-
96Recent Work on Moral RevolutionsAnalysis 82 (2): 354-366. 2022.In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to c…Read more
-
37Socially disruptive technologies and epistemic injusticeEthics and Information Technology 26 (1): 1-8. 2024.Recent scholarship on technology-induced ‘conceptual disruption’ has spotlighted the notion of a conceptual gap. Conceptual gaps have also been discussed in scholarship on epistemic injustice, yet up until now these bodies of work have remained disconnected. This article shows that ‘gaps’ of interest to both bodies of literature are closely related, and argues that a joint examination of conceptual disruption and epistemic injustice is fruitful for both fields. I argue that hermeneutical margina…Read more
-
17Who owns NATURE? Conceptual appropriation in discourses on climate and biotechnologiesEnvironmental Values. forthcoming.Emerging technologies can have profound conceptual implications. Their emergence frequently calls for the articulation of new concepts, or for modifications and novel applications of concepts that are already entrenched in communication and thought. In this paper, we introduce the notion of “conceptual appropriation” to capture the dynamics between concepts and emerging technologies. By conceptual appropriation, we mean the novel application of a value-laden concept to lay a contestable claim on…Read more
-
7Climate Change, Uncertainty, and PolicyIn Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change, Springer Nature. pp. 977-1000. 2023.While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent, and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics, and climate economics. …Read more
-
37Conceptual Engineering and Philosophy of Technology: Amelioration or Adaptation?Philosophy and Technology 36 (4): 1-17. 2023.Conceptual Engineering (CE) is thought to be generally aimed at ameliorating deficient concepts. In this paper, we challenge this assumption: we argue that CE is frequently undertaken with the orthogonal aim of _conceptual adaptation_. We develop this thesis with reference to the interplay between technology and concepts. Emerging technologies can exert significant pressure on conceptual systems and spark ‘conceptual disruption’. For example, advances in Artificial Intelligence raise the questio…Read more
-
18Climate Uncertainty, Real Possibilities and the Precautionary PrincipleErkenntnis 88 (6): 2431-2447. 2021.A challenge faced by defenders of the precautionary principle is to clarify when the evidence that a harmful event might occur suffices to regard this prospect as a real possibility. Plausible versions of the principle must articulate some epistemic threshold, or de minimis requirement, which specifies when precautionary measures are justified. Critics have argued that formulating such a threshold is problematic in the context of the precautionary principle. First, this is because the precaution…Read more
-
38Attention as Practice: Buddhist Ethics Responses to Persuasive TechnologiesGlobal Philosophy 33 (2): 1-16. 2023.The “attention economy” refers to the tech industry’s business model that treats human attention as a commodifiable resource. The libertarian critique of this model, dominant within tech and philosophical communities, claims that the persuasive technologies of the attention economy infringe on the individual user’s autonomy and therefore the proposed solutions focus on safeguarding personal freedom through expanding individual control. While this push back is important, current societal debates …Read more
-
74Pistols, pills, pork and ploughs: the structure of technomoral revolutionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 1-33. forthcoming.The power of technology to transform religions, science, and political institutions has often been presented as nothing short of revolutionary. Does technology have a similarly transformative influence on societies’ morality? Scholars have not rigorously investigated the role of technology in moral revolutions, even though existing research on technomoral change suggests that this role may be considerable. In this paper, we explore what the role of technology in moral revolutions, understood as …Read more
-
5Doorleefde rede, beproefde moraalAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 114 (1): 61-66. 2022.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
-
285Science and SpeciesismIn Timothy Kneeland (ed.), Routledge Handbook of American Science. forthcoming.This chapter introduces topical issues in the ethical debate on speciesism. It does so against a background of the history of the debate and with an emphasis on concerns that arise at the intersection of speciesism and science. The term speciesism was coined in the 1970s by Richard Rider and popularized by Peter Singer, who defined speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.” Critiques of …Read more
-
311Shall We Adapt? Evolutionary Ethics and Climate ChangeIn Wouter Floria Kalf, Michael Klenk, Jeroen Hopster & Julia Hermann (eds.), Philosophy in the Age of Science?: Inquiries Into Philosophical Progress, Method, and Societal Relevance, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2020.In this chapter I zoom in on a topic in climate ethics that has not previously received academic scrutiny: the intersection between evolutionary ethics and climate change. I argue that in the context of climate discourse, an evolutionary perspective can be illuminating, but may also invite moral corruption and reasoning fallacies. Relating my discussion to the general theme of the book, I argue that academic philosophy is well-positioned to fulfil a specific societal role, which is particularly …Read more
-
630Climate Change, Uncertainty and PolicySpringer. forthcoming.While the foundations of climate science and ethics are well established, fine-grained climate predictions, as well as policy-decisions, are beset with uncertainties. This chapter maps climate uncertainties and classifies them as to their ground, extent and location. A typology of uncertainty is presented, centered along the axes of scientific and moral uncertainty. This typology is illustrated with paradigmatic examples of uncertainty in climate science, climate ethics and climate economics. Su…Read more
-
337Future value change: identifying realistic possibilities and risksPrometheus. forthcoming.The co-shaping of technology and values is a topic of increasing interest among philosophers of technology. Part of this interest pertains to anticipating future value change, or what Danaher (2021) calls the investigation of “axiological futurism”. However, this investigation faces a challenge: “axiological possibility space” is vast, and we currently lack a clear account of how this space should be demarcated. It stands to reason that speculations about how values might change over time should…Read more
-
