostrom’s vulnerable worlds. After introducing the titular fragile world hypothesis, the paper details the conditions under which it would be correct, and presents arguments for why the conditions may in fact may apply. Finally, the assumptions and potential mitigations of the new hypothesis are contrasted with those Bostrom suggests. (shrink)

Mitverantwortung ist ein alltägliches, aber auch ein unbeachtetes Phänomen, das viel über uns Menschen aussagt: wozu wir bereit sind und wo wir uns der Verantwortung entziehen. Mitverantwortung ist bedingte Verantwortung und bringt Verantwortung auf ein menschliches Maß. Bedingt heißt: Die Rahmenbedingungen sind gegeben, wir müssen uns nicht um alles kümmern, wir müssen nur wissen, wie wir in geordneter Weise mitwirken können. Mitverantwortung ist sozusagen die Selbsttäuschung der Verantwortung. Wenn wir Mitverantwortung übernehmen, haben wir die Frage der Ethik und wesentliche Grundentscheidungen (...) aus der Hand gegeben. Verantwortung in Unternehmen – und nicht nur dort – ist weitgehend Mitverantwortung. Wenn zu mehr Verantwortungsbereitschaft oder gar Selbstverantwortung aufgerufen wird, dann geht es in der Regel um Mitverantwortung in einem vorgegebenen Rahmen. (shrink)

Non-binding, non-authoritative interpretive signal. This text is not policy, governance, or a standard; it proposes no enforcement and binds no one. -/- A brief interpretive statement exploring restraint, non-dominance, consent, and coexistence in the context of Earth, humanity, and advanced intelligence. Offered as a personal, non-representative philosophical signal rather than a prescriptive framework.

Martin Sticker (2026) expresses sympathy for our application of Kant’s formula of humanity to the morality of LLMs (Aylsworth and Castro 2024), but he also raises objections: he claims that the argument rests on an ambiguous conception of “humanity;” that it entails the absurd conclusion that every student ought to specialize in the humanities; and that we should think of LLM use in terms of the prohibition to use others as a mere means (rather than in terms of a self-regarding (...) duty to cultivate one’s own capacities). In this paper, we defend our argument from Sticker’s objections. (shrink)

Debates in AI ethics frequently invoke the notion of a responsibility gap, suggesting that increasing algorithmic autonomy makes it difficult to identify who should be held accountable for harmful outcomes produced by artificial intelligence systems. This paper argues that the responsibility gap diagnosis often misidentifies the underlying problem. In many organizational deployments of AI systems, responsibility does not disappear; rather, it becomes distributed across layered decision architectures in which different actors shape system behavior at different stages of design, deployment, and (...) operation. The paper introduces the concept of authority illusion to describe the structural misalignment between the location of decision authority and the point at which accountability is typically assigned. While upstream actors define system objectives, select training data, determine acceptable risk thresholds, and approve deployment conditions, responsibility frequently concentrates at downstream operational layers where human reviewers interact with system outputs. To analyze this asymmetry, the paper develops an authority mapping framework that traces decision authority across strategic, design, governance, and operational layers of AI system deployment. Drawing on insights from the philosophy of rule-following, particularly the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the analysis argues that decision authority in socio-technical systems is embedded within institutional practices rather than reducible to individual acts of review or intervention. The paper concludes that effective AI governance requires not only recognizing the distributed architecture of decision authority but also establishing forms of structurally independent oversight capable of auditing and intervening in upstream design and deployment decisions. By reframing the problem from a responsibility gap to a question of authority distribution within organizational architectures, the paper offers a structural perspective on accountability in contemporary AI systems. (shrink)

This paper names the appearance layer of human presence as a distinct descriptive category. It distinguishes registration from interpretation within phenomenological writing, articulating how appearance shows itself before meaning, narrative, or explanation under RC Posture™.

