Felix S. H. Yeung

This paper critically examines theories of neoliberal socialisation. Taking Byung-chul Han's theory of ‘psychopolitics’ as an example, I contend that descriptions highlighting the ‘seductive’ and ‘positive’ elements of neoliberal culture overlook the persistent disciplinary and precarising forces underpinning the neoliberal socio-economy. Contrary to claims that repressive mechanisms are obsolete, the analysis shows they were initially redirected towards marginalised groups along racialised, psychiatrised, and class demarcations, and their effects are now working their way up the class hierarchy. Proposing an alternative framework, this paper refocuses the analysis of neoliberalism on capitalist class dynamics and centres precarisation as the key socialising force. By detailing the multi-layered effects of this precarisation – such as the rise of cynicism, defensive individualism, and paranoid-populist outcrops – this paper provides a revised understanding of contemporary capitalist subjectivity. Ultimately, this contributes to broader theoretical debates concerning the psychosocial chaos of our late-neoliberal present.

This Dissertation provides a multilayered diagnosis of the psychosocial and psychopolitical landscape of contemporary capitalism, exploring the persisting obstacles to emancipatory change despite mounting dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the order. The Dissertation comprises three parts: The first part reconstructs the structural, institutional, and cultural paths leading to the persistence of neoliberal hubris amid widespread precarity and insecurity. I describe the psychopolitical impacts of neoliberal socialization, highlighting both the soft charm of competitive entrepreneurial ideals and the hard disciplinary effects of social insecurity. This system causes individuals to experience both internal psychoneurotic anxieties and external objective ones simultaneously, which people negotiate differently depending on their subject/abject positions, most with individualizing and depoliticizing effects. The second part aims to discuss the main psychosocial symptoms of contemporary capitalism in the literature under three headings: (i) manic cultures of accelerated work and consumption, (ii) medicalized and individualized regimes of psychiatry and psycho-culture, and (iii) paranoid, populist political mobilizations. On the one hand, I demonstrate that these symptoms are not merely psychological but are also sustained by institutional norms, cultural expectations, and material infrastructures. On the other hand, drawing from object-relations psychoanalytic theories of ‘pathological organizations,’ I suggest that these formations solidify in ‘wounding attachments’ that variously leverage our attachments to partial libidinal gains to perpetuate the havoc such formations wreak in our societies, psyches, and emancipatory imaginations. In the concluding chapters, I show that our addictions and attachments to such wounds must be mourned and weaned if emancipation is to be imaginable. This involves experimenting with how freely-associative and containing spaces can be reopened, both in our everyday lives and in potential counterpublics, so that stalled emancipatory visions can reemerge.

Existing approaches to machine ethics harbor an unquestioned commitment to the development of ethical machines and an unreflective optimism that ethical principles can be executable by machines. The first part of this paper raises two challenges to such dogmas: the hypocrisy challenge and the disagreement challenge. The first challenge is that, aside from finding the right machine ethics program, machine ethicists must consider whether their development of such machines is consistent with the precepts of their adopted ethical theory. The second challenge concerns whether the focus on particular ethical theories (especially rationalist and codifiable ones) in the field of machine ethics involves a biased representation of ethical traditions that contradicts commitments to inclusion and pluralism. In the second part of the paper, we offer a possible candidate for machine ethics we call the “skillful-expert model.” This model is based on the assumption that, for machines that have well-defined functions, the requirement of ethical goodness is equivalent to the requirement of skillful performance. We argue that this model has strong support from the neglected, virtue-ethical and phenomenological traditions of ethics, and sidesteps the major challenges raised in the first part.

While most contemporary proposals of ethics for machines draw upon principle-based ethics, a number of recent studies attempt to build machines capable of acting virtuously. This paper discusses the promises and limitations of building virtue-ethical machines. Taking inspiration from various philosophical traditions—including Greek philosophy (Aristotle), Chinese philosophy (Zhuangzi), phenomenology (Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus) and contemporary virtue theory (Julia Annas)—we argue for a novel model of machine ethics we call the “skillful-expert model.” This model sharply distinguishes human virtues and their machine analogues and rejects the direct transposition of human virtues to machines, as suggested by most proposals for machine virtues. Instead, we propose that human skills are better candidates for machine virtues.

Previous research on moral dilemmas has mainly focused on decisions made under conditions of probabilistic certainty. We investigated the impact of uncertainty on the preference for action (killing one individual to save five people) and inaction (saving one but allowing five people to die) in moral dilemmas. We reported two experimental studies that varied the framing (gain vs loss), levels of risk (probability of gain and loss) and levels of ambiguity (imprecise probability information) in the choice to save five individuals by sacrificing one. We found that participants preferred actions with uncertainty (risk/ambiguity) over inaction. Specifically, we found that participants preferred actions with precise probability information (risk) over inaction, and they preferred actions with modest or high levels of ambiguity over actions with precise probabilities, especially when moral dilemmas had a loss frame. We also observed commission bias in Study 2. We discussed the implications for research in moral decision-making.

With the increasing degrees A.I.s and machines are applied across different social contexts, the need for implementing ethics in A.I.s is pressing. In this paper, we argue for a pluralist hybrid model for the implementation of moral A.I.s. We first survey current approaches to moral A.I.s and their inherent limitations. Then we propose the pluralist hybrid approach and show how these limitations of moral A.I.s can be partly alleviated by the pluralist hybrid approach. The core ethical decision-making capacity of an A.I. based on the pluralist hybrid approach consists of two systems. The first is a deterministic algorithm system that incorporates different moral rules for making explicit moral decisions. The second is a machine learning system that calculates the value of the variables required by the application of moral principles. The pluralist hybrid system is better than the existing proposals as (i) it better addresses the moral disagreement problem of the top-down approach by including different moral principles, while (ii) it reduces the opacity of ethical decision-making compared with a bottom-up system by implementing explicit moral principles for moral decision making.

If critical theory is meant to be the “ruthless criticism of all that exists”, on what basis can critical theory ground its evaluative claims without being self-defeating? Is there a normative ground on which critique can stand? For Jürgen Habermas, critical theory has a ground embedded in the normative logic of communicative interactions. On the contrary, for Michel Foucault, critique can stand on no ground: critique is the refusal of any given ground and the opening up of possibilities for “thinking and acting differently.” In this dissertation, I will show that a reconsideration of the Habermas-Foucault debate can be helpful for elucidating the normative foundations and the tasks of critical theory. Given the incommensurability of Habermas’s and Foucault’s positions, this elucidation aims to forge a non-assimilatory synthesis between them. Juxtaposing Habermas’s emphasis on moral universality and the participant’s perspective with Foucault’s focus on objectivating problematization, I will suggest that, taken in isolation, their critical theories are inadequate, and a ‘synthesis’ of their respective positions can be found in a “critical conception of participatory normativity.” This conception of normativity, which is in some sense outlined in the critical theories of Theodor Adorno and Judith Butler, will offer a way of understanding the normative foundations of critical theory.