A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Author: Journal of Applied Philosophy

Climate / Environment / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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Choose Your Own Philosophical Policy Role

In this interactive “choose-your-own-adventure” post, Kian Mintz-Woo (University College Cork) explores the different roles that philosophers might play in supporting the development of public policies. This is based on his recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

[§1]

Congratulations! You have been invited to participate in a government policy-recommendation committee in [insert your research area of expertise]. You look around and see some academics (a political scientist, an economist and a [insert relevant] natural scientist), but also some political bureaucrats and some representatives of civil society. You have been jointly tasked on evaluating and recommending a policy option.

‘This is our justice theorist,’ they say in introduction. Or maybe ‘Please welcome our ethicist!’ You’re a little intimidated. You’ve never done something like this before, but you want to contribute in a way that is useful for the group—but also reflects the appropriate role for a philosopher.

When it comes time for you to contribute, do you:

  • explain, defend, and apply your substantive normative position and how it applies to this policy question (‘the partisan’): Jump to [§2]; or
  • explain what you take to be the relevant societal values and how they bear on this policy question (‘the populist’): Jump to [§3]; or
  • act as a ‘conduit for the discipline’ and explain a variety of positions and the arguments that link them to particular policy options, looking for convergence and divergence between different normative positions (‘the convergent evaluator’): Jump to [§4]?

[§2]

‘I’m a normative theorist who has considered this area extensively,’ you begin. ‘The principles and theories of [insert your normative position] are clearly stronger than the alternatives. Indeed, we can tell that those principles are useful as they show that [your preferred policy option] is highly justifiable.’

Some members of the committee, having never heard the policy options discussed in this kind of theoretical way, find that your position sounds quite plausible. Discussion continues, with the following rebuttal occasionally offered to alternative views: ‘But justice demands [your preferred policy option], according to our justice theorist!’

You find yourself squirming slightly, since you realize that [your normative opponent at a more famous university] could also have been invited instead, and, as they have a different normative position, they would have argued for [your dispreferred policy option]. But you content yourself with the thought that, luckily, you are here instead of them. Jump to [§5].

[§3]

‘We have to remember that we are here to consider and recommend public policies,’ you begin. ‘So it behooves us to consider what the public thinks. Luckily, I have a more than passing familiarity with [news opinions, polling data, historical documents, other potential sources of societal value] and I think the deep values of society are [liberal, conservative, egalitarian, xenophobic, utopian, etc.]. That is very helpful because it shows that [society’s preferred policy option] is highly justifiable.’

The committee is intrigued and begins to debate about whether these are society’s real values. One member points out that it would be somewhat more convincing if a social scientist could inform the committee, muttering something under their breath about ‘empirics’ and ‘armchair philosophers’. Another member asks whether society’s values are reflected by what society does or what society says. Yet another asks whether we should really be thinking about what society did or said.

You find yourself squirming slightly, since the questions the committee keeps asking you sound like ones that maybe a social psychologist or a sociologist or a historian would have an easier time answering. Jump to [§5].

[§4]

‘What do philosophers do?’ you begin. ‘Many of you are wondering that, but you might not really know. Well, part of what we do is we try to make arguments or draw valid inferences based on various normative positions. For instance, in this particular policy context, some influential principles and theories are [you introduce some relevant positions]. While there is significant theoretical disagreement, [some policy option] can be justified from very many normative positions and [some other policy option] can be justified from quite a lot of positions. Here is how those justifications work…’

The committee pays close attention, with some members nodding sagely when certain positions are mentioned and a couple interested murmurs as you draw some subtle inferences. Afterwards, the committee discusses which principles they are drawn to and question some of the arguments you present.

You find yourself squirming slightly, since you wonder if your summary of the arguments is idiosyncratic or whether you were fair to the various interlocutors’ positions. But you comfort yourself by thinking that you gave it your best shot and that at least you didn’t give a wild misrepresentation of the debate. Continue to [§5].

[§5]

After much discussion, multiple meetings, and several reports, the committee ultimately decides to recommend [your preferred policy option]. You are surprised but pleased, although you remain unconvinced about whether your particular recommendation made any difference. You finish your committee work with a mix of inspiration and skepticism about the role of policy committees.

