•  26
    Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can serve as affective …Read more
  •  33
    Intellectual humility (IH) is often conceived as the recognition of, and appropriate response to, your own intellectual limitations. As far as we are aware, only a handful of studies look at interventions to increase IH – e.g. through journalling – and no study so far explores the extent to which having high or low IH can be predicted. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques to develop a predictive model for IH and identify top terms and features that indicate…Read more
  •  2
    The Situation of the Jury
    In Fritz Allhoff & S. Waller (eds.), Serial Killers ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Attribution Bias in the Trials of Accused Serial Killers Introduction The Case of Doug Clark Situationism and Destructive Behavior Attribution Biases Seeing Ghosts “Ewww…Guilty!” “You people are all…” “Aren't you the guy who…?” Doug Clark Again Conclusion.
  •  26
    The Moral Psychology of Trust (edited book)
    with David Collins
    Lexington Books. 2023.
    This edited volume features discussions by leading scholars on the topic of trust and its place in moral psychology. The contributors cover theoretical and applied issues relating to trust, including trust and distrust in conditions of oppression, trust and technology, and trust in medical ethics.
  •  10
    Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop (08/09/2022).
  •  17
    The Moral Psychology of Trust (edited book)
    with David Collins, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, and Hale Demir-Doğuoğlu
    Lexington Books. 2023.
    This edited volume features discussions by leading scholars on the topic of trust and its place in moral psychology. The contributors cover theoretical and applied issues relating to trust, including trust and distrust in conditions of oppression, trust and technology, and trust in medical ethics.
  • Trust in vaccination is eroding, and attitudes about vaccination have become more polarized. This is an observational study of Twitter analyzing the impact that COVID-19 had on vaccine discourse. We identify the actors, the language they use, how their language changed, and what can explain this change. First, we find that authors cluster into several large, interpretable groups, and that the discourse was greatly affected by American partisan politics. Over the course of our study, both Republi…Read more
  •  1284
    Generative artificial intelligence systems based on transformers, including both text-generators like GPT-4 and image generators like DALL-E 3, have recently entered the popular consciousness. These tools, while impressive, are liable to reproduce, exacerbate, and reinforce extant human social biases, such as gender and racial biases. In this paper, we systematically review the extent to which DALL-E Mini suffers from this problem. In line with the Model Card published alongside DALL-E Mini by i…Read more
  • Friendship and the structure of trust
    In Alberto Masala & Jonathan Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
  •  177
    The social media platform Twitter platform has played a crucial role in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The immediate, flexible nature of tweets plays a crucial role both in spreading information about the movement’s aims and in organizing individual protests. Twitter has also played an important role in the right-wing reaction to BLM, providing a means to reframe and recontextualize activists’ claims in a more sinister light. The ability to bring about social change depends on the balanc…Read more
  •  296
    Having a sense of humor as a virtue
    with Mandi Astola and Paula Urbanowicz
    Journal of Value Inquiry 1-22. forthcoming.
    Could having a sense of humor be a virtue? In this paper, we argue for an affirmative answer to this question. Like other virtues, a sense of humor enhances and inhibits the expression of various emotions, especially amusement, contempt, trust, and hope. Someone possesses a virtuous sense of humor to the extent that they are well-disposed to appropriately enhance or inhibit these emotions in themselves and others through both embodied reactions (e.g., smiling, laughter, eyerolls) and language (e…Read more
  •  267
    There is not as much resistance to COVID-19 mitigation as there seems, but there are structural features that make resistance seem worse than it is. Here we describe two ways that the problem seeming to be worse than it is can make it worse. First, visible hesitation to implement COVID-19 responses signals to the wider society that mitigation measures may not succeed, which undermines people’s conditional willingness to join in on those efforts. Second, our evaluations of others’ willingness to …Read more
  •  230
    Misinformation and disagreement
    In M. Baghramian, J. A. Carter & R. Rowland (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Disagreement, Routledge. forthcoming.
