This article examines the complaint that arbitrary algorithmic decisions wrong those whom they affect. It makes three contributions. First, it provides an analysis of what arbitrariness means in this context. Second, it argues that arbitrariness is not of moral concern except when special circumstances apply. However, when the same algorithm or different algorithms based on the same data are used in multiple contexts, a person may be arbitrarily excluded from a broad range of opportunities. The third contribution is to explain (...) why this systemic exclusion is of moral concern and to offer a solution to address it. (shrink)

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The Anti-Compounding Injustice principle or aci. Compounding injustice and the aci principle are likely to be relevant when analyzing the moral issues raised by “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Past injustice can infect the data used in algorithmic decisions in two distinct ways. Sometimes prior (...) injustice undermines the accuracy of the data itself. In these contexts, improving accuracy will also help to avoid compounding injustice. Other times, past injustice produces real-world differences among people with regard to skills, health, wealth, and other traits that employers, lenders, and others seek to measure. When decisions are based on accurate data that itself results from prior injustice, these decisions can also compound injustice. This second dynamic has received less attention than the first but is especially important because improving the accuracy of data will not mitigate this unfairness. (shrink)

Exploring the philosophical foundations of discrimination law as it exists in several jurisdictions, this collection of all new essays bridges the gap between abstract philosophical work on justice and fairness and legal work on specific types of discrimination.

Clinical research employing the randomized clinical trial has, traditionally, been understood to pose an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, each patient ought to get the treatment that best meets her needs, as judged by the patient in consultation with her doctor. On the other hand, the method most helpful to advancing our understanding about what treatments are indeed best able to meet patient needs is the randomized trial, which necessitates that each patient's care is decided not by physician judgment (...) or patient choice but instead by random assignment. The tension can be described as a conflict between the interests of individual patients who are sick today, and the interests of the group of people who will become sick in the future and would benefit from advances in medical understanding. How one ought to balance these important and often competing interests is an important ethical question that resists easy resolution. (shrink)

The essays in this volume apply philosophical analysis to address three kinds of questions: What are the implications of genetic science for our understanding of nature? What might it influence in our conception of human nature? What challenges does genetic science pose for specific issues of private conduct or public policy?

Clinical research employing the randomized clinical trial has, traditionally, been understood to pose an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, each patient ought to get the treatment that best meets her needs, as judged by the patient in consultation with her doctor. On the other hand, the method most helpful to advancing our understanding about what treatments are indeed best able to meet patient needs is the randomized trial, which necessitates that each patient's care is decided not by physician judgment (...) or patient choice but instead by random assignment. The tension can be described as a conflict between the interests of individual patients who are sick today, and the interests of the group of people who will become sick in the future and would benefit from advances in medical understanding. How one ought to balance these important and often competing interests is an important ethical question that resists easy resolution. (shrink)

Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor—the drug courier—is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he (...) suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about her pain. The paper argues that each of these actors is justified in cultivating ignorance about his client’s or patient’s truthfulness. If this is right, then a good theory of willful blindness must distinguish these cases. The article argues that neither Husak & Callender’s motivation-based account of willful blindness nor the recklessness account is able to do so. The paper proposes the following alternative: contrived ignorance constitutes culpable blindness when the decision to remain blind or to cultivate blindness is not itself justified. This Justification approach meshes with our intuitions about willfully blind drug couriers as well as willfully blind lawyers and doctors. (shrink)

When a doctor writes prescriptions in his office, following consultation with a patient, and receives no compensation other than the normal fee for service, can this still be drug trafficking? Recent courtjudgments have emphatically held that it can, but in so doing courts wrongly impose criminal liability on doctors for trusting patients.

In Faces of Inequality, Sophia Moreau offers an intricate and nuanced account of the wrong of discrimination that is grounded in the real-world complaints of people who have been the victims of dis...

Bribery is an agreement to exchange something of value for an official act. According to the dominant view, bribery is wrong because this agreement violates the professional or positional duties of the official. This chapter argues that this duty-based account is flawed. Instead, the author argues that the key features of bribery, as compared to other sorts of exchanges, reside in the fact that goods or services of different types are exchanged.