Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, assert that rejecting the use nudges is ‘pointless’ because ‘[i]n many cases, some kind of nudge is inevitable’. Schlomo Cohen makes a similar claim. He asserts that in certain situations surgeons cannot avoid nudging patients either toward or away from consenting to surgical interventions. Cohen concludes that in these situations, nudging patients toward consenting to surgical interventions is uncriticizable or morally permissible. I call this argument: The (...) Unavoidability Argument. In this essay, I will respond to Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument in support of using nudges during the process of informed consent. Specifically, I argue that many so-called ‘unavoidable nudges’ are, in fact, avoidable. Although my argument is directed toward Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument, it is applicable to the unavoidability argument more generally. (shrink)

In “Nudging, Bullshitting, and the Meta-Nudge”, the author responds to William Simkulet’s claim that nudging is bullshitting (according to Harry Frankfurt’s analysis of bullshit and bullshitting), and therefore nudging during the process of informed consent renders consent invalid. The author argues that nudging is not necessarily bullshitting and then explains that although this issue is philosophically interesting, practically speaking, even if nudging is bullshitting, it does not follow that nudging necessarily renders informed consent invalid. This is obviously true in those (...) situations in which nudging during the process of informed consent is unavoidable. The author concludes with a discussion of the meta-nudge and suggests that physicians can use the meta-nudge to eliminate or decrease the power of inappropriate, problematic, or undesirable nudges. (shrink)

In “The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging” (2021), I address a phenomenon that is widely neglected in the current literature on nudges: intentional doxastic nudging, i.e. people’s intentional influence over other people’s beliefs, rather than over their choices. I argue that, at least in brute cases, nudging is not giving reasons, but rather bypasses reasoning altogether. More specifically, nudging utilizes psychological heuristics and the nudged person’s biases in smart ways. The goal of my paper is to defend the claim that nudging, (...) even when it bypasses reasoning, can result in justified beliefs and knowledge. As I argue, it takes two things to accomplish this goal: suitable meta-epistemological views and appropriate circumstances. If a broadly reliabilist account of justified beliefs and knowledge is correct, and if the relevant belief-forming methods are externally individuated in the right way, then nudging to knowledge is possible. If, in addition, the nudger is knowledgeable, epistemically benevolent and systematically effective, then nudging to knowledge will become reality. In their replies Neil Levy (2021) and Jonathan Matheson and Valerie Joly Chock (2021), put pressure on my argument from different angles. Levy thinks that a better case can be made for his view that nudging is giving testimonial reasons, and finds my objections to this view unconvincing. Matheson and Joly Chock, on the other hand, point out that acquiring knowledge through nudging (i.e. epistemic nudging) is compatible with evidentialism, even if nudging is not giving reasons. On their view, evidentialism provides an explanation of epistemic nudging that is superior to my own account, which, according to them, also suffers from a number of counterintuitive consequences. I am grateful to my critics for raising these concerns, because considering them deepens our perspective on the target phenomenon, and has made me think harder about the relevant epistemological issues. Nevertheless, I am convinced that my core claims can be defended against these criticisms. (shrink)

Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges (...) but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity. (shrink)

(1996). International policy of Albania: 1912–21. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 852-857.

One of the common domains in health care in which the concept of vulnerability is used is end-of-life care, including euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS). Since different uses and implications of the notion have been recognised in the literature on EAS, this paper aims to analyse them and reflect on who is the most vulnerable in the context of EAS. A prior exploratory review of the literature has served as a starting point for the discussion. We concluded that vulnerability is (...) a complex, multi-perspective and multi-layered concept, which implies the vulnerability of different stakeholders involved in EAS practices and vulnerability in different aspects of being human (i.e., physical, mental, moral, social and spiritual). A comprehensive understanding of the notion of vulnerability, which balances as well as complements the concept of autonomy, seems to be an indispensable element of the discourse on EAS. (shrink)

