Journal of Applied Philosophy最新文献

Liberals writing about the family frequently cite the child's ‘right to an open future’ in discussions of the ethics of parental decision-making for young children. This purported right grounds certain claims on behalf of children in considerations related to their future autonomy. In this article, I argue that there is no compelling argument in favor of a distinctive ‘right to an open future’ construed as either a negative or a positive right. Insofar as claims made about the content of this purported right are justified, they can be grounded in the interests of the child or in other uncontroversial rights. Talk of a ‘right to an open future’ serves only to obscure the ethical considerations that actually matter and citing the right is not helpful in deciding what may or should be done. I illustrate this claim by reference to two examples of how the ‘right to an open future’ has been applied: one regarding genetic testing for adult-onset disorders and one regarding selection for disabilities.

In this article, we discuss the role that ‘true preferences’ can and should play in discussions on the possibility and desirability of paternalist nudges. Critics have claimed that such preferences do not exist, cannot be known reliably by third parties, and cannot justify whether and how to nudge people. In this article, we argue that these objections undermine the extent to which philosophers and laypeople can make sense of autonomy and authenticity. We aim to identify what kinds of preferences can plausibly be labelled ‘true’ and how that impacts discussions on the ethics of paternalist nudging. We analyse what ‘true preferences’ can mean, not for Econs, but for Humans, and argue, more specifically, that some of our existing preferences have special status. In addition, we argue that satisfying them is good for individuals and that nudgers should seek to overcome the epistemic challenges of discovering their content.

Japa Pallikkathayil persuasively argues that abortion prohibitions treat impregnable people as less than equal citizens, subject to different treatment than other citizens whose bodies are protected from compulsory service for the benefit of others. Pallikkathayil's argument could be modified to avoid a tension with arguments for conscription, to stress that democratic equality is inconsistent with requisitioning a citizen's body to serve the needs of another specific citizen. Pallikkathayil also contends that ‘[t]he changes we would need to make to our other laws and practices to bring them into line with restrictive abortion laws are intuitively unattractive’. To complement her approach, I contend that consistency would require that if we subject minors to involuntary pregnancy and labor, then we should enfranchise minors. We lowered the voting age to 18 on the grounds that if military conscripts were ‘old enough to fight’, they were ‘old enough to vote’. Abortion restrictions conscript impregnable minors and subject them to involuntary bodily intrusions, major life disruptions, and responsibility over life and death decisions. Old enough to carry; old enough to vote. If that conclusion is unpalatable because minors seem too immature to vote, then perhaps they are too immature to be forced to carry a pregnancy and to give birth.

Imagine a man chatting with his AI girlfriend app. He looks at his smartphone and says, ‘Finally, I'm being understood’. Is he deceiving himself? Is there anything morally wrong with it? The human tendency to anthropomorphize AI is well established, and the popularity of AI companions is growing. This article answers three questions: (1) How can being charmed by AI's simulated emotions be considered self-deception? (2) Why might we have an obligation to avoid harmless self-deception? (3) When is self-deception in emotional relationships with AI morally questionable, and can it be blameworthy? Regarding question 1, I describe being seduced by AI's simulated emotions as self-deception, where desires bias beliefs. In response to question 2, I outline two ways to justify a prima facie obligation to avoid harmless self-deception – instrumental and autotelic. For question 3, I highlight crucial factors to consider in assessing the blameworthiness of harmless self-deception, such as the emotional and cognitive competences of the self-deceiver, reasons for self-deception, and its consequences for one's predispositions, self-image, and other people. Moreover, I argue that the ethical requirement to avoid self-deception does not easily translate into attributing blame to others for being self-deceived.

