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197(Im)Moral technology? Thought experiments and the future of `mind control'In Akira Akayabashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 113-119. 2014.In their paper, “Autonomy and the ethics of biological behaviour modification”, Savulescu, Douglas, and Persson discuss the ethics of a technology for improving moral motivation and behaviour that does not yet exist and will most likely never exist. At the heart of their argument sits the imagined case of a “moral technology” that magically prevents people from developing intentions to commit seriously immoral actions. It is not too much of a stretch, then, to characterise their paper as a thoug…Read more
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171The real force of 'procreative beneficence'In Akira Akayabashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 183-192. 2014.
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45A Child's Right to a Decent Future?: Regulating Human Genetic Enhancement in Multicultural SocietiesAsian Bioethics Review 4 (4): 355-373. 2012.Should significant enhancement of human capacities using genetic technologies become possible, each generation will have an unprecedented power over the next. I argue that it is implausible to leave decisions about the genetic traits of children entirely up to individuals and that communities will sometimes be justified in intervening to protect the interests of children against their parents. While a number of influential authors have suggested that the primary interest that the community shoul…Read more
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19The perils of post-personsJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (2): 80-81. 2013.The willingness of some scientists, futurists … and now philosophers to contemplate—or even actively pursue—their own obsolescence is a source of genuine wonder. Writers such as Hans Moravec,1 Ray Kurzweil2 and Nick Bostrom3 blithely maintain that we will soon be outclassed by our own cybernetic creations as though this were a prospect that could only be celebrated and not feared. In this context, one can only applaud Agar's clearheaded investigation4 of the prospects for creating ‘post-persons’…Read more
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2Procreative Beneficence, Obligation, and EugenicsGenomics, Society, and Policy 3 (3): 43-59. 2007.
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161Robots in aged care: a dystopian futureAI and Society 31 (4): 1-10. 2016.In this paper I describe a future in which persons in advanced old age are cared for entirely by robots and suggest that this would be a dystopia, which we would be well advised to avoid if we can. Paying attention to the objective elements of welfare rather than to people’s happiness reveals the central importance of respect and recognition, which robots cannot provide, to the practice of aged care. A realistic appreciation of the current economics of the aged care sector suggests that the intr…Read more
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318Can machines be people? Reflections on the Turing triage testIn Patrick Lin, Keith Abney & George Bekey (eds.), Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics, Mit Press. pp. 301-315. 2012.In, “The Turing Triage Test”, published in Ethics and Information Technology, I described a hypothetical scenario, modelled on the famous Turing Test for machine intelligence, which might serve as means of testing whether or not machines had achieved the moral standing of people. In this paper, I: (1) explain why the Turing Triage Test is of vital interest in the context of contemporary debates about the ethics of AI; (2) address some issues that complexify the application of this test; and, (3)…Read more
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196Twenty seconds to comply: Autonomous weapon systems and the recognition of surrenderInternational Law Studies 91 699-728. 2015.Would it be ethical to deploy autonomous weapon systems (AWS) if they were unable to reliably recognize when enemy forces had surrendered? I suggest that an inability to reliably recognize surrender would not prohibit the ethical deployment of AWS where there was a limited window of opportunity for targets to surrender between the launch of the AWS and its impact. However, the operations of AWS with a high degree of autonomy and/or long periods of time between release and impact are likely to re…Read more
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144Building a better warbot: Ethical issues in the design of unmanned systems for military applicationsScience and Engineering Ethics 15 (2): 169-187. 2009.Unmanned systems in military applications will often play a role in determining the success or failure of combat missions and thus in determining who lives and dies in times of war. Designers of UMS must therefore consider ethical, as well as operational, requirements and limits when developing UMS. I group the ethical issues involved in UMS design under two broad headings, Building Safe Systems and Designing for the Law of Armed Conflict, and identify and discuss a number of issues under each o…Read more
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16Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive LibertyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (2): 102-118. 2009.Concern for “reproductive liberty” suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest tha…Read more
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42Orphaned at conception: The uncanny offspring of embryosBioethics 26 (4): 173-181. 2012.A number of advances in assisted reproduction have been greeted by the accusation that they would produce children ‘without parents’. In this paper I will argue that while to date these accusations have been false, there is a limited but important sense in which they would be true of children born of a reproductive technology that is now on the horizon. If our genetic parents are those individuals from whom we have inherited 50% of our genes, then, unlike in any other reproductive scenario, chil…Read more
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251Predators or Ploughshares? Arms Control of Robotic WeaponsIEEE Technology and Society 28 (1): 25-29. 2009.This paper makes the case for arms control regimes to govern the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems and long range uninhabited aerial vehicles.
