Marina Moreno

This paper examines robustly Humean solutions to temptation cases. Such cases are typically characterized by a pattern of preference reversal: at an initial time t1, an agent prefers not to give in to a temptation; at a later time t2, when the temptation becomes imminent, this preference reverses; and at a subsequent time t3 after the agent has either succumbed to or resisted the temptation, the preference often reverts again. Standard Humean accounts of rationality and motivation face a difficulty here. If, as these accounts maintain, agents are motivated to act in accordance with their desires, and rationality consists in doing so, then it is unclear how resisting the t2 preference could be rational—or even possible. I begin by clarifying what a robustly Humean solution must involve and I argue that existing proposals in the literature fail to meet these criteria. I then offer my own solution. I propose that temptation cases are best understood as involving a persistent conflict among the agent’s desires, and I model this conflict using Nash bargaining. I show that this model is robustly Humean with respect to both motivation and rationality, and that it identifies resisting temptation as uniquely rational in many temptation cases.

This paper develops a parallel between prudence and population ethics. I argue that developing a standard guiding the evaluation of the comparative prudential value of different lives is challenging because it shares a similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value of populations of person-stages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare five possible escape routes: Critical-Level Views, Totalism, Limited Aggregation, Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View and what I call the Negative Lexicality View.

In this paper, I examine the impact of self-selection bias on expert consensus in fields driven by constructed arguments, such as philosophy. Through an agent-based model, I explore how pre-existing beliefs influence researchers' decisions to enter specific fields and how these dynamics contribute to distorted epistemic outcomes, particularly when the questions investigated are complex and argument construction plays a central role. The model reveals that self-selection can significantly and stably skew expert consensus, reinforcing initial biases rather than reflecting the evidence. To address this, I propose and test several strategies that scientific reviewers relying on expert testimony can employ to subtract this bias when relying on expert opinions. The results suggest that strategies accounting for the direction and persistence of belief changes among experts are particularly effective in improving the accuracy of reviewers' conclusions.

There is a debate between Proponents and Skeptics about the epistemic value of travel. Proponents argue that there are normative reasons that speak in favour of travel based on the kinds of knowledge, beliefs, or other epistemically relevant features that we might acquire through travelling recreationally. Skeptics deny that travel provides distinctive epistemic value such as to give us normative reasons that speak in favour of it. In this paper we explore this debate. Our first goal is to clear up what is at stake. We argue that Proponents and Skeptics are arguing about whether travel has epistemic value that plays a moral justificatory function. There are the large moral costs to travel (e.g., environmental damage, over-tourism). So, there needs to be some normative reason that speaks in favour of travel that makes travel morally permissible. The debate about the epistemic value of travel is (partly) a debate about whether travel can provide value that could justify travel and make it permissible despite these costs. Our second goal is to provide an account of the epistemic value of travel that could at least potentially serve this justificatory function. We argue that leisure travel puts agents into a position in which they must consciously modify their default signal/noise processing. Put simply, travel provides epistemic value because it changes something about the agent and the way the agent processes information. Our account ultimately offers a middle point for both Proponents and Skeptics of the epistemic value of travel: It vindicates Proponents while still taking onboard the objections Skeptics offer.

In his paper “Wellbeing and Changing Attitudes Across Time”, Krister Bykvist investigates the challenge that changing attitudes pose for attitude-sensitive theories of well-being in determining temporal wellbeing. He offers both a useful tool to investigate the conceptual space of possible answers, namely an attitudinal matrix, as well as a seemingly plausible constraint on such an answer, which he terms ‘diagonalism’. This paper draws on his matrix to provide an argument against diagonalism and offer an error theory regarding its intuitive force. Using his matrix, I sketch my own view of temporal well-being according to which it is not a single unified concept, but can rather be understood in two different ways (‘better for’ vs. ‘better off’), both of which are interesting in their own right.

We are constantly making choices about how to invest our time and resources. From a moral perspective, we must ask which moral concerns are most deserving of our attention. Longtermism, as e.g. defined by Greaves and MacAskill, holds that our moral focus should be on the long-term future, and that current and medium-term moral problems are comparatively insignificant. This theory is centrally based on the assumption that the moral importance of individuals can be aggregated. Since the number of individuals of future generations far exceeds the number of current individuals and those closer in time, future generations are to bemorally prioritised, according to longtermism. This paper explores the implications of rejecting the premise of moral aggregation of individuals and adopting a strongly non-aggregationist position instead. It is argued that, according to strong non-aggregationism, the magnitude of the probability with which our intervention actually make a difference, as well as whether we look at the available interventions from an ex ante or ex post perspective, are relevant factors in their moral assessment. Ultimately, the conclusion is reached that strong non-aggregationism does likely not support strongly longtermist conclusions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is booming, and AI ethics is booming with it. Yet there is surprisingly little attention paid to what the discipline of AI ethics is and what it ought to be. This paper offers an ameliorative definition of AI ethics to fill this gap. We introduce and defend an original distinction between novel and applied research questions. A research question should count as AI ethics if and only if (i) it is novel or (ii) it is applied and has gained new importance through the development of AI. We argue that a lack of such a definition contributes to six disciplinary problems: ethics washing and lobbying, limited applicability, dilution of the field, conceptual bloating, costs of AI ethics, and an internal dispute. Based on our definition, we construct a methodological framework for AI ethics and show how it helps address these problems.

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems.