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100Robots in the Workplace: a Threat to—or Opportunity for—Meaningful Work?Philosophy and Technology 33 (3): 503-522. 2020.The concept of meaningful work has recently received increased attention in philosophy and other disciplines. However, the impact of the increasing robotization of the workplace on meaningful work has received very little attention so far. Doing work that is meaningful leads to higher job satisfaction and increased worker well-being, and some argue for a right to access to meaningful work. In this paper, we therefore address the impact of robotization on meaningful work. We do so by identifying …Read more
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25Direct-to-Consumer Neurotechnologies and Quantified Relationship Technologies: Overlapping Ethical ConcernsAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 10 (4): 167-170. 2019.
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38Is Being “Paid to Endure” Compatible With Autonomy? Paid Research Participation and Five (Rather Than Four) Goods of WorkAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (9): 41-43. 2019.Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 41-43.
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97It Loves Me, It Loves Me NotTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 23 (3): 402-424. 2019.Drawing on insights from robotics, psychology, and human-computer interaction, developers of sex robots are currently aiming to create emotional bonds of attachment and even love between human users and their products. This is done by creating robots that can exhibit a range of facial expressions, that are made with human-like artificial skin, and that possess a rich vocabulary with many conversational possibilities. In light of the human tendency to anthropomorphize artefacts, we can expect tha…Read more
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150Disability and the Goods of LifeJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (6): 704-728. 2021.The so-called Disability Paradox arises from the apparent tension between the popular view that disability leads to low well-being and the relatively high life-satisfaction reports of disabled people. Our aim in this essay is to make some progress toward dissolving this alleged paradox by exploring the relationship between disability and various “goods of life”—that is, components of a life that typically make a person’s life go better for her. We focus on four widely recognized goods of life (h…Read more
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121Other Minds, Other Intelligences: The Problem of Attributing Agency to MachinesCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 28 (4): 592-598. 2019.John Harris discusses the problem of other minds, not as it relates to other human minds, but rather as it relates to artificial intelligences. He also discusses what might be called bilateral mind-reading: humans trying to read the minds of artificial intelligences and artificial intelligences trying to read the minds of humans. Lastly, Harris discusses whether super intelligent AI – if it could be created – should be afforded moral consideration, and also how we might convince super intelligen…Read more
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1924The Good in HappinessIn Tania Lombrozo, Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 1, Oxford University Press. 2014.There has been a long history of arguments over whether happiness is anything more than a particular set of psychological states. On one side, some philosophers have argued that there is not, endorsing a descriptive view of happiness. Affective scientists have also embraced this view and are reaching a near consensus on a definition of happiness as some combination of affect and life-satisfaction. On the other side, some philosophers have maintained an evaluative view of happiness, on which bein…Read more
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94On Kant's Idea of Humanity as an End in ItselfEuropean Journal of Philosophy 24 (2): 358-374. 2016.Writers like Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood understand Kant's idea of rational nature as an end in itself as a commitment to a substantive value. This makes it hard for them to explain the supposed equivalence between the universal law and humanity formulations of the categorical imperative, since the former does not appear to assert any substantive value. Nor is it easy for defenders of value-based readings to explain Kant's claim that the law-giving nature of practical reason makes all bei…Read more
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332Robot sex and consent: Is consent to sex between a robot and a human conceivable, possible, and desirable?Artificial Intelligence and Law 25 (3): 305-323. 2017.The development of highly humanoid sex robots is on the technological horizon. If sex robots are integrated into the legal community as “electronic persons”, the issue of sexual consent arises, which is essential for legally and morally permissible sexual relations between human persons. This paper explores whether it is conceivable, possible, and desirable that humanoid robots should be designed such that they are capable of consenting to sex. We consider reasons for giving both “no” and “yes” …Read more
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34Pettit on Love and Its Value: A Critical AssessmentMoral Philosophy and Politics 5 (1): 87-102. 2018.Philip Pettit has identified some interesting apparent commonalities among core human values like love, friendship, virtue, and respect. These are all, Pettit argues, ‘robustly demanding’: they require us to provide certain benefits across ranges of alternative scenarios. Pettit also suggests a general ‘rationale’ for valuing such goods, which draws on his work on freedom. In this paper, I zoom in on love in particular. I critically assess whether Pettit’s schematic account of love’s value adequ…Read more
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206The ethics of crashes with self‐driving cars: A roadmap, IIPhilosophy Compass 13 (7). 2018.Self‐driving cars hold out the promise of being much safer than regular cars. Yet they cannot be 100% safe. Accordingly, we need to think about who should be held responsible when self‐driving cars crash and people are injured or killed. We also need to examine what new ethical obligations might be created for car users by the safety potential of self‐driving cars. The article first considers what lessons might be learned from the growing legal literature on responsibility for crashes with self‐…Read more
