• Syracuse University
    Maxwell School: Department of Public Administration and International Affairs
    Assistant Professor
APA Eastern Division
Syracuse, New York, United States of America
  •  934
    Asylum for Sale: A Market between States that is Feasible and Desirable
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (2): 217-232. 2019.
    The asylum system faces problems on two fronts. States undermine it with populist politics, and migrants use it to satisfy their migration preferences. To address these problems, asylum services should be commodified. States should be able to pay other states to provide determination and protection-elsewhere. In this article, I aim to identify a way of implementing this idea that is both feasible and desirable. First, I sketch a policy proposal for a commodification of asylum services. Then, I a…Read more
  •  729
    This article examines two questions about scientists’ search for knowledge. First, which search strategies generate discoveries effectively? Second, is it advantageous to diversify search strategies? We argue pace Weisberg and Muldoon, “Epistemic Landscapes and the Division of Cognitive Labor”, that, on the first question, a search strategy that deliberately seeks novel research approaches need not be optimal. On the second question, we argue they have not shown epistemic reasons exist for the d…Read more
  •  527
    The Disappearing Agent as an Exclusion Problem
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The disappearing agent problem is an argument in the metaphysics of agency. Proponents of the agent-causal approach argue that the rival event-causal approach fails to account for the fact that an agent is active. This paper examines an analogy between this disappearing agent problem and the exclusion problem in the metaphysics of mind. I develop the analogy between these two problems and survey existing solutions. I suggest that some solutions that have received significant attention in respons…Read more
  •  474
    AI and Structural Injustice: Foundations for Equity, Values, and Responsibility
    In Justin B. Bullock, Yu-Che Chen, Johannes Himmelreich, Valerie M. Hudson, Anton Korinek, Matthew M. Young & Baobao Zhang (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of AI Governance, Oxford University Press. 2023.
    This chapter argues for a structural injustice approach to the governance of AI. Structural injustice has an analytical and an evaluative component. The analytical component consists of structural explanations that are well-known in the social sciences. The evaluative component is a theory of justice. Structural injustice is a powerful conceptual tool that allows researchers and practitioners to identify, articulate, and perhaps even anticipate, AI biases. The chapter begins with an example of r…Read more
  •  413
    This paper develops a taxonomy of kinds of actions that can be seen in group agency, human–machine interactions, and virtual realities. These kinds of actions are special in that they are not embodied in the ordinary sense. I begin by analysing the notion of embodiment into three separate assumptions that together comprise what I call the Embodiment View. Although this view may find support in paradigmatic cases of agency, I suggest that each of its assumptions can be relaxed. With each assumpti…Read more
  •  343
    A central dispute in social ontology concerns the existence of group minds and actions. I argue that some authors in this dispute rely on rival views of existence without sufficiently acknowledging this divergence. I proceed in three steps in arguing for this claim. First, I define the phenomenon as an implicit higher-order disagreement by drawing on an analysis of verbal disputes. Second, I distinguish two theories of existence—the theory-commitments view and the truthmaker view—in both their e…Read more
  •  219
    Never Mind the Trolley: The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in Mundane Situations
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3): 669-684. 2018.
    Trolley cases are widely considered central to the ethics of autonomous vehicles. We caution against this by identifying four problems. Trolley cases, given technical limitations, rest on assumptions that are in tension with one another. Furthermore, trolley cases illuminate only a limited range of ethical issues insofar as they cohere with a certain design framework. Furthermore, trolley cases seem to demand a moral answer when a political answer is called for. Finally, trolley cases might be e…Read more
  •  174
    Responsibility for Killer Robots
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (3): 731-747. 2019.
    Future weapons will make life-or-death decisions without a human in the loop. When such weapons inflict unwarranted harm, no one appears to be responsible. There seems to be a responsibility gap. I first reconstruct the argument for such responsibility gaps to then argue that this argument is not sound. The argument assumes that commanders have no control over whether autonomous weapons inflict harm. I argue against this assumption. Although this investigation concerns a specific case of autonom…Read more
  •  125
    Justice in the Global Digital Economy
    In Axel Berger, Clara Brandi & Eszter Kollar (eds.), Justice in Global Economic Governance, Edinburgh University Press. forthcoming.
    This chapter outlines a framework for thinking about justice in the global digital economy. The chapter first proposes to understand the digital economy as about infrastructure, then describes some of the problems of justice raised by the global digital economy and sketches potential reforms.