But you also can’t help realizing that you can’t wait to go back and try it over again, maybe a little differently.

[The (very slightly) less interactive version of this blogpost can be found at: Mintz-Woo, Kian. Forthcoming. “Explicit Methodologies for Normative Evaluation in Public Policy, as Applied to Carbon Budgets.” Journal of Applied Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.70047 .]

Animals / Duties / Education / Environment / General / Health / Moral values

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Using wonder to achieve animal rights

In this post, Steve Cooke, (University of Leicester) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the experience of wonder as a route towards justice for nonhuman animals.

Par Arnaud 25 — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27321151

Every year, more than 90 billion land animals are killed for food. Most are raised in factory farms. Campaigns for animal rights often rely upon shocking images of their suffering to gain attention and drive change. Whilst this often succeeds, it can also be counter-productive and drive people away. Being confronted by the harms we cause is uncomfortable. Rather than change behaviour, many people instead try to escape feelings of shame, disgust, horror, and sadness. They do this through rationalisation and carefully avoiding evidence. Hence, there’s a need for other strategies, ones that make use of more pleasant emotions. The feeling of wonder is just such an emotion. Cultivating wonder at nonhuman animals has the potential to change how they are treated.

Wonder is an emotion we feel when confronted by the mysterious and magical and we often feel it when confronted by things we don’t fully understand. When we encounter something wonderous, our attention is grabbed and we begin to search for meaning and understanding. For this reason, wonder has been considered an important emotion many philosophers. One important feature of it is that things we feel wonderment at cannot easily be ignored. Because wondrous things press us to find meaning and significance, wonder can also cause an ethical re-evaluation. Not only that, but wonder is by nature a positive attitude. When we experience wonder towards something, we attend to it closely and regard it as especially valuable. 

These features of wonder make it a useful emotion to for animal activists to encourage. One change is difficult is because animal lives have been made banal. For example, animals are frequently conceived merely as products and described in ways that remove individuality. Modern animal agriculture is directed at sameness, routine, and predictability. It treats animals as replaceable units of production. Mass killing is made routine and thus uninteresting. Finding wonder in the lives of individual animals acts as a counter to these processes of disenchantment.

For as long as it has been possible, the mass slaughter of nonhuman animals has been moved away from the public’s gaze. Studies have shown that the more visible the lives of animals are, the more legal protections they receive. As a result, the meat industry works hard to conceal and sanitise what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses. In response, animal activists use what is known as ‘the politics of sight’. This form of activism involves drawing attention to harm in order to stimulate compassion. But, because it makes people feel bad, it needs them to be willing to experience and attend to that discomfort. Many are not. Here, wonder can function to draw attention without provoking discomfort. Wonder can replace compassion or cause people to value animals enough to take on its emotional burden.

Radically changing how animals are treated, such as by ending factory farming, requires paying much more attention to animal suffering. Before they can be granted rights, animals need to be seen as unique and valuable individuals. Rational arguments, no matter how sound, often fail if made without heed to moral psychology. Hence, achieving moral progress requires us to also think about how we experience encounters with other beings. Documentaries like My Octopus Teacher have probably helped campaigns against octopus farming more than any rational argument. Those working towards justice for nonhuman animals should therefore consider how to harness emotions like wonder to support their objectives.

Steve Cooke works on animal rights and the ethics of activism. He is primarily interested theories of justice for animals, moral progress, and duties in non-ideal circumstances.

Children / Climate / Duties / Environment / General

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My child, whose emissions?

In this post, Serena Olsaretti (ICREA/Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Isa Trifan (University of Essex) discuss their recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, where they explore the morality of having children in light of climate change.

Created with GenAI

‘Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children!’  So announced the title of an article in The Guardian in 2017, when the idea that procreation is bad for the environment started to once again garner significant public attention. The Guardian article pointed to recent empirical evidence about the carbon impact of different ‘green’ choices a person could make if they wanted to reduce their carbon emissions. The evidence suggested that the carbon ‘savings’ a person could make by choosing to ‘have one fewer child’ in a developed country far exceeded the carbon reductions a person could make by making typical, green choices like giving up one’s car, going on fewer flights, or recycling put together.

