Letters & Forthcoming Articles

The Ethics of Social Media: Why Content Moderation is a Moral Duty. Forthcoming article by Jeffrey Howard

Posted by Liz Sanders on 2024-03-14

Abstract: This article defends platforms’ moral responsibility to moderate wrongful speech posted by users. Several duties together ground and shape this responsibility. First, platforms have duties to defend others from harm when they can do so at reasonable cost. Second, platforms have a moral duty to avoid complicity with users’ wrongfully harmful or dangerous speech. I will argue that one can [...]

Why Me? Forthcoming article by Sarah Buss

Posted by Liz Sanders on 2024-01-18

Abstract: When a misfortune befalls us, it is natural for us to react: “Why me?” This is not just the question: “Why did this unfortunate event occur?” Nor are we simply wondering: “Why do such things happen?” The self-reference implies a comparison we generally manage to keep at the back of our minds: “Why did this happen to me, and not someone else?” Importantly, this is not an [...]

Why We Should Negatively Discount the Well-Being of Future Generations. Forthcoming article by Matthew Price

Posted by Liz Sanders on 2024-01-18

Abstract: Traditionally, the discounting debate has been dominated by those who advocate equality between generational interests and those who think future generations’ interests should be discounted at some positive rate. This paper argues for a novel view: future generations’ interests should be negatively discounted. First I defend the claim that we have greater reason to promote the [...]

Lying to our children. Forthcoming article by Joseph Millum

Posted by Liz Sanders on 2024-01-18

Abstract: Most parents lie to their children. They do it for fun, as a method of behavior control, and to protect children from what they consider to be dangerous truths. At the same time, most parents bring their children up with the message that honesty is a virtue and that lying is usually wrong. How should our practice and our preaching be reconciled? In this paper, I examine the [...]

Longevity. Forthcoming article by Douglas MacLean

Posted by Liz Sanders on 2023-12-19

Abstract: The value of a person’s life is not reducible to the satisfaction of one’s desires or interests, including the interest in living longer. A person who takes pleasure in beach vacations each summer may look forward to another stay at the shore next year, but this is not the kind of interest that gives her a reason to continue living. Assuming she has lived a normal [...]

The challenges of using machine learning for organ allocation. Reply to Sinnott-Armstrong and Skorburg By Esther Braun, Noah Broestl, Dorothy Chou, and Robert Vandersluis. Published October 15, 2021, in response to: How AI can aid bioethics

Posted by JPE Editors on 2021-10-15

In their paper "How Can AI Aid Practical Ethics", Sinnott-Armstrong and Skorburg propose an AI system for kidney allocation based on the preferences of survey participants. Their proposal that AI systems trained on large-scale survey data will result in more “informed, rational, and impartial” outcomes is optimistic. In an earlier paper, Sinnott-Armstrong and others state that “aggregating the [...]