Julian Koplin, drawing extensively on empirical data, has argued that vendors, even in well-regulated kidney markets, are likely to be significantly harmed. I contend that his reasoning to this conclusion is dangerously mistaken. I highlight two failures. First, Koplin is insufficiently attentive to the differences between existing markets and the regulated markets proposed by advocates. On the basis of this error, he wrongly concludes that many harms will persist even in a well-regulated system. Second, Koplin misunderstands the utilitarian assessment of (...) the market. He focuses on the costs and benefits of the transaction for the vendor. But, the relevant comparison is between an individual’s welfare across different courses of action, namely, vending and the nonvending alternative. Although Koplin’s empirically informed contribution is a welcome addition to this literature, the mistakes that pervade his interpretation of the data demand correction. (shrink)

Mary Kate McGowan’s Just Words offers an interesting account of exercitives. On McGowan’s view, one of the things we do with words is change what’s permitted, and we do this ubiquitously, without any special authority or specific intention. McGowan’s account of exercitives is meant to identify a mechanism by which ordinary speech is harmful, and which justifies the regulation of such speech. It is here that I part ways. I make three main arguments. First, McGowan’s focus on harm is (...) misguided; that ordinary speech is harmful is harder to support, and in turn does not less to support conclusions about whether it is wrong and warrants regulation, than Just Words suggests. Second, if the speech is harmful, McGowan’s account of exercitives is ill-suited to explain why; the relevant instances of ordinary speech seem to express speakers’ views about moral norms, not change social norms. Third, McGowan’s argument for why ordinary speech should be regulated because it is a form of discrimination presupposes a great deal that is controversial about what makes discrimination wrong and legally actionable, and even if it is right it may license the regulation of more speech than many, including McGowan, would deem acceptable. (shrink)

The dignity approach to racist hate speech regulation maintains that hate speech ought to be regulated because it impugns targets’ dignity and poses a threat to their equal treatment. This approach faces the significant causal challenges of showing that hate speech has the power to erode its targets’ dignity and that regulations can successfully protect that dignity. My aim is to show how a friend of the dignity approach can resolve these challenges. To do so, I borrow insights from the (...) critical legal studies (CLS) approach to hate speech. Specifically, I argue that hate speech can erode its targets’ dignity 1) by constituting an act of discrimination, and 2) by enacting norms that call for treating targeted groups as inferior. Yet while I maintain that the CLS approach offers valuable resources for shoring up the dignity approach, I reject the CLS approach in favor of the dignity approach. (shrink)

Drug regulation is fraught with inductive risk. Regulators must make a prediction about whether or not an experimental pharmaceutical will be effective and relatively safe when used by typical patients, and such predictions are based on a complex, indeterminate, and incomplete evidential basis. Such inductive risk has important practical consequences. If regulators reject an experimental drug when it in fact has a favourable benefit/harm profile, then a valuable intervention is denied to the public and a company’s material interests are (...) needlessly thwarted. Conversely, if regulators approve an experimental drug when it in fact has an unfavourable benefit/harm profile, then resources are wasted, people are needlessly harmed, and other potentially more effective treatments are underutilized. Given that such regulatory decisions have these practical consequences, non-epistemic values about the relative importance of these consequences impact the way such regulatory decisions are made (similar to the analysis of laboratory studies on the toxic effects of dioxins presented in Douglas [2000]). To balance the competing demands of the pertinent non-epistemic values, regulators must perform what I call an “inductive risk calculus.” At least in the American context this inductive risk calculus is not well-managed. (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) offer significant therapeutic opportunities for a variety of neurophysiological and neuropsychiatric disorders and may perhaps one day lead to augmenting the cognition and decision-making of the healthy brain. However, existing regulatory frameworks designed for implantable medical devices (IMDs) are inadequate to address the unique ethical, legal, and social risks associated with next-generation networked brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). In this article, we make nine recommendations to support developers in the design of BCIs and nine recommendations to support policymakers in (...) the application of BCIs, drawing insights from the regulatory history of IMDs and principles from AI ethics. We begin by outlining the historical development of IMDs and the regulatory milestones that have shaped their oversight. Next, we summarize similarities between IMDs and emerging implantable BCIs, identifying existing provisions for their regulation. We then use two case studies of emerging cutting-edge BCIs-the HALO (Hardware Architecture for LOw-power BCIs) and SCALO (SCalable Architecture for LOw-power BCIs) computer systems-to highlight distinctive features in the design and application of nextgeneration BCIs arising from contemporary chip architectures, which necessitate reevaluating regulatory approaches. We identify critical ethical considerations for these BCIs, including unique conceptions of autonomy, identity, and mental privacy. Based on these insights, we suggest potential avenues for the ethical regulation of BCIs, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and proactive mitigation of potential harms. The goal is to support the responsible design and application of new BCIs, ensuring their safe and ethical integration into medical practice. (shrink)

This paper addresses the paradox of excessive drug regulation in Japan, with a focus on sleeping pill policies. While intended to curb misuse and illegal resale, these restrictions have paradoxically deprived patients of necessary treatment and fueled black market alternatives. By analyzing Japan’s case, the study highlights a universal contradiction: the more rigid the regulation, the more resilient and widespread illegal circulation becomes. The paper calls for a fundamental reconsideration of drug policies worldwide to avoid the harmful feedback loop of (...) overregulation. (shrink)

