Martin Peterson

Michael Haiden argues that Kenneth Waltz’s analysis of nuclear weapons supports Peter-Paul Verbeek’s claim that technological artifacts and human beings are hybrid agents. I disagree with Haiden on at least two points. First, I see no reason to think that nuclear weapons are endowed with positive or negative values. They are neutral means to an end, and—contrary to Haiden’s suggestion—nothing of philosophical significance turns on whether our example is nuclear weapons, guns, or lifesaving medical technologies. Second, even if we believe that nuclear weapons are a particularly illuminating case, we still have no reason to accept Verbeek’s thesis of hybrid agency. The example does not establish that artifacts themselves are agents, nor that agency is literally shared between humans and technological artifacts.

According to Aristotle, virtue is the mean between deficiency and excess. While Aristotle’s concept of “mean” has been the subject of some debate, his geometric and arithmetic comparisons suggest a natural interpretation according to which the virtuous mean lies on a straight path connecting the extremes. We critically discuss this interpretation, first by focusing on the mathematical elaboration of the concept of mean offered by Aristotle, and then by investigating how contemporary English speakers conceptualize the relation between some of the moral character traits discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics. Our main finding, based on studies of five Aristotelian triads, is that for most of them, alleged extreme traits tend to be roughly as opposed to each other as they are to the alleged mean. We use these findings to defend a more nuanced interpretation of the doctrine of the mean, situating the relevant character traits in a higher-dimensional space. This higher-dimensional interpretation remains compatible with the Aristotelian idea that reaching the mean involves finding the right balance between several dimensions. However, a philosophical consequence we draw is that simply moving away from deficiency toward excess may not always bring one closer to virtue. Going from one extreme to the other will sometimes lead one further astray and is no substitute for aiming at virtue proper.

The main claim of this chapter is that multidimensional consequentialists have reason to reject some of the key premises of Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox as well as Arrhenius’s sixth impossibility theorem. The latter is the most general and far-reaching impossibility theorem in the literature on population ethics. The chapter shows that multidimensional consequentialists can reasonably maintain that the mere addition of people who have lives worth living is not always entirely right. To add what Parfit calls “extra people” is right with respect to one moral aspect (the size of the population) but wrong with respect to another (the average quality of life).

This paper articulates an objection to Henry Sidgwick’s dualist account of practical reason. Sidgwick claims that if egoism and utilitarianism offer conflicting advice, only ‘non-rational impulses’ can guide our choices. In response, I demonstrate that Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem can be applied to conflicts between egoism and utilitarianism. By generalizing the theorem and weakening one of its premisses, the recommendations of egoism and utilitarianism can be combined into a weighted sum, without the need to invoke non-rational impulses.

The main result of this paper is a formal argument for the principle of maximizing expected utility that does not rely on the law of large numbers. Unlike the well‐known arguments by Savage and von Neumann & Morgenstern, this argument does not presuppose the sure‐thing principle or the independence axiom. The principal idea is to use the concept of transformative decision rules for decomposing the principle of maximizing expected utility into a sequence of normatively reasonable subrules. It is shown that this procedure provides a resolution of Allais's paradox that cannot be obtained by Savage‐style or von Neumann & Morgenstern‐style arguments.

This paper aims to broaden the discussion of value alignment beyond artificial intelligence to technology in general: _all_ technologies—not just AI systems—should be aligned with values specified by humans. I make two points—the first concerns how value alignment in ordinary technical artifacts should be measured. By combining insights from social choice theory with Peter Gärdenfors’ influential theory of conceptual spaces, I argue that measuring value alignment on a cardinal scale is possible. My second point is an argument in support of the idea that all technical artifacts are neutral means to an end, which is a claim that numerous philosophers of technology explicitly reject. Once we recognize that every technology can be aligned with human values, there is no reason to think they are inherently value-laden. Claims about the morality of technologies can, and should, be expressed in terms of value alignment. Consider, for instance, the low bridges over the parkways in Long Island designed by Robert Moses in the 1920s. The bridges were intentionally designed to prevent buses from passing under them, thereby limiting access to beaches and other desirable destinations for low-income groups and racial minorities, who relied on public transportation more than other social groups. Langdon Winner argues that this shows how the bridges themselves embody social and moral values: the concrete and steel of the bridges “embody […] systematic social inequality” (1980: 124). However, according to the proposal outlined here, the bridges are morally neutral means to an end that align poorly with some of our values: racial justice and equity.

According to the dual nature thesis, technical artifacts have a dual nature: they are material objects that have a material base, but also functions that depend on their intentional history, in particular their intended and actual use. In an influential paper, Houkes and Meijers argue that the dual nature thesis does not square well with the seemingly plausible idea that the function of a technological artifact supervenes on its material base. They correctly point out that many versions of the supervenience thesis are unable to account for the following two-way underdetermination condition: “an artefact type, as a functional type, is multiply realizable in material structures or systems, while a given material basis can realize a variety of functions” (Houkes and Meijers 2006, 120). In this paper, I articulate a supervenience thesis that is compatible with the two-way underdetermination condition.