Since then, in political theory as in the public sphere, this question has been gaining traction, with newspapers articles in France, Germany, Italy and Spain exploring the same issue. So, is having children in developed societies just as bad, or worse, from the point of view of climate justice as living a lavish, high-consumption lifestyle?

Our answer is: it depends. The kind of ‘moral equivalence’ that many have sought to draw between procreation, on the one hand, and a high-consumption/high-emissions lifestyle (or eco-gluttony), on the other hand, can be interpreted in at least two ways. The first interpretation is that both procreation and eco-gluttony are wrong because both involve overstepping our carbon budget. Assuming that we all have a moral obligation to keep our carbon emissions within a certain limit, or budget, the idea is this. If it is wrong for an eco-glutton to overstep her carbon budget by going on frequent, far-flung holidays every year, then, by logical consistency, it is also wrong for a person to overstep their budget by choosing to bring a child (and therefore a new carbon emitter) into a developed, high-consumption society.

We argue that this ‘strict’ way of drawing the moral equivalence between procreation and eco-gluttony fails because it wrongly assumes that the carbon costs of children should be ‘paid for’ from their parents’ budgets only. But, we argue, insofar as all of society benefits from a certain amount of demographic renewal, the carbon costs that come with bringing new people into the world should be shared between the parents and the rest of society. The carbon costs of some demographic renewal should be treated like we treat the carbon costs of producing other public goods like road infrastructure and national defence: they should be covered by everyone’s carbon budgets. If so, for some parents, at least, it is not true that having children will cause them to overstep their personal carbon budgets.

But there is a second way to interpret the moral equivalence between procreation and eco-gluttony. Procreation and eco-gluttony may be morally on a par, but only in the ‘lax’ sense in which both may be liable to moral criticism from a climate justice standpoint. While eco-gluttony is, indeed, a way of overstepping one’s carbon budget, having children need not be, as we have seen. Nevertheless, those considering procreation in developed societies may have good reason to ‘have one fewer child’ if doing so would contribute to reducing the harms of climate warming.

The basic idea is that if we are well placed to help reduce harm, we ought to do so, at least when this is not unreasonably burdensome for us. If having one fewer child than originally planned is not unreasonably burdensome for some prospective procreators, they may have good reason to refrain from having that child in virtue of the fact that they are uniquely well placed, practically and morally, to stop the entire chain of emissions that their child, and their child’s descendants, would produce. A would-be procreator is uniquely well placed, both practically and morally, to prevent 100% of the emissions of their child and of further descendants because, by contrast to most other individual choices that can reduce global emissions, the choice to refrain from having a child is one that we are (i) morally permitted to make, (ii) uniquely (justifiably) legally entitled to make, and such that (iii) we are able to singlehandedly ensure that a chain of emissions is not produced. If stopping this potentially enormous chain of emissions would help to reduce the harms of global warming, prospective procreators have good reason, perhaps even a moral obligation, to have one fewer child after all.

Climate / Distribution / Economics / Environment / General / Technology

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Bednets versus Rocket Ships: Should we care more for people alive today or the future of humanity?

In this post, Elizabeth Hupfer (High Point University) discusses her article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on how to balance concern for the future of humanity with the needs of those alive today.

Made with Canva AI

Ever wonder why ChatGPT was invented? Or why billionaires have become so obsessed with rockets? The common thread in these questions is Longtermism. Longtermism is the view that concern for the long-term future is a moral imperative. The theory is caricatured by critics as a movement preoccupied with dystopian takeover by AI, a globe shrouded in nuclear winter, and colonization of distant planets. But at the heart of Longtermism are concepts intuitive to many: that future people’s lives matter and that it is good to ensure the survival of humanity. Yet, in our current world of scarce resources, Longtermist priority may go to future people at the expense of present people in need. In my paper I argue that Longtermists do not have a clear means of giving priority to people in need today without abandoning central tenets of the theory.

Longtermism

Longtermism has grown in popularity from a philosophical theory to a social movement that impacts Silicon Valley, US politics, international laws, and more. To understand this consequential theory, we need to look at two important components: time and quantity of future people.