We introduce a new and time-efficient memory-encoding paradigm for functional magnetic resonance imaging. This paradigm is optimized for mapping multiple contrasts using a mixed design, using auditory and visual stimuli. We demonstrate that the paradigm evokes robust neuronal activity in typical sensory and memory networks. We were able to detect auditory and visual sensory-specific encoding activities in auditory and visual cortices. Also, we detected stimulus-selective activation in environmental-, voice-, scene-, and face-selective brain regions. A subsequent recognition task allowed the detection (...) of sensory-specific encoding success activity in both auditory and visual cortices, as well as sensory-unspecific positive ESA in the hippocampus. Further, sensory-unspecific negative ESA was observed in the precuneus. Among others, the parallel mixed design enabled sustained and transient activity comparison in contrast to rest blocks. Sustained and transient activations showed great overlap in most sensory brain regions, whereas several regions, typically associated with the default-mode network, showed transient rather than sustained deactivation. We also show that the use of a parallel mixed model had relatively little influence on positive or negative ESA. Together, these results demonstrate a feasible, versatile, and brief memory-encoding task, which includes multiple sensory stimuli to guarantee a comprehensive measurement. This task is especially suitable for large-scale clinical or population studies, which aim to test task-evoked sensory-specific and sensory-unspecific memory-encoding performance as well as broad sensory activity across the life span within a very limited time frame. (shrink)

In controlled human infection (CHI) studies, investigators deliberately infect healthy individuals with pathogens in order to study mechanisms of disease or obtain preliminary efficacy data on investigational vaccines and medicines. CHI studies offer a fast and cost‐effective way of generating new scientific insights, prioritizing investigational products for clinical testing, and reducing the risk that large numbers of people are exposed to ineffective or harmful substances in research or in practice. Yet depending on the pathogen, CHI studies can involve significant risks (...) or burdens for participants, pose risks to individuals or communities not involved in the research, and lead to public controversy. It is therefore essential to ensure that the risks of CHI studies are justified by their social value—that is, their potential to generate benefits for society—and that public trust can be maintained. In this paper, we aim to clarify how research sponsors, research ethics committees and other reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. We develop a list of relevant considerations for making social value judgments based on the standard view of social value. We then use this list to discuss the example of potentially conducting dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings. We argue that dengue virus CHI studies in endemic settings would fall on the higher end of the spectrum of social value, mostly because of their potential to redirect all fields of future dengue research. Drawing on this discussion, we derive several general recommendations for how reviewers should judge the social value of CHI studies. (shrink)

This Open Access book offers a synthetic reflection on the authors’ fieldwork experiences in seven countries within the framework of ‘Authoritarianism in a Global Age’, a major comparative research project. It responds to the demand for increased attention to methodological rigor and transparency in qualitative research, and seeks to advance and practically support field research in authoritarian contexts. Without reducing the conundrums of authoritarian field research to a simple how-to guide, the book systematically reflects and reports on the authors’ combined (...) experiences in getting access to the field, assessing risk, navigating ‘red lines’, building relations with local collaborators and respondents, handling the psychological pressures on field researchers, and balancing transparency and prudence in publishing research. It offers unique insights into this particularly challenging area of field research, makes explicit how the authors handled methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas, and offers recommendations where appropriate. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

O Katulu vemo zelo malo zanesljivega in celo večino tega je treba razbrati iz njegovega lastnega literarnega dela. To je vedno tvegan pristop, ki mu kritika danes večinoma nasprotuje (četudi je kritika vedno spremenljiva in znaki teh sprememb so že v zraku). Toda po drugi strani vemo kar precej o zadnjem stoletju rimske republike, o času torej, v katerem je Katul preživel svoje kratko, a intenzivno življenje, in o številnih javnih osebnostih, tako iz sveta književnosti kot politike, ki jih je (...) štel med svoje prijatelje ali sovražnike. Tako kot Byron, ki je bil Katulu v nekaterih pogledih podoben, se je gibal v krogih visoke družbe, imel je radikalna stališča, ne da bi se aktivno politično udejstvoval, ter je pisal poezijo, ki daje vtis, da je nastala kot odziv na družbeno dogajanje, literarne tokove ali zasebne škandale takratne aristokracije. (shrink)

El presente volumen incluye la edición crítica, acompañada de un completo estudio introductorio, del Arte de bien morir, texto en prosa sin autor declarado, y de La contienda del cuerpo y alma, una composición en verso firmada por Antón López de Meta. Ambas obras integraban un mismo libro destinado a preparar al hombre para enfrentar su tránsito final hacia la vida eterna y forman parte de la tradición del Memento mori.

