Several proposals for moral enhancement would use AI to augment (auxiliary enhancement) or even supplant (exhaustive enhancement) human moral reasoning or judgment. Exhaustive enhancement proposals conceive AI as some self-contained oracle whose superiority to our own moral abilities is manifest in its ability to reliably deliver the ‘right’ answers to all our moral problems. We think this is a mistaken way to frame the project, as it presumes that we already know many things that we are still in the process (...) of working out, and reflecting on this fact reveals challenges even for auxiliary proposals that eschew the oracular approach. We argue there is nonetheless a substantial role that ‘AI mentors’ could play in our moral education and training. Expanding on the idea of an AI Socratic Interlocutor, we propose a modular system of multiple AI interlocutors with their own distinct points of view reflecting their training in a diversity of concrete wisdom traditions. This approach minimizes any risk of moral disengagement, while the existence of multiple modules from a diversity of traditions ensures pluralism is preserved. We conclude with reflections on how all this relates to the broader notion of moral transcendence implicated in the project of AI moral enhancement, contending it is precisely the whole concrete socio-technical system of moral engagement that we need to model if we are to pursue moral enhancement. (shrink)

As AI large language models (LLMs) become increasingly embedded in everyday technologies, should we be concerned about their capacity to influence human beliefs - particularly in the moral domain? Being persuaded because one is convinced by the LLM-generated reasons can support the moral and intellectual growth of users, while being persuaded because one defers to the LLM can prevent, or even reverse, growth and understanding. In three studies, we investigate whether and how people revise their moral judgments after receiving advice (...) from LLMs. In Study 1, we find that despite rating human advisors as more trustworthy, participants were equally persuaded by LLMs in everyday moral dilemmas. In Study 2, we used a methodologically realistic paradigm in which participants interacted with a genuine LLM, finding that the LLM’s past performance and judged trustworthiness did not have an effect on its persuasiveness in everyday moral dilemmas. In Study 3, participants interacted with an LLM that defended its moral recommendation with good reasons, no reasons, or bad (i.e., patently absurd) reasons. While high-quality reasons do not increase persuasion relative to no reasons, bad reasons may actively undermine it. Our findings suggest that users defer to the LLM on a response-by-response basis, not based on past performance or the presence of high-quality reasons alone. That people defer to AI moral advice, even if not blindly, raises concerns about the effects of AI moral advisors - a heuristic of “this advice seems good enough” is not the way we should approach moral advice. (shrink)

Since some AI algorithms with high predictive power have impacted human integrity, safety has become a crucial challenge in adopting and deploying AI. Although it is impossible to prevent an algorithm from failing in complex tasks, it is crucial to ensure that it fails safely, especially if it is a critical system. Moreover, due to AI’s unbridled development, it is imperative to minimize the methodological gaps in these systems’ engineering. This paper uses the well-known Box-Jenkins method for statistical modeling as (...) a framework to identify engineering pitfalls in the adjustment and validation of AI models. Step by step, we point out state-of-the-art strategies and good practices to tackle these engineering drawbacks. In the final step, we integrate an internal and external validation scheme that might support an iterative evaluation of the normative, perceived, substantive, social, and environmental safety of all AI systems. (shrink)

Practical wisdom enables moral decision-making and action by aligning one’s apprehension of proximate goods with a distal, socially embedded interpretation of a more ultimate Good. A focus on purpose within the overall process mutually informs human moral psychology and moral AI development in their examinations of practical wisdom. AI practical wisdom could ground an AI system’s apprehension of reality in a sociotechnical moral process committed to orienting AI development and action in light of a pluralistic, diverse interpretation of that Good. (...) Defining AI purpose in terms of the human struggle to determine the moral “ought” (versus the way reality is) can overcome practical and normative limitations of principle-based approaches to AI ethics without requiring idiosyncratic moral reasoning or a premature commitment to a single ethical theory, which could hinder navigating the moral implications of future unknowns. Dividing practical wisdom into proximate, mediating, and distal processes enables each division to incorporate the moral dimensions of the situation, individual AI system, and sociotechnical community, respectively. Drawing upon externalist (4E) and ecological cognitive psychology theories to extend Xavier Zubiri’s sentient intelligence, proximate apprehension of what an object affords the perceiver includes affordances for practical and moral purposes. Those apprehensions are structured by moral and other social-cognitive schemas that mediate moral constructs, the apprehended situation, and individual commitments and other motivating identifications in a process Ignacio Ellacuria calls historical reality. Distally, Josiah Royce’s community of interpretation characterizes one way of organizing a sociotechnical process to synthesize diverse interpretations of the Good, orient AI moral practice, and align AI development with human and AI moral purpose. (shrink)