First, Longtermists argue that time is not morally important. In What We Owe the Future, William MacAskill gives the example of a dropping a shard of glass on a hike. If you drop the glass and do not pick it up then you have harmed the person who steps on it, even if that person exists in the future.

Second, Longtermists argue that there are potentially tens of trillions of people who could exist in the future. There are various ways that Longtermists can calculate this number, but all that matters for our purposes is that it is a lot. A whole lot. More people than exist presently, and more people than have ever existed up to this point.

Combining the notion that time is not morally important and that there are a vast number of potential people, means that it is imperative to safeguard both the survival of humanity and the quality-of-life of future people.

Far-Future Priority Objection

What if this concern for the tens of trillions of future people comes at the expense of people who are living today? I call this the Far-Future Priority Objection: repeated instances of priority to far-future concerns will result in the systemic neglect of current people in the most need and potentially large-scale reallocation of resources to far-future interventions.

For example, Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill argue that the most effective way to save a current life through donation is providing insecticide-treated bednets in malaria zones. Their data shows that with these bednets, donating $100 is equivalent to saving 0.025 lives. But this is less effective than many Longtermists causes such asteroid deflection ($100 would result in around 300,000 additional lives), pandemic preparedness (200 million additional lives), and preventing AI takeover (one trillion additional lives). If Longtermists are concerned about efficiently doing the most good they can with a unit of resources (and I argue in my paper that they are), then Longtermist causes will trump even the most efficient causes for people alive today.

According to the Far-Future Priority Objection, repeated priority in this pattern could significantly shift overall resources away from those in need today over time, particularly those in low-income nations. Thus, widespread espousal of Longtermism may result in the global affluent turning their backs on these populations.

Potential Responses

In my paper, I analyse several potential responses the Longtermist could give to the Far-Future Priority Objection and argue that none of these responses can successfully mitigate the objection without abandoning basic tenets of Longtermism.

I will highlight one such argument here. Longtermists typically argue that far-future interventions cannot cause serious harm in the short term. According to my Far-Future Priority objection, individual instances of priority to the far future are not harmful but repeated instances may be. Take the following analogy: a law is enacted which is not explicitly discriminatory towards minority Group X. However, over time, implementation of the law results in resources, which would previously have gone to Group X, going to nearby (perhaps better off) Group Y. A decade later, Group X is significantly worse off. I think that one could reasonably argue that Group X was seriously harmed. Similarly, Longtermism does not intentionally or explicitly discriminate against current people, and it does not remove existing resources from them. Serious harm is likely caused nonetheless.

However, I argue that appealing to near-future serious harms results in either too strong or too weak of a response to the Far-Future Priority Objection and is not a viable avenue for the Longtermist. This is because one could be an absolutist about causing harm, which would mean that repeated priority to the future would be morally wrong and Longtermism would be undermined altogether. Alternatively, one could be a non-absolutist and say that the prevention of harm can be overridden when the stakes are high enough. Yet, since there could be tens of trillions of future lives at risk, the stakes will always be so high as to override the ban.

Conclusion

Longtermists have two options. First, they can bite the bullet and accept that Longtermism could result in systemic neglect of present people. This is counterintuitive to many. Second, they can create a new principle which allows for occasional priority for present people without abandoning basic tenets of the theory. In my paper, I analyse and dismiss several possible principles.

Elizabeth Hupfer’s research focuses on the intersection between normative/applied ethics and social/ political philosophy. She has published on distributive justice, coercion, humanitarianism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.

Children / Duties / Gender / General / Health / Rights

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Pregnancy is not caregiving

In this post, Christie Hartley (Georgia State University) and Ashley Lindsley-Kim (University of British Columbia) discuss their recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy  in which they argue against the claim that the feminist commitment that all persons are owed care could obligate pregnant persons to gestate unwanted fetuses.

Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko, available at https://www.pexels.com/]

Is pregnancy a kind of caregiving? This might seem initially plausible since it is through pregnancy that essential fetal needs are met. Furthermore, at least in some societies, it is commonly thought that pregnancy is a labor of love or that continuing a pregnancy is a way of caring for another. Yet, it is a mistake to think of pregnancy in this way, that is, as a kind of caregiving. Understanding why is crucial for thinking well about the ethics and politics of abortion.

