Truth is neither absolute nor timeless. But the pursuit of truth remains at the heart of the scientific endeavour But philosophers of science, over the past half-century, have turned against the representation of science as a ceaseless forward march toward truth. It is just not how science works, how it moves through history. It flies […]
A moral map for AI cars – reveal that moral choices are not universal
The Moral Machine Experiment – Survey maps global variations in ethics for programming autonomous vehicles. How do different cultures value human life? To find out, researchers created a viral online experiment to gather data from millions of participants across the world. Some values generalised across cultures, but others came as a surprise. When a driver […]
Life-and-death thought experiments are correctly unsolvable
Moral dilemma should not be seen as puzzles to be solved – but sources of insight for living in complexity. People have concerns about the psychological effects of endlessly playing shoot-em-up video games but I sometimes wonder whether doing moral philosophy is just as corrosive. A worryingly large proportion of ethical thought experiments involve fantasies […]