Shannon Vallor

Flourishing on facebook: virtue friendship & new social media

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 these developments, or what insights they might offer, if any. In attempting to address this lacuna in applied ethical research, this paper investigates the ethical significance of online friendship by means of an Aristotelian theory of the good life, which holds that human flourishing is chiefly realized through ‘complete’ friendships of virtue. Here, four key dimensions of ‘virtue friendship’ are examined in relation to online social media: reciprocity, empathy, self-knowledge and the shared life. Online social media support and strengthen friendship in ways that mirror these four dimensions, particularly when used to supplement rather than substitute for face-to-face interactions. However, deeper reflection on the meaning of the shared life (suzên) for Aristotle raises important and troubling questions about the capacity of online social media to support complete friendships of virtue in the contemporary world, along with significant concerns about the enduring relevance of this Aristotelian ideal for the good life in the 21st century.

The Pregnancy of the Real: A Phenomenological Defense of Experimental Realism

This paper develops a phenomenological defense of Ian Hackings 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 Fraassen, the experimental relevance of which is illustrated through a phenomenological interpretation of the 1974 discovery of the J/ψ particle generally regarded as evidence for the charmed quark. The argument then turns to address known problems in Hackings account, demonstrating that his own instrumentalist criterion of the real is inadequately rooted in the phenomenology of perception, and as a result, passes over the true ontological significance of experimental phenomena. The paper maintains that the proper criterion, only indirectly related to instrumentality, is the distinctive style of the real encountered in perception: empirical pregnancy. With this notion and Merleau‐Pontys associated reversibility thesis, I show that the phenomenological tradition provides insights into the warrant for our realist commitments that have yet to be adequately acknowledged by philosophers of science.

Why software engineering courses should include ethics coverage

Encouraging students to become comfortable exercising ethical discernment in a professional context with their peers.

Acknowledging AI's dark side.

The 17 July special section on Artificial Intelligence (AI) (p. [248][1]), although replete with solid information and ethical concern, was biased toward optimism about the technology. The articles concentrated on the roles that the military and government play in “advancing” AI, but did not include the opinions of any political scientists or technology policy scholars trained to think about the unintended (and negative) consequences of governmental steering of technology. The interview with Stuart Russell touches on these concerns (“Fears of an AI pioneer,” J. Bohannon, News, p. [252][2]), but as a computer scientist, his solutions focus on improved training. Yet even the best training will not protect against market or military incentives to stay ahead of competitors. Likewise double-edged was M. I. Jordan and T. M. Mitchells desire “that society begin now to consider how to maximize” the benefits of AI as a transformative technology (“Machine learning: Trends, perspectives, and prospects,” Reviews, p. [255][3]). Given the grievous shortcomings of national governance and the even weaker capacities of the international system, it is dangerous to invest heavily in AI without political processes in place that allow those who support and oppose the technology to engage in a fair debate. The section implied that we are all engaged in a common endeavor, when in fact AI is dominated by a relative handful of mostly male, mostly white and east Asian, mostly young, mostly affluent, highly educated technoscientists and entrepreneurs and their affluent customers. A majority of humanity is on the outside looking in, and it is past time for those working on AI to be frank about it. The rhetoric was also loaded with positive terms. AI presents a risk of real harm, and any serious analysis of its potential future would do well to unflinchingly acknowledge that fact. The question posed in the collections introduction—“How will we ensure that the rise of the machines is entirely under human control?” (“Rise of the machines,” J. Stajic et al. , p. [248][1])—is the wrong question to ask. There are no institutions adequate to “ensure” it. There are no procedures by which all humans can take part in the decision process. The more important question is this: Should we slow the pace of AI research and applications until a majority of people, representing the worlds diversity, can play a meaningful role in the deliberations? Until that question is part of the debate, there is no debate worth having. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.248 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.252 [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa8415

Armed Robots and Military Virtue

This article examines how the accelerated development of semi-autonomous or autonomous armed robots may challenge traditional conceptions of military virtue. While early reflections on the ethical implications of military robotics have focused primarily on utilitarian or deontological/rule-based considerations rather than questions of virtue or character, a comprehensive inquiry into the ethical impact of armed military robots must not ignore the role of military virtue in restraining and legitimizing armed conflict. Armed military robots problematize this role in three ways: first, by potentially leveling the distinction between mere military action and virtuous military service; second, by possibly diminishing the scope of the military profession and its cultivation of military virtue; and third, by undercutting the expectation of virtuous motivation in warfare that gives rules of engagement at least some restraining force and helps to distinguish the practice of war from mercenary or criminal violence. I suggest that by initiating or accelerating such shifts in the meaning and practical scope of military virtue, the widespread deployment of armed military robots may have ethically deleterious effects on human soldiers and civilians independently of whether optimistic utilitarian predictions of reduced casualties and collateral damage are realized.

Hitting the moving target: challenges of creating a dynamic curriculum addressing the ethical dimensions of geospatial data

While established ethical norms and core legal principles concerning the protection of privacy may be easily identified, applying these standards to rapidly evolving digital information technologies, markets for digital information and convulsive changes in social understandings of privacy is increasingly challenging. This challenge has been further heightened by the increasing creation of, access to, and sophisticated nature of geocoded data, that is, data that contain time and global location components. This article traces the growing need for, and the structural challenges to creating educational curricula that address the ethical and privacy dimensions of geospatial data.

AI and the Automation of Wisdom

This chapter identifies three challenges to human wisdom posed by ongoing advances in robotics, machine learning, and computer automation. Building upon an account of wisdom as moral or intellectual expertise enriched by the habit of responsible self-regulation in the light of holistic value judgments, I note that in many future labor contexts, machine expertise, or the semblance of it, will appear to be an increasingly expedient and attractive substitute for human expertise and wisdom. Moreover, existing technical, political, and economic conditions may well disrupt the historical pattern in which automation eventually creates new and enriched domains for the cultivation of human expertise and wisdom. I conclude that unless we challenge these conditions and assume responsibility for their effects, we risk wasting the vast positive potential of artificial intelligence and automation, which lies in their only acceptable use: namely, enlisting their power in the full support of our own moral and intellectual perfectibility, in the service of the growth of human wisdom for the benefit of ourselves and those who share our world.

Experimental Virtue: Perceptual Responsiveness and the Praxis of Scientific Observation

In this chapter I will develop and defend an account of one particular scientific virtue, one not easily identifiable among traditional lists of the epistemic or the moral virtues, though components or preconditions of this virtue are found in most such accounts. Although my special focus here will be the manifestation of this virtue of scientific character in experimental/observational praxis, I will show how this virtue functions in both experimental and theoretical contexts, and is in fact critical to the excellent function of each as a guide and constraint for the other. While there is no English term that captures precisely the meaning of the virtue I shall emphasize, the nearest approximation would be perceptual responsiveness. The virtue of being perceptually responsive is conceptually complex, and will require precise definition and clarification.