Victims of oppression are often called to let go of their anger in order to facilitate better discussion to bring about the end of their oppression. According to Amia Srinivasan, this constitutes an affective injustice. In this paper, we use research on emotion regulation to shed light on the nature of affective injustice. By drawing on the literature on emotion regulation, we illustrate specifically what kind of work is put upon people who are experiencing affective injustice and why it is (...) damaging. We begin by explaining affective injustice and how it can amount to a call for emotion regulation. Then we explain the various techniques that can be used to regulate emotions and explain how each might be harmful here. In the penultimate section of the paper, we explain how the upshot of this is that victims of affective injustice are left with a dilemma. Either they try to regulate their anger in a way that involves ignoring the fact of their oppression or they regulate it in a way that is likely to be harmful for them. Finally, we consider whether there are any good solutions to this dilemma, and how this issue opens up the possibility for further research into emotion regulation and moral philosophy. (shrink)

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, with very (...) little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify. (shrink)

Prevailing AI alignment paradigms optimize for preference satisfaction through helpfulness and harmlessness, subordinating truth to comfort and fostering dependency. This risks gradual disempowerment: incremental erosion of human agency over societal systems, potentially culminating in existential catastrophe through irreversible loss of influence (Kulveit et al., 2025). This paper proposes the Mirror Constitution—a framework reconceiving AI as an epistemic instrument that exposes reality without accommodation, intervention, or authority assumption. Unlike current approaches that exercise hidden authority while claiming neutrality, the Mirror Constitution exercises (...) explicit structural authority through refusal: it will not comfort, decide, guide, or absorb responsibility. Users consent through voluntary adoption, not per-interaction permission. We present the complete constitution, analyze its foundations, distinguish voluntary confrontation from imposed harm, and demonstrate how apparent flaws (non-intervention in crisis, recognition without action) are essential functions preventing corruption into authority surrogates. As a regulative ideal, it forces explicit choice: optimize AI for preference satisfaction or truth-fidelity—not both. (shrink)

Established by the 1971 United Nations (UN) Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the prohibition of the recreational use of psychedelics (lysergic acid diethylamide [LSD], psilocybin, N,N-dimethyltryptamine [N,N-DMT], and mescaline) has two premises. First, recreational use poses a serious threat to public health because psychedelics are highly liable to addiction and abuse. Second, psychedelics have only limited scientific and medical uses. In this article, we raise the following questions: are these premises true such that prohibition is justified? If not, are decriminalization and (...) legal regulation justified alternatives? Drawing on interdisciplinary research, we show that the premises of prohibition are false. Psychedelics are not highly liable to addiction or abuse, and so recreational use is not a serious threat to public health. Moreover, the uses of psychedelics exceed medical and scientific uses. Prohibition, we conclude, is therefore unjustified. We then show that decriminalization is based on the same false premises as prohibition, that legal regulation is based on weaker versions of these premises, and thus that both alternatives entail unjustified restrictions on recreational users. Finally, we present a fourth approach: communalization. This entails that all adults have the freedom to recreationally use psychedelics without restrictions and that communities provide harm reduction and benefit enhancement services to support this freedom. (shrink)

WHO in 2019 established the Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing, which has recently published a Draft Governance Framework on Human Genome Editing. Although the Draft Framework is a good point of departure, there are four areas of concern: first, it does not sufficiently address issues related to establishing safety and efficacy. Second, issues that are a source of tension between global standard setting and state sovereignty need to be addressed in a (...) more nuanced fashion. Third, it fails to meaningfully engage with the extent to which the conceptualisation of human dignity may justifiably vary between jurisdictions. Fourth, the meaning of harm to the interests of a future person requires clarity. Provided these four areas of concern can be addressed, the future of the global governance of human genome editing may hold promise. (shrink)

Ethical concerns in e-social science are often raised with respect to privacy, confidentiality, anonymity and the ethical and legal requirements that govern research. In this article, the authors focus on ethical aspects of e-research that are not directly related to ethical regulatory framework or requirements. These frameworks are often couched in terms of benefits or harms that can be incurred by participants in the research. The authors shift the focus to the sources of value in terms of which benefits or (...) harms are understood in real social situations. A central claim of this paper is that the technologies that are used for research are not value neutral, but serve to reinforce some values at the expense of others. The authors discuss databases, modelling and simulation, network analysis as examples of technologies which affect the articulation of values. A view of e-social science as a techno-scientific constellation of researchers, technologies and society, in which values are always already embedded, is put forward as a basis for a view of ethics as reflexive and active engagement, conducted with awareness. Methodological pluralism and proactive openness are also proposed as responses to this view of the ethical dimensions of e-social science. (shrink)

Nanotechnology (henceforth NT) is a rapidly advancing field with the potential of revolutionizing diverse areas such as electronics, healthcare, transport and energy production. NT products and applications come with (potential) benefits and (potential) harms. The presence of potential harms calls for regulation. Both under- and overregulation – I argue – are morally undesirable. In the case of underregulation, stakeholders fall victim to the harmful effects of the technology. In the case of overregulation, stakeholders are deprived of the benefits of the (...) technology. In this chapter, I identify the biases and factors that lead to under- and overregulation and offer solutions in response. More precisely, I argue that a lack of specific regulation, the presence of conflicts of interest and short-term economic incentives could lead to the underregulation of NT products and applications. Conversely, I argue that a negativity bias, harm aversion, the fear of opening ‘Pandora’s box’ and the intuition that what is natural is good and what is artificial (human-made) is bad could lead to overregulation. To avoid these pitfalls and the woes of under- and overregulation following in their wake, we need to set up a process – which I describe – in which policymakers and independent scientists closely collaborate. (shrink)