A philosophical task force explores how AI is revolutionizing our lives - and what moral problems it might bring, showing us what to be wary of, and what to be hopeful for. There is no more important issue at present than artificial intelligence. AI has begun to penetrate almost every sphere of human activity. It will disrupt our lives entirely. David Edmonds brings together a team of leading philosophers to explore some of the urgent moral concerns we should have about (...) this revolution. The chapters are rich with examples from contemporary society and imaginative projections of the future. The contributors investigate problems we're all aware of, and introduce some that will be new to many readers. They discuss self and identity, health and insurance, politics and manipulation, the environment, work, law, policing, and defence. Each of them explains the issue in a lively and illuminating way, and takes a view about how we should think and act in response. Anyone who is wondering what ethical challenges the future holds for us can start here. (shrink)

The debate over whether artificial intelligence systems "understand" language has reached an unproductive impasse, with skeptics denying any philosophically significant competence and enthusiasts implying capacities far beyond what current systems possess. This paper argues that the impasse results in part from a persistent conflation of two different competence profiles. We define Textbook Competence as the capacity to perform context-sensitive, inferentially disciplined transformations on structured symbolic material across registers and tasks without requiring direct immersion in the domain described. Steeped Competence is (...) then defined as the capacity acquired through sustained participation in a domain, shaped by perceptual, motor, social, and cultural attunement that is often difficult to verbalize and resistant to transmission through language alone. Current large language models plausibly exhibit the former on an operational reading and lack the latter in the ordinary human sense. We position this binary relative to more refined cuts in the recent literature and argue that it tracks a real categorical break in acquisition mode whose operational consequences the more refined cuts are not designed to make perspicuous. The brittleness profile documented in recent empirical work — strong performance on tasks statistically near the training distribution, sharp degradation under distribution shift — is precisely what the framework predicts and is therefore positive evidence for it, not merely a caveat on the empirical claim. By distinguishing these two competence profiles and mapping the evidence for each, we clarify the apparent paradox of systems that seem to "understand everything and nothing." The distinction is offered as an analytic tool with substantive philosophical and empirical commitments, not as a complete taxonomy of cognition. (shrink)

In “Against Personalized AI Moral Advisors” (2025), Muriel Leuenberger has argued that the personal nature of practical deliberation, which I stressed in my “Can AI Rely on the Systematicity of Truth? The Challenge of Modelling Normative Domains” (2025a), counterintuitively militates against the development of personalized AI moral advisors and in favour of generalist AI moral advisors. Here, I take up and develop this line of thought, drawing out how the asystematicity of normative domains reveals the fundamental limitations of both personalized (...) and generalist AI moral advisors. (shrink)

The Turing Test, despite its historical significance, has been rendered inadequate by contemporary large language models (LLMs) that exhibit linguistic competence without consciousness. This inadequacy reveals a fundamental problem: passing a test based solely on linguistic behavior does not capture the systemic properties that ground conscious experience. We propose the Emergence Framework, a diagnostic-conceptual tool that evaluates consciousness across three interrelated dimensions: Agency (teleodynamic goal-directedness and capacity for norm generation), Self (boundary maintenance and reflexive coherence), and Otherness (recognition and interpretation (...) of alterity through semiotic engagement). This framework emerges from a reconciliation of contemporary theories of consciousness—Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Workspace Theory (GWT), and the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—with biosemiotic perspective. Each theoretical approach addresses aspects of these three dimensions but lacks an explicit account of their necessary integration. By grounding these axes in biosemiotic principles, the framework offers a more comprehensive basis for evaluating consciousness not only in biological systems but also in synthetic and hybrid substrates. We apply this framework to diverse cases—from bacteria to organoids to AI agents—demonstrating how the three axes can discriminate degrees and kinds of conscious organization. This integrated approach offers new conceptual tools for consciousness research while acknowledging that translating these criteria into rigorous empirical protocols requires ongoing work. (shrink)

