•  16
    The Ethics of IT
    Metascience 17 (2): 283-286. 2008.
  •  185
    This paper explores the ambiguous impact of new information and communications technologies on the cultivation of moral skills in human beings. Just as twentieth century advances in machine automation resulted in the economic devaluation of practical knowledge and skillsets historically cultivated by machinists, artisans, and other highly trained workers , while also driving the cultivation of new skills in a variety of engineering and white collar occupations, ICTs are also recognized as potent…Read more
  •  122
    The fantasy of third-person science: Phenomenology, ontology and evidence
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 8 (1): 1-15. 2009.
    Dennett’s recent defense in this journal of the heterophenomenological method and its supposed advantages over Husserlian phenomenology is premised on his problematic account of the epistemological and ontological status of phenomenological states. By employing Husserl’s philosophy of science to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and evidence and the implications of this relationship for the empirical identification of ‘real’ conscious states, I argue that the naturalistic account of…Read more
  •  322
    Social networking technology and the virtues
    Ethics and Information Technology 12 (2): 157-170. 2010.
    This paper argues in favor of more widespread and systematic applications of a virtue-based normative framework to questions about the ethical impact of information technologies, and social networking technologies in particular. The first stage of the argument identifies several distinctive features of virtue ethics that make it uniquely suited to the domain of IT ethics, while remaining complementary to other normative approaches. I also note its potential to reconcile a number of significant m…Read more
  •  134
    The pregnancy of the real: A phenomenological defense of experimental realism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (1). 2009.
    This paper develops a phenomenological defense of Ian Hacking's experimental realism about unobservable entities in physical science, employing historically undervalued resources from the phenomenological tradition in order to clarify the warrant for our ontological commitments in science. Building upon the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Heelan, the paper provides a phenomenological correction of the positivistic conception of perceptual evidence maintained by antirealists such as van Fraass…Read more
  •  49
    Ihde, Technoscience, and the Resilience of Phenomenology
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2): 90-94. 2016.
    My review of Don Ihde’s new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies begins by identifying a thematic link binding its chapters: specifically, the exploration of alternative histories for the trajectory of classical Husserlian phenomenology. Ihde’s book can be seen as a meditation on questions like the following: “What might phenomenology have been had Husserl paid more attention to the essential role of instrumentation and experiment in science, or to the mediating role of technologies in perceptio…Read more
  •  214
    New technologies from artificial intelligence to drones, and biomedical enhancement make the future of the human family increasingly hard to predict and protect. This book explores how the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics can help us to cultivate the moral wisdom we need to live wisely and well with emerging technologies.
  •  106
    Technology and the Virtues: a Response to My Critics
    Philosophy and Technology 31 (2): 305-316. 2018.
  •  96
    Knowing What to Wish For: Human Enhancement Technology, Dignity and Virtue
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 15 (2): 137-155. 2011.
    Through an analysis of the appeals to human dignity used by bioconservatives to criticize transhumanist proposals for aggressive development of human enhancement technologies, I identify an implicit tension within such appeals that renders them internally incoherent and ultimately unpersuasive. However, I point the way to a more compelling objection to radical human enhancement available to bioconservatives, a version of the argument from hubris that employs an Aristotelian account of prudential…Read more
  •  383
    Flourishing on facebook: virtue friendship & new social media
    Ethics and Information Technology 14 (3): 185-199. 2012.
    The widespread and growing use of new social media, especially social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, invites sustained ethical reflection on emerging forms of online friendship. Social scientists and psychologists are gathering a wealth of empirical data on these trends, yet philosophical analysis of their ethical implications remains comparatively impoverished. In particular, there have been few attempts to explore how traditional ethical theories might be brought to bear upon t…Read more
  •  2
    The phenomenon of reference is a very ordinary one. We refer to things in one manner or another in nearly every sentence we utter or thought we entertain. Yet within the analytic tradition, the phenomenon of reference has proved oddly resistant to philosophical clarification. Attempts to provide such clarification have met with a wide range of paradoxes and seemingly intractable aporias. The phenomenon has generally been treated in one of three ways: as an unexplained relation between words and …Read more
  •  82
    An enactive-phenomenological approach to veridical perception
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (4): 39-60. 2006.
    Most accounts of veridical perception draw upon conventional causal theories of perception for an explanatory framework. Recently developed enactive or sensorimotor theories of perception pose a challenge to such accounts, necessitating a redefinition of veridical perception. I propose and defend one such definition, drawing upon empirical studies of perception, the resources of the enactive approach and phenomenology. I argue that perceptual experience engages an organism in a network of sensor…Read more
  •  199
    In the early twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of welcoming robots into domains of human activity that will expand their presence in our lives dramatically. One provocative new frontier in robotics, motivated by a convergence of demographic, economic, cultural, and institutional pressures, is the development of “carebots”—robots intended to assist or replace human caregivers in the practice of caring for vulnerable persons such as the elderly, young, sick, or disabled. I argue here…Read more
  •  96
  •  47
    Examined lives
    The Philosophers' Magazine 63 91-98. 2013.
  •  58
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology (edited book)
    Oxford University Press, Usa. 2020.
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology gives readers a view into this increasingly vital and urgently needed domain of philosophical understanding, offering an in-depth collection of leading and emerging voices in the philosophy of technology. The thirty-two contributions in this volume cut across and connect diverse philosophical traditions, methodologies, and subfields, providing the reader with provocative and original insights on the history, concepts, problems and challenges that m…Read more
  •  28
    Ihde, Technoscience, and the Resilience of Phenomenology
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 20 (2): 90-94. 2016.
    My review of Don Ihde’s new book, Husserl’s Missing Technologies begins by identifying a thematic link binding its chapters: specifically, the exploration of alternative histories for the trajectory of classical Husserlian phenomenology. Ihde’s book can be seen as a meditation on questions like the following: “What might phenomenology have been had Husserl paid more attention to the essential role of instrumentation and experiment in science, or to the mediating role of technologies in perceptio…Read more
  • AIES '19: Proceedings of the 2019 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (edited book)
    with Vincent Conitzer and Gillian Hadfield