ḥeleḳ 1. Isure biʼah, ḳedushah u-tseniʻut -- ḥeleḳ 2. Hilkhot yiḥud ṿe-onaʼat mamon u-devarim.

While anti-exceptionalism about logic is now a popular topic within the philosophy of logic, there’s still a lack of clarity over what the proposal amounts to. currently, it is most common to conceive of AEL as the proposal that logic is continuous with the sciences. Yet, as we show here, this conception of AEL is unhelpful due to both its lack of precision, and its distortion of the current debates. Rather, AEL is better understood as the rejection of certain traditional (...) properties of logic. The picture that results is not of one singular position, but rather a cluster of often connected positions with distinct motivations, understood in terms of their rejection of clusters of the various traditional properties. In order to show the fruitfulness of this new conception of AEL, we distinguish between two prominent versions of the position, metaphysical and epistemological AEL, and show how the two positions need not stand or fall together. (shrink)

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on the logical structure of intentional action, on the (...) question of whether basic actions are tryings, and on the notion of “options” in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

In non-ideal theory, the political philosopher seeks to identify an injustice, synthesize social scientific work to diagnose its underlying causes, and propose morally permissible and potentially efficacious remedies. This paper explores the role in non-ideal theory of the identification of a plausible agent of change who might bring about the proposed remedies. I argue that the question of the agent of change is connected with the other core tasks of diagnosing injustice and proposing practical remedies. In this connection, I criticize (...) two linked postures that nonideal theorists sometimes adopt: a technocratic mode of neutral policy recommendation, whereby philosophers say what “we” must do to address some problem, without attending to the way agency enters the problem and its possible resolution; and the tendency to treat non-ideal theory as primarily consisting int eh enumeration of duties we are failing to fulfill, and specification of who is under what additional duties in light of this shortfall. My argument is that these tendencies fail to register in a coherent way the practical character of political philosophy. (shrink)

Considerable attention recently has been paid to anti-exceptionalism about logic, the thesis that logic is more similar to the sciences in important respects than traditionally thought. One of AEL’s prominent claims is that logic’s methodology is similar to that of the recognised sciences, with part of this proposal being that logics provide explanations in some sense. However, insufficient attention has been given to what this proposal amounts to, and the challenges that arise in providing an account of explanations in logic. (...) This paper clarifies these challenges, and shows how the practice-based approach is best placed to meet them. (shrink)

This is the first work to apply complex systems science to the psychological interplay of order and chaos. The author draws on thought from a wide range of disciplines-both conventional and unorthodox-to address such questions as the nature of consciousness, the relation between mind and reality, and the justification of belief systems. The material should provoke thought among systems scientists, theoretical psychologists, artificial intelligence researchers, and philosophers.

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

It is natural to think that there is a tight connection between whether someone is responsible for some outcome and whether it is appropriate to hold her accountable for that outcome. And this natural thought naturally extends to health: if someone is responsible for her health, then, all else being equal, she is accountable for it. Given this, some have thought that responsibility for health has an important role to play in distributing the benefits and burdens of healthcare. But there (...) is a reason for caution. That health is influenced by social, economic, and environmental factors is a matter of consensus. And some have argued that in light of these social determinants of health, individuals are not typically responsible for their health, rendering inappropriate policies that employ a responsibility‐for‐health criterion. This debate implicates a number of overlapping concepts and questions that are often difficult to pull apart. And I worry that those who maintain that social determinants undermine responsibility for health have latched on to the wrong target. The social determinants of health are relevant to such policies, but, I argue, not by globally undermining responsibility. Rather, social determinants are sometimes responsibility‐undermining, sometimes responsibility‐preserving, and often relevant to whether we should hold individuals accountable for their health regardless of their responsibility. This calls for a more nuanced appraisal of the ways in which the social determinants of health are relevant to such policies. And here I attempt to provide one. (shrink)

Democracy is commonly associated with political equality and/or majority rule. This essay shows that these three ideas are conceptually separate, so the transition from any one to another stands in need of further substantive argument, which is not always adequately given. It does this by offering an alternative decision-making mechanism, called lottery voting, in which all individuals cast votes for their preferred options but, instead of these being counted, one is randomly selected and that vote determines the outcome. This procedure (...) is democratic and egalitarian, since all have an equal chance to influence outcomes, but obviously not majoritarian. (shrink)

