- Missouri University of Science and Technology, Arts, Languages, and Philosophy, Faculty MemberUniversity of Notre Dame, Philosophy, Graduate Studentadd
- Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Historiography, Martin Heidegger, Kant, Logic And Foundations Of Mathematics, and 32 morePhilosophy of History, Walter Benjamin, Philosophy of Social Science, Giorgio Agamben, Sovereignty, Intentionality, Normativity, History of Analytic Philosophy, History and Philosophy of the Human Sciences, Meta-Ontology, Post-Kantian Philosophy, Speculative Realism, Post-Marxism, Bruno Latour, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Michel Foucault, History of Science, Philosophy of Science, Governmentality, Biopolitics, Paul Ricoeur, History and Philosophy of Biology, Extended Mind, Power (social), Ontology, Philosophy Of Race, Naturalism, Neuropolitics, Philosophy of Technology, science and technology studies (STS), Actor Network Theory, and Cognitive archaeologyedit
In this paper, I present a Foucauldian reflection on our datafied present. Following others, I characterize this present as a condition of "digital capitalism" and proceed to explore whether and how digital conditions present an important... more
In this paper, I present a Foucauldian reflection on our datafied present. Following others, I characterize this present as a condition of "digital capitalism" and proceed to explore whether and how digital conditions present an important change of episteme and, accordingly, an importantly different mode of subjectivity. I answer both of these concerns affirmatively. In the process, I engage with Colin Koopman's recent work on infopower and argue that, despite changes in episteme and modes of subjectivity, the digital capitalist present is continuous with biopolitics as Foucault understood it, though it does raise serious worries about the possibility of transgressive resistance.
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I present an account of nihilism, following Foucault and Nietzsche, as a sort of colonization of our thinking by a religious form of normativity, grounded in our submission to truth as correspondence, in the idea that the facts themselves... more
I present an account of nihilism, following Foucault and Nietzsche, as a sort of colonization of our thinking by a religious form of normativity, grounded in our submission to truth as correspondence, in the idea that the facts themselves could be binding upon us. I then present Brassier's radicalization of nihilism and show how it remains subservient to this religious ideal of truth. I argue, further, that far from showing how a commitment to Enlightenment reason and science demands a cold metaphysics of death, in dismissing the irreducibly plural ways in which what is determines thought, Brassier's attempt to secure a fit between thought and disenchanted world suggests that the view is an expression of the unliveable condition of nihilism, rather than its proof. Finally, I present a form of naturalism that makes legitimate claim to the legacy of Enlightenment, drawing from French historical epistemology, and dispenses with the problems animating Brassier's nihilism by radically transforming the concept of truth and how we relate to it.
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In this article, I provide a sympathetic critique of a particular orientation or approach in machine ethics, namely, "Levinasian" machine ethics. I am sympathetic insofar as Levinasian machine ethics articulates what I call a... more
In this article, I provide a sympathetic critique of a particular orientation or approach in machine ethics, namely, "Levinasian" machine ethics. I am sympathetic insofar as Levinasian machine ethics articulates what I call a "normativityfirst" approach to ethics and uses the particularly striking case of robots, or artificial agents, to illustrate it. However, the particular way in which Levinasians like David Gunkel articulate a normativity-first ethics is, I think, misguided. In order to be successful, such an ethics would need to be made more Levinasian, but doing so would lead to an ethical theory with undesirable consequences in the context of digital and surveillance capitalism. I will conclude by suggesting that the aims of Levinasian machine ethics might be better served by an ethics of design oriented toward transforming our shared forms of moral life.
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Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral... more
Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the "machine question" by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where either human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On "relational" views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings.
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In this paper, I provide the outlines of an alternative metaphilosophical orientation for Continental philosophy, namely, a form of scientific naturalism that has proximate roots in the work of Bachelard and Althusser. I describe this... more
In this paper, I provide the outlines of an alternative metaphilosophical orientation for Continental philosophy, namely, a form of scientific naturalism that has proximate roots in the work of Bachelard and Althusser. I describe this orientation as an " alternative " insofar as it provides a framework for doing justice to some of the motivations behind the recent revival of metaphysics in Continental philosophy, in particular its ecological-ethical motivations. In the second section of the paper, I demonstrate how ecological-ethical issues motivate new metaphysicians like Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Timothy Morton, Ian Bogost, and Graham Harman to impute to objects real features of agency. I also try to show how their commitments lead to deep ambiguities in their metaphysical projects. In the final section, I outline a type of scientific naturalism in Continental philosophy that parallels the sort of naturalism championed by Quine, both conceptually and historically, and suggest that it might serve our ecological-ethical purposes better.
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It is now common for people to encounter artificial intelligence (AI) across many areas of their personal and professional lives. Interactions with AI agents may range from the routine use of information technology tools to encounters... more
It is now common for people to encounter artificial intelligence (AI) across many areas of their personal and professional lives. Interactions with AI agents may range from the routine use of information technology tools to encounters where people perceive an artificial agent as exhibiting mind. Combining two studies (useable N = 266), we explore people's qualitative descriptions of a personal encounter with an AI in which it exhibits characteristics of mind. Across a range of situations reported, a clear pattern emerged in the responses: the majority of people report their own emotions including surprise, amazement, happiness, disappointment, amusement, unease, and confusion in their encounter with a minded AI. We argue that emotional reactions occur as part of mind perception as people negotiate between the disparate concepts of programmed electronic devices and actions indicative of human-like minds. Specifically, emotions are often tied to AIs that produce extraordinary outcomes, inhabit crucial social roles, and engage in human-like actions. We conclude with future directions and the implications for ethics, the psychology of mind perception, the philosophy of mind, and the nature of social interactions in a world of increasingly sophisticated AIs.
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People tend to attribute less of a virtuous or unvirtuous characteristic to artificial intelligence (AI) agents compared to humans after observing a behavior exemplifying that particular virtue or vice. We argue that this difference can... more
People tend to attribute less of a virtuous or unvirtuous characteristic to artificial intelligence (AI) agents compared to humans after observing a behavior exemplifying that particular virtue or vice. We argue that this difference can be explained by perceptions of experiential and agentic mind. Experiential mind focuses on one's emotions, sensations, and past experiences, whereas agentic mind focuses on one's intentions, capacity for action, and behaviors. Building on person-centered morality, virtue ethics, and mind perception research, we argue that both agentic and experiential mind are possible mediators of behavior-to-character attributions. We conducted two experiments (n = 613, n = 584) using vignette scenarios in the virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor where we manipulated the actor to be an AI or human and the behavior to be virtuous or unvirtuous. As expected, we found that the character judgments of virtues and vices are weaker for AIs compared to humans. This character judgment difference is mediated by both experiential and agentic mind with a larger mediation effect for experiential mind compared to agentic mind. Exploratory analyses revealed differences in character and experiential mind based on the virtue domain.
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This paper argues against a common misunderstanding of Foucault's work. Even after the release of his lectures at the Collège de France, which ran throughout the 1970s until his death in 1984, he is still often taken to have made an... more
This paper argues against a common misunderstanding of Foucault's work. Even after the release of his lectures at the Collège de France, which ran throughout the 1970s until his death in 1984, he is still often taken to have made an "ethical" turn toward the end of his life. As opposed to his genealogies of power published in the 1970s, which are relentlessly suspicious of claims of individual agency, his final monographs focus on the ethical self-formation of free individuals. I suggest that this basic misinterpretation makes possible interpretations of Foucault's work as being sympathetic to neoliberal government, by linking the ethical turn to a "liberal" or "neoliberal" turn in his thought. I present a case against the ethical turn by arguing that Foucault's main focus, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, is a concern for the ways in which we become obligated by truth.