Hayate Shimizu

This paper offers a relational response to Jeff Sebo’s The Moral Circle and its moral-expansionist framework under conditions of uncertainty. While Sebo argues that we should consider not only which beings matter but which beings might matter, and extends this precautionary logic to animals, AI systems, and other marginal cases, we argue that this framework leaves underexamined the standpoint from which moral-circle expansion is undertaken. A relational approach does not reject the importance of avoiding moral exclusion. Rather, it reframes the question by asking what it means to “expand” the moral circle in the first place, how moral circles are historically and socially constituted, and who has the authority to draw and redraw their boundaries. On this view, moral significance does not arise solely from intrinsic properties such as sentience, agency, or welfare capacity, but also from the relations, institutions, practices, and power structures through which beings become ethically salient. We therefore ask not simply whether AI belongs within the moral circle, but how the very framing of inclusion is shaped when AI systems are in view. We argue that Sebo’s critique of human exceptionalism remains partially constrained by a human standpoint that continues to administer inclusion. The paper concludes that the ethical challenge posed by AI is not only to determine whether artificial systems belong within the moral circle, but also to examine how moral relations are formed, mediated, and governed in increasingly complex sociotechnical worlds.

In the ethical literature on robot design, considerable attention has been devoted to the risks that human-like robots pose to humans. In particular, the resemblance of robots to humans has been associated with concerns about social disruption, deception, and potential harm, leading some authors to argue for restrictions or bans in certain contexts. However, while the ethical significance of human-like form has been widely recognized for humans, significantly less attention has been paid to the implications of animal-like robots from the perspective of nonhuman animals and human–animal relations. This paper addresses that gap by examining how the design and deployment of animal-like robots may affect animals both directly and indirectly. We argue that the use of animal form in robotics is not ethically neutral, as it can shape human perceptions of animals, influence patterns of interaction, and potentially contribute to harms such as mislearning, objectification, and alienation. By shifting the focus from human-centered concerns to the impact on animals, we identify a set of ethically relevant risks associated with animal-like robots and analyze their broader implications for human–animal relations. On this basis, we propose preliminary guidelines aimed at supporting the responsible design and use of such technologies.

Van der Horst and Puzio’s target article reorients what it means to “queer sex robots” by moving beyond design diversification toward the relational formation and transformation of desire, drawing Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism in tandem. This commentary sharpens the paper’s theoretical stakes by making explicit an ontological thesis it presupposes: the relational self, understood as an alternative to atomistic individualism and illuminated through comparative resources such as Watsuji’s analyses of aidagara and fūdo. On this basis, we argue that the paper’s tandem is most promising when read as dismantling the self-transparent chooser and treating technological mediation as constitutive of sexual self-understanding. We then examine the paper’s practical “pointers,” especially designing for friction, as interventions into self-formation that generate distinctive obligations concerning psychological safety, consent, and responsibility. To sustain the theoretical promise of queering in design practice, further reflection on ethical risks and safety is needed, and we call for continued debate on how such reflection should proceed.

Oxidative stress has been implicated in cardiac arrhythmia, although a causal relationship remains undefined. We have recently demonstrated a marked up-regulation of NADPH oxidase isoform 4 in patients with atrial fibrillation, which is accompanied by overproduction of reactive oxygen species. In this study, we investigated the impact on the cardiac phenotype of NOX4 overexpression in zebrafish. One-cell stage embryos were injected with NOX4 RNA prior to video recording of a GFP-labeled beating heart in real time at 24-31 h post-fertilization. Intriguingly, NOX4 embryos developed cardiac arrhythmia that is characterized by irregular heartbeats. When quantitatively analyzed by an established LQ-1 program, the NOX4 embryos displayed much more variable beat-to-beat intervals. Both the phenotype and the increased ROS in NOX4 embryos were attenuated by NOX4 morpholino co-injection, treatments of the embryos with polyethylene glycol-conjugated superoxide dismutase, or NOX4 inhibitors fulvene-5, 6-dimethylaminofulvene, and proton sponge blue. Injection of NOX4-P437H mutant RNA had no effect on the cardiac phenotype or ROS production. In addition, phosphorylation of calcium/cal-modulin-dependent protein kinase II was increased in NOX4 embryos but diminished by polyethylene glycol-conjugated superoxide dismutase, whereas its inhibitor KN93 or AIP abolished the arrhythmic phenotype. Taken together, our data for the first time uncover a novel pathway that underlies the development of cardiac arrhythmia, namely NOX4 activation, subsequent NOX4-specific NADPH-driven ROS production, and redox-sensitive CaMKII activation. These findings may ultimately lead to novel therapeutics targeting cardiac arrhythmia. © 2014 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.