This paper first offers a standard modal extension of dialetheic logics that respect the normal semantics for negation and conjunction, in an attempt to adequately model absolutism, the thesis that there are true contradictions at metaphysically possible worlds. It is shown, however, that the modal extension has unsavoury consequences for both absolutism and dialetheism. While the logic commits the absolutist to dialetheism, it commits the dialetheist to the impossibility of the actual world. A new modal logic AV is then proposed (...) which avoids these unsavoury consequences by invalidating the interdefinability rules for the modal operators with the use of two valuation relations. However, while using AV carries no significant cost for the absolutist, the same isn't true for the dialetheist. Although using AV allows her to avoid the consequence that the actual world is an impossible world, it does so only on the condition that the dialetheist admits that she cannot give a dialetheic solution to all self-refe.. (shrink)

This paper develops a language for distinguishing more rigorously between various senses of the term ‘anthropocentrism.’ Specifically, it differentiates between:1. Perceptual anthropocentrism ;2. Descriptive anthropocentrism 3. Normative anthropocentrism.

Critical counter-conducts -- Who is the subject of (Foucault's human) rights? -- The ambivalence of rights -- Rights between tactics and strategy.

I introduce a distinction between health need and medical need, and raise several questions about their interaction. Health needs are needs that relate directly to our health condition. Medical needs are needs which bear some relation to medical institutions or processes. I suggest that the question of whether medical insurance or public care should cover medical needs, health needs, or only needs which fit both categories is a political question that cannot be resolved definitionally. I also argue against an overly (...) strict definition of medical need on the grounds that this presupposes, wrongly, that medical intervention should always be a last resort. (shrink)

Counterfactuals are context-sensitive. However, we argue that various debates and doctrines in metaphysics and the philosophy of science are premised on ignoring the full extent of counterfactual context-sensitivity. Our focus is on the prominent "miracle" versus "no-miracle" debate about counterfactuals under the assumption that our laws of nature are deterministic. But we also discuss doctrines that employ counterfactuals in theories of rational decision, as well as doctrines that explain what it is to be a law of nature in terms of (...) counterfactuals. We conclude by drawing some morals about the use of counterfactuals in philosophical theorizing more generally. (shrink)

“Only a small community has concentratedon general intelligence. No one has tried to make a thinking machine... The bottom line is that we really haven’t progressed too far toward a truly intelligent machine. We have collections of dumb specialists in small domains; the true majesty of general intelligence still awaits our attack.... We have got to get back to the deepest questions of AI and general intelligence... ” –MarvinMinsky as interviewed in Hal’s Legacy, edited by David Stork, 2000. Our goal (...) in creating this edited volume has been to?ll an apparent gap in the scienti?c literature, by providing a coherent presentation of a body of contemporary research that, in spite of its integral importance, has hitherto kept a very low pro?le within the scienti?c and intellectual community. This body of work has not been given a name before; in this book we christen it “Arti?cial General Intelligence”. What distinguishes AGI work from run-of-the-mill “arti?cial intelligence” research is that it is explicitly focused on engineering general intelligence in the short term. We have been active researchers in the AGI?eld for many years, and it has been a pleasure to gather together papers from our colleagues working on related ideas from their own perspectives. In the Introduction we give a conceptual overview of the AGI?eld, and also summarize and interrelate the key ideas of the papers in the subsequent chapters. (shrink)