Issues related to controlled human infection studies using Schistosoma mansoni (CHI-S) were explored to ensure the ethical and voluntary participation of potential CHI-S volunteers in an endemic setting in Uganda. We invited volunteers from a fishing community and a tertiary education community to guide the development of informed consent procedures. Consultative group discussions were held to modify educational materials on schistosomiasis, vaccines and the CHI-S model and similar discussions were held with a test group. With both groups, a mock consent (...) process was conducted. Fourteen in-depth key informant interviews and three group discussions were held to explore perceptions towards participating in a CHI-S. Most of the participants had not heard of the CHI-S. Willingness to take part depended on understanding the study procedures and the consenting process. Close social networks were key in deciding to take part. The worry of adverse effects was cited as a possible hindrance to taking part. Volunteer time compensation was unclear for a CHI-S. Potential volunteers in these communities are willing to take part in a CHI-S. Community engagement is needed to build trust and time must be taken to share study procedures and ensure understanding of key messages. (shrink)

In the contemporary philosophical literature, the topic of security has been largely neglected, and this is especially true of the affect of security. In what follows, I aim to nudge the affect of security toward the philosophical foreground by offering a basic analysis of this attitude. Specifically, I sketch an account on which the affect of security is helpfully construed as a feeling of confidence in one’s ability to competently and effectively exercise one’s agency. Security, so construed, is an affective (...) attitude toward one’s agency that both admits of affect regulation and plays a crucial meta-affective regulatory role in facilitating and modulating other affective dispositions and occurrent emotions. Examining this attitude can help to illuminate both the phenomenology and motivational structure of agency and the nature of certain emotions. (shrink)

Recently several authors have proposed proxies of welfare that equate some (as opposed to all) choices with welfare. In this paper, I first distinguish between two prominent proxies: one based oncontext-independent choicesand the other based onreason-based choices. I then propose an original proxy based on choices that individuals state they would want themselves to repeat at the time of the welfare/policy evaluation (confirmed choices). I articulate three complementary arguments that, I claim, support confirmed choices as a more reliable proxy of (...) welfare than context-independent and reason-based choices. Finally, I discuss the implications of these arguments fornudgesandboosts. (shrink)

Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for objectivity (...) and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these limitations and therefore take evidence-based findings with a much larger grain of salt than do policy makers. Their experience suggests that the (...) real world is more heterogeneous than the world imagined by evidence-based policy enthusiasts. (shrink)

Nudging works through dispositions to decide with specific heuristics, and has three component parts. A nudge is a feature of an environment that enables such a disposition; a person is nudged when such a disposition is triggered; and a person performs a nudged action when such a disposition manifests in action. This analysis clarifies an autonomy-based worry about nudging as used in public policy or for private profit: that a person’s ability to reason well is undermined when she is nudged. (...) Reasoning well is a component of self-guidance, which is an aspect of autonomy and so something there is reason to promote, preserve, or respect. However, a person can reason well when she is nudged: Many of these heuristics are good rules to reason with, and she can be flexible with respect to them when she takes there to be a better way to reason. Along the way, this paper uncovers several design specifications for responsible nudging, and discusses open empirical questions. However, nudging’s being compatible with reasoning well crystallizes a distinct worry about manipulation: that nudge designers can rely on nudged people guiding themselves toward the designers’ own ends. Manipulation of this sort exploits one aspect of autonomy (namely, self-guidance) to undermine autonomy in other respects. (shrink)

This article will appear in a special issue dedicated to theme, "the human being in the digital era: awareness, critical thinking and political space in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence." In this article, I consider the way that social-media companies nudge us to spend more time on their platforms, and I argue that, in principle, these nudges are morally permissible: they are not manipulative and do not violate any obvious moral rules. The moral problem, I argue, is (...) not with nudging in principle but is instead with the fact that users are being nudged towards something bad for them. In practice, this often involves being nudged to spend an unhealthy amount of time using a social-media app or being nudged towards content that is bad for us, such as by promoting eating-disorder content to young girls. Since nudging is morally permissible, it is open to these companies to use the same technologies to nudge us towards the good. (shrink)

