Zach Peck

In this paper, we argue that radical embodied cognitive science implies an ethics of responsibility that prioritizes what we refer to as taking collective responsibility. By taking responsibility, we mean that the ethical concept of responsibility ought to be more fundamentally understood in terms of the knowledge-how of the first-person capacity to respond to a situation rather than the knowledge-that of a third-person judgment that an agent ought to respond to a situation. By taking collective responsibility, we mean that all individual human response-taking (or, response-ability) is, to some extent, a collective endeavor. Consequently, we argue that radical embodied cognitive science has a similarly radical consequence for how we ought to think about the ethics of responsibility. To demonstrate, we consider social harms associated with use of social media as a case study to demonstrate what we mean by taking collective responsibility. In short, identifying who or what to hold responsible for social media harms obfuscates the more critical question – how do we each, as individuals, take responsibility for a phenomenon in which we have (nearly) all participated?

In this paper, we argue that radical embodied cognitive science implies an ethics of responsibility that prioritizes what we refer to as taking collective responsibility. By taking responsibility, we mean that the ethical concept of responsibility ought to be more fundamentally understood in terms of the knowledge-how of the first-person capacity to respond to a situation rather than the knowledge-that of a third-person judgment that an agent ought to respond to a situation. By tak- ing collective responsibility, we mean that all individual human response-taking (or, response-ability) is, to some extent, a collective endeavor. Consequently, we argue that radical embodied cognitive science has a similarly radical consequence for how we ought to think about the ethics of responsibility. To demonstrate, we consider social harms associated with use of social media as a case study to demonstrate what we mean by taking collective responsibility. In short, identify- ing who or what to hold responsible for social media harms obfuscates the more critical quest

In this essay, we explore two salient kinds of value conflict between instructors and students and how such conflict can cause both pedagogical and professional challenges for instructors. We delineate two main forms of value conflict: between instructors and students and between students and their peers. We highlight case studies for each example, illustrating first-order pedagogical consequences and second-order social, political, and professional consequences for each conflict type. In response to the two kinds of conflicts instructors in both K–12 and higher education face, we propose Ethics Bowl–style pedagogy as a strategy for addressing each type of conflict. We argue that by utilizing pedagogical tools taken from and inspired by Ethics Bowl, instructors at various institutions and academic levels can mitigate the multiple consequences associated with each value-conflict kind.

Both group agents (for group agency theorists) and individual agents (for enactivists) are themselves constituted by agents. This raises a similar challenge for both group agency and enactivism, namely to explain the constitutive relationship between sub-agential agents and the agents themselves. In this paper, I propose an enactivist account of what constitutes collective action. I conclude that non-human processes—both natural and artificial—may be constitutive of group agents typically recognized as human. In particular, I argue that machine learning recommendation algorithms should be recognized as constitutive of certain group agents on an enactivist account of what constitutes collective action.

Christian List has recently defended what he refers to as a compatibilist-libertarian theory of free will. He attempts to satisfy the libertarian requirement for alternative possibilities without assuming the falsity of physical determinism. To do so, List relies on a multi-level modal theory that he developed with Marcus Pivato. In this theory, List and Pivato demonstrate the compatibility of physical determinism and agential indeterminism. The success of compatibilist-libertarianism essentially hinges upon whether or not List and Pivato’s theory is truly consistent with a non-hypothetical conception of possibility. In this paper, I argue that, despite his attempt to distance himself from a standard compatibilist conception of possibility, List remains committed to such a hypothetical conception. I also argue that List’s theory of agential causation is implausible given his modal interpretation of agency. Therefore, I conclude that compatibilist-libertarianism is an implausible theory of free will.