430Mutual affordances: the dynamics between social media and populismMedia, Culture and Society 43 (3): 551-560. 2021.In a recent contribution to this journal Paolo Gerbaudo has argued that an ‘elective affinity’ exists between social media and populism. The present article expands on Gerbaudo’s argument and examines various dimensions of this affinity in further detail. It argues that it is helpful to conceptually reframe the proposed affinity in terms of affordances. Four affordances are identified which make the social media ecology relatively favourable to both-right as well as left-wing populism, compared …Read more
-
715What are Socially Disruptive Technologies?Technology in Society 67 101750. 2021.Scholarly discourse on “disruptive technologies” has been strongly influenced by disruptive innovation theory. This theory is tailored for analyzing disruptions in markets and business. It is of limited use, however, in analyzing the broader social, moral and existential dynamics of technosocial disruption. Yet these broader dynamics should be of great scholarly concern, both in coming to terms with technological disruptions of the past and those of our current age. Technologies can disrupt soci…Read more
-
315Climate Uncertainty, Real Possibilities and the Precautionary PrincipleErkenntnis (6): 1-17. 2021.A challenge faced by defenders of the precautionary principle is to clarify when the evidence that a harmful event might occur suffices to regard this prospect as a real possibility. Plausible versions of the principle must articulate some epistemic threshold, orde minimisrequirement, which specifies when precautionary measures are justified. Critics have argued that formulating such a threshold is problematic in the context of the precautionary principle. First, this is because the precautionar…Read more
-
119Soorten bestaan nietAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 112 (4): 499-502. 2020.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
-
397Why Metaethics Needs Empirical Moral PsychologyCritica 52 (155): 27-54. 2020.What is the significance of empirical moral psychology for metaethics? In this article we take up Michael Ruse’s evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism and reassess it in the context of the empirical state of the art. Ruse’s argument depends on the phenomenological presumption that people generally experience morality as objective. We demonstrate how recent experimental findings challenge this widely-shared armchair presumption and conclude that Ruse’s argument fails. We situate t…Read more
-
68Philosophy in the Age of Science? Inquiries into Philosophical Progess, Method, and Societal Relevance (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 2020.Current academic philosophy is being challenged from several angles. Subdisciplinary specialisations often make it challenging to articulate philosophy’s relevance for the societal questions of our day. Additionally, the success of the ‘scientific method’ puts pressure on philosophers to articulate their methods and specify how these can be successful. How does philosophical progress come about? What can philosophy contribute to our understanding of today’s world? Moreover, can it also contribut…Read more
-
556The Speciesism Debate: Intuition, Method, and Empirical AdvancesAnimals 9 (12): 1-14. 2019.This article identifies empirical, conceptual and normative avenues to advance the speciesism debate. First, I highlight the application of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) as one such avenue: especially where (anti-)speciesist positions heavily rely on appeals to moral intuition, and EDAs have potential to move the debate forward. Second, an avenue for conceptual progress is the delineation of speciesism from other views in its vicinity, specifically from the view that biological differe…Read more
-
25Review of Peter Singer's Ethics in the real world: 82 brief essays on things that matter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, 355 pp (review)Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 10 (1): 120-123. 2017.
-
580The meta-ethical significance of experiments about folk moral objectivismPhilosophical Psychology 32 (6): 831-852. 2019.The meta-ethical commitments of folk respondents – specifically their commitment to the objectivity of moral claims – have recently become subject to empirical scrutiny. Experimental findings suggest that people are meta-ethical pluralists: There is both inter- and intrapersonal variation with regard to people’s objectivist commitments. What meta-ethical implications, if any, do these findings have? I point out that current research does not directly address traditional meta-ethical questions: T…Read more
-
435Explaining historical moral convergence: the empirical case against realist intuitionismPhilosophical Studies 177 (5): 1255-1273. 2020.Over the course of human history there appears to have been a global shift in moral values towards a broadly ‘liberal’ orientation. Huemer argues that this shift better accords with a realist than an antirealist metaethics: it is best explained by the discovery of mind-independent truths through intuition. In this article I argue, contra Huemer, that the historical data are better explained assuming the truth of moral antirealism. Realism does not fit the data as well as Huemer suggests, whereas…Read more
-
338Striking coincidences: How realists should reason about themRatio 32 (4): 260-274. 2019.Many metaethicists assume that our normative judgments are both by and large true, and the product of causal forces. In other words, many metaethicists assume that the set of normative judgments that causal forces have led us to make largely coincides with the set of true normative judgments. How should we explain this coincidence? This is what Sharon Street (2006) calls the practical/theoretical puzzle. Some metaethicists can easily solve this puzzle, but not all of them can, Street argues; she…Read more
-
450Evolutionary arguments against moral realism: Why the empirical details matter (and which ones do)Biology and Philosophy 33 (5-6): 41. 2018.The aim of this article is to identify the strongest evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism and to assess on which empirical assumptions it relies. In the recent metaethical literature, several authors have de-emphasized the evolutionary component of EDAs against moral realism: presumably, the success or failure of these arguments is largely orthogonal to empirical issues. I argue that this claim is mistaken. First, I point out that Sharon Street’s and Michael Ruse’s EDAs both inv…Read more
-
607Two Accounts of Moral Objectivity: from Attitude-Independence to Standpoint-InvarianceEthical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (4): 763-780. 2017.How should we understand the notion of moral objectivity? Metaethical positions that vindicate morality’s objective appearance are often associated with moral realism. On a realist construal, moral objectivity is understood in terms of mind-, stance-, or attitude-independence. But realism is not the only game in town for moral objectivists. On an antirealist construal, morality’s objective features are understood in virtue of our attitudes. In this paper I aim to develop this antirealist constru…Read more
Utrecht, Netherlands