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70“Hands up Who Wants to Die?”: Primoratz on Responsibility and Civilian Immunity in WartimeEthical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (3): 299-319. 2005.The question of the morality of war is something of an embarrassment to liberal political thinkers. A philosophical tradition which aspires to found its preferred institutions in respect for individual autonomy, contract, and voluntary association, is naturally confronted by a phenomenon that is almost exclusively explained and justified in the language of States, force and territory. But the apparent difficulties involved in providing a convincing account of nature and ethics of war in terms of…Read more
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506Egalitarianism and Moral BioenhancementAmerican Journal of Bioethics 14 (4): 20-28. 2014.A number of philosophers working in applied ethics and bioethics are now earnestly debating the ethics of what they term “moral bioenhancement.” I argue that the society-wide program of biological manipulations required to achieve the purported goals of moral bioenhancement would necessarily implicate the state in a controversial moral perfectionism. Moreover, the prospect of being able to reliably identify some people as, by biological constitution, significantly and consistently more moral tha…Read more
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31What we can - and cannot - learn about the ethics of enhancement by thinking about sportIn Akira Akayabashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 218-223. 2014.In “The misguided quest for the ethics of enhancement”, Tom Murray makes two related claims. First, he argues that “understanding the ethics of enhancement is deeply dependent on context". Second, he suggests that, as a consequence, we should not look for “a single all-purpose ethics for every form of human enhancement”. In this brief response, I argue that while Murray is correct in the first of these claims, there is an important sense in which he is wrong in the second. His focus on the ethic…Read more
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21Borders, States, Freedom and JusticeArena Magazine 66 25-31. 2003.What are borders? For many in the movement opposing mandatory detention they are simply expressions of the state. Yes this position cannot give us a coherent and critical politics. Rethinking borders is essential to the project of a genuinely democratic society.
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689The March of the robot dogsEthics and Information Technology 4 (4): 305-318. 2002.Following the success of Sony Corporation’s “AIBO”, robot cats and dogs are multiplying rapidly. “Robot pets” employing sophisticated artificial intelligence and animatronic technologies are now being marketed as toys and companions by a number of large consumer electronics corporations. It is often suggested in popular writing about these devices that they could play a worthwhile role in serving the needs of an increasingly aging and socially isolated population. Robot companions, shaped li…Read more
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369Nanotechnologically Enhanced Combat Systems: The Downside of InvulnerabilityIn Bert Gordijn & Anthony Mark Cutter (eds.), In Pursuit of Nanoethics, Springer. pp. 89-103. 2014.In this paper we examine the ethical implications of emerging Nanotechnologically Enhanced Combat Systems (or 'NECS'). Through a combination of materials innovation and biotechnology, NECS are aimed at making combatants much less vulnerable to munitions that pose a lethal threat to soldiers protected by conventional armor. We argue that increasing technological disparities between forces armed with NECS and those without will exacerbate the ethical problems of asymmetric warfare. This will place…Read more
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54Revolutionary and familiar, inevitable and precarious: Rhetorical contradictions in enthusiasm for nanotechnologyNanoEthics 1 (1): 57-68. 2007.This paper analyses rhetorics of scientific and corporate enthusiasm surrounding nanotechnology. I argue that enthusiasts for nanotechnologies often try to have it both ways on questions concerning the nature and possible impact of these technologies, and the inevitability of their development and use. In arguments about their nature and impact we are simultaneously informed that these are revolutionary technologies with the potential to profoundly change the world and that they merely represent…Read more
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326In the hands of machines? The future of aged careMinds and Machines 16 (2): 141-161. 2006.It is remarkable how much robotics research is promoted by appealing to the idea that the only way to deal with a looming demographic crisis is to develop robots to look after older persons. This paper surveys and assesses the claims made on behalf of robots in relation to their capacity to meet the needs of older persons. We consider each of the roles that has been suggested for robots in aged care and attempt to evaluate how successful robots might be in these roles. We do so from the perspect…Read more