In a recent article, Queloz (Philosophy & Technology, 38(1), 2025) proposed that AI cannot rely on the systematicity of truth in normative domains to build comprehensive models. Beyond challenging AI development, the asystematicity of truth in normative domains underscores the essential role of individual human agency in practical deliberation. When faced with difficult choices between conflicting and incommensurable values, individuals must make judgements of importance that cannot be delegated to an algorithm. This commentary expands on the fundamentally personal nature of (...) practical deliberation to argue in favor of generalist AI moral advisors over personalized systems. (shrink)

Le travail d'Étienne Bimbenet s'est distingué comme l'un des principaux commentateurs de la pensée du phénoménologue français Maurice Merleau-Ponty, notamment pour l'accent qu'il met sur la question de l'humain, que l'on peut déjà observer dans Nature et Humanité (2004). Cependant, ce qui était au départ une interprétation personnelle de la philosophie d'un autre penseur s'est ensuite transformé en une proposition entièrement originale autour du lien et des distinctions entre l'anthropologie et la phénoménologie, plus précisément en une réarticulation de la question (...) de l'humain et de ses répercussions pour penser sa distinction avec l'animal. (shrink)

Providing meaningful and actionable explanations for end-users is a situated problem requiring the intersection of multiple disciplines to address social, operational, and technical challenges. However, the explainable artificial intelligence community has not commonly adopted or created tangible design tools that allow interdisciplinary work to develop reliable AI-powered solutions. This paper proposes a formative architecture that defines the explanation space from a user-inspired perspective. The architecture comprises five intertwined components to outline explanation requirements for a task: (1) the end-users’ mental models, (...) (2) the end-users’ cognitive process, (3) the user interface, (4) the Human-Explainer Agent, and (5) the agent process. We first define each component of the architecture. Then, we present the Abstracted Explanation Space, a modeling tool that aggregates the architecture’s components to support designers in systematically aligning explanations with end-users’ work practices, needs, and goals. It guides the specifications of what needs to be explained (content: end-users’ mental model), why this explanation is necessary (context: end-users’ cognitive process), to delimit how to explain it (format: Human-Explainer Agent and user interface), and when the explanations should be given. We then exemplify the tool’s use in an ongoing case study in the aircraft maintenance domain. Finally, we discuss possible contributions of the tool, known limitations or areas for improvement, and future work to be done. (shrink)

L’articolo ricostruisce una panoramica sintetica del significato del Concilio Vaticano II, guardandolo attraverso le categorie di “evento” e “processo”. Se “lo spirito e l’andamento” dell’assemblea conciliare confermarono un nuovo clima e sensibilità ecclesiale che implicava anche una nuova forma di fare teologia, tuttavia l’immagine risultante non è priva di dubbi e punti interrogativi. Assieme ai limiti epistemologici e “pratici”, il suo carattere pastorale – novità conciliare fondamentale, particolarmente legata alla “Gaudium et spes” – continua navigando tra una comprensione della pastorale (...) come sensibilità dogmatica di base o come semplice adattamento pratico della dottrina. (shrink)

En perspectiva kantiana, la posibilidad del conocimiento surge de la conjunción o unidad sintética de la espontaneidad del entendimiento (categorías) con las formas a priori de la sensibilidad. La tarea es entender cómo se efectúa esa conjunción o unidad sintética analizando cada una de sus condiciones por separado y en su conjunto. En la Crítica de la razón pura, específicamente en el apartado “Del esquematismo de los conceptos puros del entendimiento” (A 137–147/B 176–187) se muestra este mecanismo. Teniendo en mente (...) esta discusión, este trabajo tiene los siguientes objetivos: en primer lugar, presentar la problemática del esquematismo trascendental; en segundo lugar, describir cómo ocurre la construcción esquemática de los conceptos geométricos y, finalmente, especificar el lugar que ocupa el álgebra en la filosofía kantiana de las matemáticas. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Emergent Moral Ecology (EME) framework as a novel approach to addressing the complexities of moral responsibility in artificial intelligence (AI) systems. As AI technologies become increasingly autonomous and integrated into critical societal functions, traditional models of moral agency—grounded in anthropocentric concepts like consciousness, free will, and intention—prove inadequate for attributing responsibility. The EME framework reconceptualizes responsibility not as an intrinsic property of agents but as an emergent, context-sensitive function within sociotechnical systems comprising humans, AI entities, institutions, (...) and environments. Drawing from systems theory, ethics of care, process philosophy, and ecological metaphors, the framework posits that moral responsibility arises from the dynamic interactions and relational configurations of the components within these moral ecologies. It introduces foundational principles such as ecological emergence, moral gradients, contextual activation, reciprocal shaping, and temporal extension. Through multidimensional analysis—ontological, relational, contextual, and developmental—the framework offers a rigorous, adaptable tool for ethically assessing and guiding the deployment of AI systems. Case studies involving autonomous vehicles, medical diagnostics, and algorithmic decision-making demonstrate its practical relevance. The EME framework ultimately advocates for a shift from agent-centered ethics to ecology-centered responsibility, offering a philosophically robust and practically viable path for AI governance in an era of moral complexity. (shrink)

This chapter aims to challenge the cognitivist bias in debates surrounding AI-based and general moral enhancement and introduces the concept of moral identity as an alternative. The primary objective is to establish moral identity as an important and empirically adequate focal point for moral enhancement interventions. While an emphasis on cognition might preserve autonomy, it fails to present an adequate picture of moral self-governance. As the chapter argues, cognition does not play the central role in moral conduct we may desire. (...) This also applies to higher-order abilities.The focus on identity aligns with philosophical perspectives that place identity at the core of moral agency and recognizes that often it is our will, not reasoning ability, that affects our moral behavior. Furthermore, moral identity captures the agential dimension of enhancement in a potentially morally neutral and autonomy-respecting manner. As such, it offers a promising approach for improving moral conduct through AI-based interventions while being grounded in evidence from state-of-the-art empirical research. (shrink)

