•  7
    Friendship, Love, and Sex with Droids in Solo
    In Jason T. Eberl & Kevin S. Decker (eds.), Star Wars and Philosophy Strikes Back, Wiley. 2023.
    In Solo: A Star Wars Story, the debonair Lando Calrissian is clearly in love with the artificially intelligent droid L3‐37. There are lots of friendships between droids and humans in Star Wars. This chapter looks at the relationship between Lando and L3‐37 in Solo and argues that they exhibit all the hallmarks not just of friendship, but of love. A friendship between people who both seek to gain from the relationship is one of utility, while a friendship between people who simply enjoy each othe…Read more
  •  2
    The Moral Requirement for Digital Connectivity
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 31 (3): 327-341. 2021.
    ARRAY
  •  45
    Against the Political Exclusion of the Incapable
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (3): 601-616. 2018.
    Political exclusion on grounds of incapacity is the primary remaining source of exclusion from the franchise. It is appealed to by states and theorists alike to justify excluding young people and many people with cognitive disability from the franchise. Defenders of this exclusion claim that no wrong is done by this exclusion and that states gain some significant benefits from this restricting of the franchise. I have argued elsewhere that political exclusion as currently practiced in modern lib…Read more
  •  83
    The New Political Blogosphere
    Social Epistemology 26 (1): 55-70. 2012.
    This article discusses the current epistemological status of the political blogosphere, in light both of the concerns raised by Alvin Goldman in his 2008 paper ?The Social Epistemology of Blogging? and the recent drastic changes in the structure of the blogosphere. I argue that the political blogosphere replicates epistemically beneficial functions of the mainstream media for the functioning of democracy, and defend this claim from objections to the blogosphere that have been levelled by Goldman…Read more
  •  54
    In this article, I claim that at least some young people have the requisite capacity for political participation, and that the exclusion of these young people is in breach of the reasonable expectation that all capable citizens are included in democratic processes. I suggest implementing a capacity test for those under the current age of majority. I outline a system of capacity testing for the youth, distinguish this proposal from prior attempts to justify capacity testing and argue that a suita…Read more
  •  167
    The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds
    Ethics and Information Technology 14 (1): 1-10. 2012.
    In this article I examine a recent development in online communication, the immersive virtual worlds of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). I argue that these environments provide a distinct form of online experience from the experience available through earlier generation forms of online communication such as newsgroups, chat rooms, email and instant messaging. The experience available to participants in MMORPGs is founded on shared activity, while the experience of earli…Read more
  •  35
    Reconciling the Criminal and Participatory Responsibilities of the Youth
    Social Theory and Practice 38 (1): 139-159. 2012.
    This article examines the setting of the ages of criminal and participatory responsibility, noting that criminal responsibility is attributed significantly earlier than is participatory responsibility. I claim that the requirements for participatory responsibility are less onerous than those for criminal responsibility, and question the system that denies youth participatory responsibility. I suggest two methods of resolving this difficulty. First, lowering the voting age to enfranchise the capa…Read more