Abstract The development of AI and the cyber-physical systems that typify it has yet to be theorized as a product of shifts in Western epistemology, or have its historical links to the American military-technological revolution of the mid-20th century explored in any rigorous manner. To fill this gap in knowledge, we argue that Sylvia Wynter's framework of MAN reveals the philosophical underpinnings of and links between Western liberal humanism, modern scientific inquiry, and racist philosophical anthropology that can explain the contemporary symbiosis between these and the application of new predictive, data, and AI technologies today by Western-Liberal security apparati.

Abstract This essay introduces the special issue Contemporary Issues in Black Philosophy: Pluralism in Methodological Approaches and advances a metaphilosophical argument about method in Black philosophy. We distinguish the question of what makes philosophy Black from the question of what counts as philosophy, and argue that conflating these questions produces a misleading methodological monism. Attention to the difference between substance and method shows that methodological choice must be guided by the problems under investigation. We defend a disciplined pluralism according to which methods are justified by problem-fit rather than by allegiance to a single tradition. The essays in this collection are a demonstration, not a discussion, of methodological pluralism and its benefits to philosophy.

Abstract G. E. Moore and L. Wittgenstein discussed statements of form “A and I do not believe that A,” and offered quite different diagnoses of the apparent absurdity. I will examine logical aspects of this paradox, including variants for subjective probability as well as simple belief. In the end I will argue that both Moore's and Wittgenstein's diagnoses appear when we treat belief as a modality, provided we give the language both a third-person and first-person reading. In this way a classical modal logic can have a non-classical logic hidden inside.

Abstract A comparison of Rescher's commonsense philosophy with the views of Moore and those of Wittgenstein. It is argued that Rescher's view is superior to that of his great analytic predecessor, G.E. Moore. Rescher's approach is then compared to Wittgenstein's in On Certainty. Finally, an alternative similar to the coherentisms of Rescher and Wittgenstein is laid out, similar but substantially different.

Abstract Much of the contemporary discussion over the problem of evil is undermined by a violation of a basic conceptual truth: no rational agent would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. The argument of this paper contends that several prominent versions of the Evidential Argument from Evil are undercut as these arguments imply an incentive structure that would generate perverse outcomes. Put another way, these arguments imply that an omniscient agent would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. Interestingly, however, it is not just arguments from evil which run afoul of the principle that no rational being would knowingly engage in self-sabotage. As several prominent theodicies suffer from the flaw of incentivizing perverse outcomes as well.

Abstract The current project focuses on models of “artificial moral learning” (as a type of moral cognition) and “moral coherentism.” It clarifies how artificial moral agency sheds light on some meta-ethical questions in the coherentism framework (Brink, Dorsey, Lynch, Sayre-McCord). In the current approach, data of artificial moral cognition is divided into two subspaces (representing facts and values, respectively) and contains complex, mixed machine-learnable patterns. Inspired by Lynch's “moral concordance,” some schematic models of this type of two-dimensional data are proposed and assessed. The last, more comprehensive model is premised on the theoretical concept of “distributed concordance” over a population of artificial moral agents. The paper concludes that coherentism, when generalized to machine ethics and artificial moral learning, has some advantages over foundationalist or reliabilist approaches in meta-ethics.

Abstract A central question in AI ethics concerns the moral status of robots. This article argues against the idea that they have moral status. It proceeds by defending the assumption that consciousness is necessary for welfare subjectivity. Since robots most likely lack consciousness, and welfare subjectivity is necessary for moral status, it follows that robots lack moral status. The assumption that consciousness is necessary for welfare subjectivity appears to be in tension with certain widely accepted theories of wellbeing, especially versions of Desire Satisfaction Theory and Objective List Theory. However, instead of elevating non-conscious robots to welfare subjects, this tension should lead us to reject versions of these theories that have this implausible implication.

Abstract According to a prominent view, discrimination is wrong, when it is, because it makes people worse off. In this paper, I argue that this harm-based account runs into trouble because it cannot point to a harm, without making controversial metaphysical commitments, in cases of discrimination in which the discriminatory act kills the discriminatee. That is, the harm-based account suffers from a problem of death. I then show that the two main alternative accounts of the wrongness of discrimination—the mental-state-based account and the objective-meaning account—do not run into this problem.

Abstract This article aims to defend the thesis—originally defended by Alan Donagan but rejected by Philippa Foot and most others—that the doing/allowing distinction is based upon the difference between acting and failing to act. The paper restricts its focus to the second aspect of this thesis: that every allowing is most fundamentally a failure to act. Foot rejects the thesis because of cases of ‘enabling harm’—such as removing a respirator—in which the agent allows some harm by way of doing something. The troubling aspect of these cases, however, disappears when two points are better understood. First, an independent sequence must be understood in relation to the agent's own actions. Second, sometimes an agent has ongoing actions, such as the use of a respirator.

Abstract Over the last twenty-five years, philosophers have offered increasingly more sophisticated accounts of the nature and wrongness of racism. But very little in this literature discusses what is distinctive to anti-Asian racism. This gap exists partly because philosophy, like much of U.S. culture, has been influenced by civic narratives that center anti-black racism in ways that leave vague anti-Asian racism. We discuss this conceptual gap and its effects on understanding anti-Asian racism. In response to this problem, we offer an account of anti-Asian racism not beholden to the black-white binary. In our view, xenophobia, as a form of civic ostracism, plays a distinctive role in anti-Asian racism and admits of a complexity that is worth philosophical study. We also begin an exploration of a correlated phenomenon, namely xenophilia. It has a peculiar, often pernicious, presence in anti-Asian racism and sexism, but it is morally more complex than xenophobia.