Shang Long Yeo

The central claim of standpoint theory is the epistemic advantage thesis: that the oppressed are epistemically advantaged with respect to the workings of oppression (e.g., Narayan 1988; Toole 2018; Dror 2022). This is taken to support a further claim, its methodological imperative: that inquiry into the workings of oppression should start from the lives of the oppressed (e.g., Harding 1992; Fricker 1999; Bright 2018). This methodological imperative is straightforwardly zetetic, in that it bears on how we should conduct inquiry. There are, however, different ways of understanding the epistemic advantage thesis—differing in the nature and extent of the oppressed’s epistemic advantage, and in the mechanisms that produce and maintain it. In this paper, we canvas different arguments for epistemic advantage, assess their plausibility, and trace their implications for inquiry into oppression—particularly for how we should prioritize questions about oppression on our research agendas, and for how we should actively investigate a specific question about oppression.

Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional structures derived from human stem cells that model aspects of brain development and function, offering potentially unprecedented opportunities for studying neurological disorders and for developing treatments. This consensus paper presents recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group, developed through interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, bioethicists, philosophers, and legal scholars who convened in Singapore in November 2024. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the ethical, legal, and sociocultural dimensions of HBO research, addressing both current realities and future possibilities. The paper examines key ethical considerations, including the potential moral status of HBOs, particularly regarding sentience and consciousness, while identifying and dispelling common misconceptions and “ethical red herrings” arising from sensationalized portrayals. We analyze consent frameworks for cell donation, privacy concerns, dual-use risks, and questions of distributive justice. Legal challenges are explored, including the categorical ambiguity of HBOs within existing regulatory frameworks, intellectual property issues, and cross-border inconsistencies in standards. Sociocultural perspectives emphasize the importance of public understanding, cross-cultural engagement, and empirical research on diverse community attitudes toward HBO research. In our recommendations, we advocate for evidence-based ethical discussions, anticipatory frameworks addressing potential future developments, contextualized analysis comparing HBOs to related experimental models, robust informed consent processes, proportionate responses to consciousness concerns, development of adaptive regulatory frameworks, responsible science communication to manage public expectations, and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration. We emphasize a balanced approach that promotes scientific innovation while maintaining rigorous ethical oversight, recognizing HBOs’ significant potential for advancing neuroscience and medicine. This represents the first comprehensive ethical framework for HBO research from the Asia Pacific region, helping to establish foundational principles for responsible development of this rapidly advancing field.

Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional structures derived from human stem cells that model aspects of brain development and function, offering potentially unprecedented opportunities for studying neurological disorders and for developing treatments. This consensus paper presents recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group, developed through interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, bioethicists, philosophers, and legal scholars who convened in Singapore in November 2024. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the ethical, legal, and sociocultural dimensions of HBO research, addressing both current realities and future possibilities. The paper examines key ethical considerations, including the potential moral status of HBOs, particularly regarding sentience and consciousness, while identifying and dispelling common misconceptions and “ethical red herrings” arising from sensationalized portrayals. We analyze consent frameworks for cell donation, privacy concerns, dual-use risks, and questions of distributive justice. Legal challenges are explored, including the categorical ambiguity of HBOs within existing regulatory frameworks, intellectual property issues, and cross-border inconsistencies in standards. Sociocultural perspectives emphasize the importance of public understanding, cross-cultural engagement, and empirical research on diverse community attitudes toward HBO research. In our recommendations, we advocate for evidence-based ethical discussions, anticipatory frameworks addressing potential future developments, contextualized analysis comparing HBOs to related experimental models, robust informed consent processes, proportionate responses to consciousness concerns, development of adaptive regulatory frameworks, responsible science communication to manage public expectations, and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration. We emphasize a balanced approach that promotes scientific innovation while maintaining rigorous ethical oversight, recognizing HBOs’ significant potential for advancing neuroscience and medicine. This represents the first comprehensive ethical framework for HBO research from the Asia Pacific region, helping to establish foundational principles for responsible development of this rapidly advancing field.

There is a certain kind of ethical inquiry about healthcare which we may call ethical detective work—careful, curious and rigorous analysis which uncovers ethical issues that may not be apparent at first glance. Like regular detective work, ethical detective work involves noticing the un-noticed, cultivating deep attention and sensitivity to the context of a case and fitting its details into a broader, significant pattern—with the aim of protecting the vulnerable and listening to the ignored. The papers in this month’s issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics embody good ethical detective work: they illuminate important ethical issues in healthcare, subject them to systematic analysis, in the hopes of uncovering deep patterns and finding useful solutions.