Dutilitarianism is the view that the most plausible theory of normative ethics is a compromise between utilitarianism and duty ethics. I discuss several proposals for how to spell out the dutilitarian theory and point out that a version of Arrow's impossibility theorem is applicable: Any attempt to aggregate utilitarianism and duty ethics into a dutilitarian theory will turn either the utilitarian or the deontological theory into a "dictator theory" that unilaterally determines the ranking of the hybrid theory, provided that a small number of seemingly plausible conditions are satisfied. However, this does not show that it is impossible to aggregate utilitarianism and duty ethics into a dutilitarian theory; a more plausible conclusion is that dutilitarians must reject one of Arrow's conditions. I argue that dutilitarians should reject the Ordering condition (rather than Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives). If so, clashes between utilitarianism and duty ethics are best understood as cases in which moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees. The article ends by considering a generalization of Arrow's theorem presented by Khmelnitskaya, which has recently been discussed in a different context by Hedden and Nebel. My gradualist approach to dutilitarianism avoids Khmelnitskaya's impossibility theorem in a manner that differs from the solution proposed by Hedden and Nebel.

Cost-benefit analysis is commonly understood to be intimately connected with utilitarianism and incompatible with other moral theories, particularly those that focus on deontological concepts such as rights. We reject this claim and argue that cost-benefit analysis can take moral rights as well as other non-utilitarian moral considerations into account in a systematic manner. We discuss three ways of doing this, and claim that two of them (output filters and input filters) can account for a wide range of rights-based moral theories, including the absolute notions of moral rights proposed by Hayek, Mayo, Nozick, and Shue. We also discuss whether the use of output filters and input filters can be generalized to cover other non-utilitarian theories, such as Kantian duty ethics and virtue ethics.

_An increasing number of cities around the globe aim to become Smart Cities through the implementation of a range of Information and Communication technologies (ICT), AI applications and cloud-based IoT solutions. While the underlying motivations vary, all such transitions require large amounts of data. In this paper, we articulate and defend two claims about privacy in a Smart City. Our first claim is that some level of systematic data collection and processing is ethically permissible. However, there is an upper limit for what is permissible: We suggest that it is never permissible to collect and process data that significantly undermine people’s autonomy. Our second claim specifies when such minor privacy infringements that do not significantly undermine people’s autonomy are permissible: We suggest that the only policies legitimized by the first claim are those that promote the collective good._ _Keywords_: smart city, privacy, autonomy, natural right, collective good.

Australia II became the first foreign yacht to win the America's Cup in 1983. The boat had a revolutionary wing keel and a better underwater hull form. In official documents, Ben Lexcen is credited with the design. He is also listed as the sole inventor of the wing keel in a patent application submitted on February 5, 1982. However, as reported in _New York Times_, _Sydney Morning Herald_, and _Professional Boatbuilder_, the wing keel was in fact designed by engineer Peter van Oossanen at the Netherlands Ship Model Basin in Wageningen, assisted by Dr. Joop Slooff at the National Aerospace Laboratory in Amsterdam. Based on telexes, letters, drawings, and other documents preserved in his personal archive, this paper presents van Oossanen’s account of how the revolutionary wing keel was designed. This is followed by an ethical analysis by Martin Peterson, in which he applies the American NSPE and Dutch KIVI codes of ethics to the information provided by van Oossanen. The NSPE and KIVI codes give conflicting advice about the case, and it is not obvious which document is most relevant. This impasse is resolved by applying a method of applied ethics in which similarity-based reasoning is extended to cases that are not fully similar. The key idea, presented in Peterson’s book _The Ethics of Technology_ (Peterson, The ethics of technology: A geometric analysis of five moral principles, Oxford University Press, 2017), is to use moral paradigm cases as reference points for constructing a “moral map”.

What should morally conscientious agents do if they must choose among options that are somewhat right and somewhat wrong? Should one select an option that is right to the highest degree, or would it perhaps be more rational to choose randomly among all somewhat right options? And how should lawmakers and courts address behaviour that is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong? In this first book-length discussion of the 'gray area' in ethics, Martin Peterson challenges the assumption that rightness and wrongness are binary properties and explores acts which are neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather a bit of both. Including discussions of white lies and the permissibility of abortion, Peterson's book presents a gradualist theory of right and wrong designed to answer these and other practical questions about the gray area in ethics.

We show that in infinite worlds the following three conditions are incompatible: The spatiotemporal ordering of individuals is morally irrelevant. All else being equal, the act of bringing about a good outcome with a high probability is better than the act of bringing about the same outcome with a low probability. One act is better than another only if there is a nonzero probability that it brings about a better outcome. The impossibility of combining these conditions shows that it is more costly to endorse than has been previously acknowledged.