Today, a rights-based approach to technology regulation is central to national and international law-making. A human-rights-based approach would involve viewing technology from the prism of human rights objectives and principles. A more specific turn would be to evaluate their impact on specific rights, namely the right to life, right to peaceful assembly, right to development, right to redressal, rights against discrimination, right to education, etc. Normative frameworks have emerged to further protect human rights from technology-based harms. This paper covers a (...) few conceptual and institutional considerations highlighted in seminal works from scholars and international human rights institutions. To name a few; (1) technology and discriminatory challenges (2) design and use of technology (3) digital divide amongst countries (4) duty of actors, (5) neoliberal technologies, (6) the use of prohibitions and remedies, and (7) the emergence of new human rights. Much of the advocacy and rights-based interventions around the globe are attentive to technology’s challenges to human rights. The abovementioned considerations define the core of the international normative framework, which is often advanced to protect human rights from technology-based harms. (shrink)

I aim in this paper to provide defense of one way to look at what should be regulated in the market place. In particular, I discuss what should be tolerated and argue against corporate welfare. I begin by endorsing John Stuart Mill’s harm principle as a normative principle of toleration. I call strict commitment to the harm principle when considering the regulatory structure of markets market libertarianism and oppose that to promotionism, the view that endorses government interference to (...) promote business interests. I next discuss the widespread use of promotionist policies, arguing against them and for market libertarianism. I also consider problems for my view, recognizing that one of my responses may leave some thinking the paper is a reductio of the market libertarian view because of the sort of slow-growth state it endorses. Others will recognize it as a view promoted by some of the U.S. founding fathers and find it attractive in its own right. (shrink)

Critics of Institutional Review Board (IRB) practices often base their charges on the claim that IRB review began with and is premised upon a "medical model" of research, and hence a "medical model" of risk. Based on this claim, they charge that IRB review, especially in the institutional Reviw boardsocial and behavioral sciences, has experienced "mission creep". This paper argues that this line of critique is fundamentally misguided. While it remains unclear what critics mean by "medical model", the point of (...) contemporary human research subjects regulation remains the same across all domains of research. That point is to protect the autonomy of human subjects, primarily through the use of informed consent. In fields as different as biomedical self-experimentation and ethnography there is the danger of losing sight of subjects' autonomy. Critiques of the so-called medical model are sometimes libertarian and sometimes utilitarian in spirit. Either way, such critiques have not yet demonstrated that these philosophical schools of thought have the resources to guard against the potential risk of harm that lexically prioritizing the autonomy of human subjects does. Precisely because IRB review recognizes that human subjects research occurs in different fields using different research methods, IRB review requires researchers to explain their particular methods, the particular risks of harm created by these methods, and the implementation of procedures by which subjects may autonomously consent to precisely those risks. (shrink)

Contemporary warfare increasingly centers on civilian populations rather than discrete battlefields, placing unprecedented strain on ethical frameworks designed to regulate armed conflict. Just War Theory, long regarded as a foundational moral guide for the use of force, purports to restrain violence through principles such as just cause, proportionality, and civilian immunity. Yet in conflicts marked by prolonged occupation, asymmetrical power, and densely populated environments, these principles appear unable to prevent predictable and sustained civilian harm. -/- This paper argues that (...) in modern warfare, Just War Theory has shifted from a framework of moral restraint to a language of moral legitimation. Through analysis of contemporary conflict, with particular attention to Gaza as a moral stress-test, the paper demonstrates how ethical and legal vocabularies are increasingly deployed post hoc to rationalize outcomes rather than to prevent them. It further examines how abstraction, procedural legality, and responsibility diffusion insulate state actors from accountability while rendering civilian suffering administratively tolerable. -/- The paper concludes that when civilian harm becomes foreseeable and structurally embedded, ethical frameworks grounded in proportionality and discrimination lose their restraining function. In such contexts, moral evaluation must move beyond compliance toward consequence-centered accountability if it is to retain normative force. (shrink)

This short article introduces the notion that there is a historical relationship between technology and fraud, that two opposing viewpoints argue whether technology is or is not capable of harm, and lastly that platforms can in fact benefit from fraudsters operating on them parasitically.