This paper develops a language for distinguishing more rigorously between various senses of the term ‘anthropocentrism.’ Specifically, it differentiates between:1. Perceptual anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms informed by sense-data from human sensory organs);2. Descriptive anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that begin from, center upon, or are ordered around Homo sapiens / ‘the human’)3. Normative anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that constrain inquiry in a way that somehow privileges Homo sapiens / ‘the human’ [passive normative anthropocentrism]; and which characterizes paradigms that make assumptions or (...) assertions about the superiority of Homo sapiens, its capacities, the primacy of its values, its position in the universe, and/or make prescriptions based on these assertions and assumptions [active normative anthropocentrism]). (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) (...) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe develops a non-psychologistic account of intentional individual action. According to her, action is intentional when it is subject to a special sense of the question “Why?”, the answer to which displays certain forms of explanation that are available to the agent. In this paper, I present an Anscombean account of collective action. On this account, an action is collective if it is subject to a certain sense of the question why, and displays a form different from, but related (...) to, that of individual action. In particular, agents act together on my account if and only if their actions can all be straightforwardly instrumentally rationalized by the same action. Since an Anscombean account is non-psychologistic in that it does not presuppose that actions are intentional in virtue of being caused by a mental state, my account dissolves most worries about group minds. If I am right, such concerns arise from a bad picture of individual action that poses special problems when carried over to the collective case. (shrink)

This book provides a richly interdisciplinary assessment of the thought and work of Bryan Norton, one of most innovative and influential environmental philosophers of the past thirty years. In landmark works such as Toward Unity Among Environmentalists and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Norton charted a new and highly productive course for an applied environmental philosophy, one fully engaged with the natural and social sciences as well as the management professions. A Sustainable Philosophy gathers together a distinguished group (...) of scholars and professionals from a wide array of fields to engage Norton’s work and its legacy for our shared environmental future. A study in the power of intellectual legacy and the real-world influence of philosophy, the book will be of great interest scholars and students in environmental philosophy, public policy and management, and environmental and sustainability studies. By considering the value and impact of Norton’s body of work it will also chart a course for the next generation of pragmatic environmental philosophers and sustainability scholars grappling with questions of environmental value, knowledge, and practice in a rapidly changing world. (shrink)

Until relatively recently, few democrats had much to say about the constitution of the ‘demos' that ought to rule. A number of recent writers have, however, argued that all those whose interests are affected must be enfranchised if decision-making is to be fully democratic. This article criticizes this approach, arguing that it misunderstands democracy. Democratic procedures are about the agency of the people so only agents can be enfranchised, yet not all bearers of interests are also agents. If we focus (...) on agency, rather than who is affected, then this leads us to focus on the permissible limits of action, rather than who makes the decision. Just as individual sovereignty is ordinarily limited by the requirement not to injure others, we may apply similar restrictions to what a demos can permissibly do. Thus, any collection of individuals may choose to regulate their affairs collectively for mutual benefit, but should be prohibited from imposing negative externalities on outsiders. On this view, the constitution or definition of the demos is arbitrary, from the democratic point of view. Moreover, democracy does not require the expansion of the franchise, unless injuries cannot be avoided. (shrink)

Proposals for increasing organ donation are often rejected as incompatible with altruistic motivation on the part of donors. This paper questions, on conceptual grounds, whether most organ donors really are altruistic. If we distinguish between altruism and solidarity – a more restricted form of other-concern, limited to members of a particular group – then most organ donors exhibit solidarity, rather than altruism. If organ donation really must be altruistic, then we have reasons to worry about the motives of existing donors. (...) However, I argue that altruism is not necessary, because organ donation supplies important goods, whatever the motivation, and we can reject certain dubious motivations, such as financial profit, without insisting on altruism.Once solidaristic donation is accepted, certain reforms for increasing donation rates seem permissible. This paper considers two proposals. Firstly, it has been suggested that registered donors should receive priority for transplants. While this proposal appears based on a solidaristic norm of reciprocity, it is argued that such a scheme would be undesirable, since non-donors may contribute to society in other ways. The second proposal is that donors should be able to direct their organs towards recipients that they feel solidarity with. This is often held to be inconsistent with altruistic motivation, but most donation is not entirely undirected in the first place (for instance, donor organs usually go to co-nationals). While allowing directed donation would create a number of practical problems, such as preventing discrimination, there appears to be no reason in principle to reject it. (shrink)

Whilst God is said to be omnipresent, some religions also claim that God is specially present, or more present at/in certain locations. For example, a claim of special presence shared by Christians and Jews is that God was specially present at/in the first Temple. The chapter canvases various ways in which one can make sense of this claim whilst still affirming the omnipresence of God. This includes offering different accounts of special presence relying on derivative notions of presence, and offering (...) other views of special presence that rely upon fundamental accounts of presence. The chapter itself does not argue for one view in particular, but instead offers a map of possible options and future areas for research. (shrink)

