Noelle Leslie Dela Cruz

This chapter explores the moral status of artificial intelligence through the lens of Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Using the concept of moral status, I examine whether Chiang’s digients—intelligent, evolving AI beings—should be afforded ethical consideration. Drawing from philosophical theories on personhood, sentience, and rights, I analyze the implications of granting AI moral status and whether they should be treated as animals, children, or legal persons. I argue that AI with cognitive and emotional capacities warrants protection and distinct rights, challenging conventional ethical boundaries between human, machine, and moral responsibility in an increasingly digital world.

This paper evaluates Nel Noddings’s view of moral education in the context of teaching in a Philippine university. It first presents the key aspects of Noddings’s ethical theory, identifying her three strategic moves as follows: the dissolution of the public/private split, the replacement of justice-based punishment system with a caring system, and the promotion of care work as the core of education itself. Through a discussion of two cases of academic dishonesty, the author assesses the merits of these strategies and recommends a re-conceptualization both of care ethics and the existing educational paradigm.

My aim in this paper is to explore what Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative can contribute to the discussior about the nature and aims of education. Debates about what learning is and how teaching ought to be conducted are usually based ontological theories, i.e., claims about the nature of pedagogy and its desiderata. Theories of narrative (seeTaylor 1989, Polkinghorne 1988, Carr 1986, and Mctclntyre 1981, for example) are usually applied to discussions about teaching and research methods. However I want to show that Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity is relevant not just to issues of methodology; it has both ontological and ethical implications. It constitutes the basis of a unique view of the learning process, one that emphasizes intersubjectivity and authenticity. It also provides a set of ethical principles for the practice of teaching as storytelling.