Can the theory of conceptual spaces developed by Peter Gärdenfors and others be applied to moral issues? Martin Peterson argues that several moral principles can be construed as regions in a shared similarity space, but Kristin Shrader-Frechette and Gert-Jan Lokhorst question Peterson’s claim. They argue that the moral similarity judgments used to construct the space are underspecified and subjective. In this paper, we present new data indicating that moral principles can indeed be construed as regions in a multidimensional conceptual space on the basis of moral similarity judgments. Four hundred and seventy-five students taking a course in engineering ethics completed a survey in which they were presented with ten cases featuring ethical issues related to technology and engineering. Participants were asked to judge the moral similarity of each pair of cases and to select which moral principle they believed should be applied for resolving the case. We used interval multidimensional scaling as well as individual differences scaling for analyzing the moral similarity judgments. Despite noteworthy individual variations in the judgments, the five moral principles included in the study were discernable in the aggregate multidimensional spaces, even for participants with no previous exposure to the principles. Participants tended to apply the same moral principles to cases rated as morally similar. Our overall conclusion is that moral similarity judgments, and their representation in multidimensional spaces, can help us identify moral principles that are relevant for assessing difficult moral choice situations.

Erratum to: Book Symposium on Peter Paul Verbeek’s Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011 Content Type Journal Article Category Erratum Pages 1-27 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0058-z Authors Evan Selinger, Dept. Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA Don Ihde, Dept. Philosophy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA Ibo van de Poel, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands Martin Peterson, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Peter-Paul Verbeek, Dept. Philosophy, Twente University, Enschede, the Netherlands Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433

The values that will govern choices among future energy systems are unlikely to be the same as the values we embrace today. This paper discusses principles of rational choice for agents expecting future value shifts. How do we ought to reason if we believe that some values are likely to change in the future? Are future values more, equally, or less important than present ones? To answer this question, I propose and discuss the Expected Center of Gravity Principle, which articulates what I believe to be a reasonable compromise between present and future values.

According to the dual nature thesis, technical artifacts have a dual nature: they are material objects that have a material base, but also functions that depend on their intentional history, in particular their intended and actual use. In an influential paper, Houkes and Meijers argue that the dual nature thesis does not square well with the seemingly plausible idea that the function of a technological artifact supervenes on its material base. They correctly point out that many versions of the supervenience thesis are unable to account for the following two-way underdetermination condition: “an artefact type, as a functional type, is multiply realizable in material structures or systems, while a given material basis can realize a variety of functions” (Houkes and Meijers 2006, 120). In this paper, I articulate a supervenience thesis that is compatible with the two-way underdetermination condition.

An essential all-in-one introduction, Ethics for Engineers provides in-depth coverage of major ethical theories, professional codes of ethics, and case studies in a single volume. Incorporating numerous practical examples and about 100 review questions, it helps students better understand and address ethical issues that they may face in their future careers. Topics covered include whistle-blowing, the problem of many hands, gifts, bribes, conflicts of interest, engineering and environmental ethics, privacy and computer ethics, ethical technology assessment, and the ethics of cost-benefit analysis and risk and uncertainty.

This article questions the traditional view that moral rightness and wrongness are discrete predicates with sharp boundaries. I contend that moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees: Some acts are somewhat rightandsomewhat wrong. My argument is based on the assumption that meaning tracks use. If an overwhelming majority of competent language users frequently say that some acts are a bit right and a bit wrong, this indicates that rightness and wrongnessaregradable concepts. To support the empirical part of the argument I use the tools of experimental philosophy. Results from three surveys (n= 715, 578, and 182) indicate that respondents userightandwrongas gradable terms to approximately the same extent as color terms, meaning that rightness and wrongness come in degrees roughly as much as colors do. In the largest study, only 4 percent persistently usedrightandwrongas non-gradable terms.

This article discusses some aspects of animal ethics from an Aristotelian virtue ethics point of view. Because the notion of friendship (philia) is central to Aristotle’s ethical theory, the focus of the article is whether humans and animals can be friends. It is argued that new empirical findings in cognitive ethology indicate that animals actually do fulfill the Aristotelian condition for friendship based on mutual advantage. The practical ethical implications of these findings are discussed, and it is argued that eating meat from free-living animals is more morally acceptable than eating cattle because hunters (unlike farmers) do not befriend their prey.

Johansson and Rosenqvist reject our argument for the rational permissibility of pure time preferences (PTP). Johansson and Rosenqvist's main objection is that where two options, X and Y, have equal intrinsic value, there will be a reason to be indifferent between X and Y, and therefore a reason to not hold a PTP for X or Y. In this reply, we argue that if two options have equal intrinsic value, it does not follow that you have a reason to be indifferent. Rather, the two equally large intrinsic values cancel each other out, like two equal weights on kitchen scales.