A reassuring and thought-provoking guide to all the big questions about AI and ethics Should robots ever be considered free? Will computers transcend human intelligence? And what can we do to make sure AI is safe? The artificial intelligence revolution has begun. Today, there are self-driving cars on our streets, autonomous weapons in our armies, robot surgeons in our hospitals - and AI's presence in our lives will only increase. Some see this as the dawn of new era in innovation and ease; others are alarmed by its destructive potential. But one thing is clear: this is a technology like no other, one that raises profound questions about freedom, justice and the very definition of human agency. In Moral AI, world-renowned researchers in artificial intelligence and philosophy, Jana Schaich Borg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vince Conitzer tackle these thorny issues head-on. Writing lucidly and calmly, they lay out the recent advances in this still nascent field, peeling away the exaggeration and alarm, and offer clear examinations of the moral concerns at the heart of AI programmes. Ultimately, they argue that artificial intelligence can be built and used safely and ethically, but that its potential cannot be achieved without careful reflection on the values we wish to imbue it with. This is an essential primer for any thinking person.

ADVANGEBOOKS - UNDERSTANDING ARGUMENTS: AN INTRODUCTION TO INFORMAL LOGIC, 9E shows readers how to construct arguments in everyday life, using everyday language. In addition, this easy-to-read textbook also devotes three chapters to the formal aspects of logic including forms of argument, as well as propositional, categorical, and quantificational logic. Plus, this edition helps readers apply informal logic to legal, moral, scientific, religious, and philosophical scenarios, too.

Modality, morality and belief are among the most controversial topics in philosophy today, and few philosophers have shaped these debates as deeply as Ruth Barcan Marcus. Inspired by her work, a distinguished group of philosophers explore these issues, refine and sharpen arguments and develop new positions on such topics as possible worlds, moral dilemmas, essentialism, and the explanation of actions by beliefs. Together, this collection honors one of the most rigorous and iconoclastic of philosophical pioneers.

Modality, morality and belief are among the most controversial topics in philosophy and few philosophers have shaped these debates as deeply as Ruth Barcan Marcus. Inspired by her work, a distinguished group of philosophers explore these issues, refine and sharpen arguments and develop fresh positions on such topics as possible worlds, moral dilemmas, essentialism and the explanation of actions by beliefs. This collection honours one of the most rigourous and iconoclastic of philosophical pioneers.

Groundbreaking essays and commentaries on the ways that recent findings in psychology and neuroscience illuminate virtue and character and related issues in philosophy. Philosophers have discussed virtue and character since Socrates, but many traditional views have been challenged by recent findings in psychology and neuroscience. This fifth volume of Moral Psychology grows out of this new wave of interdisciplinary work on virtue, vice, and character. It offers essays, commentaries, and replies by leading philosophers and scientists who explain and use empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience to illuminate virtue and character and related issues in moral philosophy. The contributors discuss such topics as eliminativist and situationist challenges to character; investigate the conceptual and empirical foundations of self-control, honesty, humility, and compassion; and consider whether the virtues contribute to well-being. Contributors Karl Aquino, Jason Baehr, C. Daniel Batson, Lorraine L. Besser, C. Daryl Cameron, Tanya L. Chartrand, M. J. Crockett, Bella DePaulo, Korrina A. Duffy, William Fleeson, Andrea L. Glenn, Charles Goodman, Geoffrey P. Goodwin, George Graham, June Gruber, Thomas Hurka, Eranda Jayawickreme, Andreas Kappes, Kristjan Kristjansson, Daniel Lapsley, Neil Levy, E.J. Masicampo, Joshua May, Christian B. Miller, M. A. Montgomery, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, Hanna Pickard, Katie Rapier, Raul Saucedo, Shannon W. Schrader, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Nancy E. Snow, Gopal Sreenivasan, Chandra Sripada, June P. Tangney, Valerie Tiberius, Simine Vazire, Jennifer Cole Wright

A masterclass in persuasion from the inspiring philosopher who has taught a million people to argue through his popular open online course Our personal and political worlds are rife with arguments and disagreements, some of them petty and vitriolic. The inability to compromise and understand the other side is widespread today. What can we do to change this? In Think Again philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong draws on a long tradition of logic to show why we should stop focusing on winning arguments and instead argue in a more constructive way. Based on a hugely popular online course with more than a million followers around the world, Think Again explains how to analyse, evaluate and make better arguments while also spotting bad reasoning and avoiding certain fallacies. Through lively, practical examples from everyday life, politics and popular culture, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong offers brilliantly straightforward, wise advice that we can all use at work, at home and online.

