We are pleased to announce the next installment of Ethics discussions at PEA Soup, which will feature an article by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, "The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason" (Ethics, volume 123, issue 1). We are also very pleased that Roger Crisp
has accepted our invitation to be the Lead Discussant.
In keeping with our partnership with Ethics, a free copy of the article can be found here. Professor Crisp's post will appear, and discussion will begin, December 3. We invite anyone interested to participate. Abstract below the fold...
In his latest book, The Ends of Harm (OUP 2011), our own Victor Tadros advances a fascinating theory of punishment, which is articulated in Chapter 12, made available by OUP here. Discussion of the chapter kicks off today with a critical precis by another of our own, Cecile Fabre, a professor at Oxford University. Professor Fabre's precis begins below the fold.
A friend sent me a link to a New Yorker piece--link below--that pointed out that the self-driving cars that Google is developing will sometimes have to make "moral" decisions. The author, Gary Marcus, provides this example: "Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when an errant school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path." Should you swerve, with the expectation that your car will fly off the bridge and you will die, or simply slam on the brakes with the expectation that you will hit the bus fast enough to kill many children (you being protected by your airbag)?
Marcus points out that the computers that control cars will have to make such judgment calls in a split second. My concern is: how should they do it? In particular, whose perspective should they take on?
One perspective is that of you, the driver. It seems to me that you are not required to turn your car if you expect to die as a result. It's not your fault that the bus cut in front of you, and I'll suppose that going 50 mph is within the speed limit. It would be heroic of you to sacrifice yourself for the children, but it's beyond the call of duty. I will suppose that you would not do it.
The other perspective is that of a neutral party (of course there's also the perspective of the children and their loved ones, but it's hard to see why the computer would take their perspective). I think it would be permissible, and that there is positive moral reason, for someone who had the power to flip a switch and cause your car to swerve off to the side in order to save some number of children. You and your car constitute an innocent threat to the children, but I think innocent threats can be killed to save a greater number of innocent victims. I will suppose that a neutral party would divert your car, thereby killing you, to save them.
Should your car take your perspective, as though it is your agent? Or should it take the neutral perspective, as we would want state installed machines to be programmed if they could intervene in such situations? I can see reasons on both sides, but I'd love to hear what thoughts those of you who read this post have.
Thanks. Alec
Your
car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant
school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should
your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order
to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk?
Your
car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant
school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should
your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order
to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk?
Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant
school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should
your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order
to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk?
Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant
school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should
your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order
to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk?
My colleague Jonathan Weisberg has created an excellent free iPhone app. Among other things, the app allows you to run informal surveys, run intuition polls, etc. I was one of the beta testers and I can say that the interface is great and the thing works like a charm. During beta testing, for instance, I could learn what my peers thought about a difficult question in the metaphysics of dance: "Is Gangnam Style a Natural Kind". The answer field also introduced me to the trivalent logic which added to the traditional truth-values, the imporant tertium "Awesome". There were serious questions too, but, of course, I can't remember waht they were. The official literature is below the fold.
Submissions: We welcome submissions
from faculty and graduate students, as some sessions will be reserved
for student presentations. Please submit an essay of approximately
4000 words and an abstract of at most 150 words. Essay topics in all
areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered,
although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes
from the works of Talbot Brewer and Sarah Buss, such as autonomy,
desire, goodness, moral psychology, moral responsibility, pleasure,
practical reasoning, respect, virtue, Aristotelianism and Kantianism.
Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in word,
rtf, or pdf format. Graduate submissions should be sent by e-mail to
[email protected]; faculty submissions should be sent
by e-mail to [email protected]. Notices of acceptance
will be sent by April 1, 2013. For more information, please contact
Kyla Ebels-Duggan at the e-mail address above or visit our website:
http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/conferences/moralpolitical/
I am very pleased to announce that we will be hosting a discussion of Chapter 12 of Victor Tadros's book The Ends of Harm (OUP, 2011) on PEA Soup, starting on Wed., November 28. Oxford University Press has generously made this chapter available open access here. To jumpstart discussion, Oxford Professor Cecile Fabre will provide a critical precis of the chapter (a chapter which is more or less freestanding and so is accessible to those who haven't read the rest of the book). In it, Victor advances the "duty view" of punishment's justification, on which the permission to punish offenders is grounded in the duties that they incur in virtue of their wrongdoing. This is a controversial yet compelling understanding of punishment, and I hope many of you will join us in the discussion of it.
Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in any given post reflect the opinion of only that individual who posted the particular entry or comment.
We are pleased to announce the next installment of Ethics discussions at PEA Soup, which will feature an article by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, "The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason" (Ethics, volume 123, issue 1). We are also very pleased that Roger Crisp
has accepted our invitation to be the Lead Discussant.
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