Brandon Long

Proponents of moral enhancement often link certain traits to virtuous behavior but typically focus on average trait scores, neglecting individual behavioral trait variance. Behavioral trait variance refers to the range of behaviors a person exhibits within a trait, which may partly arise from genetic factors independent of mean scores. Using Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach and virtue ethics, I argue that increasing behavioral trait variance could promote moral flourishing. For example, a consistently disagreeable teacher might excel in specific contexts, like a philosophy seminar. However, such a teacher will struggle to find Aristotle's moral meaning of friendliness, limiting their virtue across diverse contexts. Since social virtues are context-dependent, reducing behavioral trait variance through personality enhancement could also hinder an individual's ability to achieve virtues or capabilities. This article investigates behavioral trait variance's moral role within virtue ethics and calls for other moral enhancement theories to address the ethical significance of behavioral trait variance and its potential impact on moral flourishing.

Recent advancements in brain research have drastically increased the need for serious ethical consideration. Postmortem brain research has taken a significant step in the development of BrainEx. The technology can metabolically resuscitate pig brains from pigs that were “clinically dead” for hours. Ethical discourse around organoids ranges from being overly cautious and sensational to highly permissive and skeptical of even minimal consciousness emerging in such a model. Some of these criticisms are allayed in postmortem brains. As such, postmortem brain research presents philosophers and policymakers with a higher risk model of being conscious. The outcome of researchers unknowingly subjecting postmortem brains to negative mental states through research will be termed brain-in-a-vat-world. We will provide some motivation to believe this is a reasonable outcome of proceeding with postmortem brain research. As such, we propose applying the PP to all postmortem brain research. These precautions go beyond previous precautions of brain activity monitoring and the willingness to administer anesthetics to the brains should they appear awake. These precautions aim to avoid potential negative mental states. Such precautions reasonably mitigate the risk of postmortem brain research causing suffering. We recommend several practical precautions. First, anesthetics may prevent any conscious experience at all, cingulotomies prevent painful experiences, and the administration of opioids may prevent boredom or isolation. IRBs should work to determine how these precautions interact with experimental outcomes and how to balance the risk of side effects in light of the experimentation period. The upshot of the article is such PP applications avoid overapplication of the PP, which has occurred in the brain organoid literature. Further, the PP, we argue, provides better guidance to precautionary policy than decision theory, given the difficulties with applying decision theory in medical ethics.

Street’s Darwinian dilemma claims that anti-realist theories are more parsimonious explanations of moral evaluative attitudes. Anti-realists claim we have evaluative attitudes because having them was evolutionarily beneficial. Unlike the realist, the anti-realist does not need to appeal to moral facts to explain evaluative attitudes. Such parsimony is not the only way a theory can be simpler. Realists may appeal to theory unity to respond to the anti-realist’s dilemma. Unity is when the same account explains more observed phenomena. Realists may do this by using a tracking account to explain both moral and epistemic evaluative attitudes. Some anti-realists conversely present a more disunified account. Such theories use a tracking account to explain epistemic evaluative attitudes but an adaptive link account to explain moral evaluative attitudes. Compared to such an account the realist’s single account of both epistemic and moral evaluative attitudes is more unified and may be simpler. Anti-realists defending such a position must explain why their ontological parsimony is preferable to the realist’s unity. However, there is no agreement as to how to go about this. Unless this can be done, this complicates Street’s anti-realist claim on the second horn. Further, this implicates other similar anti-realist accounts claiming simplicity over realists. However, through an objection, we will show the anti-realist who claims to explain all evaluative attitudes with an adaptive link account possesses the simplest theory. Determining which simplicity comparison is the most useful will require arguing for the most plausible realist or anti-realist account. I will avoid doing this and will only mention the various measures of simplicity they comparatively do well or poorly on. Whatever the most plausible position is, my paper will inform it as to how well it fares in terms of simplicity when compared to either the opposing realist or anti-realist.

ChatGPT – a large language model – recently passed the U.S. bar exam. The startling rise and power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT lead us to consider whether and how more specialized systems could be used to overcome existing barriers to the legal system. Such systems could be employed in either of the two major stages of the pursuit of justice: preliminary information gathering and formal engagement with the state’s legal institutions and professionals. We focus on the former and argue that developing and deploying publicly funded AI legal advisors can reduce economic and shame-based cultural barriers to the information-gathering stage of pursuing justice.