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34What Pacemakers Can Teach Us about the Ethics of Maintaining Artificial OrgansHastings Center Report 46 (6): 14-24. 2016.One day soon it may be possible to replace a failing heart, liver, or kidney with a long-lasting mechanical replacement or perhaps even with a 3-D printed version based on the patient's own tissue. Such artificial organs could make transplant waiting lists and immunosuppression a thing of the past. Supposing that this happens, what will the ongoing care of people with these implants involve? In particular, how will the need to maintain the functioning of artificial organs over an extended period…Read more
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259Genes, identity, and the expressivist critiqueIn Loane Skene and Janna Thompson (ed.), The Sorting Society, Cambridge University Press. 2008.In this paper, I explore the “expressivist critique” of the use of prenatal testing to select against the birth of persons with impairments. I begin by setting out the expressivist critique and then highlighting, through an investigation of an influential objection to this critique, the ways in which both critics and proponents of the use of technologies of genetic selection negotiate a difficult set of dilemmas surrounding the relationship between genes and identity. I suggest that we may be …Read more
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135Therapeutic Cloning and Reproductive LibertyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 33 (2): 1-17. 2008.Concern for “reproductive liberty” suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest tha…Read more
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86Cloning, parenthood, and genetic relatednessBioethics 20 (6). 2006.In this paper I examine what I take to be the best case for reproductive human cloning, as a medical procedure designed to overcome infertility, and argue that it founders on an irresolvable tension in the attitude towards the importance of being ‘genetically related’ to our children implied in the desire to clone. Except in the case where couples are cloning a child they have previously conceived naturally, cloning is unable to establish the right sort of genetic relation to make couples the pa…Read more
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125The Turing triage testEthics and Information Technology 6 (4): 203-213. 2004.If, as a number of writers have predicted, the computers of the future will possess intelligence and capacities that exceed our own then it seems as though they will be worthy of a moral respect at least equal to, and perhaps greater than, human beings. In this paper I propose a test to determine when we have reached that point. Inspired by Alan Turing’s (1950) original “Turing test”, which argued that we would be justified in conceding that machines could think if they could fill the role of a …Read more
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132Barbarians at the gatesIn Igor Primoratz (ed.), Politics and Morality, Palgrave-macmillan. 2007.The phenomenon of “dirty hands” is often held to be endemic to political life. Success in politics—it has been argued—requires a willingness to sacrifice our moral principles in order to pursue worthwhile goals. I argue that the tension between morality and politics goes deeper than this. The very existence of “politics” requires that morality is routinely violated because political community, within which political discourse is possible, is based on denying the moral claims of non-members. P…Read more
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31The Dead Donor Rule and Means-End ReasoningCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (1): 141-146. 2012.
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30Harris, harmed states, and sexed bodiesJournal of Medical Ethics 37 (5): 276-279. 2011.This paper criticises John Harris's attempts to defend an account of a ‘harmed condition’ that can stand independently of intuitions about what is ‘normal’. I argue that because Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, determining whether a particular individual is in a harmed condition or not will sometimes require making reference to the normal capacities of their sex. Consequently, Harris's account is unable to play the role he intends for it in debates about the ethics of human enhancem…Read more
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163Liberalism and eugenicsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (3). 2011.‘Liberal eugenics’ has emerged as the most popular position amongst philosophers writing in the contemporary debate about the ethics of human enhancement. This position has been most clearly articulated by Nicholas Agar, who argues that the ‘new’ liberal eugenics can avoid the repugnant consequences associated with eugenics in the past. Agar suggests that parents should be free to make only those interventions into the genetics of their children that will benefit them no matter what way of life …Read more
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120Imposing Genetic DiversityAmerican Journal of Bioethics 15 (6): 2-10. 2015.The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis . This thought plays an important role in the “disability critique” of prenatal testing. However, the idea that human genetic variation is an important good with significant benefits for society at large is also embraced by a wide range of figures writing in the bioe…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |