Academic Publications

  • Abstract:Chatbots of the dead are chatbots designed to converse in ways that resemble specific dead people. We argue that chatbots of the dead are continuous with representations found in art, like memoir and theater, and function as props that mandate and prompt imaginal interactions with the deceased. We proffer a framework for conceptualizing chatbots of the dead, inspired by an analogy to participatory theater, according to which chatbots are thought of as actors that have trained on character sketches in order to stage participatory performances of the deceased. We argue that this framework ameliorates common worries about this technology and spotlights creative design possibilities. We then take a first step to developing an artistic analysis of chatbots of the dead. We describe five artistic values–evocativeness, informativeness, reflection, catharsis, and enjoyment–that can be pursued through this medium, and we provide some provisional suggestions about how this might be done. Along the way, we apply insights from literary criticism, performance art, theater studies, and psychology.

    Link: https://philpapers.org/rec/KURTOT

  • Abstract: Cryonics is the practice of cryopreserving the bodies or brains of legally dead individuals with the hope that these individuals will be reanimated in the future. A standard argument for cryonics says that cryonics is prudentially justified despite uncertainty about its success because at worst it will leave you no worse off than you otherwise would have been had you not chosen cryonics, and at best it will leave you much better off than you otherwise would have been. Thus, it is a good, no-risk bet; in game-theoretic terms, cryonics is a weakly dominant strategy relative to refraining from utilizing cryonics. I object to this argument for two reasons. First, I argue that there is a practically relevant chance that cryonics will put you into an inescapable and very bad situation. Hence, cryonics is neither a no-risk bet nor a weakly dominant strategy. Second, I argue that the experience of being reanimated and living in the distant future would likely be transformative, and this likelihood undermines your justification for thinking that reanimation would be beneficial to you. I conclude that the standard argument does not show that cryonics is prudentially justified.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13277

  • Abstract: We investigate the question of whether (and if so why) creating or distributing deepfake pornography of someone without their consent is inherently objectionable. We argue that nonconsensually distributing deepfake pornography of a living person on the internet is inherently pro tanto wrong in virtue of the fact that nonconsensually distributing intentionally non-veridical representations about someone violates their right that their social identity not be tampered with, a right which is grounded in their interest in being able to exercise autonomy over their social relations with others. We go on to suggest that nonconsensual deepfakes are especially worrisome in connection with this right because they have a high degree of phenomenal immediacy, a property which corresponds inversely to the ease with which a representation can be doubted. We then suggest that nonconsensually creating and privately consuming deepfake pornography is worrisome but may not be inherently pro tanto wrong. Finally, we discuss the special issue of whether nonconsensually distributing deepfake pornography of a deceased person is inherently objectionable. We argue that the answer depends on how long it has been since the person died.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00657-0

  • Abstract: I argue that death can be (and sometimes is) bad for cattle because it destroys relationships that are valuable for cattle for their own sake. The argument relies on an analogy between valuable human relationships and relationships cattle form with conspecifics. I suggest that the reasons we have for thinking that certain rich and meaningful human relationships are valuable for their own sake should also lead us to think that certain cattle relationships are valuable for their own sake. And just as death is bad for us when it destroys our valuable relationships, so death is bad for cattle when it destroys their valuable relationships. This argument is important because it pinpoints something that is bad about death for cattle that is potentially overlooked by popular accounts of the badness of death for non-human animals that focus on the impact of death on lifetime well-being. Thus, the argument reveals an overlooked moral cost of some of our farming practices.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-023-09945-6

    Manuscript available here.

  • Abstract: In this paper, I explore the connection between certain metaphysical views of time and emotional attitudes concerning one’s own death and mortality. I argue that one metaphysical view of time, B-theory, offers consolation to mortals in the face of death relative to commonsense and another metaphysical view of time, A-theory. Consolation comes from three places. First, B-theory implies that time does not really pass, and as a result one has less reason to worry about one’s time growing short. Second, B-theory entails that there is a real sense in which one’s death does not result in one’s annihilation, and this fact can temper feelings of existential distress. Third, B-theory has the consequence that the benefits one has lost (or will lose) have concrete existence, and this fact can mitigate the emotional significance of the losses of death.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09372-4

    Manuscript available here.

  • Abstract: Clinicians regularly work as teams and perform joint actions that have a great deal of moral significance. As a result, clinicians regularly share moral responsibility for the actions of their teams and other clinicians. In this paper, we argue that clinicians are exceptionally susceptible to a special type of moral luck, called interpersonal moral luck, because their moral statuses are often affected by the actions of other clinicians in a way that is not fully within their control. We then argue that this susceptibility partly explains why a conscientious clinician has reason to avoid participating in unvirtuous healthcare teams. We also argue that this susceptibility partly explains the special systems of entitlements that characterize healthcare teams and set healthcare teams apart from other teams of workers.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12328

  • ​​​Abstract: ​Intuitively, even very young children can act jointly. For instance, a child and her parent can build a simple tower together. According to developmental psychologists, young children develop theory of mind by, among other things, participating in joint actions like this. Yet many leading philosophical accounts of joint action presuppose that participants have a robust theory of mind. In this article, I examine two philosophical accounts of joint action designed to circumvent this presupposition, and then I proffer my own novel account of what makes (at least some) interactions between very young children and others joint. I argue that children can take up without deliberation intentions with a joint content that have been transmitted to them by others. In doing so, children can come to share intentions with others, and by acting on these shared intentions they can come to act jointly, all without employing a robust theory of mind.​

    Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02386-4

  • Abstract: I introduce an underdiscussed type of moral luck, which I call interpersonal moral luck. Interpersonal moral luck characteristically occurs when the actions of other moral agents, qua morally evaluable actions, affect an agent’s moral status in a way that is outside of that agent’s capacity to control. I suggest that interpersonal moral luck is common in collective contexts involving shared responsibility and has interesting distinctive features. I also suggest that many philosophers are already committed to its existence. I then argue that agents who are susceptible to interpersonal moral luck are usually for this reason defeasibly entitled to make demands of those agents who are the source of that luck. This is the phenomenon of normative entanglement. I conclude by discussing some of the important ways in which normative entanglement can shape the norms that govern the actions of agents in collective contexts as well as explain some of our intuitions about what participants in these contexts owe one another.

    Link: https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.021

  • Dissertation Abstract: My dissertation concerns the social dimensions of human agency. I reject the common (although often unstated) presupposition that agents have clear boundaries separating one agent from another. In my view, it often becomes strained to think of interacting agents as functionally discrete spheres of intentional activity. This is because agents regularly act on one another’s intentions and for one another’s reasons. When your intentions and reasons guide and sustain my activities, there is an important sense in which some of my practical mental states and actions are attributable to you as well as to me, and there is no way to sharply distinguish what you are up to from what I am up to without distortion. My agency and yours have become intertwined.

    Consider a simple example. Suppose my colleague phones me and asks me to find a document in our shared office. I have no idea where the document is, so my colleague actively directs my search. First, she tells me to check the filing cabinet. Then, she has me check the bookshelf. Finally, she tells me to check her desk, wherein I find the document. She then asks me to scan and email her the document, which I do after hanging up.

    My colleague and I jointly searched for the document. But we played very different roles in that search. My colleague was deliberating and directing; I was acting at my colleague’s direction and was guided by my colleague’s intentions and goal. There is a sense in which my actions were an expression of not just my agency, but of my colleague’s as well. It is as if my colleague’s sphere of intentional activity was interpersonally extended such that it overlapped with or twisted around my own intentional activity. We were agentially intertwined.

    The first part of my dissertation is dedicated to defending these ideas. I first argue that directives are ubiquitous and integral to good social functioning. Most contemporary philosophers who have written about directives have thought of them as tools for giving others reasons. But this approach fails to capture the distinctive ways that directives and interpersonal authority characteristically shape practical thought. I argue that directing another is a way of communicating one’s intentions for them, and typically when one complies with a directive, one adopts that intention without independent deliberation about what to do, leading to the sort of agential overlap just described.

    In the second part of my dissertation, I apply some of these ideas to a problem in developmental psychology. Psychologists hold that joint action is developmentally prior to robust theory of mind. Yet leading philosophical accounts of joint action presuppose that participants have robust theory of mind. I argue that even without a robust theory of mind young children can and often do share intentions and participate in joint action by adopting the communicated intentions of more competent partners who structure and manage interactions for them.

    In the final part of my dissertation, I turn to purely moral matters. I introduce interpersonal moral luck, which occurs whenever another’s action, qua action, affects one’s moral status in a way that is outside of one’s capacity to control. I then argue that agents who are susceptible to interpersonal moral luck often for that reason enjoy special claims against those who are the source of that luck. I call this normative entanglement. I suggest that if my views about agency are correct, both phenomena are widespread in human life. This has important implications for our thinking about the nature of moral responsibility and the norms that govern agents in collective contexts.

    Link: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xh8p10s

My Google Scholar page can be found here.

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