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95Teaching & Learning Guide for: The ethics of crashes with self‐driving cars: A roadmap, I–IIPhilosophy Compass 13 (7). 2018.Self‐driving cars hold out the promise of being much safer than regular cars. Yet they cannot be 100% safe. Accordingly, they need to be programmed for how to deal with crash scenarios. Should cars be programmed to always prioritize their owners, to minimize harm, or to respond to crashes on the basis of some other type of principle? The article first discusses whether everyone should have the same “ethics settings.” Next, the oft‐made analogy with the trolley problem is examined. Then follows a…Read more
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309The ethics of crashes with self‐driving cars: A roadmap, IPhilosophy Compass 13 (7). 2018.Self‐driving cars hold out the promise of being much safer than regular cars. Yet they cannot be 100% safe. Accordingly, they need to be programmed for how to deal with crash scenarios. Should cars be programmed to always prioritize their owners, to minimize harm, or to respond to crashes on the basis of some other type of principle? The article first discusses whether everyone should have the same “ethics settings.” Next, the oft‐made analogy with the trolley problem is examined. Then follows a…Read more
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79The Benefits and Risks of Quantified Relationship Technologies: Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Quantified Relationship”American Journal of Bioethics 18 (2): 3-6. 2018.The growth of self-tracking and personal surveillance has given rise to the Quantified Self movement. Members of this movement seek to enhance their personal well-being, productivity, and self-actualization through the tracking and gamification of personal data. The technologies that make this possible can also track and gamify aspects of our interpersonal, romantic relationships. Several authors have begun to challenge the ethical and normative implications of this development. In this article,…Read more
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577Attributing Agency to Automated Systems: Reflections on Human–Robot Collaborations and Responsibility-LociScience and Engineering Ethics 24 (4): 1201-1219. 2018.Many ethicists writing about automated systems attribute agency to these systems. Not only that; they seemingly attribute an autonomous or independent form of agency to these machines. This leads some ethicists to worry about responsibility-gaps and retribution-gaps in cases where automated systems harm or kill human beings. In this paper, I consider what sorts of agency it makes sense to attribute to most current forms of automated systems, in particular automated cars and military robots. I ar…Read more
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67Do We Always Act on Maxims?Kantian Review 22 (2): 233-255. 2017.It is commonly thought that on Kant’s view of action, ‘everyone always acts on maxims.’ Call this the ‘descriptive reading.’ This reading faces two important problems: first, the idea that people always act on maxims offends against common sense: it clashes with our ordinary ideas about human agency. Second, there are various passages in which Kant says that it is ‘rare’ and ‘admirable’ to firmly adhere to a set of basic principles that we adopt for ourselves. This article offers an alternative:…Read more
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162Automated cars meet human drivers: responsible human-robot coordination and the ethics of mixed trafficEthics and Information Technology 22 (4): 335-344. 2020.In this paper, we discuss the ethics of automated driving. More specifically, we discuss responsible human-robot coordination within mixed traffic: i.e. traffic involving both automated cars and conventional human-driven cars. We do three main things. First, we explain key differences in robotic and human agency and expectation-forming mechanisms that are likely to give rise to compatibility-problems in mixed traffic, which may lead to crashes and accidents. Second, we identify three possible so…Read more
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1Iddo Landau, Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, Oxford University Press, 297pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780190657666. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2017. 2017.Iddo Landau understands a meaningful life as a life containing a sufficient number of sufficiently valuable aspects. Do the world's and the human condition's imperfections threaten meaning, thus understood? Landau argues that we can have a sufficient number of sufficiently valuable parts of our lives, even if the world is imperfect and the human condition involves various different imperfections. In this review, we offer some constructive criticisms of Landau's discussion, and we also highlight …Read more
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64Is the Personal Identity Debate a “Threat” to Neurosurgical Patients? A Reply to Müller et alNeuroethics 11 (2): 229-235. 2017.In a recent article, Sabine Müller, Merlin Bittlinger, and Henrik Walter launch a sweeping attack against what they call the "personal identity debate" as it relates to patients treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). In this critique offered by Müller et al., the so-called personal identity debate is said to: (a) be metaphysical in a problematic way, (b) constitute a threat to patients, and (c) use "vague" and "contradictory" statements from patients and their families as direct evidence for…Read more
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4360The Quantified RelationshipAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (2): 3-19. 2018.The growth of self-tracking and personal surveillance has given rise to the Quantified Self movement. Members of this movement seek to enhance their personal well-being, productivity, and self-actualization through the tracking and gamification of personal data. The technologies that make this possible can also track and gamify aspects of our interpersonal, romantic relationships. Several authors have begun to challenge the ethical and normative implications of this development. In this article,…Read more
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69Steve Clarke, Julian Savulescu, C. A. J. Coady, Alberto Giubilini, and Sagar Sanyal (eds.), The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate, Oxford University Press, 2016, 269pp (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2017. 2017.The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate has two chief aims. These aims are to help readers understand the existing debate and to move the debate forward. The book consists of an introductory chapter by Alberto Giubilini and Sagar Sanyal (which lays out some prominent bioconservative objections to enhancement), eight essays grouped under the theme of "Understanding the Debate" (Section I), and eight devoted to "Advancing the Debate" (Section II). In this review, we offer brief s…Read more