Moral metasemantic theories explain how our moral thought and talk are about certain properties. Given the connection between what our moral terms are about and which moral claims are true, it might be thought that metasemantic theorising can justify first-order ethical conclusions, thus providing a novel way of doing moral epistemology. In this paper, we spell out one kind of argument from metasemantic theories to normative ethical conclusions, and argue that it fails to transmit justification from premises to conclusion. We give three reasons for this transmission failure, which together pose a serious challenge to such metasemantic arguments.

The combination of philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) delivers a powerful approach for analysing social and political phenomena, and is an exemplar of productive interdisciplinary integration. Integrating the constituent disciplines is key to the power of an approach like PPE, yet such integration is neither simple nor natural. In this paper, I reflect on the process of designing and convening a PPE course, as a case study for understanding the benefits, challenges, and nature of interdisciplinary integration. This PPE course is an upper-level seminar on the ethics of nudges – which, roughly, are policies that use peoples' heuristics and biases to influence them to act in certain ways, without removing options or significantly changing financial incentives. I first argue that the ethics of nudging is a fruitful site for interdisciplinary integration. I then walk through my course design, showing how specific topics and readings facilitate such integration while overcoming common challenges to it. I also present concrete examples of integrative class activities and assessment. Using this case study, I draw out general lessons and models for how to teach an interdisciplinary course.

Some bioethicists argue that a doctor may frame treatment options in terms of effects on survival rather than on mortality in order to influence patients to choose the better option. The debate over such framing typically assumes that the survival and mortality frames convey the same numerical information. However, certain empirical findings contest this numerical equivalence assumption, demonstrating that framing effects may in fact be due to the two frames implying different information about the numerical bounds of survival and mortality rates. In this paper, I use these findings to argue that framing is presumptively wrong because it violates the duty of proper disclosure. Along the way, I highlight morally relevant features affecting the permissibility of framing, tackle three objections and draw some general lessons for the ethics of nudging.

Suppose an agent is choosing between rescuing more people with a lower probability of success, and rescuing fewer with a higher probability of success. How should they choose? Our moral judgments about such cases are not well-studied, unlike the closely analogous non-moral preferences over monetary gambles. In this paper, I present an empirical study which aims to elicit the moral analogues of our risk preferences, and to assess whether one kind of evidence—concerning how they depend on outcome probabilities—can debunk them. I find significant heterogeneity in our moral risk preferences—in particular, moral risk-seeking and risk-neutrality are surprisingly popular. I also find that subjects’ judgments aren't probability-dependent, thus providing an empirical defense against debunking arguments from probability dependence.

Debunking arguments use empirical evidence about our moral beliefs - in particular, about their causal origins, or about how they depend on various causes - in order to reach an epistemic conclusion about the trustworthiness of such beliefs. In this thesis, I investigate the scope and limits of debunking arguments, and their implications for what we should believe about morality. I argue that debunking arguments can in principle work - they are based on plausible epistemic premises, and at least some of them avoid putative problems concerning regress and redundancy. However, I also argue that some debunking arguments fall short because they are insufficiently supported by the empirical evidence. By considering different objections, analyses, and a case study, I explore the conditions for a successful debunking argument.

Debunking arguments in ethics contend that our moral beliefs have dubious evolutionary, cultural, or psychological origins—hence concluding that we should doubt such beliefs. Debates about debunking are often couched in coarse-grained terms—about whether our moral beliefs are justified or not, for instance. In this paper, I propose a more detailed Bayesian analysis of debunking arguments, which proceeds in the fine-grained framework of rational confidence. Such analysis promises several payoffs: it highlights how debunking arguments don’t affect all agents, but rather only those agents who updated on their intuitions using a specific range of evidentiary weights; it underscores how the debunkers shouldn’t conclude that we should reduce confidence beyond some threshold, but rather only that we should reduce confidence by some amount; and it proposes a method of integrating different kinds of evidence—about the kinds of epistemic flaws at play, about the different possible origins of our moral beliefs, about the background normative assumptions we’re entitled to make—in order to arrive at a rational moral credence in light of debunking.

A debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge.