In the ongoing debate, there are a set of mind-body theories sharing a certain physicalist assumption: whenever a genuine cause produces an effect, the causal efficacy of each of the nonphysical properties that participate in that process is determined by the instantiation of a well-defined set of physical properties. These theories would then insist that a nonphysical property could only be causally efficacious insofar as it is physically implemented. However, in what follows we will argue against the idea that fine-grained mental contents could be physically implemented in the way that functional properties are. Therefore, we will examine the metaphysical conditions under which the implementing mechanism of a particular instance of a functional property may be individuated, and see how genuine beliefs and desires—insofar as they track the world—cannot meet such conditions.

I argue here that sophisticated AI systems, with the exception of those aimed at the psychological modeling of human cognition, must be based on general philosophical theories of rationality and, conversely, philosophical theories of rationality should be tested by implementing them in AI systems. So the philosophy and the AI go hand in hand. I compare human and generic rationality within a broad philosophy of AI and conclude by suggesting that ultimately, virtually all familiar philosophical problems will turn out to be at least indirectly relevant to the task of building an autonomous rational agent, and conversely, the AI enterprise has the potential to throw light at least indirectly on most philosophical problems.

The mere possibility of irrationality has been challenged by a long-standing tradition which strongly supports the normative primacy of ideals of rationality. In this paper, I consider the possibility that a coherent account of irrationality can nonetheless be provided and furthermore that some forms of irrationality may be seen as justifiable on the basis of their functional roles.

Recently, Gilbert Harman has used empirical results obtained by social psychologists to argue that there are no character traits of the type presupposed by virtue ethics—no honesty or dishonesty, no courage or cowardice, in short, no virtue or vice. In this paper, I critically assess his argument as well as that of the social psychologists he appeals to. I suggest that the experimental results recounted by Harman would not much concern such classical virtue theorists as Plato—particularly the Plato of the Republic—because they are pretty much exactly what these theorists would have predicted. The more difficult thesis that virtuous or vicious character traits exist, I do not here argue. Instead, the results of this paper focus on clarifying some of the ways in which character traits are understood by virtue ethicists, especially those who look to the classical philosophers.

Both indignation, and sometimes shame, can be considered moral emotions because whoever feels them needs a sense of moral values and distinctions, and a grasp of what is correct and incorrect, just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable. However, there are differences in the moral aspects associated with each. Shame is related to self-respect and, sometimes, for this to be upheld, something moral is considered necessary. But shame, unlike indignation, is not moral in the sense of being other-regarding. The person who becomes indignant acknowledges the violations of the rights of others and their suffering. The focus here will be on explicating shame and indignation as emotions that require concepts, beliefs and desires related to morality.

Recent discussions on the nature of freedom have suggested that freedom of action depends on freedom of the will and that the conditions for the freedom of the will preclude the possibility of the antecedents of free actions being determined or alternatively require that the agent be responsible for those antecedents. In this paper, it is argued that the first thesis is correct but that the second on either interpretation is wrong. What I argue is that if we take one essential component of the antecedents of action, namely belief, and look at the conditions for freedom of belief, or better, autonomy of belief, we will see that rather than determinism being precluded as a condition for autonomy, a certain sort of determinism would make best sense of that autonomy. It is argued that contrary to oft-cited intuitions, were this form of determinism to obtain, our autonomy would be enhanced.

Eric T. Olson has argued that any view of personal identity in terms of psychological continuity has a consequence that he considers untenable—namely, that I was never an early-term fetus. I have several replies. First, the psychological-continuity view of personal identity does not entail the putative consequence; the appearance to the contrary depends on not distinguishing between de re and de dicto theses. Second, the putative consequence is not untenable anyway; the appearance to the contrary depends on not taking seriously an idea that underlies a plausible view of persons that I call ‘the Constitution View’. Finally, Olson’s own “Biological View of personal identity” has liabilities of its own.

Ethics is frequently divided into three parts: metaethics, normative ethical theory, and the more specific normative ethics. However, only metaethics is explicitly philosophical insofar as it is concerned with fundamental questions about the content, objects, and status of ethical thought and discourse. During the heyday of conceptual analysis, philosophers were admonished to restrict themselves entirely to metaethics. Since, it was said, they lacked any special expertise as philosophers on normative questions, their pronouncements could be no more than hortatory. I will argue that there is no satisfactory alternative to conducting normative ethical inquiry in conjunction with metaethics. Only by investigating normative and metaethical questions together in an integrated philosophical ethics can we hope to make real progress with either. Ethics should remain part of philosophy.

The dominant methodology in health policy for prioritizing and rationing health care resources is cost-effectiveness analysis, typically using quality adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure health outcomes. The construction of these measures involves a number of moral or value choices, including: How should states of health and disability be evaluated, and whose preferences (e.g., the disabled or non-disabled) should be used? How should these evaluations reflect that prioritization will involve tradeoffs between health benefits for different persons or groups? Do all QALYs count equally, no matter what age at which they are received? Should discount rates be applied to health benefits? I will show the nature of the moral issues at stake in answering these questions, and briefly argue how they should be answered.