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141Ingmar Persson, From Morality to the End of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 336 (review)Utilitas 26 (3): 321-325. 2014.Persson argues that common sense morality involves various “asymmetries” that don’t stand up to rational scrutiny. (One example is that intentionally harming others is commonly thought to be worse than merely allowing harm to happen, even if the harm involved is equal in both cases.) A wholly rational morality would, Persson argues, be wholly symmetrical. He also argues, however, that when we get down to our most basic attitudes and dispositions, we reach the “end of reason,” at which point we s…Read more
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275Anti-Meaning and Why It MattersJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (4). 2015.It is widely recognized that lives and activities can be meaningful or meaningless, but few have appreciated that they can also be anti-meaningful. Anti-meaning is the polar opposite of meaning. Our purpose in this essay is to examine the nature and importance of this new and unfamiliar topic. In the first part, we sketch four theories of anti-meaning that correspond to leading theories of meaning. In the second part, we argue that anti-meaning has significance not only for our attempts to theor…Read more
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96Love Troubles: Human Attachment and Biomedical EnhancementsJournal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2): 190-202. 2014.In fascinating recent work, Julian Savulescu and his various co-authors argue that human love is one of the things we can improve upon using biomedical enhancements. Is that so? This article first notes that Savulescu and his co-authors mainly treat love as a means to various other goods. Love, however, is widely regarded as an intrinsic good. To investigate whether enhancements can produce the distinctive intrinsic good of love, this article does three things. Drawing on Philip Pettit's recent …Read more
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595The Ethics of Accident-Algorithms for Self-Driving Cars: an Applied Trolley Problem?Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1275-1289. 2016.Self-driving cars hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. Yet they cannot be a 100 % safe. Collisions are sometimes unavoidable. So self-driving cars need to be programmed for how they should respond to scenarios where collisions are highly likely or unavoidable. The accident-scenarios self-driving cars might face have recently been likened to the key examples and dilemmas associated with the trolley problem. In this article, we critically examine this tempting analogy. We…Read more
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85Reason-based Value or Value-based Reasons?In Björn Haglund & Helge Malmgren (eds.), Kvantifikator För En Dag. Essays Dedicated to Dag Westerståhl on His Sixtieth Birthday, Philosophical Communications. pp. 193-202. 2006.In this paper, I discuss practical reasons and value, assuming a coexistence thesis according to which reasons and value always go together. I start by doing some taxonomy, distinguishing among three different ways of accounting for the relation between practical reasons and the good. I argue that, of these views, the most plausible one is that according to which something’s being good just consists in how certain facts about the thing in question – other than that of how it is good – give us re…Read more
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51Just Freedom?: Philip Pettit: Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World. Norton Books, New York, 2014, 288 pp (review)Res Publica 20 (4): 441-445. 2014.In Just Freedom, Pettit presents a powerful new statement and defense of the traditional “republican” conception of liberty or freedom. And he claims that freedom can serve as an ecumenical value with broad appeal, which we can put at the basis of a distinctively republican theory of justice. That is, Pettit argues that this “conception of freedom as non-domination allows us to see all issues of justice as issues, ultimately, of what freedom demands.” It is not, however, clear that liberty is th…Read more
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70Deep Brain Stimulation, Continuity over Time, and the True SelfCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25 (4): 647-658. 2016.One of the topics that often comes up in ethical discussions of deep brain stimulation (DBS) is the question of what impact DBS has, or might have, on the patient’s self. This is often understood as a question of whether DBS poses a “threat” to personal identity, which is typically understood as having to do with psychological and/or narrative continuity over time. In this article, we argue that the discussion of whether DBS is a “threat” to continuity over time is too narrow. There are other qu…Read more
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26Motivation-Enhancements and Domain-Specific ValuesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 6 (1): 37-39. 2015.Recent research suggests that “smart drugs” don’t make healthy individuals who use them smarter. The main effects are instead on levels of motivation and interest. So the main ethical question here is not whether there is anything wrong or regrettable about healthy individuals’ using these drugs to make themselves smarter. It is rather whether there is anything problematic about their using these drugs to control or modulate their levels of motivation and interest. This question can either be di…Read more
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39The Normative and Evaluative Status of Moral Distress in Health Care ContextsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (12): 17-19. 2016.Stephen Campbell, Connie Ulrich, and Christine Grady argue that we need to a broader understanding of moral distress – broader, that is, than the one commonly used within nursing-ethics and, more recently, healthcare ethics in general. On their proposed definition, moral distress is any self-directed negative attitude we might have in response to viewing ourselves as participating in a morally undesirable situation. While being in general agreement with much of what Campbell et al. say, I make t…Read more
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Ludwig Maximilians Universität, MünchenFaculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of ReligionProfessor
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Value Theory |
Neuroethics |
Technology Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Kantian Ethics |
Objections to Kantian Ethics |
Kantian Ethics, Misc |