  •  99
    Agency as difference-making: causal foundations of moral responsibility
    Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science. 2015.
    We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is a causal one. I cl…Read more
  •  90
    Against “Democratizing AI”
    AI and Society 38 (4): 1333-1346. 2023.
    This paper argues against the call to democratize artificial intelligence (AI). Several authors demand to reap purported benefits that rest in direct and broad participation: In the governance of AI, more people should be more involved in more decisions about AI—from development and design to deployment. This paper opposes this call. The paper presents five objections against broadening and deepening public participation in the governance of AI. The paper begins by reviewing the literature and c…Read more
  •  87
    This paper is on the problem of profligate omissions. The problem is that counterfactual definitions of causation identify as a cause anything that could have prevented an effect but that did not actually occur, which is a highly counterintuitive result. Many solutions of this problem appeal to normative, epistemic, pragmatic, or metaphysical considerations. These existing solutions are in some sense substantive. In contrast, this paper concentrates on the semantics of counterfactuals. I propose…Read more
  •  81
    The Paraphrase Argument Against Collective Actions
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (1): 81-95. 2017.
    This paper is about the status of collective actions. According to one view, collective actions metaphysically reduce to individual actions because sentences about collective actions are merely a shorthand for sentences about individual actions. I reconstruct an argument for this view and show via counterexamples that it is not sound. The argument relies on a paraphrase procedure to unpack alleged shorthand sentences about collective actions into sentences about individual actions. I argue that …Read more
  •  76
    Responsible AI Through Conceptual Engineering
    Philosophy and Technology 35 (3): 1-30. 2022.
    The advent of intelligent artificial systems has sparked a dispute about the question of who is responsible when such a system causes a harmful outcome. This paper champions the idea that this dispute should be approached as a conceptual engineering problem. Towards this claim, the paper first argues that the dispute about the responsibility gap problem is in part a conceptual dispute about the content of responsibility and related concepts. The paper then argues that the way forward is to evalu…Read more
  •  61
    Punishing groups raises a difficult question, namely, how their punishment can be justified at all. Some have argued that punishing groups is morally problematic because of the effects that the punishment entails for their members. In this paper we argue against this view. We distinguish the question of internal justice—how punishment-effects are distributed—from the question of external justice—whether the punishment is justified. We argue that issues of internal justice do not in general under…Read more
  •  37
    The Oxford Handbook of AI Governance (edited book)
    with Justin B. Bullock, Yu-Che Chen, Valerie M. Hudson, Anton Korinek, Matthew M. Young, and Baobao Zhang
    Oxford University Press. 2023.
    As the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have increased over recent years, so have the challenges of how to govern its usage. Consequently, prominent stakeholders across academia, government, industry, and civil society have called for states to devise and deploy principles, innovative policies, and best practices to regulate and oversee these increasingly powerful AI tools. Developing a robust AI governance system requires extensive collective efforts throughout the world. It also ra…Read more
  •  33
    Ethics of Technology Needs More Political Philosophy
    Communications of the Acm 63 (1): 33-35. 2020.
    The ongoing debate on the ethics of self-driving cars typically focuses on two approaches to answering such questions: moral philosophy and social science. I argue that these two approaches are both lacking. We should neither deduce answers from individual moral theories nor should we expect social science to give us complete answers. To supplement these approaches, we should turn to political philosophy. The issues we face are collective decisions that we make together rather than individual de…Read more
  •  9
    Much of the debate on the ethics of self-driving cars has revolved around trolley scenarios. This paper instead takes up the political or institutional question of who should decide how a self-driving car drives. Specifically, this paper is on the question of whether and why passengers should be able to control how their car drives. The paper reviews existing arguments—those for passenger ethics settings and for mandatory ethics settings respectively—and argues that they fail. Although the argum…Read more
  •  6
    Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together (review)
    Journal of Social Ontology 3 (2): 275-278. 2017.
  •  2
    Hierarchical groups shape social, political, and personal life. This paper concerns the question of how individuals within such groups can be responsible. The paper explores how individual responsibility can be partially grounded in difference-making. The paper concentrates on the control condition of responsibility and takes into view three distinct phenomena of responsibility in hierarchical groups. First, a superior can be responsible for outcomes that her subordinates bring about. Second, a …Read more