In accounts of the ethics of science, we may treat practicing science as an institution of sorts. It has an imputed purpose, roughly, finding the truth about vast classes of causal relations. Scientists have been able to act reasonably with no more than the natural confluence of individual interest with the truth. But in the age of institutionalized science, with career stakes outside the accumulation of scientific findings and with institutional interests often directly conflicting with truth, this ‘natural confluence’ is no longer adequate. Now, incentives must be reinforced from outside the scientist’s personal research arena or the scientist must be normatively governed by a desire for truth. In big science, there is little doubt that a formal regulatory system outside the scientist’s research arena is institutionally easier to design and implement than is the inculcation of an attitude of service.

In what follows I want to endorse and to reinforce what seems to me a pragmatic, and more specifically a Deweyan, account of the dim prospects for traditional moral theory. I want further to describe a role for moral philosophy that accepts the demise of moral theory, a role exemplified by Dewey himself in his insistence on the place of intelligence and reflection in a satisfactory life. Dewey’s insistence on intelligence and reflection in the good life gives rise to a large–scale moral ideal, the ideal of the reflective life; I describe that ideal and contrast it with some others.

I will treat feminist ethical theory as a distinct type of theory. Although some feminists are skeptical about the need for theory as distinct from cultivating practices of being morally perceptive and sensitive, many others argue for the theory they see as needed. Feminist ethical theory usually includes, but is not limited to, the concerns that have been developed under the heading of ‘the ethics of care’ or ‘care ethics’. Care ethics are usually contrasted with ethics of justice, such as Kantian and utilitarian moral theories. Instead of being a theory primarily focused on right action, an ethic of care seeks moral evaluations of relations between persons, and reinterprets both personal and political relations in light of the value of care. I will show how feminist ethical theory differs from virtue theory as well as from Kantian and utilitarian theories.

The recent revival of virtue ethics may have a salutary effect on normative ethical theory. Over the past few years, an ‘agent-based’ virtue ethics inspired by the moral sentimentalism of Hutcheson, Hume, Martineau, and (more recently) Nel Noddings has taken shape. Because this approach allows room for a generalized humanitarianism that is notably absent in Aristotle, it may have more contemporary promise than neo-Aristotelian views. But agent-based virtue ethics also enables us to make some new distinctions within more familiar views and to that extent, therefore, has something to offer advocates of the very approaches with which it disagrees.

This paper is an attempt to answer the charge that extreme moral particularism is unable to explain the possibility of moral concepts and our ability to acquire them. This charge is based on the claim that we acquire moral concepts from experience of instances, and that the sorts of similarities that there must be between the instances are ones that only a generalist can countenance. I argue that this inference is unsound.

Moral philosophers working today on concrete moral issues seem to assume certain views that are opposite to those of their predecessors; chief among these is that morality has an objective basis, that it is not just the result of subjective reactions, but comprises a body of beliefs acquired through some kind of perception of certain traits of reality. However, the reasons for thinking that people who discuss substantive moral issues are committed to moral objectivism are either not very clear or not entirely convincing. In what follows I shall examine the reasons given by John Mackie for considering that the use of first-level moral language—the language frequently used in the discussion of concrete moral problems—commits the user to moral objectivism.

This paper relates the concept of “discourse” (in the discourse-ethics’ meaning) with the concept of “social justice.” I maintain that the social nature of reason is a condition of possibility of such justice. According to the Alexy-Habermas system, the rules for the practical discourse mean in their third level the conditions of symmetry, that is, the absence of privileges among the participants. My paper introduces the concept of discursive fairness, referred to the requirements for maintaining the discursive symmetry, even under circumstances of non-discursive, but real asymmetry. Two principles of discursive fairness are offered (by analogy to Rawls’ “principles of justice”): 1. equality of rights among the participants in the practical discourse, and 2. possibility of reviewing all arguments used in the discourse, together with guarantees of benefits for the unsuccessful participants.

My question is the following: to what extent is ethical anthropocentrism tenable? In a “discourse ethical” perspective I will consider some case-oriented arguments in favor of a paradigmatically unique ethical standing for humans and some arguments in favor of an ethical gradualism between humans and other mammals and between humans and nature, ending with a conclusion in favor of a fair treatment of all moral subjects, human and non-human.

Any acceptable account of moral epistemology must accord with the following points. (1) Different people acquire seemingly very different moralities. (2) All normal people acquire a moral sense, whether or not they are given explicit moral instruction. Language resembles morality in these ways. There is considerable evidence from linguistics for linguistic universals. This suggests that (3) despite the first point, there are moral universals. If so, it might be possible to develop a moral epistemology that is analogous to the theory of universal grammar in linguistics. In what follows, I will try to sketch what might be involved in such a moral epistemology.