Let’s start with caregiving, which involves providing material or emotional care for another or oneself. Examples of the former include feeding, bathing, or dressing someone; examples of the latter include comforting or simply listening to another. Both types of caregiving are social practices and, as such, involve patterns of behavior that are part of a society or a group’s culture and that emerge or follow from a society or a group’s values and beliefs. Pregnancy, by contrast, is not a social practice. It’s a progressive biological condition characterized by numerous nonvoluntary changes in a female’s body. Some of these changes help maintain and support fetal development; others prepare the body for birthing and breastfeeding. While essential fetal needs (e.g., the fetus’s need for oxygen, nutrients, waste disposal) are met through pregnancy, these needs are not met through social practices.

This is not to deny that cultures have values and beliefs about pregnancy that result in social practices related to pregnancy or that pregnancy is implicated in our social lives. Regarding social practices, pregnant persons often engage in self-care for their pregnancy by, for example, consuming extra calories, or they engage in practices related to supporting fetal development by taking prenatal vitamins or avoiding certain foods. Many pregnant persons also develop a social relationship with their fetus during gestation and express a caring attitude towards their fetus. All these things influence how pregnant persons think about and respond to their pregnancy.

Yet, we should not conflate pregnancy with caregiving. Consider some important differences. Intentionally ceasing material caregiving does not involve some kind of physical intervention, such as surgery or medical care. And, for those who engage in material caregiving, when they are meeting their own needs – by eating, taking medication, etc. – they are not necessarily affecting others (at least, when they are not pregnant). These differences have to do with the fact that material caregiving lacks the distinctive kind of physical intertwinement and entanglement that characterizes pregnancy. Indeed, as the fetus comes into existence, it is necessarily integrated with the pregnant person. From the beginning of a pregnancy, when a fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall, the fetus’s internal entanglement is established. Continued development requires considerable integration with the pregnant person, in addition to the physical expansion of the pregnant person’s body.

Indeed, this kind of considerable physical intimacy is necessary for fetal development, and it is different from other types of intimacy in two important ways. First, this kind of invasive relation poses especially significant risks to a pregnant person’s health and wellbeing. A pregnant body undergoes physiological and anatomical changes – such as weight gain, fluid retention, ligament laxity, hormonal changes, and compression of soft tissues and nerves – which can be painful and debilitating. Additionally, a pregnancy person’s cardiac output increases, putting stress on the heart and putting them at persistent higher risks for cardiovascular disease and premature death for the rest of their lives. Second, physically invasive intimacy fundamentally concerns bodily integrity, and persons have a morally weighty interest in its protection. We are our bodies in an important sense, and pregnancy changes how a person’s body functions, how a person’s internal systems operate, and how a person is internally organized. Moreover, successfully carrying a fetus to term requires birthing, whether a birth is vaginal or cesarean. This is a physically traumatic end to a fetus’s invasive physical integration with a gestating person and, all by itself, raises concerns about forced pregnancy given the importance of bodily integrity.

Comparing pregnancy and material caregiving leads us to ignore the distinctive ways in which a person’s bodily integrity is at stake in pregnancy and not in caregiving. Of course, we certainly do not intend to minimize the demandingness of caregiving or its costs. We hold caregiving to be socially necessary, valuable work that can be demanding and costly and that we have a shared, moral obligation to provide. Yet, analogizing pregnancy to material caregiving suggests that pregnant persons have far more agency over what occurs in the progressive condition of pregnancy than they do. Further, considering pregnancy as a form of caregiving suggests that pregnant persons may have a moral obligation to gestate. This perpetuates the pernicious view that those who can gestate must use their bodies in the sexual and reproductive service of others. This threatens to naturalize sex-based caregiving.

In today’s political climate, thinking of pregnancy as a kind of caregiving is especially dangerous. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. At this time, 12 U.S. states have almost completely banned the practice, and Florida, Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina have banned abortion at about 6 weeks. Other states have taken measures to protect the practice and make it more accessible. In states with restrictive abortion bans, pregnant persons are legally required to gestate and, then, legally required to birth. This forces pregnant persons – overwhelmingly women – to be in the forced service of the state. Given the importance of caregiving duties, the suggestion that pregnancy is a form of caregiving provides support for such sexual servitude.  

