• University of Guelph
    Department of Philosophy
    Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (CARE-AI)
    One Health Institute
    Associate Professor
University of Oregon
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2017
Guelph, Canada
  •  177
    This article identifies and examines a tension in mental health researchers’ growing enthusiasm for the use of computational tools powered by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). Although there is increasing recognition of the value of participatory methods in science generally and in mental health research specifically, many AI/ML approaches, fueled by an ever-growing number of sensors collecting multimodal data, risk further distancing participants from research pr…Read more
  •  153
    “Large Language Models” Do Much More than Just Language: Some Bioethical Implications of Multi-Modal AI
    with Kristina L. Kupferschmidt and Graham W. Taylor
    American Journal of Bioethics 23 (10): 110-113. 2023.
    Cohen (2023) takes a fair and measured approach to the question of what ChatGPT means for bioethics. The hype cycles around AI often obscure the fact that ethicists have developed robust frameworks...
  •  81
    Why Canada’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Act Needs “Mental Data”
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2): 101-103. 2023.
    By introducing the concept of “mental data,” Palermos (2023) highlights an underappreciated aspect of data ethics that policymakers would do well to heed. Sweeping artificial intelligence (AI) legi...
  •  711
    This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing character-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape the character traits of their memb…Read more
  •  66
    The question of what makes someone the same person through time and change has long been a preoccupation of philosophers. In recent years, the question of what makes ordinary or lay people judge that someone is—or isn’t—the same person has caught the interest of experimental psychologists. These latter, empirically oriented researchers have sought to understand the cognitive processes and eliciting factors that shape ordinary people’s judgments about personal identity and the self. Still more re…Read more
  •  267
    Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely position…Read more
  •  1904
    From human resources to human rights: Impact assessments for hiring algorithms
    with Josephine Yam
    Ethics and Information Technology 23 (4): 611-623. 2021.
    Over the years, companies have adopted hiring algorithms because they promise wider job candidate pools, lower recruitment costs and less human bias. Despite these promises, they also bring perils. Using them can inflict unintentional harms on individual human rights. These include the five human rights to work, equality and nondiscrimination, privacy, free expression and free association. Despite the human rights harms of hiring algorithms, the AI ethics literature has predominantly focused on …Read more
  •  301
    Me, my (moral) self, and I
    with Jim A. C. Everett and Jordan Livingston
    In Felipe De Brigard & Walter Sinnott Armstrong (eds.), Neuroscience and Philosophy, . pp. 111-138. forthcoming.
    In this chapter, we outline the interdisciplinary contributions that philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have provided in the understanding of the self and identity, focusing on one specific line of burgeoning research: the importance of morality to perceptions of self and identity. Of course, this rather limited focus will exclude much of what psychologists and neuroscientists take to be important to the study of self and identity (that plethora of self-hyphenated terms seen in psychology …Read more
  •  1353
    Is There an App for That?: Ethical Issues in the Digital Mental Health Response to COVID-19
    with Josephine Yam
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 13 (3): 177-190. 2022.
    As COVID-19 spread, clinicians warned of mental illness epidemics within the coronavirus pandemic. Funding for digital mental health is surging and researchers are calling for widespread adoption to address the mental health sequalae of COVID-19. We consider whether these technologies improve mental health outcomes and whether they exacerbate existing health inequalities laid bare by the pandemic. We argue the evidence for efficacy is weak and the likelihood of increasing inequalities is high. …Read more
  •  300
    How AI can AID bioethics
    Journal of Practical Ethics. forthcoming.
    This paper explores some ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to improve human moral judgments in bioethics by avoiding some of the most common sources of error in moral judgment, including ignorance, confusion, and bias. It surveys three existing proposals for building human morality into AI: Top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid approaches. Then it proposes a multi-step, hybrid method, using the example of kidney allocations for transplants as a test case. The paper concludes wit…Read more
  •  419
    What Counts as “Clinical Data” in Machine Learning Healthcare Applications?
    American Journal of Bioethics 20 (11): 27-30. 2020.
    Peer commentary on Char, Abràmoff & Feudtner (2020) target article: "Identifying Ethical Considerations for Machine Learning Healthcare Applications"
  •  432
    Debates about obesity in bioethics tend to unfold in predictable epicycles between individual choices and behaviours and the oppressive socio-economic structures constraining them. Here, we argue that recent work from two cutting-edge research programmes in microbiology and social psychology can advance this conceptual stalemate in the literature. We begin in section 1 by discussing two promising lines of obesity research involving the human microbiome and relationship partners. Then, in section…Read more
  •  964
    Where are virtues?
    Philosophical Studies 176 (9): 2331-2349. 2019.
    This paper argues that the question, ‘where are virtues?’ demands a response from virtue theorists. Despite the polarizing nature of debates about the relevance of empirical work in psychology for virtue theory, I first show that there is widespread agreement about the underlying structure of virtue. Namely, that virtues are comprised of cognitive and affective processes. Next, I show that there are well-developed arguments that cognitive processes can extend beyond the agent. Then, I show that …Read more
  •  766
    A recent systematic review of Machine Learning (ML) approaches to health data, containing over 100 studies, found that the most investigated problem was mental health (Yin et al., 2019). Relatedly, recent estimates suggest that between 165,000 and 325,000 health and wellness apps are now commercially available, with over 10,000 of those designed specifically for mental health (Carlo et al., 2019). In light of these trends, the present chapter has three aims: (1) provide an informative overview o…Read more
  •  267
    Partisanship, Humility, and Epistemic Polarization
    with Thomas Nadelhoffer, Rose Graves, Mark Leary, and Walter Sinnott Armstrong
    In Michael Lynch & Alessandra Tanesini (eds.), Arrogance and Polarization (. pp. 175-192. forthcoming.
    Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al…Read more
  •  349
    AI Methods in Bioethics
    with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer
    American Journal of Bioethics: Empirical Bioethics 1 (11): 37-39. 2020.
    Commentary about the role of AI in bioethics for the 10th anniversary issue of AJOB: Empirical Bioethics
  •  665
    Some ethics of deep brain stimulation
    In Dan Stein & Ilina Singh (eds.), Global Mental Health and Neuroethics, . pp. 117-132. 2020.
    Case reports about patients undergoing Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for various motor and psychiatric disorders - including Parkinson’s Disease, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Treatment Resistant Depression - have sparked a vast literature in neuroethics. Questions about whether and how DBS changes the self have been at the fore. The present chapter brings these neuroethical debates into conversation with recent research in moral psychology. We begin in Section 1 by reviewing the recent clin…Read more
  •  571
    The Moral Self and Moral Duties
    with Jim A. C. Everett and Julian Savulescu
    Philosophical Psychology (7): 1-22. 2020.
    Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of…Read more
  •  469
    Addiction, Identity, Morality
    with Brian D. Earp, Jim A. C. Everett, and Julian Savulescu
    AJOB Empirical Bioethics 10 (2): 136-153. 2019.
    Background: Recent literature on addiction and judgments about the characteristics of agents has focused on the implications of adopting a ‘brain disease’ versus ‘moral weakness’ model of addiction. Typically, such judgments have to do with what capacities an agent has (e.g., the ability to abstain from substance use). Much less work, however, has been conducted on the relationship between addiction and judgments about an agent’s identity, including whether or to what extent an individual …Read more
  •  443
    Relational Agency: Yes—But How Far? Vulnerability and the Moral Self
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 8 (2): 83-85. 2017.
    Peer commentary on: Goering, S., Klein, E., Dougherty, D. D., & Widge, A. S. (2017). Staying in the loop: Relational agency and identity in next-generation DBS for psychiatry. AJOB Neuroscience, 8(2), 59-70.
  •  711
    Bioethics and the Hypothesis of Extended Health
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 28 (3): 341-376. 2018.
    Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine have presumed the existence of a fixed, stable, individual organism as the bearer of health and disease states, and as such, the appropriate target of medical therapy and ethical concern. However, recent developments in microbial biology, neuroscience, the philosophy of cognitive science, and social and personality psychology (Ickes...
  •  415
    Chris Abel. The Extended Self: Architecture, Memes and Minds (review)
    Environmental Philosophy 14 (1): 151-153. 2017.
    Review of: Abel, C. (2014). The extended self: Architecture, memes and minds. Manchester University Press
  •  414
    Jane Addams as experimental philosopher
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (5): 918-938. 2018.
    This paper argues that the activist, feminist and pragmatist Jane Addams was an experimental philosopher. To defend this claim, I argue for capacious notions of both philosophical pragmatism and experimental philosophy. I begin in Section 2 with a new defence of Rose and Danks’ [‘In Defense of a Broad Conception of Experimental Philosophy’. Metaphilosophy 44, no. 4 : 512–32] argument in favour of a broad conception of experimental philosophy. Koopman [‘Pragmatist Resources for Experimental Philo…Read more
  •  424
    Toward an Ecological Bioethics
    American Journal of Bioethics 16 (5): 35-37. 2016.
    Peer commentary on: Blumenthal-Barby, J. S. (2016). Biases and heuristics in decision making and their impact on autonomy. The American Journal of Bioethics, 16(5), 5-15.
  •  863
    Extended knowledge, the recognition heuristic, and epistemic injustice
    In Duncan Pritchard, Jesper Kallestrup, Orestis Palermos & Adam Carter (eds.), Extended Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 239-256. 2018.
    We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recogniti…Read more
  •  323
    Beyond Embodiment: John Dewey and the Integrated Mind
    The Pluralist 8 (3): 66-78. 2013.
    In 1916 John Dewey expressed a worry that American philosophy would be relegated to “chewing a historic cud long since reduced to a woody fibre, or an apologetics for lost causes (lost to natural science).”1 In this paper, I will attempt to contribute to a growing body of literature within the classical American philosophical tradition that seeks to avoid this fate by engaging Dewey’s thought with debates in contemporary philosophy of mind.2 To date, the vast majority of this work has centered a…Read more
  •  502
    This chapter aims to expand the body of empirical literature considered relevant to virtue theory beyond the burned-over districts that are the situationist challenges to virtue ethics and epistemology. We thus raise a rather simple-sounding question: why doesn’t virtue epistemology have an account of intelligence? In the first section, we sketch the history and present state of the person-situation debate to argue for the importance of an interactionist framework in bringing psychological resea…Read more
  •  268
    Abstract: While pragmatism and the so-called 4E program may form a united front against methodological individualism, classical cognitivism, traditional internalism, and the like, the 4E approach is not without its own internal tensions. One such tension, between Embodied and Extended, is brought to light by Clark (2008), who argues in favor of the latter. Dempsey and Shani (2013) reply that Clark’s functionalism undercuts what should be a more fundamental commitment to Embodied. With respect to…Read more
  •  802
    This paper brings together two erstwhile distinct strands of philosophical inquiry: the extended mind hypothesis and the situationist challenge to virtue theory. According to proponents of the extended mind hypothesis, the vehicles of at least some mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) are not located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent whose states they are. When external props, tools, and other systems are suitably integ…Read more
  •  948
    This paper aims to expand the range of empirical work relevant to the extended cognition debates. First, I trace the historical development of the person-situation debate in social and personality psychology and the extended cognition debate in the philosophy of mind. Next, I highlight some instructive similarities between the two and consider possible objections to my comparison. I then argue that the resolution of the person-situation debate in terms of interactionism lends support for an anal…Read more