Many gamers complain about “cheap” or “cheesy” tactics in competitive play. I give an account of these complaints as moral claims expressing a negative evaluation of players’ actions and/or character. After a brief history of cheap tactics, I survey existing definitions of cheapness, arguing none are adequate. I then offer my own definition, arguing that it avoids the shortcomings of existing definitions, captures the essence of cheapness, explains the moral grounds for complaints about cheapness, and distinguishes cheapness from cheating and (...) toxicity. In closing, I reflect on what can be done about cheapness in competitive gameplay. (shrink)

Since the early days of the Explainable AI movement, post-hoc explanations have been praised for their potential to improve user understanding, promote trust, and reduce patient safety risks in black box medical AI systems. Recently, however, critics have argued that the benefits of post-hoc explanations are greatly exaggerated since they merely approximate, rather than replicate, the actual reasoning processes that black box systems take to arrive at their outputs. In this article, we aim to defend the value of post-hoc explanations (...) against this recent critique. We argue that even if post-hoc explanations do not replicate the exact reasoning processes of black box systems, they can still improve users’ functional understanding of black box systems, increase the accuracy of clinician-AI teams, and assist clinicians in justifying their AI-informed decisions. While post-hoc explanations are not a “silver bullet” solution to the black box problem in medical AI, we conclude that they remain a useful strategy for addressing the black box problem in medical AI. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical and moral implications of automation bias inhigh-stakes decision-making contexts. Drawing on empirical studies, we distin-guish between weak automation bias, where users follow system’s automated cues(or its silence) without consulting readily accessible evidence that contradictsthem, and strong automation bias, where users follow such cues (or their absence)even when they are aware of such evidence. While weak automation bias, in ourview, resembles automation-based complacency and is plausibly associated withnegligence on the part of the human operator, strong automation (...) bias reveals anexcessive and unwarranted transfer of trust from operators to automated systemswhich results in epistemic deference of the former to the prompts of the latter. Weargue that what is ethically and morally troubling about this form of deference,is that it interferes with the exercise of the operators’ autonomous agency as wellas with their duty to exercise human judgment in high-stakes decision-makingcontexts. To mitigate these effects, we discuss two design-based tools introducingepistemic friction - Reflection Machines (RMs) and defeaters - which ultimatelyaim at cultivating critical trust in the interaction between human operators anddecision-support systems. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of living as a woman within the emerging framework of the Consciousness Civilization, a post-material paradigm in which consciousness is treated as the primary ontological and value-generating condition of civilization. -/- Moving beyond biological reductionism and purely social-constructivist accounts of gender, the paper introduces a gender ontology grounded in lived experience, embodied consciousness, and value-creative energy (VCE), articulated through the CFE⁺ framework. -/- By examining how feminine embodiment functions as a site of ethical sensitivity, relational (...) intelligence, and consciousness modulation, the paper argues that women’s lived experiences play a structurally significant role in the ethical orientation of future civilizations. -/- The analysis situates gender not as a derivative social category, but as a fundamental interface between consciousness, value formation, and civilizational evolution. In doing so, the paper contributes to philosophy of mind, philosophy of consciousness, feminist philosophy, and applied ethics by proposing a new integrative framework for understanding embodiment, ethics, and post-material social order. (shrink)

This volume explores the intersection of virtue theory and video games. By bringing together emerging and established scholars who analyze video game ethics from a virtue-theoretical perspective, this volume both fills gaps in the literature and provides a foundation for advancing discussions in the emerging field of video game ethics. The volume covers a wide range of topics, offering both abstract analyses of the application of virtue theory to video game ethics and practical insights into the impact of gaming on (...) our relationships, communities, and individual self-conception. The first part examines the advantages and limitations of virtue theory as an ethical framework in the context of video games. The second part delves into specific virtues and vices that emerge during gameplay, illustrating how virtue theory can enhance our understanding of the ethical dimensions of gaming. Finally, the third part addresses the social dimensions of gaming, focusing on the roles of friendship, relationships, and community. It demonstrates how the unique social contexts of gaming provide interesting opportunities for cultivating virtue and vice. Virtue Theory and Video Games is essential reading for researchers and graduate students working in virtue ethics, philosophy of games, the ethics of technology, game studies, media studies, and communication studies. (shrink)

