Events

Ethics Institute Speaker, Matt Haber

Time: 3pm – 4:30pm

Location: Renaissance Park 4th floor common room

Title: Positively Misleading Errors, Algorithmic Biases, and AI Psychotherapy Chatbots

Abstract: Positively misleading errors (PMEs) are errors of statistical inference well-known in phylogenetics, but less familiar in other fields.  Large, complex data sets with interacting elements are especially susceptible to these errors.  Here I share work my lab is doing to understand whether PMEs are contributing to algorithmic biases in machine learning, and how these may contribute to ethical risks as AI psychotherapy chatbots are being promoted to expand access to mental healthcare.

About the Speaker: Matt Haber is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah.

PPE Speaker: Ryan Doody

Time: Starts at 5pm

Location: Shillman Hall 210

Title: Work Worth Doing: Esteem, Justice, and the Case for a Job Guarantee

Abstract: Why should a state guarantee jobs when it could just guarantee income by means of something simpler, more efficient, and less messy, like a Universal Basic Income (UBI)? One thought is that there is something special about work. It isn’t just a way to get money—it’s also a source of personal meaning, structure, and social recognition—key contributors to self-esteem. That’s why some argue in favor of a Job Guarantee (JG): a state commitment to provide employment to any able job-seeker who desires it.

But here’s a worry, famously raised by Jon Elster: if your job only exists because the state created it, how can it be a source of self-esteem? Esteem, Elster claims, tracks demand—if no one would pay for your work voluntarily, is it really socially valued? In particular, is it an apt source of positive self- and social-regard?

In this paper, we take Elster’s challenge seriously—and offer a reply. We argue that while acquiring a job through a JG program might not aptly inspire self-esteem, working in such a job—and keeping it—can. If JG jobs come with real standards—if they ask something of workers, and if those standards are enforced—then success in those roles can ground genuine pride. The key, we argue, is to design jobs that are not just available, but regulated, meaningful, and worth doing. A Good Job Guarantee, properly structured, can secure both material security and the social bases of self-respect.

About the Speaker: Ryan Doody is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy at Brown University.

Ethics Institute Speaker, Sahar Heydari Fard

Time: 3pm – 4:30pm

Location: Renaissance Park 4th floor common room

Title: When Shared Values Divide US

Abstract: Periods of crisis often sharpen our moral convictions. We become confident about what must be done and criticize those who fail to do it with particular intensity. Yet crises also generate a puzzling kind of conflict: people who share the same values sometimes conclude that fidelity to those very values requires opposite courses of action. One recurring version of this divide concerns how to respond to problematic institutions and social practices. Some argue that commitment to our shared values requires disrupting them. Others insist that those same values require preserving them and working within them, because they are the very structures through which progress becomes possible. In this talk, I examine why this divide arises so frequently among people who are otherwise aligned in their normative commitments. I argue that our existing normative toolkit is poorly suited to making sense of such cases, and I sketch an unorthodox way of thinking about these conflicts that takes their structure seriously.

About the Speaker: Sahar Heydari Fard is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University.

Ethics Institute Speaker, Richard Pettigrew

Time: 3pm – 4:30pm

Location: Renaissance Park 4th floor common room

Title: What is epistemic normativity, and why?

Abstract: What is the distinction between what we ought to believe simpliciter and what we ought to believe epistemically speaking, and why do we draw that distinction? Pettigrew motivates this question through a series of examples, and propose an answer based on a version of Susan Wolf’s rule consequentialism transposed to the epistemic realm: the norms that determine what we ought to do epistemically speaking are those such that broad adherence to them across your epistemic community would give the best results from an epistemic point of view. He explains why that gives us the epistemic norms we have.

About the Speaker: Richard Pettigrew is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol.

Ethics Institute Speaker, Matthew Willis

Time: 3pm – 4:30pm

Location:Renaissance Park 4th floor common room

Title: “Epistemic Dirty Work”

Abstract:This paper reveals a tension between familiar standards of epistemic responsibility and the demands of socially distributed inquiry.  Many of our guiding epistemic norms – do not believe without sufficient evidence, do not assert what you do not know, defer to expert consensus, conciliate in the face of reasonable peer disagreement – are framed as invariant constraints on responsible epistemic conduct.  When we evaluate agents one by one, violations of these norms appear straightforwardly blameworthy.  Yet collective epistemic success sometimes depends on agents who flout them – agents who engage in what I call epistemic dirty work.  Epistemic dirty work are practices or forms of inquiry that, while normatively suspect from a perspective devoid of social context, play an indispensable role in sustaining the health of distributed systems of knowledge production.  Given this tension, my aim is to show that theories of epistemic responsibility must be sensitive to social role and network dynamics as normatively relevant features of inquiry.  What counts as epistemically responsible cannot be determined solely by agent-neutral, individualistic standards.  It also depends on the roles agents occupy within broader systems of inquiry.

About the Speaker: Matthew Willis is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University.