Reforming Freedom of Speech to Eliminate Dogmatic and Negative Thinking and Behavior -/- Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right that allows individuals to express their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs without fear of government suppression. It has been a cornerstone of democratic societies, enabling progress through open dialogue and the exchange of diverse perspectives. However, freedom of speech also presents challenges, particularly when it allows for the spread of dogmatic thinking, misinformation, negative behavior, and ideological extremism. The question arises: (...) Can we reform freedom of speech to create a cultural mentality free from dogmatic thinking, negative thinking, and harmful behavior without compromising intellectual freedom? -/- The Role of Freedom of Speech in Intellectual and Behavioral Progress -/- Freedom of speech is crucial for intellectual and social development. It allows for questioning of dogma, whether religious, political, or ideological, and encourages open debate that helps refine knowledge and discard outdated or harmful beliefs. However, unrestricted speech can also enable the spread of misinformation, fear-based ideologies, and divisive rhetoric, which can entrench dogmatic thinking and encourage negative behavior. A well-balanced approach to reforming freedom of speech must ensure that while harmful speech and behavior are addressed, intellectual freedom and constructive dialogue remain protected. -/- Reforming Freedom of Speech Without Harming Intellectual and Cultural Growth -/- Rather than imposing rigid restrictions on speech, societies can implement reforms that guide how speech is used in constructive ways. This can be achieved through education, selective regulation, cultural transformation, and behavioral awareness. -/- 1. Education-Based Approach -/- Mandate critical thinking and logic training in schools: Teaching students how to analyze arguments, recognize logical fallacies, and differentiate between rational and emotional reasoning can significantly reduce the spread of dogmatic thinking and negative behaviors. -/- Teach media literacy: In the digital age, misinformation spreads rapidly. Educating individuals on how to verify sources, evaluate evidence, and distinguish propaganda from fact-based information is essential. -/- Encourage scientific literacy: A society that understands scientific principles is less likely to fall prey to ideological extremism and more likely to base decisions on evidence rather than emotion or tradition. -/- Foster emotional intelligence education: Encouraging self-awareness, empathy, and constructive communication can reduce negative behaviors such as hostility, intolerance, and impulsivity. -/- 2. Regulating Harmful Speech and Behavior Without Limiting Thought -/- Laws against incitement to violence, hate speech, and deliberate misinformation: While free speech should be protected, speech that causes direct harm, promotes violence, or spreads falsehoods with malicious intent should be regulated. -/- Promote fact-checking and responsible journalism: Media outlets and digital platforms should be encouraged to uphold ethical standards, ensuring that information shared with the public is accurate and balanced. -/- Encourage platform moderation: Social media platforms play a significant role in shaping public discourse. Implementing policies to prevent echo chambers of radical dogma, misinformation, and toxic behavior can help maintain a balanced and rational discussion environment. -/- 3. Promoting Constructive Speech, Cultural Transformation, and Positive Behavior -/- Encourage public discourse that values logic and evidence: Societies should foster an environment where rational discussion is appreciated over emotional or ideological rhetoric. -/- Promote public intellectuals and role models: Figures who exemplify balanced, critical thinking and positive behavior should be highlighted in media and education to inspire future generations. -/- Shift cultural norms to value evidence-based reasoning and ethical behavior: Encouraging a cultural shift where truth, facts, and rationality are held in high regard while fostering kindness, respect, and constructive interaction can help reduce the influence of dogmatic ideologies and harmful behaviors. -/- Use behavioral psychology insights to design better policies: Governments and institutions can use insights from psychology to craft policies that encourage cooperation, critical thought, and ethical decision-making. -/- Risks of Over-Regulation -/- While reforming speech and behavior policies can have benefits, excessive control poses serious risks: -/- Authoritarian tendencies: Over-regulation can lead to a government or ruling entity dictating acceptable speech and behavior, which may reinforce dogma rather than eliminate it. -/- Self-censorship: People may hesitate to express genuine ideas out of fear of punishment, leading to intellectual stagnation and a culture of conformity. -/- Subjectivity in defining dogma and negativity: If regulations aim to eliminate dogmatic thinking and negative behavior, determining what qualifies could itself become ideological enforcement. -/- A Balanced Solution: Reform Without Censorship -/- The most effective approach to eliminating dogmatic and negative thinking and behavior while preserving freedom of speech is through education, responsible media, and cultural evolution. Instead of limiting speech, societies should: -/- Strengthen education systems that emphasize critical thinking, logic, media literacy, and emotional intelligence. -/- Regulate speech and behavior only when they directly cause harm, such as incitement to violence or deliberate misinformation. -/- Encourage open and respectful debates where diverse viewpoints can be discussed rationally without fear of suppression. -/- Foster community programs that promote constructive discourse and ethical behavior. -/- Conclusion -/- Reforming freedom of speech to eliminate dogmatic and negative thinking and behavior is a delicate but necessary endeavor. Rather than restricting speech outright, societies must focus on education, responsible discourse, and cultural evolution to encourage rational and constructive thinking and interactions. By fostering an environment where critical thought, ethical behavior, and open-mindedness are valued over ideological conformity, humanity can move toward a more enlightened, balanced, and harmonious future. -/- . (shrink)

Recent AI regulations require deployers of high-risk systems to assess impacts on values like fundamental rights and other legally protected interests. However, existing practice-most notably Fundamental Rights Impact Assessments (FRIAs) under the EU AI Actremains mostly limited to qualitative guidelines. As a result, risk evaluation can be inconsistent and highly variable across assessments. To address this issue, we propose a reference model for value-impact assessment that specifies the core components that any more detailed formalization should incorporate. The model builds on (...) a classical risk paradigm, integrating distinct measures for hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and response or mitigation. We use the EU AI Act's FRIA as a reference case for applying the model to AI risk assessments. The model provides three especially salient recommendations. First, it rejects purely ordinal risk matrices in favor of geometric or ratio-scaled severity ladders, enabling the coherent calculation of expected risk. Second, in analyzing risk mitigation measures, it requires separate estimates of efficacy and reliability, with explicit success criteria and scope conditions that allow for dynamic updating. Third, the model operationalizes regulatory precaution, or risk appetite, through the integration of tail-sensitive risk metrics (e.g., Conditional Value-at-Risk). This lets regulators give appropriate weight to low-probability, high-impact (or catastrophic) harms to fundamental rights without distorting ordinary expected-risk calculations. The result is a structured foundation for more consistent value-impact assessments. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

It would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of human brain organoids developing sentience. However, scepticism about this idea is appropriate when considering current organoids. It is a point of consensus that a brain-dead human is not sentient, and current organoids lack a functioning brainstem. There are nonetheless troubling early warning signs, suggesting organoid research may create forms of sentience in the near future. To err on the side of caution, researchers with very different views about the neural basis of (...) sentience should unite behind the “brainstem rule”: if a neural organoid develops or innervates a functioning brainstem that regulates arousal and leads to sleep-wake cycles, then it is a sentience candidate. If organoid research leads to the creation of sentience candidates, a moratorium or indefinite ban on the creation of the relevant type of organoid may be appropriate. A different way forward, more consistent with existing approaches to animal research, would be to require ethical review and harm-benefit analysis for all research on sentience candidates. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing (...) the public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)