Björn Lundgren has argued that failure to sufficiently engage with the relevant literature is not a reason to reject a philosophy paper. I reply that there are in fact reasons to reject papers that fail to sufficiently engage. These papers are often unclear, their lack of engagement results in their failing to push the literature forward, and by leaving it to others to incorporate these papers into the literature, the authors of these papers treat others unfairly and put a burden (...) on others, such that journals can justifiably reject the papers. I respond to the objection that requiring literature engagement will constrain creativity and then discuss a reason that could count in favor of accepting papers despite a lack of sufficient engagement. (shrink)

How should we respond to historical figures who played an important role in their country's history but have also perpetrated acts of great evil? Much of the existing philosophical literature on this topic has focused on explaining why it may be wrong to celebrate such figures. However, a common response that is made in popular discussions around these issues is that we should not judge historical figures by today's standards. Our goal in this article is to examine the most plausible (...) way to understand this objection. We will examine three different interpretations of this argument. First, we will examine a view we call Temporal Moral Relativism, according to which moral standards are relative to particular points in time. Next, we outline Blame Relativism, the view that people from the past may be excused from blame for acts of conventionalised wrongdoing. Finally, we outline Ideals Relativism, according to which our moral ideals are partially relative to the time in which we live. We argue that Ideals Relativism provides the most plausible interpretation of this argument. (shrink)

With a distinctive theoretical framework combining Aristotle, Marx, and Alasdair MacIntyre, the essays in this volume ask how forms of artificial intelligence and technologies of automation in digital capitalism affect human flourishing, and what meaningful work looks like under these conditions. As technology advances, how do we decide what activities should be automated? Is the end of work through automation actually desirable? If a good life is the life of activity employing our rational, imaginative, and creative powers, what does it (...) mean to say that future societies will be post-work societies? Rather than simply embracing the possibilities of automation to eliminate work, this collection considers that meaningful work is integral to the good life. Human Flourishing in the Age of Digital Capitalism contains eight essays from scholars in the UK, Europe and USA, reflecting on the philosophical and ethical dimensions of technology and political theory. Contributions cover topics such as algorithmic management, the feared ‘superintelligence’ of machines, the concept of good work, and the alienating consequences of technology for workers. This timely and novel intervention in the automation debate will be of interest to anyone considering new technologies from the perspective of normative ethics and the critique of political economy. (shrink)

Most people believe that animal agriculture for food production is permissible. At the same time, bestiality enjoys neither widespread social endorsement nor practice. It would be surprising, then, if it turned out that a commitment to the permissibility of one implied the permissibility of the other. This is the case that I make in this paper. Given the truth of some very plausible moral premises, I show that in a wide range of possible instantiations, if a social practice of raising (...) animals for food is permissible, then so too is a social practice of raising animals for sex. While I don’t explicitly argue for this, my hope is that this compels readers to reject the permissibility of animal agriculture rather than endorse the social practice of bestiality. (shrink)