What is free will? Can it exist in a determined universe? How can we determine who, if anyone, possesses it? Philosophers have debated the extent of human free will for millennia. In recent decades neuroscientists have joined the fray with questions of their own. Which neural mechanisms could enable conscious control of action? What are intentional actions? Do contemporary developments in neuroscience rule out free will or, instead, illuminate how it works? Over the past few years, neuroscientists and philosophers have increasingly come to understand that both fields can make substantive contributions to the free-will debate, so working together is the best path forward to understanding whether, when, and how our choices might be free This book contains thirty bidirectional exchanges between neuroscientists and philosophers that focus on the most critical questions in the neurophilosophy of free will. It mimics a lively, interdisciplinary conference, where experts answer questions and follow-up questions from the other field, helping each discipline to understand how the other thinks and works. Each chapter is concise and accessible to non-experts-free from disciplinary jargon and highly technical details-but also employs thorough and up-to-date research from experts in the field. The resulting collection should be useful to anyone who wants to get up to speed on the most fundamental issues in the rising field of the neurophilosophy of free will. It will interest experts from philosophy or neuroscience who want to learn about the other discipline, students in courses on a host of related topics, and lay readers who are fascinated by these profound issues.

For much of the twentieth century, philosophy and science went their separate ways. In moral philosophy, fear of the so-called naturalistic fallacy kept moral philosophers from incorporating developments in biology and psychology. Since the 1990s, however, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science, and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. This collaborative trend is especially strong in moral philosophy, and these three volumes bring together some of the most innovative work by both philosophers and psychologists in this emerging interdisciplinary field. Contributors to Volume 2: Fredrik Bjorklund (University of Lund), James Blair (National Institute of Mental Health), Paul Bloomfield (University of Connecticut), Fiery Cushman (Harvard University), Justin D'Arms (Ohio State University), John Deigh (University of Texas at Austin), John Doris (Washington University), Julia Driver (Dartmouth College), Ben Fraser (Australian National University Research School of Social Science), Gerd Gigerenzer (Max Plank Institute), Michael Gill (University of Arizona), Jonathan Haidt (University of Virginia) Marc Hauser (Harvard University), Daniel Jacobson (Bowling Green State University), Joshua Knobe (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Brian Leiter (University of Texas at Austin), Don Loeb (University of Vermont), Ron Mallon (University of Utah), Darcia Narvaez (University of Notre Dame), Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona), Alexandra Plakias (University of Michigan), Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Russ Shafer-Landau (University ofWisconsin), Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Dartmouth College), Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago), William Tolhurst (University of Northern Illinois), Liane Young (Harvard University).

Leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists address issues of moral responsibility and free will, drawing on new findings from empirical science. Traditional philosophers approached the issues of free will and moral responsibility through conceptual analysis that seldom incorporated findings from empirical science. In recent decades, however, striking developments in psychology and neuroscience have captured the attention of many moral philosophers. This volume of Moral Psychology offers essays, commentaries, and replies by leading philosophers and scientists who explain and use empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience to illuminate old and new problems regarding free will and moral responsibility. The contributors-who include such prominent scholars as Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Gazzaniga-consider issues raised by determinism, compatibilism, and libertarianism; epiphenomenalism, bypassing, and naturalism; naturalism; and rationality and situationism. These writings show that although science does not settle the issues of free will and moral responsibility, it has enlivened the field by asking novel, profound, and important questions. Contributors Roy F. Baumeister, Tim Bayne, Gunnar Bjoernsson, C. Daryl Cameron, Hanah A. Chapman, William A. Cunningham, Patricia S. Churchland, Christopher G. Coutlee, Daniel C. Dennett, Ellen E. Furlong, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Patrick Haggard, Brian Hare, Lasana T. Harris, John-Dylan Haynes, Richard Holton, Scott A. Huettel, Robert Kane, Victoria K. Lee, Neil Levy, Alfred R. Mele, Christian Miller, Erman Misirlisoy, P. Read Montague, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, William T. Newsome, B. Keith Payne, Derk Pereboom, Adina L. Roskies, Laurie R. Santos, Timothy Schroeder, Michael N. Shadlen, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chandra Sripada, Christopher L. Suhler, Manuel Vargas, Gideon Yaffe

CENGAGE ADVANTAGE BOOKS: UNDERSTANDING ARGUMENTS, CONCISE EDITION, 1E uses everyday life experiences to teach the basics of informal logic. By taking out the non-essential instruction, this edition hones in on the "argument construction" involved in day-to-day life, and how to do it better. Plus, to round out the discussion, CENGAGE ADVANTAGE BOOKS: UNDERSTANDING ARGUMENTS, CONCISE EDITION, 1E includes a three-chapter overview of formal logic as well.