Nudge is a concept of policy intervention that originates in Thaler and Sunstein's (2008) popular eponymous book. Following their own hints, we distinguish three properties of nudge interventions: they redirect individual choices by only slightly altering choice conditions (here nudge 1), they use rationality failures instrumentally (here nudge 2), and they alleviate the unfavourable effects of these failures (here nudge 3). We explore each property in semantic detail and show that no entailment relation holds between them. This calls into question (...) the theoretical unity of nudge, as intended by Thaler and Sunstein and most followers. We eventually recommend pursuing each property separately, both in policy research and at the foundational level. We particularly emphasize the need of reconsidering the respective roles of decision theory and behavioural economics to delineate nudge 2 correctly. The paper differs from most of the literature in focusing on the definitional rather than the normative problems of nudge. (shrink)

This paper offers a theoretical framework that can be used to derive viable engineering strategies for the design and development of robots that can nudge people towards moral improvement. The framework relies on research in developmental psychology and insights from Stoic ethics. Stoicism recommends contemplative practices that over time help one develop dispositions to behave in ways that improve the functioning of mechanisms that are constitutive of moral cognition. Robots can nudge individuals towards these practices and can therefore help develop (...) the dispositions to, for example, extend concern to others, avoid parochialism, etc. (shrink)

Many parents are hesitant about, or face motivational barriers to, vaccinating their children. In this paper, we propose a type of vaccination policy that could be implemented either in addition to coercive vaccination or as an alternative to it in order to increase paediatric vaccination uptake in a non-coercive way. We propose the use of vaccination nudges that exploit the very same decision biases that often undermine vaccination uptake. In particular, we propose a policy under which children would be vaccinated (...) at school or day-care by default, without requiring parental authorization, but with parents retaining the right to opt their children out of vaccination. We show that such a policy is likely to be effective, at least in cases in which non-vaccination is due to practical obstacles, rather than to strong beliefs about vaccines, ethically acceptable and less controversial than some alternatives because it is not coercive and affects individual autonomy only in a morally unproblematic way, and likely to receive support from the UK public, on the basis of original empirical research we have conducted on the lay public. (shrink)

If citizens’ behavior threatens to harm others or seems not to be in their own interest, it is not uncommon for governments to attempt to change that behavior. Governmental policy makers can apply established tools from the governmental toolbox to this end. Alternatively, they can employ new tools that capitalize on the wealth of knowledge about human behavior and behavior change that has been accumulated in the behavioral sciences. Two contrasting approaches to behavior change are nudge policies and boost policies. (...) These policies rest on fundamentally different research programs on bounded rationality, namely, the heuristics and biases program and the simple heuristics program, respectively. This article examines the policy–theory coherence of each approach. To this end, it identifies the necessary assumptions underlying each policy and analyzes to what extent these assumptions are implied by the theoretical commitments of the respective research program. Two key results of this analysis are that the two policy approaches rest on diverging assumptions and that both suffer from disconnects with the respective theoretical program, but to different degrees: Nudging appears to be more adversely affected than boosting does. The article concludes with a discussion of the limits of the chosen evaluative dimension, policy–theory coherence, and reviews some other benchmarks on which policy programs can be assessed. (shrink)

Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility (...) in someone else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can (reasonably be expected to) manage. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the use of social nudges, policy interventions to induce voluntary cooperation in social dilemma situations, can be defended against two ethical objections which I call objections from coherence and autonomy. Specifically I argue that the kind of preference change caused by social nudges is not a threat to agents’ coherent preference structure, and that there is a way in which social nudges influence behavior while respecting agents’ capacity to reason. I base my arguments on (...) two mechanistic explanations of social nudges; the expectation-based and frame-based accounts. As a concrete example of social nudges I choose the “Don’t Mess With Texas” anti-littering campaign and discuss in some detail how it worked. (shrink)