Bryan Norton 's convergence hypothesis, which predicts that nonanthropocentric and human-based philosophical positions will actually converge on long-sighted, multi-value environmental policy, has drawn a number of criticisms from within environmental philosophy. In particular, nonanthropocentric theorists like J. Baird Callicott and Laura Westra have rejected the accuracy of Norton 's thesis, refusing to believe that his model's contextual appeals to a plurality of human and environmental values will be able adequately to provide for the protection of ecological integrity. These theoretical criticisms (...) of convergence, however, have made no real attempt to engage the empirical validity of the hypothesis, the dimension that Norton clearly takes to be the centerpiece of his project. Accordingly, the present paper attempts to provide an empirical analysis of the convergence argument, by means of a study of the Vermont public's environmental commitments and their attitudes toward national forest policy. Our findings support a generalized version of Norton 's thesis, and lead us to suggest that environmental philosophers should try to be more inclusive and empirically minded in their discussions about public moral claims regarding nature. (shrink)

Something is good insofar as it achieves its end, so says a neo-Aristotelian view of goodness. Powers/dispositions are paradigm cases of entities that have an end, so say many metaphysicians. A question therefore arises, namely, can one account for neo-Aristotelian goodness in terms of an ontology of powers? This is what I shallbeginto explore in this paper. I will first provide a brief explication of both neo-Aristotelian goodness and the metaphysics of powers, before turning to investigate whether one can give (...) an account of neo-Aristotelian goodness in terms of powers. I will suggest that the answer to this question is yes. (shrink)

Brian Leftow has argued in significant detail for a timeless conception of God. However, his work has been interacted with less than one might expect, especially given that some have contended that divine timelessness should be put to death and buried. Further, the work that has critically interacted with Leftow does a very poor job at discrediting it, or so I will contend. As we shall see, the main reason for this is either because what is central to Leftow’s view (...) is not affected by the objection, or because Leftow provides another way of getting his theory off the ground. Why, then, do so many objections miss the mark? I suspect it’s because many struggle to understand Leftow’s view and what is central to it. As such, one of the main goals of this paper will be to make Leftow’s account more accessible and to elucidate the main elements of the theory, whilst also providing responses to the main objections raised against his view. The overall result of this, I hope, will be a more fruitful examination of Leftow’s view in the future. (shrink)

There is an objection to divine timelessness which claims that timelessness shouldn’t be adopted since on this view evil is never “destroyed,” “vanquished,” “eradicated” or defeated. By contrast, some divine temporalists think that presentism is the key that allows evil to be destroyed/vanquished/eradicated/defeated. However, since presentism is often considered to be inconsistent with timelessness, it is thought that the presentist solution is not available for defenders of timelessness. In this paper I first show how divine timelessness is consistent with a (...) presentist view of time and then how defenders of Presentist-Timelessness can adopt the presentist solution to the removal of evil. After this, I conclude the paper by showing that it’s far from clear that the presentist solution is successful and that unless one weakens what is meant by the destruction/vanquishing/eradication/defeat of evil, one can only make the presentist solution work by adopting a number of additional assumptions that many will find unattractive. (shrink)

The idea of using responsibility in the allocation of healthcare resources has been criticized for, among other things, too readily abandoning people who are responsible for being very badly off. One response to this problem is that while responsibility can play a role in resource allocation, it cannot do so if it will leave those who are responsible below a “sufficiency” threshold. This paper considers first whether a view can be both distinctively sufficientarian and allow responsibility to play a role (...) even for those who will be left with very poor health. It then draws several further distinctions that may affect the application of responsibility at this level. We conclude that a more plausible version of the sufficientarian view is to allow a role for responsibility where failure to do so will leave someone else who is not responsible below the sufficiency threshold. However, we suggest that individuals must exhibit “sufficient responsibility” in order for this to apply, involving both a sufficient level of control and an avoidable failure to respond adequately to reasons for action. (shrink)