This book explores the interplay between science, economics, politics, and ethics in understanding the challenge that climate change poses to the international community. A central theme is that climate change involves core issues of scientific uncertainty and intergenerational fairness that must be accounted for in the design and implementation of policy responses. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars in a variety of relevant disciplines, this volume provides a synthetic approach to this important topic that should prove valuable to a variety of readers. This series focuses on the interface between geosystems, biosystems, and the political economy. The volumes integrate physical, natural, and social sciences with economics. It encompasses the atomistic and mechanistic epistemology of modern economic analysis.

In Moral Knowledge?: New Readings in Moral Epistemology, editors Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons bring together eleven newly written essays by distinguished moral philosophers exploring the nature and possibility of moral knowledge. Each essay represents a major position within the exciting field of moral epistemology in which a proponent of the position presents and defends his or her view and locates it vis-a-vis competing views.
The first chapter, written by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, provides a framework for understanding the basic concepts and viewpoints in moral epistemology and presents a limited skeptical challenge to the justification of moral beliefs. The following essays represent various options in response to moral skepticism. Peter Railton and Simon Blackburn take different stances on moral truth and realism, Robert Audi defends a version of intuitionism, and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord adopts coherentism, while R.M. Hare combines elements of both foundationalism and coherentism. Richard Brandt discusses the relevance of empirical science to moral knowledge, Christopher Morris develops a contractarian account of moral justification, and David Copp bases moral knowledge on rational choices by societies. Margaret Urban Walker aruges for a feminist perspective on moral knowledge, and Mark Timmons expounds contextualism in moral epistemology.
The lively and clear selections do not presuppose specialized knowledge of philosophy, and the philosophical vocabulary used throughout the anthology is uniform, in order to facilitate understanding by those not familiar with the field. The first chapter includes a sustained critical discussion of the major views represented in the following chapters, thereby furnishing beginning students with appropriate background to understand the selections. The volume is further enhanced by an index and an extensive bibliography, which is divided into sections corresponding to the chapters of the book. Moral Knowledge provides the most up-to-date work on moral knowledge and justification and serves as an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses.

Some argue that atheism must be false, since without God, no values are possible, and thus "everything is permitted." Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that God is not only not essential to morality, but that our moral behavior should be utterly independent of religion. He attacks several core ideas: that atheists are inherently immoral people; that any society will sink into chaos if it is becomes too secular; that without religion, we have no reason to be moral; that absolute moral standards require the existence of God; and that without religion, we simply couldn't know what is wrong and what is right.
Sinnott-Armstrong brings to bear convincing examples and data, as well as a lucid, elegant, and easy to understand writing style. This book should fit well with the debates raging over issues like evolution and intelligent design, atheism, and religion and public life as an example of a pithy, tightly-constructed argument on an issue of great social importance.

"In his call for sincere dialogue with theists, Sinnott-Armstrong provides a welcome relief from the apoplectic excesses of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, while also addressing objections to homosexuality and evolution frequently raised by evangelical Christians." --Publishers Weekly
" I]t is accessible and lively, my hope is that it will be widely read, especially by theists."--Peter Lamal, The Humanist
..". the clarity of this text successfully defuses many erroneous claims about religion and morality, both popular and academic; this volume certainly deserves a wide audience in this increasingly secular and skeptical world." -Choice
"Morality Without God? is an engaging, pithy book arguing against the necessity of God and religion for a robust morality. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has distinguished himself as a leading philosopher in his work on metaethics and moral psychology, as well as books on moral and epistemological skepticism, and in Morality Without God? he commendably succeeds in writing a philosophically respectable introduction to the problems facing religious morality suitable for virtually any audience." --Philosophia Christi

Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for and even a threat to ethical knowledge and the moral life. This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion that represents a range of views along this spectrum. The book begins with a lively debate between Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig on the question, Is goodness without God good enough? Kurtz defends the affirmative position and Craig the negative. Following the debate are new essays by prominent scholars. These essays comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of religion and morality. The book closes with final responses from Kurtz and Craig.

Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media_often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for_and even a threat to_ethical knowledge and the moral life. This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion that represents a range of views along this spectrum. The book begins with a lively debate between Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig on the question, Is goodness without God good enough? Kurtz defends the affirmative position and Craig the negative. Following the debate are new essays by prominent scholars. These essays comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of religion and morality. The book closes with final responses from Kurtz and Craig.

Sinnott-Armstrong here provides an extensive survey of the difficult subject of moral beliefs. He covers theories that grapple with questions of morality such as naturalism, normativism, intuitionism, and coherentism. He then defends his own theory that he calls "moderate moral skepticism," which is that moral beliefs can be justified, but not extremely justified.