    This chapter addresses the relationship between misinformation and disagreement. We begin by arguing that one traditional bogeyman in this domain, ideological polarization, does not account for the many problems that have been documented. Instead, affective polarization seems to be the root cause of most of these problems. We then discuss the relationships between moral outrage, misinformation, and affective polarization. We next turn to the political implications of affective polarization and c…Read more
  •  22
    Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning
    with Tomislav Pavlović, Flavio Azevedo, Koustav De, Julián C. Riaño-Moreno, Marina Maglić, Theofilos Gkinopoulos, Patricio Andreas Donnelly-Kehoe, César Payán-Gómez, Guanxiong Huang, Jaroslaw Kantorowicz, Michèle D. Birtel, Philipp Schönegger, Valerio Capraro, Hernando Santamaría-García, Meltem Yucel, Agustin Ibanez, Steve Rathje, Erik Wetter, Dragan Stanojević, Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Eugenia Hesse, Christian T. Elbaek, Renata Franc, Zoran Pavlović, Panagiotis Mitkidis, Aleksandra Cichocka, Michele Gelfand, Robert M. Ross, Hallgeir Sjåstad, John B. Nezlek, Aleksandra Cislak, Patricia Lockwood, Koen Abts, Elena Agadullina, David M. Amodio, Matthew A. J. Apps, John Jamir Benzon Aruta, Sahba Besharati, Alexander Bor, Becky Choma, William Cunningham, Waqas Ejaz, Harry Farmer, Andrej Findor, Biljana Gjoneska, Estrella Gualda, Toan L. D. Huynh, Mostak Ahamed Imran, Jacob Israelashvili, and Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Nexus. forthcoming.
    At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to …Read more
  •  195
    People have always shared information through chains and networks of testimony. It’s arguably part of what makes us human and enables us to live in cooperative communities with populations greater than the Dunbar number. The invention of the Internet and the rise of social media have turbo-charged our ability to share information. In this chapter, we develop a normative framework for sharing information online. This framework takes into account both ethical and epistemic considerations that are …Read more
  •  3121
    Fake news, conspiracy theorizing, and intellectual vice
    In Mark Alfano, Colin Klein & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), Social Virtue Epistemology, Routledge. 2022.
    Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and …Read more
  •  214
    Varieties of moral motivation: Empirical perspectives
    In David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford University Press Usa. 2006.
    This chapter examines three recent empirical approaches to the study of moral motivation: moral foundations theory, deep pragmatism, and morality-as-cooperation. All three approaches conceptualize moral motivation as a suite of desires, emotions, sentiments, dispositions, values, and relationships that move people to think, judge, and act in accordance with morality. Moral foundations theory posits five or six basic foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and sometimes liberty…Read more
  •  37
    Masculinity and Violent Extremism
    with Roose Joshua, Michael Flood, Alan Grieg, and Simon Copland
    Palgrave. 2022.
    This book explores men's attraction to violent extremist movements and terrorism. Drawing on multi-method, interdisciplinary research, this book explores the centrality of masculinity to violent extremist recruitment narratives across the religious and political spectrum. Chapters examine the intersection of masculinity and violent extremism across a spectrum of movements including: the far right, Islamist organizations, male supremacist groups, and the far left. The book identifies key sites an…Read more
  •  2
    Online trust and distrust
    In Michael Hannon & Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology, Routledge. 2021.
    Trust makes cooperation possible. It enables us to learn from others and at a distance. It makes democratic deliberation possible. But it also makes us vulnerable: when we place our trust in another’s word, we are liable to be deceived—sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Our evolved mechanisms for deciding whom to trust and whom to distrust mostly rely on face-to-face interactions with people whose reputation we can both access and influence. Online, these mechanisms are largely …Read more
  •  301
    Reactionary attitudes: Strawson, Twitter, and the Black Lives Matter Movement
    with Anastasia Chan and Marinus Ferreira
    In Fernando Aguiar-Gonzalez & Antonio Gaitan (eds.), Experimental Methods in Moral Philosophy, Routledge. forthcoming.