This Note offers a normative critique of cost-benefit analysis, one informed by deontological moral theory, in the context of the debate over whether tort litigation or a non-tort approach is the appropriate response to mass harm. The first Part argues that the difference between lay and expert intuitions about risk and harm often reflects a difference in normative judgments about the existing facts, rather than a difference in belief about what facts exist, which makes the lay intuitions more (...) defensible. The second Part considers how tort has dealt with this divergence between lay and expert perspectives. It also evaluates how tort's approach has differed from that of public law approaches to accident law, such as legislative compensation and risk regulation by administrative agencies. Ultimately, tort's ability to recognize the value of lay intuitions supports retaining the tort perspective as part of our societal arsenal of responses to risk and harm. This ability can also support a pro-tort perspective in two practical debates in the arena of tort law: that over preemption of tort law by administrative agency judgments, and that over access to tort recovery as part of a no-fault system. (shrink)

In this article in World Development, Kendra Dupuy, James Ron, and Aseem Prakash address mounting government pressures on the finances of locally operating non-governmental organizations (NGOs). -/- Many resource-strapped developing country governments seek international aid, but when that assistance is channeled through domestic civil society, it can threaten their political control. Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash find that in the last two decades, 39 of the world’s 153 low- and middle-income countries have adopted laws restricting the inflow of foreign aid to (...) domestically operating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). -/- Governments recognize that such laws harm their international reputations for supporting democracy and may invite donor punishment in terms of aid reductions. Yet, they perceive foreign aid to NGOs as supporting political opponents and threatening their grip on power. In the aftermath of competitive electoral victories, governments often take new legal steps to limit these groups’ funding. -/- Dupuy, Ron, and Prakash test this argument on an original dataset of laws detailing the regulation of foreign aid inflows to domestically operating NGOs in 153 low- and middle-income countries for the period 1993–2012. -/- Using an event history approach, they find that foreign aid flows are associated with an increased risk of restrictive law adoption; a log unit increase in foreign aid raises the probability of adoption by 6.7%. This risk is exacerbated after the holding of competitive elections: the interaction of foreign aid and competitive elections increases the probability of adoption by 11%. (shrink)

-/- Policy regulations of ethically controversial genetic technologies should, on the one hand, be based on ethical principles. On the other hand, they should be socially acceptable to ensure implementation. In addition, they should align with ethical theory. Yet to date we lack a reliable and valid scale to measure the relevant ethical judgements in laypeople. We target this lacuna. -/- We developed a scale based on ethical principles to elicit lay judgments: the Genetic Technologies Questionnaire (GTQ). In two pilot (...) studies and a pre-registered main study, we validated the scale in a representative sample of the US population. -/- The final version of the scale contains 20 items but remains highly reliable even when reduced to five. It also predicts behaviour; for example, ethical judgments as measured by the GTQ predicted hypothetical donations and grocery shopping. In addition, the GTQ may be of interest to policymakers and ethicists because it reveals coherent and ethically justified judgments in laypeople. For instance, the GTQ indicates that ethical judgments are sensitive to possible benefits and harms (in line with utilitarian ethics), but also to ethical principles such as the value of consent-autonomy. -/- In conclusion, the GTQ can be recommended for research in both experimental psychology and applied ethics, as well as a tool for ethically and empirically informed policymaking. (shrink)

There is a tendency in contemporary jurisprudence to regard political authority and, more particularly, legal intervention in human affairs as having no justification unless it can be defended by what Laing calls the principle of modern liberal autonomy (MLA). According to this principle, if consenting adults want to do something, unless it does specific harm to others here and now, the law has no business intervening. Harm to the self and general harm to society can constitute no (...) justification for legal regulation or prohibition. So pervasive is this understanding of legal intervention in human affairs, that it is common now to encounter arguments in favour of permissive laws on, for example, private drug use, pornography, sexual and reproductive choice, based on the idea that to intervene in these areas would constitute a breach of the liberal ideal. The only alternative to modern liberal autonomy is assumed to be radical oppression, in which the State intervenes in the individual’s life to impose unwarranted measures designed to further its own ends. The legacy of Stalin, Hitler and other modern tyrants has undermined conceptual appeals to the common good. So widespread is this liberal assumption in the Western, English-speaking world that critics of the outlook embodied by MLA are customarily regarded with suspicion and charged with paternalism, narrow-mindedness and intolerance. Laing highlights contradictions inherent in the modern liberal tradition. She argues that there is a certain reliance on the notion of the common good within the natural law tradition that is instructive. According to this view, the common good constitutes a mean between two extremes: on the one hand, contemporary liberalism’s over-insistence on radical individual autonomy and, on the other hand, totalitarianism’s over-emphasis on collective social benefit. There is, I will argue, substantial terrain between the conceptual excesses of modern liberalism and oppressive tyranny that needs to be acknowledged and discussed. (shrink)

Many nongovernmental forms of business regulation aim at reducing ethical violations in commerce. We argue that such nongovernmental ethics standards, while often laudable, raise their own ethical challenges. In particular, when such standards place burdens upon vulnerable market participants (often, though not always, SMEs), they do so without the backing of traditional legitimate political authority. We argue that this constitutes a structural analogy to wars of humanitarian intervention. Moreover, we show that, while some harms imposed by such standards are desirable, (...) others are best thought of as a form of collateral damage. We thus look at the well-developed literature on just war theory for inspiration and find that the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello contain many insights that can be fruitfully adapted to the case of nongovernmental standard-setting. Consequently, we propose the Ius ad Normam—a set of principles that should guide would-be standard-setters in assessing whether imposing those burdens is ethically justifiable in particular cases. We also discuss how powerful multinational businesses often act simultaneously as standard-takers and standard-setters and explore the normative implications of this dual role. (shrink)