All contentious moral issues--from gay marriage to abortion and affirmative action--raise difficult questions about the justification of moral beliefs. How can we be justified in holding on to our own moral beliefs while recognizing that other intelligent people feel quite differently and that many moral beliefs are distorted by self-interest and by corrupt cultures? Even when almost everyone agrees--e.g. that experimental surgery without consent is immoral--can we know that such beliefs are true? If so, how?
These profound questions lead to fundamental issues about the nature of morality, language, metaphysics, justification, and knowledge. They also have tremendous practical importance in handling controversial moral questions in health care ethics, politics, law, and education. Sinnott-Armstrong here provides an extensive overview of these difficult subjects, looking at a wide variety of questions, including: Are any moral beliefs true? Are any justified? What is justified belief? The second half of the book explores various moral theories that have grappled with these issues, such as naturalism, normativism, intuitionism, and coherentism, all of which are attempts to answer moral skepticism. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that all these approaches fail to rule out moral nihilism--the view that nothing is really morally wrong or right, bad or good. Then he develops his own novel theory, --"moderate Pyrrhonian moral skepticism"--which concludes that some moral beliefs can be justified out of a modest contrast class but no moral beliefs can be justified out of an extreme contrast class. While explaining this original position and criticizing alternatives, Sinnott-Armstrong provides awide-ranging survey of the epistemology of moral beliefs.

Throughout the history of philosophy, skepticism has posed one of the central challenges of epistemology. Opponents of skepticism--including externalists, contextualists, foundationalists, and coherentists--have focussed largely on one particular variety of skepticism, often called Cartesian or Academic skepticism, which makes the radical claim that nobody can know anything. However, this version of skepticism is something of a straw man, since virtually no philosopher endorses this radical skeptical claim. The only skeptical view that has been truly held--by Sextus, Montaigne, Hume, Wittgenstein, and, most recently, Robert Fogelin--has been Pyrrohnian skepticism. Pyrrhonian skeptics do not assert Cartesian skepticism, but neither do they deny it. The Pyrrhonian skeptics' doubts run so deep that they suspend belief even about Cartesian skepticism and its denial. Nonetheless, some Pyrrhonians argue that they can still hold "common beliefs of everyday life" and can even claim to know some truths in an everyday way.
This edited volume presents previously unpublished articles on this subject by a strikingly impressive group of philosophers, who engage with both historical and contemporary versions of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Among them are Gisela Striker, Janet Broughton, Don Garrett, Ken Winkler, Hans Sluga, Ernest Sosa, Michael Williams, Barry Stroud, Robert Fogelin, and Roy Sorensen. This volume is thematically unified and will interest a broad spectrum of scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy.

Bernard Gert's moral theory is among the clearest and most comprehensive on the contemporary scene. It touches on elements of the dominant ethical orientations -utilitarianism, Kantianism, contractionism, and virtue ethics without fitting neatly into any of those categories. For that reason, Gert's moral theory appeals to many ethicists dissatisfied with each of the dominant formulations. Rationality, Rules, and Ideals presents Gert's Morality, the reactions by a number of prominent scholars, and Gert's response. All told, it is a remarkably wide-ranging study of ethical theory. The work is broken down into six parts, making Rationality, Rules, and Ideals perfect for a broad-ranging course on ethical theory, following Gert's critiques of utilitariansim, Kantianism, and virtue ethics. Both students and professionals will find much material to work with in this volume. The papers contribute not only to the understanding of Gert's wide-ranging theory but to a number of important topics in ethic theory, the theory of rationality, and applied ethics.

Philosophers and psychologists discuss new collaborative work in moral philosophy that draws on evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. For much of the twentieth century, philosophy and science went their separate ways. In moral philosophy, fear of the so-called naturalistic fallacy kept moral philosophers from incorporating developments in biology and psychology. Since the 1990s, however, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science, and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. This collaborative trend is especially strong in moral philosophy, and these volumes bring together some of the most innovative work by both philosophers and psychologists in this emerging interdisciplinary field. The contributors to volume 1 discuss recent work on the evolution of moral beliefs, attitudes, and emotions. Each chapter includes an essay, comments on the essay by other scholars, and a reply by the author(s) of the original essay. Topics include a version of naturalism that avoids supposed fallacies, distinct neurocomputational systems for deontic reasoning, the evolutionary psychology of moral sentiments regarding incest, the sexual selection of moral virtues, the evolution of symbolic thought, and arguments both for and against innate morality. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate the value for both philosophy and psychology of collaborative efforts to understand the many complex aspects of morality. Contributors William Casebeer, Leda Cosmides, Oliver Curry, Michael Dietrich, Catherine Driscoll, Susan Dwyer, Owen Flanagan, Jerry Fodor, Gilbert Harman, Richard Joyce, Debra Lieberman, Ron Mallon, John Mikhail, Geoffrey Miller, Jesse Prinz, Peter Railton, Michael Ruse, Hagop Sarkissian, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chandra Sekhar Sripada, Valerie Tiberius, John Tooby, Peter Tse, Kathleen Wallace, Arthur Wolf, David Wong