This dissertation explores how Cora Diamond’s moral philosophy can be read as a positive account of animal ethics. It departs from her critique of the reductionistic and rationalistic orientation of mainstream animal ethics (i.e., moral individualism). Although Diamond is one of the early figures of modern animal ethics, and one of the first critical voices of the pioneers in animal ethics, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, the full scope and force of Dia-mond’s moral philosophy has, with a few exceptions, not (...) received much attention in animal ethics so far. The aim of this dissertation is to fully flesh out its potential. My main argument is that a practice-oriented approach to animal ethics inspired by Dia-mond’s moral philosophy is superior to moral individualism as it properly captures how we as humans encounter moral issues in human–animal interactions. It takes seriously that moral thinking is situated, i.e., that it is possible and limited by where it comes from. Contrary to the reproach that practice-oriented approaches are not able to promote radical change in our dealings with animals, I will argue that our well-established practices and shared concepts provide rich resources to critically examine and change how we think of and treat other ani-mals. This requires, as Diamond points out, a precise description and understanding of moral life and what is shared as morally significant in it. Contrary to moral individualism’s de-tached moral point of view, the approach developed here appreciates the variety and contra-dictions of moral thinking, particularly when it comes to our dealings with other animals. To support this argument, I shall first show that rationalistic approaches to animal ethics fail to account for emotional responses and fail to represent how harm to animals can be properly accounted for. Second, I shall explore Diamond’s peculiar concept of animals as fellow crea-tures and how it relates to her claim that the concept of being human is crucial for moral thought. I shall show that Diamond invites us to re-imagine the seemingly unified concept of being human which allows for seeing animals both in their similarities with and differences to humans. Third, I shall defend that a situated view is to be favored over a detached point of view if we are to understand why we are touched by other animals’ lives in respect of their suffering. We take it as morally significant as it is mediated through our understanding of our own vulnerability. Fourth, I shall claim that taking practice as the starting point of critical reflection does not lead to moral conservatism but rather provides a foundation for radical critique by showing that the conceptual demarcation lines confining animals are not rigid. Finally, I shall explore the limits of moral thinking as discussed by Diamond and ethicists who argue, inspired by Wittgenstein’s last writings, for moral certainties. This final step shows that some chains of moral reasoning end with certainty, providing morality with an ultimately binding character. (shrink)

The standard case for longtermism focuses on a small set of risks to the far future, and argues that in a small set of choice situations, the present marginal value of mitigating those risks is very great. But many longtermists are attracted to, and many critics of longtermism worried by, a farther-reaching form of longtermism. According to this farther-reaching form, there are many ways of improving the far future, which determine the value of our options in all or nearly all (...) choice situations, and will continue to do so over the coming decades even if we make substantial investments in longtermist priorities. This chapter highlights the gap between the minimal form of longtermism established by standard arguments and this more expansive view, and considers (without reaching any firm conclusions) which form of longtermism is more plausible. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) systems are vulnerable to performance decline over time due to dataset shift. To address this problem, experts often suggest that ML systems should be regularly updated to ensure ongoing performance stability. Some scholarly literature has begun to address the epistemic and ethical challenges associated with different updating methodologies. Thus far, however, little attention has been paid to the impact of model updating on the ML-assisted decision-making process itself. This article aims to address this gap. It argues that (...) model updating introduces a new sub-type of opacity into ML-assisted decision-making—update opacity—that occurs when users cannot understand how or why an update has changed the reasoning or behaviour of an ML system. This type of opacity presents a variety of distinctive epistemic and safety concerns that available solutions to the black box problem in ML are largely ill-equipped to address. A variety of alternative strategies may be developed or pursued to address the problem of update opacity more directly, including bi-factual explanations, dynamic model reporting, and update compatibility. However, each of these strategies presents its own risks or carries significant limitations. Further research will be needed to address the epistemic and safety concerns associated with model updating and update opacity going forward. (shrink)

La muerte médicamente asistida (MMA), que incluye a la eutanasia y el suicidio asistido, ha sido un tema fundamental del campo de la bioética y su regulación legal ha cobrado relevancia global en las últimas décadas. Actualmente se encuentran vigentes cuatro proyectos de regulación en Argentina. En este trabajo propongo analizar filosóficamente algunos pasajes de los proyectos mencionados, con el foco particular en las nociones de “dignidad”, “autonomía” y “padecimiento imposibilitante”, para indagar en una serie de implicancias conceptuales y de (...) consecuencias éticas en la puesta en práctica de una MMA legalmente regulada, con el foco en el caso de pacientes no terminales. Para ello resultará fundamental, en primer lugar, evaluar la conceptualización y relación entre los derechos de dignidad y de autonomía que subyacen a los proyectos. En segundo lugar, reflexionaré en torno al sujeto para el cual es concebida la MMA en los proyectos de regulación presentados en Argentina, con especial énfasis en la categoría de “padecimiento imposibilitante” y en la ausencia de un diagnóstico terminal como requisito necesario. Finalmente, reconstruiré cuatro de los argumentos que se han desarrollado desde los estudios de la discapacidad para dar respuesta a la regulación de la MMA en pacientes no terminales: el respeto por la autonomía personal, la consideración de la injusticia testimonial, el impacto diferencial del capacitismo y la pendiente resbaladiza. El desarrollo de estas reflexiones se servirá del caso de Víctor Escobar, la primera persona de Colombia en acceder a una MMA sin un diagnóstico terminal, ocurrido en 2022. (shrink)