The three most common responses to Taurek’s ‘numbers problem’ are saving the greater number, equal chance lotteries and weighted lotteries. Weighted lotteries have perhaps received the least support, having been criticized by Scanlon What We Owe to Each Other ( 1998 ) and Hirose ‘Fairness in Life and Death Cases’ ( 2007 ). This article considers these objections in turn, and argues that they do not succeed in refuting the fairness of a weighted lottery, which remains a potential solution to (...) cases of conflict. Moreover, it shows how these responses actually lead to a new argument for weighted lotteries, appealing to fairness and Pareto-optimality. (shrink)

For Kant right and ethics are two formally distinct departments of a single morality of reason and freedom. Unlike ethics, right involves an authorization to coerce, and this coercion serves as a pathological incentive. I argue that for Kant the distinctive character of right flows from the fact that juridical obligation has a different relational structure than ethical obligation. I argue that this relational structure explains the connection of right to coercion, and also explains how a categorical imperative can be (...) known a priori to issue in both a pathological and non-pathological incentive. Thus the justification of coercion and its special role as incentive are rooted in the relational character of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in categorical imperatives of reason. Since this pathological incentive has a moral basis in the structure of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in a representation of moral laws, I argue that Kant’s discussion of the juridical incentive of coercion is more continuous with his main discussion of moral incentives in the Critique of Practical Reason than it might at first appear. I illustrate the consequences of this reading by discussing the propensity to injustice, as Kant understands it, and the unique way in which the juridical incentive undermines it. (shrink)

Fairness is a central, but under-theorized, notion in moral and political philosophy. This paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it criticizes Broome’s seminal account of fairness in Proc Aristotelian Soc 91:87–101, showing that there are problems with restricting fairness to a matter of relative satisfaction and holding that it does not itself require the satisfaction of the claims in question. Secondly, it considers the justification of lotteries to resolve cases of ties between competing claims, which Broome claims as support for his (...) theory, and contrasts random procedures to contests of skill, which may also be considered lotteries in a broader sense. I offer no alternative account of fairness of my own, but hope to point the way for future research on the nature of fairness. (shrink)

Healthcare practitioners have access to a range of ethical guidance. However, the normative role of this guidance in ethical decision-making is underexplored. This paper considers two ways that healthcare practitioners could approach ethics guidance. We first outline the idea of deference to ethics guidance, showing how an attitude of deference raises three key problems: moral value; moral understanding; and moral error. Drawing on philosophical literature, we then advocate an alternative framing of ethics guidance as a form of moral testimony by (...) colleagues and suggest that a more promising attitude to ethics guidance is to approach it in the spirit of ‘critical engagement’ rather than deference. (shrink)

Bryan Norton's convergence hypothesis, which predicts that nonan‐thropocentric and human‐based philosophical positions will actually converge on long‐sighted, multi‐value environmental policy, has drawn a number of criticisms from within environmental philosophy. In particular, nonanthropocentric theorists like J. Baird Callicott and Laura Westra have rejected the accuracy of Norton's thesis, refusing to believe that his model's contextual appeals to a plurality of human and environmental values will be able adequately to provide for the protection of ecological integrity. These theoretical criticisms of convergence, (...) however, have made no real attempt to engage the empirical validity of the hypothesis, the dimension that Norton clearly takes to be the centerpiece of his project. Accordingly, the present paper attempts to provide an empirical analysis of the convergence argument, by means of a study of the Vermont public's environmental commitments and their attitudes toward national forest policy. Our findings support a generalized version of Norton's thesis, and lead us to suggest that environmental philosophers should try to be more inclusive and empirically minded in their discussions about public moral claims regarding nature. (shrink)

Some jurisdictions that allow assisted dying require participating patients to have a terminal illness. This includes all Australian and US states where assisted dying is allowed. 1 Philip Reed 2 argues that this requirement constitutes discrimination against the dying. As Reed 2 argues: ‘assisted death laws that limit their services to the dying discriminate against them because death is offered to them to solve their problems’. This discrimination could take two forms: (1) via harm to dying patients as a group (...) as a result of the existence of assisted dying programmes; (2) via a negative message that such programmes communicate about whether the lives of dying patients are worth living. Assisted dying programmes are not unjustly discriminatory in either sense so long as we assume that unjust discrimination requires harm to the group in question. If assisted dying singles out the terminally ill for a programme... (shrink)