The possibilities of artificial intelligence are making many professionals, including communication experts, uneasy. Instead of debating whether technological advances will put an end to journalism, this study looks at how AI-generated content is used on social media for propaganda purposes, influencing social debate and public opinion. Recent events, like the War in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Palestine, have revealed the presence of skilled disinformation specialists in cyberspace who create fake content using AI. These publications, often videos (...) or photos, are shared widely by a digital audience that can’t tell they’re artificial creations.In this study, we present some recent examples of deepfakes which, besides appearing genuine, have been widely circulated on the internet and appeal to basic human emotions: the rejection of violence and the reinforcement of a sense of belonging. While this might seem like a positive goal, the creation of AI-altered images contributes to the construction of collective identity but undermines journalistic and communicative ethics, becoming just another part of the propaganda machinery used by each side in an armed conflict.The issue with deepfakes is that they don’t hide their artificial nature; instead, they aim to confuse or outright deceive. This sets them apart from other creations like memes, which attempt to convey a particular worldview but don’t hide their artificial origins due to their specific characteristics and narrative formulas. Therefore, this document advocates for the development of an analysis guide to help those affected by the digital divide. This guide would provide a set of guidelines to identify whether an image is real or not, aiding in understanding reality and avoiding deception. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming deeply embedded in financial services, including credit scoring, robo-advisory, trading, compliance, and reporting. In these contexts, failures of trust in human–AI collaboration do not merely affect technology adoption but raise fiduciary, reputational, and systemic concerns. Yet, despite its centrality, trust remains conceptually fragmented and inconsistently operationalized across the literature. To address this fragmentation, this study presents a Bibliometric–Systematic Literature Review of trust in human–AI collaboration in finance. Accordingly, we first stabilize trust in the financial context (...) as a latent evaluative belief under uncertainty by specifying the trustor, trustee, and object of trust, and by distinguishing trust from other constructs. Then following a PRISMA-guided Scopus retrieval (June 9, 2025), 430 records were screened, yielding a final corpus of 114 finance-specific publications published between 2018 and 2025. Using bibliographic coupling, weighted Leiden clustering, and centrality metrics, the review maps the intellectual structure of the field and identifies six research clusters: (i) AI governance in finance, (ii) eXplainable AI for finance, (iii) anthropomorphism in financial AI agents, (iv) user-interface design for human–AI interaction in finance, (v) robo-advisors for financial decision-making, and (vi) infrastructural trust technologies. Across these clusters, trust is variously framed as cognitive, affective, procedural, or infrastructural, with limited integration between analytical levels. Building on the bibliometric mapping and qualitative synthesis, the study develops a multi-level socio-technical framework that organizes how trust is discussed in the literature at the micro-level (user perceptions and calibration), meso-level (organizational design and corporate AI governance), and macro-level (regulatory and infrastructural). The micro–meso–macro framework is operationalized through eight analytically distinct propositions that synthesize recurrent patterns regarding trust calibration, overreliance, transparency-as-assurance, accountability, and systemic trust vulnerability. Four finance-oriented use cases illustrate how trust is treated as a distributed property of individuals, organizations, and institutions rather than as a feature of AI systems alone. By consolidating a fragmented body of work and clarifying its conceptual structure, this review provides a bounded, governance-oriented foundation for future empirical, experimental, and longitudinal research on trust in human–AI collaboration in finance. (shrink)

In western philosophical discussions, the debates on moral expertise often concern whether moral opinions come to us with certain level of guarantee that they are true. In other words, we doubt whether moral expertise possess the justifiable right of telling us to do X and not to do Y. In ancient Chinese philosophical discussions, people believe that there are moral experts in the form of sages (shengren 聖人), who command a body of moral values, and have knowledge or techniques recognized (...) by a community. However, for ancient Chinese sages, moral experts do not necessarily entail the right to tell people whether one should do X or should not do Y. Nor does the status of moral expertise presuppose that others should always listen to their decisions, especially when facing dilemmas, namely situations to which either of the actions will lead to unsatisfactory ends. In this paper, through the ideas of Confucius and Zhuangzi, I examine questions regarding what ancient Chinese moral experts tell others when facing dilemmas. (shrink)

Civics and Moral Educationwas implemented as a new moral education programme in Singapore schools in 1992. This paper argues that the underlying theme is that of citizenship training and that new measures are under way to strengthen the capacity of the school system to transmit national values for economic and political socialisation. The motives and motivation for retaining a formal moral education programme have remained strong. A discussion of the structure and content of key modules in Civics and Moral Education (...) shows how curriculum writers have attempted to integrate separate strands of civics and moral education from earlier programmes and present them in a less divisive manner. The paper also assesses the impact of the written civics and moral education programme on teachers and pupils, and the way in which strategies have been used by curriculum agencies to overcome possible obstacles at the curriculum implementation phase. (shrink)