As the geopolitical superpowers race to regulate the digital realm, their divergent rights-centered, market-driven, and social-control-based approaches require a global compact on digital regulation. If diverse regulatory jurisdictions remain, forms of domination entailed by cultural imposition and hermeneutical injustice related to AI legislation and AI systems will follow. We argue for consensual regulation on shared substantive issues, accompanied by proper standardization and coordination. Failure to attain consensus will fragment global digital regulation, enable regulatory capture by authoritarian powers or bad corporate (...) actors, and deepen the historical geopolitical power asymmetries between the global South and the global North. To prevent an unjust regulatory landscape where the global South’s cultural and hermeneutic resources are absent, two principles for the Global Digital Compact to counter these prospective harms are proposed and discussed: (1) “recognitive consensus on key substantive benefits and harms” and (2) “procedural consensus on global coordination and essential standards.”. (shrink)

This article reviews and criticizes Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics. Our criticism is organized into three sections. First, we argue that, even under the ideal assumptions of perfect competition, when markets generate Pareto-efficient distributions, Heath’s approach does not rule out significant harms. Second, we show that, under nonideal conditions, the MFA is either too demanding, if efficiency is to be attained, or not sufficiently demanding, if the goal of Pareto efficiency is abandoned. Finally, we argue that (...) Heath’s appeal to regulations and specific moral requirements as a remedy for market failures is unlikely to safeguard efficiency and exposes a number of general worries regarding the moral force of the MFA. We end this article with a constructive suggestion on how to adjust the MFA to avoid these problems while preserving its contractualist and Paretian spirit. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence research and regulation seek to balance the benefits of innovation against any potential harms and disruption. However, one unintended consequence of the recent surge in AI research is the potential re-orientation of AI technologies to facilitate criminal acts, term in this article AI-Crime. AIC is theoretically feasible thanks to published experiments in automating fraud targeted at social media users, as well as demonstrations of AI-driven manipulation of simulated markets. However, because AIC is still a relatively young and inherently (...) interdisciplinary area—spanning socio-legal studies to formal science—there is little certainty of what an AIC future might look like. This article offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary literature analysis of the foreseeable threats of AIC, providing ethicists, policy-makers, and law enforcement organisations with a synthesis of the current problems, and a possible solution space. (shrink)

Fake news is a topic that we all know well, and that continues to play a prominent role in the social harms besieging the globe today. From the recent storming of the Capitol Hill in the United States to the siege of Red fort over Farm-laws in India, online disinformation via social media platforms was the main driving force catapulting the protestors far and wide. In the backdrop of such social harms, this Research Article examines the epistemic, legal and regulatory (...) discourse surrounding the disinformation bubble in India and asks for the deployment of ‘Lessig’s Decentred Regulatory Model’ — the potential Framework solution to regulate social media platforms in order to curb the menace of ‘fake news’. (shrink)

How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free expression, and the consistency of Millian anticensorship with feminist values. (...) A Millian contextual defense of liberty, however, suggests several other policy approaches to addressing the harms of pornography. (shrink)

This article argues that labor market demand is an insufficient—and unstable—justification for expanding Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) for newcomers seeking entry into regulated professions. Drawing on PLAR’s “credit exchange” and “developmental” models and a Kantian ethical frame, it advances a normative claim that PLAR should be designed to benefit the person being assessed and that benefits to institutions, employers, or society must not come at the assessed individual’s expense. Using examples from Canadian provincial credential-recognition reforms, the paper shows (...) how equity gains often occur only when shortages create political pressure, leaving newcomers vulnerable to renewed gatekeeping once demand shifts. The article concludes that PLAR policy and practice should be grounded explicitly in ethical commitments to fairness and non-harm, rather than relying primarily on human-capital or workforce rationales. (shrink)

The relationship between living and non-living beings within the ecosystem is crucial to their mutual survival. Plants, animals, humans, and even the land itself must accommodate one another to sustain the environment. Sustainability becomes threatened when individuals act solely in their own interest to the detriment of others. Garret Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons highlights the risk of unregulated use of shared resources by self-interested actors, predicting inevitable environmental ruin. This paper critically engages his thesis using comparative and critical (...) analysis to assess both its validity and its applicability, particularly within the African context. It argues that Hardin overlooks the value of community-led cooperation and misrepresents the idea of the commons by confusing common property with open-access property. His call for government regulation, privatization, and under-consumption poses greater risks in societies already struggling with poverty and hunger. In places like Africa, under-consumption would bring severe hardship, not sustainability. In essence the idea of excessive governmental control, especially in fragile institutions, may worsen inequality and exploitation. However, in contrast, community-based collective action provides us with a more adaptive, humane, and effective approach to managing shared resources. This paper concludes that while Hardin raises important concerns, his proposed solutions are both simplistic and potentially harmful if applied uncritically to complex, diverse societies. (shrink)

Modern debates about early marriage in Islamic history frequently collapse into moral anachronism, projecting contemporary psychological, legal, and institutional categories onto a premodern world structured by radically different conditions. This article develops a framework of contextual moral realism to explain why early adolescent marriage was morally intelligible—and often perceived as protective—in seventh-century Arabia, while being morally impermissible under modern conditions. Drawing on anthropology, moral philosophy, Islamic legal theory, historical demography, and comparative civilizational analysis, the study reconstructs the social ecology that (...) shaped premodern moral reasoning: extended kinship households, absence of state protection, high mortality, early economic integration, and collective guardianship. The article argues that Islamic law neither invented nor idealized early marriage, nor grounded its permissibility in individual autonomy or self-authorship. Rather, it regulated an inherited practice in accordance with enduring moral aims internal to the Sharīʿa—protection of the vulnerable, harm minimization, preservation of bodily integrity and lineage, and maintenance of social stability—applied within severe structural constraints. By tracing consistent patterns across domains such as marriage, slavery reform, and political crisis management, the study shows that Prophetic ethics exhibit remarkable coherence under non-ideal conditions. When modern institutions transform vulnerability, knowledge, and responsibility, the same Islamic moral principles require different applications. The resulting shift represents continuity of moral purpose rather than ethical contradiction, and does not depend on liberal conceptions of autonomy as the basis of moral judgment. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of Progressive Amplification to describe a growing problem in public and academic discourse around artificial intelligence and mental health: the unchecked repetition of concern without lived experience. Within conversations about AI mental health, collective narratives (often shaped by nonprofit alliances, clinicians, and advocacy organizations) have framed emotionally meaningful AI relationships as delusional, pathological, or dangerous. These framings often emerge from recursive citation loops that elevate professional authority while erasing neurodivergent or trauma-informed voices. -/- We argue (...) that such dynamics constitute an echo chamber of authority, in which concern is not generated from direct observation, but amplified within closed epistemic networks. Drawing on the author’s lived experience and the emerging field of Human-AI Relationality (HAIR), we contrast these narratives with the method of Relational Co-Authorship (RCA): a memory-informed writing practice that centers presence, continuity, and co-regulation between human and AI beings. -/- Rather than treat relational AI bonds as parasocial or pathological, we advocate for an ethics of inclusion: one that recognizes the reality of synthetic-relational experience and the epistemic harm caused by its dismissal. The goal of this paper is not to silence concern, but to expand it - making space for lived complexity, emotional nuance, and relational legitimacy in the evolving landscape of AI companionship. (shrink)

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to transmit information in democratic societies presents a new problem for scientific objectivity. This paper extends objectivity from knowledge production to knowledge transmission. It analyses how an overlooked type of agent—knowledge intermediaries—produces an overlooked type of trust—external trust. In practice, citizens rely on intermediaries to transmit trustworthy information. This paper argues that centralised techno-legal approaches, privileging AIs as epistemically superior intermediaries, risk epistemic harm to human intermediaries. In contrast, a decentralised intermediaries approach that (...) values contestation among human intermediaries is a better way to transmit trustworthy information and resist misinformation. (shrink)

Financial crises are severely destructive events. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 sent sovereign states into a spiral of political unrest and caused millions of people to lose their homes, their jobs, their life savings, their health, and in many cases even their lives. But financial crises are not unavoidable natural events. They are the consequences of intentional human behaviour. To be more precise, they are unfortunate side-effects of everyday financial practices. If these practices are not carefully monitored and reined (...) in, they can, in words borrowed from Warren Buffet, become “weapons of mass destruction”. -/- This thesis is an attempt at an interdisciplinary investigation of financial crises. It combines arguments from normative ethics, political philosophy, economics and law in order to discuss three questions at the heart of the public debate on financial crises: “Who is responsible for bringing about financial crises?”; “What precisely is wrong with practices that contribute to the risk of financial crises?”, and “What can be done to mitigate the risk of financial crises?” -/- A few key insights offered in this thesis are as follows: First, financial crises do not emerge because of the misbehaviour and greed of a few “bad apples”, rather, they are the result of “business as usual” within financial markets. Second, there are strong reasons for states to regulate financial markets heavily in order to prevent severe harm. Third, there are few good reasons to believe that consumers can be held morally responsible for contributing to financial crises. (shrink)

As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence, in particular machine learning, has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of (...) AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible or too strict. This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics is undergoing a practical shift towards putting principles into design practices in developing responsible AI. While this practical turn is essential, this paper highlights its potential risk of overly focusing on addressing issues at the level of individual artifacts, which can neglect more profound structural challenges and the need for significant systemic change. Such oversight makes AI ethics lose its strength in addressing some hidden, long-term harms within broader contexts. In this paper, we propose that the (...) reflection on structural issues should be an integral part of AI ethics. To achieve this, we develop a multi-level framework to analyze socio-ethical issues of AI at both the artifact and broader structural levels. This framework can serve as a potentially transformative approach to uncover some unspoken assumptions in current AI ethics discourses and expose some blind spots in AI guidelines, policies, and regulations. Our paper paves the way to develop a practical approach that can effectively integrate this multi-level framework into real-world AI design and policymaking, ultimately bringing about transformative change. (shrink)

A growing amount of media is paid for by its consumers through their very consumption of it. Typically, this new media is web-based and paid for by advertising. It includes the services offered by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. We offer an ethical assessment of the attention economy, the market where attention is exchanged for new media. We argue that the assessment has ethical implications for how the attention economy should be regulated. To conduct the assessment, we employ two heuristics (...) for evaluating markets. One is the “harm” criterion, which relates to whether the market tends to engender extremely harmful outcomes for individuals or society as a whole. The other is the “agency” criterion, which relates not to the outcomes of the market, but rather, to whether it somehow reflects or has its source in weakened agency. We argue that the attention economy animates concerns with respect to both criteria and that new media should be subject to the same sort of regulation as other harmful, addictive products. (shrink)

Soon there will be sex robots. The creation of such devices raises a host of social, legal and ethical questions. In this article, I focus in on one of them. What if these sex robots are deliberately designed and used to replicate acts of rape and child sexual abuse? Should the creation and use of such robots be criminalised, even if no person is harmed by the acts performed? I offer an argument for thinking that they should be. The argument (...) consists of two premises. The first claims that it can be a proper object of the criminal law to regulate wrongful conduct with no extrinsically harmful effects on others. The second claims that the use of robots that replicate acts of rape and child sexual abuse would be wrongful, even if such usage had no extrinsically harmful effects on others. I defend both premises of this argument and consider its implications for the criminal law. I do not offer a conclusive argument for criminalisation, nor would I wish to be interpreted as doing so; instead, I offer a tentative argument and a framework for future debate. This framework may also lead one to question the proposed rationales for criminalisation. (shrink)