This volume addresses the relationship between law and neoliberalism. Assembling work from established and emerging legal scholars, political theorists, philosophers, historians and sociologists from around the world, including the Americas, Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom, it addresses the conceptual, legal, and political relationships between liberal legality and neoliberal economics. More specifically, the book analyses the role that legality plays in the dominant economic force of our time: offering both a legal corrective to scholarship in economics and political economy that (...) has paid insufficient attention to legal ideas and, at the same time, a political economic corrective to legal scholarship which has only recently turned to theorizing neoliberalism. It will be of enormous interest to those working at the intersection of law and politics in our neoliberal age. (shrink)

Greg Bognar has recently offered a prioritarian justification for ‘fair innings’ distributive principles that would ration access to healthcare on the basis of patients' age. In this article, I agree that Bognar's principle is among the strongest arguments for age-based rationing. However, I argue that this position is incomplete because of the possibility of ‘time-relative' egalitarian principles that could complement the kind of lifetime egalitarianism that Bognar adopts. After outlining Bognar's position, and explaining the attraction of time-relative egalitarianism, I suggest (...) various ways in which these two kinds of principle could interact. Since various options have very different implications for age-based rationing, proponents of such a rationing scheme must take a position on time-relative egalitarianism to complement a lifetime prioritarian view like Bognar's. (shrink)

This paper explores ethical issues raised by quadratic voting. We compare quadratic voting to majority voting from two ethical perspectives: the perspective of utilitarianism and that of democratic theory. From a utilitarian standpoint, the comparison is ambiguous: if voter preferences are independent of wealth, then quadratic voting out- performs majority voting, but if voter preferences are polarized by wealth, then majority voting may be superior. From the standpoint of democratic theory, we argue that assess- ments in terms of efficiency are (...) too narrow. Voting institutions and political institutions more generally face a legitimacy requirement. We argue that in the presence of inequalities of wealth, any vote buying mechanism, including quadratic voting, will have a difficult time meeting this requirement. (shrink)

My students sometimes worry that if eternalism is true then they can’t have libertarian freedom. They aren’t alone, as this sentiment is also expressed, albeit typically briefly, by various philosophers. However, somewhat surprisingly, those working within the free will literature have largely had nothing to say about libertarianism’s relationship to time, with this also being similar in the case of those working in the philosophy of time, apart from some work which has mainly focused on nonlibertarian views of freedom. In (...) this short paper I note why I’m currently unconvinced that there’s an incompatibility between eternalism and libertarianism, and in doing so one will see why I think they are compatible. (shrink)

While it seems unlikely that any method of guaranteeing human-friendliness on the part of advanced Artificial General Intelligence systems will be possible, this doesn’t mean the only alternatives are throttling AGI development to safeguard humanity, or plunging recklessly into the complete unknown. Without denying the presence of a certain irreducible uncertainty in such matters, it is still sensible to explore ways of biasing the odds in a favorable way, such that newly created AI systems are significantly more likely than not (...) to be Friendly. Several potential methods of effecting such biasing are explored here, with a particular but non-exclusive focus on those that are relevant to open-source AGI projects, and with illustrative examples drawn from the OpenCog open-source AGI project. Issues regarding the relative safety of open versus closed approaches to AGI are discussed and then nine techniques for biasing AGIs in favor of Friendliness are presented: 1. Engineer the capability to acquire integrated ethical knowledge.2. Provide rich ethical interaction and instruction, respecting developmental stages.3. Develop stable, hierarchical goal systems.4. Ensure that the early stages of recursive self-improvement occur relatively slowly and with rich human involvement.5. Tightly link AGI with the Global Brain.6. Foster deep, consensus-building interactions between divergent viewpoints.7. Create a mutually supportive community of AGIs.8. Encourage measured co-advancement of AGI software and AGI ethics theory.9. Develop advanced AGI sooner not later. In conclusion, and related to the final point, we advise the serious co-evolution of functional AGI systems and AGI-related ethical theory as soon as possible, before we have so much technical infrastructure that parties relatively unconcerned with ethics are able to rush ahead with brute force approaches to AGI development. (shrink)