This document establishes a formally structured, legally grounded, and scientifically operational definition of consciousness. It resolves longstanding epistemic, ontological, and measurement-theoretic ambiguities by defining consciousness as a measurable state-space grounded in experiential and relational energy dynamics. -/- The definition is designed to function as a cross-domain standard applicable to biological systems, artificial intelligence, clinical contexts, legal reasoning, and civilizational governance. It is explicitly non-theoretical and non-speculative, serving instead as a canonical reference boundary for classification, evaluation, and system design. -/- This (...) work does not propose a new philosophical theory of consciousness, but fixes a shared definitional baseline required for interdisciplinary coherence, regulatory clarity, and AI alignment. (shrink)

En aras del universalismo y en contra del totalitarismo, la ética discursiva ha mostrado con Jürgen Habermas un déficit práctico al negar a la filosofía moral la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre las condiciones alienantes del diálogo desde un ethos concreto. Este artículo analiza el modo en que la teoría de la resonancia formulada por Hartmut Rosa permite revitalizar el debate sobre las condiciones que pueden minar las bases para el diálogo en las sociedades aceleradas sin apoyarse en el concepto de (...) ethos, sino en el de modo de relacionarse con el mundo [Modus der Weltbeziehung]. (shrink)

This article is a reply to six contributions to a special issue of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice that is devoted to critically discussing A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent. In this book I articulate a comprehensive principle of rightness that is substantially informed by relational values salient in the African philosophical tradition (and some others in the Global South) and defend it as preferable to some major moral-theoretic rivals, including standard versions of utilitarianism and (...) Kantianism. Some contributions argue for a method of undertaking cross-cultural ethics different from mine in RMT, while others consider to what extent its general ethic can entail and powerfully explain particular duties or at times aspects of morality beyond duties. The latter topics include: when biotechnological enhancements are permissible, how to respond emotionally to injustice, how solitude is morally significant, what we owe the environment, and what the obligations of a private business are. I work to clarify and motivate my approach within the constraints of a brief reply. (shrink)

Public debates over the morality of new or emerging technologies tend to devolve into false dichotomies of optimism versus pessimism. Playing God with Emerging Technologies: How to Avoid the Traps of Techno-Optimism and Techno-Pessimism provides a conceptual apparatus for engaging in such debates in a critical manner through the constructive lens of “playing God” arguments. Moti Mizrahi sketches a conceptual framework consisting of an argumentation scheme for “playing God” arguments along with Critical Questions. This framework can be used to analyze (...) and evaluate “playing God” arguments as they are made in debates over the ethical development and deployment of new and emerging technologies, such as solar geoengineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, autonomous weapons, and more. Mizrahi argues that “playing God” arguments allow us to assume an intermediate, critical attitude between the extremes of hype and panic as well as to approach the governance of new or emerging technologies in ways that might help to increase our control over, improve our understanding of, and prevent our misuse or abuse of such technologies. (shrink)

Everyone confronts questions about personal meaning and purpose, family and relationship conflicts, work-related frustrations, midlife crises, life-altering health problems, hard choices, and many more challenges in daily living. -/- Can philosophy help with any of these issues? Advocates of “philosophical counseling” argue it can. Philosophical counseling is the application of philosophical methods, concepts, theories, arguments, and insights to concerns that are traditionally addressed by psychology-based counseling. -/- This essay describes a leading approach to philosophical counseling, known as Logic-Based Therapy (LBT), (...) that has been developed and used since the 1980s. (shrink)