Academia / Education / General / Pedagogy / Teaching / Teaching Philosophy / Technology

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Should Universities Restrict Generative AI?

In this post, Karl de Fine Licht (Chalmers University of Technology) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the moral concerns of banning Generative AI in universities.

Rethinking the Ban

Universities face a challenging question: what should they do when the tools that help students learn also raise serious moral concerns?

Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT offer immediate feedback, personalized explanations, and writing or coding assistance. But they also raise concerns: energy and water use, exploitative labor, privacy risks, and fears of academic dishonesty. In response, some universities have banned or severely restricted these tools. That may seem cautious or principled—but is it the right response?

In a recent academic paper, I argue that while these concerns are real, banning GenAI is often not the most justified or effective approach. Universities should instead pursue responsible engagement: adopting ethical procurement practices, educating students on thoughtful use, and leveraging their institutional influence to demand better standards.

Do Bans Make a Difference?

Many arguments for bans focus on harm. Using GenAI may contribute to carbon emissions, involve labor under poor conditions, or jeopardize student privacy. But how much difference does banning GenAI at a single university make?

Not much. Models are trained centrally and used globally. Universities typically rely on existing, pre-trained models—so their marginal contribution to emissions or labor practices is negligible. Even if all universities banned GenAI, it’s not clear this would shift global AI development or halt resource use. Worse, bans may backfire: students may use GenAI anyway, without oversight or support, leading to worse outcomes for learning and equity.

Take climate impact. Training models like GPT-4 requires substantial energy and water. But universities rarely train their own models; they use centralized ones whose training would happen regardless. Further, GenAI’s daily use is becoming more efficient, and in some applications—like architectural design, biodiversity monitoring, and climate modeling—GenAI may even help reduce emissions. The better route is for universities to demand energy-efficient models, support green cloud services, and explore carbon offsetting—not prohibit tools whose use is educationally beneficial and environmentally marginal.

Or consider labor exploitation. Training GenAI models often relies on underpaid workers performing harmful tasks, especially in the Global South. That’s a serious ethical issue. But again, banning use doesn’t necessarily help those workers or change the system. Universities could instead pressure companies to raise labor standards—leveraging their roles as clients, research partners, and talent suppliers. This collective influence is more likely to yield ethical improvements than a local ban.

The Reduction Problem

Even if you think universities are morally complicit by using GenAI—regardless of impact—you face a further problem: consistency. If the right response to morally tainted technologies is prohibition, why stop with GenAI?

Much of higher education depends on digital infrastructure. Computers, smartphones, and servers are produced under similarly problematic labor and environmental conditions. If the logic is “avoid complicity by avoiding use,” then many standard technologies should also be banned. But that leads to a reductio: if universities adopted this policy consistently, they would be unable to function.

This doesn’t mean ethical concerns should be ignored. Rather, it shows that avoiding all complicity isn’t feasible—and that universities must find ways to act responsibly within imperfect systems. The challenge is to engage critically and constructively, not withdraw.

Hidden Costs of Prohibition

There are also moral costs to banning GenAI.

Students continue to use AI tools, but in secret. This undermines educational goals and privacy protections. Vulnerable students—those with fewer resources, time, or academic support—may be most reliant on GenAI, and most harmed by a ban. When students use unvetted tools outside institutional guidance, the risks to their privacy and integrity increase.

Instead of banning GenAI, universities can offer licensed, secure tools and educate students on their appropriate use. This supports both ethical awareness and academic integrity. Just as we teach students to cite sources or evaluate evidence, we should teach them to engage with GenAI responsibly.

Setting Ethical Precedents

Some argue that even small contributions to harm are morally significant—especially when institutions help normalize problematic practices. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t follow that bans are the best response.

A more constructive alternative is to model responsible AI use. That includes setting ethical procurement standards, embedding AI literacy in curricula, and advocating for transparency and fair labor. Universities, especially when acting collectively, have leverage to influence AI providers. They can demand tools that respect privacy, reduce emissions, and avoid exploitative labor.

In other words, universities should take moral leadership—not by withdrawing, but by shaping the development and use of GenAI.