Peter Singer's argument against ‘speciesism’ has served as the theoretical foundation for the modern animal rights movement. His argument is that the wrongs we do to animals are analogous to those committed against marginalized humans; that if we are opposed to one, then we should also be opposed to the other. Despite the argument's popularity, those historically oppressed groups to whom animals are compared have been critical of it, perceiving the analogy as dehumanizing. Animal activists have struggled to understand this criticism, arguing that the analogy is only dehumanizing if one believes animals to be inferior in the first place – which is exactly what they dispute. What they fail to realize, I argue, is that the disagreement cannot be reduced to a difference in what one chooses to value. It is, instead, fundamentally conceptual. To be likened to an ‘Animal’ is something different for they who have never been regarded as ‘fully human’ in the first place. It is only after animal activists appreciate this – the singular character of human oppression, how it differs conceptually from the injustice that animals can be subject to – that the building of alliances and the work of collaboration can begin in earnest.

Adding an option is a neglected mechanism for bringing about behavioural change. This mechanism is distinct from nudges, which are changes in the choice architecture, and instead makes it possible to pursue republican paternalism, a unique form of paternalism in which choices are changed by expanding people's set of options. I argue that this is truly a form of paternalism (albeit a relatively soft one) and illustrate some of its manifestations in public policy, specifically public options and market creation. Furthermore, I compare it with libertarian paternalism on several dimensions, namely respect for individuals' agency, effectiveness, and efficiency. Finally, I consider whether policymakers have the necessary knowledge to successfully change behaviour by adding options. Given that adding an option has key advantages over nudges in most if not all of these dimensions, it should be considered indispensable in the behavioural policymaker's toolbox.

Recently, there has been much discussion of ‘fair machine learning’: fairness in data-driven decision-making systems (which are often, though not always, made with assistance from machine learning systems). Notorious impossibility results show that we cannot have everything we want here. Such problems call for careful thinking about the foundations of fair machine learning. Sune Holm has identified one promising way forward, which involves applying John Broome's theory of fairness to the puzzles of fair machine learning. Unfortunately, his application of Broome's theory appears to be fatally flawed. This article attempts to rescue Holm's central insight – namely, that Broome's theory can be useful to the study of fair machine learning – by giving an alternative application of Broome's theory, which involves thinking about fair machine learning in counterfactual (as opposed to merely statistical) terms.

In their response to Persson and Savulescu's argument that we urgently need to pursue the moral enhancement of humankind given the risk posed by a ‘morally corrupt minority's potential to abuse cognitive enhancement’, Gordon and Ragonese offer a ‘practical proposal’ for a targeted form of cognitive enhancement whereby ‘as more sophisticated forms of cognitive enhancement become accessible, they should be made available in a carefully regulated way to’ scientific researchers invested in the production of new and improved moral enhancements. In this article we raise some concerns with such a proposal, focusing specifically on the (potential) harms such an intervention may give rise to, for both the enhanced researchers and their unenhanced counterparts. We further suggest that recent changes in the nature of the academic environment – which already seem to be driving researchers to use cognitive enhancers – present a serious challenge to any proposal that encourages such use.

In banning religious symbols for civil servants in a position of authority, Québec's laicity law disproportionately burdens religious minorities. Nevertheless, politicians seem to somehow avoid this problem, and the law is largely supported by the population. This insensitivity to religious discrimination calls for an explanation. I argue that part of the explanation for this unequal treatment of religion in secular society lies in active religious ignorance. Drawing a parallel from how white ignorance functions to protect racial inequalities, I argue that a kind of active ignorance in the religious domain – which I name post-Christendom ignorance – makes it difficult to comprehend alternative understandings of religious experience and allows the majority to deny its religious positionality. Applying this framework, I criticize Québec's laicity law for wrongfully relying on inadequate hermeneutical resources about religion. Further, the failure to see that targeting only religious symbols worn by individuals is discriminatory is the result of the epistemic vice of closed-mindedness. This article aims to show how religious persons in secular society can suffer hermeneutical wrongs because of their religious identity, and it aims to show that this injustice in the epistemic domain can help explain the unequal treatment of religious minorities while providing grounds for criticism.