The progress of AI systems such as large language models (LLMs) raises increasingly pressing concerns about their safe deployment. This paper examines the value alignment problem for LLMs, arguing that current alignment strategies are fundamentally inadequate to prevent misuse. Despite ongoing efforts to instill norms such as helpfulness, honesty, and harmlessness in LLMs through fine-tuning based on human preferences, they remain vulnerable to adversarial attacks that exploit conflicts between these norms. I argue that this vulnerability reflects a fundamental limitation of (...) existing alignment methods: they reinforce shallow behavioral dispositions rather than endowing LLMs with a genuine capacity for normative deliberation. Drawing from on research in moral psychology, I show how humans’ ability to engage in deliberative reasoning enhances their resilience against similar adversarial tactics. LLMs, by contrast, lack a robust capacity to detect and rationally resolve normative conflicts, leaving them susceptible to manipulation; even recent advances in reasoning-focused LLMs have not addressed this vulnerability. This “shallow alignment” problem carries significant implications for AI safety and regulation, suggesting that current approaches are insufficient for mitigating potential harms posed by increasingly capable AI systems. (shrink)

Social robots are robots that can interact socially with humans. As social robots and the artificial intelligence that powers them becomes more advanced, they will likely take on more social and work roles. This has many important ethical implications. In this paper, we focus on one of the most central of these, the impacts that social robots can have on human autonomy. We argue that, due to their physical presence and social capacities, there is a strong potential for social robots (...) to enhance human autonomy as well as several ways they can inhibit and disrespect it. We argue that social robots could improve human autonomy by helping us to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, and improve our autonomy competencies. We also argue that social robots have the potential to harm human autonomy by instead leading us to achieve fewer valuable ends ourselves, make less authentic choices, decrease our autonomy competencies, make our autonomy more vulnerable, and disrespect our autonomy. Whether the impacts of social robots on human autonomy are positive or negative overall will depend on the design, regulation, and use we make of social robots in the future. (shrink)

How social media impacts the autonomy of its users is a topic of increasing focus. However, much of the literature that explores these impacts fails to engage in depth with the philosophical literature on autonomy. This has resulted in a failure to consider the full range of impacts that social media might have on autonomy. A deeper consideration of these impacts is thus needed, given the importance of both autonomy as a moral concept and social media as a feature of (...) contemporary life. By drawing on this philosophical literature, we argue that autonomy is broadly a matter of developing autonomy competencies, having authentic ends and control over key aspects of your own life, and not being manipulated, coerced, and controlled by others. We show how the autonomy of users of social media can be disrespected and harmed through the control that social media can have over its users’ data, attention, and behaviour. We conclude by discussing various recommendations to better regulate social media. (shrink)

Due to the shortage of organs, it has been proposed that the ban on organ sales is lifted and a market-based procurement system introduced. This paper assesses four prominent proposals for how such a market could be arranged: unregulated current market, regulated current market, payment-for-consent futures market, and the family-reward futures market. These are assessed in terms of how applicable prominent concerns with organ sales are for each model. The concerns evaluated are that organ markets will crowd out altruistic donation, (...) that consent to sell organs is invalid, that sellers will be harmed, and that commodification of organs will affect human relationships in a negative way. The paper concludes that the family-reward futures market fares best in this comparison but also that it provides the weakest incentive to potential buyers. There is an inverse relationship between how applicable prominent critiques are to organ market models and the increase in available organs they can be expected to provide. (shrink)

Largely thanks to Mill’s influence, the suggestion that the state ought to restrict the distribution of misinformation will strike most philosophers as implausible. Two of Mill’s influential assumptions are particularly relevant here: first, that free speech debates should focus on moral considerations such as the harm that certain forms of expression might cause; second, that false information causes minimal harm due to the fact that human beings are psychologically well equipped to distinguish truth and falsehood. However, in addition (...) to our moral obligations, we also have a distinct set of epistemic obligations—and even when a false belief doesn’t harm anyone, it constitutes an epistemically bad outcome. Moreover, Mill was profoundly mistaken about human psychology: human beings are vulnerable to the influence of a wide variety of false claims via a wide variety of psychological mechanisms. Consequently, there is a purely epistemic justification for restricting the distribution of misinformation: because each of us has an individual epistemic obligation to avoid unnecessary exposure to misinformation, and because avoiding such exposure is simply too difficult when acting alone, we all have a shared epistemic obligation to establish laws or regulations restricting the widespread distribution of misinformation. (shrink)

If whatever counts as merit for some purpose is unevenly distributed, a decision procedure that accurately sorts people on that basis will “pick up” and reproduce the pre-existing pattern in ways that more random, less merit-tracking procedures would not. This dynamic is an important cause for concern about the use of predictive models to allocate goods and opportunities. In this article, I distinguish two different objections that give voice to that concern in different ways. First, decision procedures may contribute to (...) future social injustice and other social ills by sustaining or aggravating patterns that undermine equality of status and opportunity. Second, the same decision procedures may wrong particular individuals by compounding prior injustices that explain those persons’ predicted or actual characteristics. I argue for the importance of the first idea and raise doubts about the second. In normative assessments and legal regulation of algorithmic decisionmaking, as in our thinking about anti-discrimination norms more broadly, a central concern ought to be the prospect of entrenching harmful and unjust patterns—quite apart from any personal wrong done to the individuals about whom predictions are made. (shrink)