Choosing a Better Path

GenAI is not going away. The real question is how we engage with it—and on whose terms. Blanket bans may seem safe or principled, but they often achieve little and may create new harms.

Instead, universities should adopt a balanced approach. Acknowledge the risks. Respond to them—through institutional advocacy, ethical licensing, and student education. But also recognize the benefits of GenAI and prepare students to use it well.

In doing so, universities fulfill both moral and educational responsibilities: not by pretending GenAI doesn’t exist, but by helping shape the future it creates.

Karl de Fine Licht is Associate Professor in Ethics and Technology at Chalmers University of Technology. His research focuses on the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on public decision-making and higher education. He has published extensively on trustworthy AI, generative AI, and justice in technology governance, and regularly advises public and academic institutions on responsible AI use.

Economics / General / Governance / Liberty / Moral values / Punishment

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How much is too much? Why defining ‘mass incarceration’ is important – and isn’t as easy as it seems

In this post, Vincent Chiao, discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on how to understand the “mass” part of “mass incarceration.”

By Our World In Data. See English Wikipedia: Our World in Data. – https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prison-population-rate. CC BY 4.0,

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. On a per capita basis, the United States incarcerates at a higher rate than any other democracy, with the possible exception of El Salvador. Yet at the same time, a disturbingly large share of crime is never reported much less punished. This raises the simple question: how do we know when a penal system incarcerates too many people? Even as “mass incarceration” has become a staple of both academic research and political discourse over the last decade, and even as renewed attention has been paid to glaring racial disparities, the question of scale – how much is too much – has remained surprisingly elusive.

Why defining excess is not as easy as it seems.

It is tempting to think that it is sufficient to point to the sheer scale of incarceration in the United States. Tempting—but wrong. Most crimes in the United States go unpunished, including “core” crimes of interpersonal violence. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a third of robberies, half of aggravated assaults, and the overwhelming majority of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported, much less punished. Strikingly, one advocacy group estimates that there are approximately 433,000 sexual assaults in the United States every year, and that ‘out of every 1000 sexual assaults, 975 perpetrators will walk free.’ This implies that each year there are approximately 422,000 instances of sexual assault in which no one is held accountable. For context, that is strikingly close to the total number of people admitted to prison in 2021.

It is true that people tend to be incarcerated for longer in the United States than in other parts of the world, but that alone does not show that the United States incarcerates “too many” people. In part, this is because punishments of varying degrees of severity might all be in some sense “proportionate,” and in part because the large number of unpunished crimes creates significant headroom in incarceration rates. The United States could incarcerate many more people, and potentially incarcerate them for longer, without violating basic rights against punishing the innocent or disproportionate punishment of the guilty.

Otherwise put: incarceration rates tend to be driven more by policy than by crime. What makes this into a philosophical problem is principled disagreement about what we are trying to do when we punish people for committing crimes. Crime prevention? Reparation? Symbolic vindication? Rehabilitation? Something else? We tend to be more confident that criminals should be punished than we are as to why they should be punished. But that makes it difficult to say if what we are getting is too much, too little, or just about right.

What about crime prevention?

Crime prevention is the most common, and most popular, answer to “why do we punish criminals?” But it is easy to see why one might hesitate. “Is incarceration an efficient way of preventing crime?” quickly leads to comparing the interests of the innocent in not being victimized against the interests of the guilty in not being imprisoned. Not only is that a hard question to answer objectively, but it also involves intrusive value judgments that liberals have reason to eschew. Telling people that their safety isn’t “worth the cost” can easily sound condescending, particularly when the costs mostly fall on those who choose to break the law.

Three conceptions of excess

This presents a difficult, though not insurmountable, challenge. For starters, we could define excess incarceration in strictly Paretian terms: can we release people from jails and prisons without increasing crime? Since this approach makes some people better off without making anyone worse off, it does not require trading off different people’s interests.

Alternatively, we could consider whether alternative modes of preventing crime could substitute for incarceration, again holding crime constant. By holding crime constant, we would only be asking whether there are ways of controlling crime that have a less malign impact on people’s lives than prisons. This too does not involve weighing competing interests.