    On 25 May 2020, Officer Derek Chauvin asphyxiated George Floyd in Minneapolis — a murder that was captured in a confronting nine-minute bystander video that set off a firestorm of activity on online social networks, in the streets of the United States, and even worldwide. These protests captured the collective rage, dissatisfaction, and resentment personally and vicariously experienced towards the widespread systematic injustice and mistreatment of African Americans by police and vigilantes. The…Read more
  •  257
    Fanaticism in the manosphere
    In Paul Katsafanas (ed.), Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy, Rewriting the History of Philosophy. 2023.
    This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept the…Read more
  •  273
    The epistemic position of an agent often depends on their position in a larger network of other agents who provide them with information. In general, agents are better off if they have diverse and independent sources. Sullivan et al. [19] developed a method for quantitatively characterizing the epistemic position of individuals in a network that takes into account both diversity and independence; and presented a proof-of-concept, closed-source implementation on a small graph derived from Twitter…Read more
  •  17
    According to Nietzsche, drives are the ultimate constituents of virtues and vices. I argue that Nietzsche identifies two blueprints for character construction: a slavish, interpersonal blueprint, and a masterly, reflexive blueprint. When the interpersonal blueprint is implemented, a person becomes what he is called: his drives are shaped by the traits ascribed to him so that he becomes more like the sort of person he’s taken to be. When the reflexive blueprint is implemented, a person becomes mo…Read more
  •  550
    Nietzsche on style
    Nineteenth Century Prose. forthcoming.
    Nietzsche talks about style [Stil and cognates] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to style in over one hundred passages. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and style includes only a handful of publications, among them Derrida’s notorious Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (1978), which barely even engages with Nietzsche’s writings (see also Magnus 1991 and Babich 2011, 2012). Much of the rest of the literature is about Nietzsche’s style…Read more
  •  1
    Perspectives on Trust in the History of Philosophy (edited book)
    with David Collins and Iris Jovanovic
    Lexington. 2023.
  •  1092
    Nietzsche on Trust and Mistrust
    In Mark Alfano, David Collins & Iris Jovanovic (eds.), Perspectives on Trust in the History of Philosophy, Lexington. 2023.
    Nietzsche talks about trust [vertraue*] and mistrust [misstrau*] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to trust in 90 passages and mistrust in 101 – approximately ten times as often as he refers to resentment/ressentiment. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and trust includes just a handful of publications. Worse still, I have been unable to find a single publication devoted to Nietzsche and mistrust. This chapter aims to fill the …Read more
  •  19
    Nietzsche’s Virtues: Curiosity, Courage, Pathos of Distance, Sense of Humor, and Solitude
    In Christoph Halbig & Felix Timmermann (eds.), Handbuch Tugend Und Tugendethik, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 271-286. 2021.
    The contours of Nietzsche’s socio-moral framework are idiosyncratic when compared to contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. Nietzsche starts with a naturalistic conception of drives, instincts, and types of people. He then moves in a normative direction by identifying some drives and instincts as virtues – at least for certain types of people in particular social and cultural contexts. Much of Nietzsche’s understanding of virtue must therefore be understood relative to a type of person and…Read more
  •  1119
    The functions of shame in Nietzsche
    In Raffaele Rodogno & Alessandra Fussi (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Shame, Rowman & Littlefield. forthcoming.
    Nietzsche talks about shame [scham*, schmach*, schand*] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to shame in over one hundred passages – at least five times as often as he refers to resentment/ressentiment. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and shame includes just a handful of publications, while the literature on Nietzsche and resentment includes over a thousand. Arguably, this disproportionate engagement has been driven by the fact…Read more
  •  39
    YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served t…Read more