Existing research offers a moral critique of the neoliberal approach to corporate environmental ethics in the oil and gas industry, highlighting its reliance on private market dynamics and managerial agency, which are often invoked to shape strategic decisions and justify delays or resistance in addressing environmental responsibilities. However, the micro-foundations of this phenomenon—how individual employees respond to the moral challenges attributed to oil and gas companies in the context of climate change—remain underexplored. Drawing on Albert Bandura’s cognitive model of moral (...) disengagement, this study examines their micro-level responses. Based on interviews with 30 industry employees, we identify a broad spectrum of moral disengagement mechanisms articulated in discussions, aligned with three core tenets of neoliberal environmentalism, with only a small number of individuals showing little or no such evidence of disengagement. This analysis contributes to the literature on corporate environmental ethics by revealing how an unchallenged neoliberal mode of reasoning hampers a deeper moral engagement with nature-centred environmental ethics at the employee level. We also highlight potential avenues for further research and for group or institution-level intervention aimed at fostering moral engagement with sustainable development beyond organisational boundaries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toleration and Justice in the Laozi:Engaging with Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early ChinaAi Yuan (bio)IntroductionThis review article engages with Tao Jiang's ground-breaking monograph on the Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China with particular focus on the articulation of toleration and justice in the Laozi (otherwise called the Daodejing).1 Jiang discusses a naturalistic turn and the re-alignment of values in the Laozi, resulting in a naturalization (...) of justice (impartiality) by rejecting artificial humaneness and rigid hierarchical moral-political structures. In this Laozian just world, there is no room for human intervention and rigid top-down enforcement of values, thus leaving justice to naturalized Heaven or Dao as the ultimate source of the cosmos.Based on Jiang's interpretative context, I show that there is a twofold justification for the "paradoxical" and "elusive"2 value of political toleration.3 A negative expression of toleration focuses on non-interference with choices, and non-enforcement of values toward those whom one reasonably disagrees with and regards as morally wrong. Such an attitude of toleration results in practical advantages such as avoiding entrenchment in bloodshed, abandonment, and deprivation.A positive expression of toleration operating in the Laozian ideal world requires equal protection of people as capable knowers, including those to whom we object. Such protection includes their ways of expression and an unbiased recognition of them as equally capable knowers so that they are heard without bias and prejudice. Such a kind of toleration is revealed as a constituent component of justice since it enables equal contribution toward the shaping of society without discrimination. In other words, toleration is seen as naturalized justice in a Laozian world within which no one is "being wronged with the capacity as a knower"—a kind of epistemic justice articulated by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007).4 [End Page 466]This article discusses how Jiang's political reconstruction of Laozian philosophy contains the seeds for a discussion of toleration, a value associated with distributive justice and against epistemic injustice. First, it introduces Jiang's arguments on a naturalization of justice and impartiality as Heavenly attributes in the Laozi. Second, it articulates the value of tolerance in the Laozi. Finally, I compare Laozian toleration with Confucian toleration using youwei- wuwei metaethical criticism.Moral-Political Philosophy in the LaoziJiang's interpretative framework about the origins of distributive justice in the Laozi starts with a discussion of the cosmogonic-mystical worldviews that signal "a new understanding of the nature of the cosmos, as well as a broad reorientation in the Heaven-human relationship in the mid-Warring States period" (p. 192). Differing from the interests in the origins of human culture or civilization in the Ru and Mo traditions, Jiang agrees with Franklin Perkins and identifies a "cosmogonic turn" in the late fourth century b.c. that reveals a demotion of anthropomorphic Heaven. By paring Heaven with earth and accordingly decentering human beings in the intellectual discourse, the Laozi directs equal values to the ten thousand things, with humans as just one among them (Perkins 2016, quoted in Jiang 2021, p. 196).5 Laozi's philosophy thus stands out by rejecting Heaven as caring for human affairs while taking Dao as the ultimate origin of the cosmos, as claimed in chapter 5 of the received text: "Heaven and earth are not humane; they treat ten-thousand things in the world as straw dogs; the sage is not humane; he treats people as straw dogs" (p. 199).With Jiang's reading of a naturalistic heaven, we see a re-alignment between cosmos and the human since sage-rulers follow the Heaven-Dao. The Laozian Dao is "self-so-ing" (ziran 自然), "accommodating" (rong 容), and "impartial" (gong 公), and thus marks a sharp contrast to Confucian familial bias resulting in "actively intervening in human affairs on behalf of the (certain) humans by appointing them to carry out its mission" (p. 200). With the sage emulating the ultimate Dao, the Laozi replaces the Confucian anthropocentric Heaven, which focuses on partiality (qin 親) and humaneness (ren 仁).This Laozian understanding of the cosmos also grounds its philosophical departure from Mohism despite both having a political... (shrink)