The main limitation of these approaches is that they take existing levels of criminal victimization as sacrosanct. As a result, a quite substantial degree of incarceration could potentially be justified if it prevented trivial increases in crime. That might lead us to seek a more demanding conception of excess. That will, however, require weighing competing interests – those of potential victims in not having their rights violated and those of potential prisoners in not being incarcerated. As noted, this can easily come across as condescending, and worse, as involving intrusive judgments of worth.

That said, it’s worth noting that very few people are absolutists about crime. Most of us regularly make practical trade-offs between convenience and safety, for instance, which routes we will walk, where to lock our bikes, whether to install a security system. These mundane decisions – along with jury awards, tangible costs, and survey data – reveal how people subjectively value safety versus other goods.

Such information would, of course, need to be carefully considered to control for morally salient biases. Nonetheless, the broader point is that a utilitarian conception of excess is not committed to paternalistically evaluating whether people are wrong to fear crime as much as they do. Its theory of value can be constructed from the bottom up rather than imposed from the top down. Doing so can help mitigate concerns about condescending or intrusive value judgments.

So what?

Mass incarceration is unjust. This is in part because the burdens of incarceration are unfairly distributed, but it is also in part because those burdens are excessive in absolute terms. The moral critique of mass incarceration thus depends on an analytical metric—a theory of what it is to incarcerate too many people. The metric we choose will tell us what it means to truly bring the era of mass incarceration to an end.

Vincent Chiao’s research interests are in public law, with a particular focus on the philosophy of criminal law. He is the author of Criminal Law in the Age of the Administrative State (OUP 2018). Themes in his work include the place of law in formal and informal social orders, punishment and the evolution of cooperation, and the rule of law as a social technology.

Economics / General / Liberty / Rights

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ARE NUDGES FAILING VULNERABLE POPULATIONS?

In this post, Viviana Ponce de León Solís discusses her article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on  how nudging interventions can have uneven effects on low-income individuals, potentially worsening inequalities.

Image by Reinhard Dietrich from Wikimedia Commons

Nudges can be powerful tools for influencing behavior, but their impact on vulnerable populations—especially low-socioeconomic status groups (SES)—remains a topic of debate. Research reveals three possible outcomes: these groups may respond more strongly, less strongly, or similarly to nudges compared to the general population. While the type of nudge—cognitive, affective, or behavioral—matters, the real key to success lies in the intervention’s design and its ability to address the unique barriers faced by the target audience. Without careful consideration, “one-size-fits-all” nudges risk deepening inequalities or stigmatizing vulnerable communities.

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Economics / General / Moral values / Work

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What’s so bad about workism?

In this post, Matthew Hammerton (Singapore Management University) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the phenomenon and value of people making work the primary source of meaning in their life.

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Some people center their life on work. They identify with their job and derive most of their life’s meaning from it. The writer Derek Thompson coined the term ‘workism’ to describe this phenomenon. Other people center their life on family (think of a stay-at-home parent who finds raising children deeply meaningful), a hobby, or something else entirely. Finally, some people don’t center their life on any single thing. Instead, they try to live a well-rounded life, drawing meaning and identity from a plurality of sources.

Are each of these lifestyles reasonable ways to live a life, or are some of them mistakes that lead to less fulfilling lives? In recent years, workism has come under fire and been dismissed as an especially poor life choice. In my article ‘What is wrong with workism?’ I challenge that view and defend workism as a viable way to live a good life. In case you are wondering, I am not a workist myself—I find meaning from a plurality of sources. Still, from a philosophical perspective, I don’t see what’s wrong with some people choosing to center their lives on work.  

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Children / Climate / Democracy / Environment / General / Social justice

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Innocence and Agency: The ethics of child protests

In this post, Tim Fowler (University of Bristol) discusses his recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy in which he explores whether children can be deemed as competent to engage in political activism.

The Fridays for Future or ‘Climate Strikes’ have been a striking feature of political action on climate change. Most associated with Greta Thunberg, these actions reveal the power of children to intervene effectively in political spaces. In doing so, they raise ethical, political, and sociological questions. In my paper I focus on two: first, whether recognizing children’s right to protest should affect the age thresholds for other activities, especially voting; and second, the impact on the child protesters themselves.

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