Andreas Schmidt and Neil Levy have recently defended nudging against the objection that nudges fail to treat nudgees as rational agents. Schmidt rejects two theses that have been taken to support the objection: that nudges harness irrational processes in the nudgee, and that they subvert the nudgee’s rationality. Levy rejects a third thesis that may support the objection: that nudges fail to give reasons. I argue that these defences can be extrapolated from nudges to some nonconsensual neurointerventions; if Schmidt’s and (...) Levy’s defences succeed, then some nonconsensual neurointerventions neither harness irrationality, nor subvert rationality, nor fail to give reasons. This, I claim, poses a challenge both to opponents of nonconsensual neurointerventions, and to defenders of nudging. (shrink)

This essay has three general themes. The first involves the claim that nudging threatens human agency. My basic response is that human agency is fully retained (because nudges do not compromise freedom of choice) and that agency is always exercised in the context of some kind of choice architecture. The second theme involves the importance of having a sufficiently capacious sense of the category of nudges, and a full appreciation of the differences among them. Some nudges either enlist or combat (...) behavioral biases but others do not, and even among those that do enlist or combat such biases, there are significant differences. The third general theme is the need to bring various concerns (including ethical ones) in close contact with particular examples. A legitimate point about default rules may not apply to warnings or reminders. An ethical objection to the use of social norms may not apply to information disclosure. Here as elsewhere, abstraction can be a trap. We continue to learn about the relevant ethical issues, about likely public reactions to nudging, and about differences across cultures and nations. Future progress will depend on a high level of concreteness, perhaps especially in dealing with the vexing problem of time-inconsistency. (shrink)

Traditional medical practices and relationships are changing given the widespread adoption of AI-driven technologies across the various domains of health and healthcare. In many cases, these new technologies are not specific to the field of healthcare. Still, they are existent, ubiquitous, and commercially available systems upskilled to integrate these novel care practices. Given the widespread adoption, coupled with the dramatic changes in practices, new ethical and social issues emerge due to how these systems nudge users into making decisions and changing (...) behaviours. This article discusses how these AI-driven systems pose particular ethical challenges with regards to nudging. To confront these issues, the value sensitive design approach is adopted as a principled methodology that designers can adopt to design these systems to avoid harming and contribute to the social good. The AI for Social Good factors are adopted as the norms constraining maleficence. In contrast, higher-order values specific to AI, such as those from the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, are adopted as the values to be promoted as much as possible in design. The use case of Amazon Alexa's Healthcare Skills is used to illustrate this design approach. It provides an exemplar of how designers and engineers can begin to orientate their design programs of these technologies towards the social good. (shrink)

In this article I argue that anti-perfectionist liberals can accept nudging in certain areas: in particular, they can accept nudges aimed at helping people to discharge their nonenforceable duties, and to secure personal autonomy. I claim that nudging is not disrespectful since it does not involve a comparative negative judgment on people’s ability to pursue their plans, and that the judgments that motivate nudging are compatible with treating citizens as free and equal. I also claim that despite being sometimes manipulative, (...) nudging is easy to resist and so it can be employed to pursue legitimate goals. (shrink)

Nudge and boost are two competing approaches to applying the psychology of reasoning and decision making to improve policy. Whereas nudges rely on manipulation of choice architecture to steer people towards better choices, the objective of boosts is to develop good decision-making competences. Proponents of both approaches claim capacity to enhance social welfare through better individual decisions. We suggest that such efforts should involve a more careful analysis of how individual and social welfare are related in the policy context. First, (...) individual rationality is not always sufficient or necessary for improving collective outcomes. Second, collective outcomes of complex social interactions among individuals are largely ignored by the focus of both nudge and boost on individual decisions. We suggest that the design of mechanisms and social norms can sometimes lead to better collective outcomes than nudge and boost, and present conditions under which the three approaches (nudge, boost, and design) can be expected to enhance social welfare. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag argumentieren wir, dass eine umfassende Implementierung sogenannter Nudges weitreichende Auswirkungen für rechtliche und politische Institutionen hat. Die wissenschaftliche Diskussion zu Nudges ist derzeit hauptsächlich von philosophischen Theorien geprägt, die im Kern einen individualistischen Ansatz vertreten. Unsere Analyse bezieht sich auf die Art und Weise, in der sich Anhänger des Nudging neuster Erkenntnisse aus den Verhaltenswissenschaften bedienen – immer in der Absicht, diese für effektives Regieren einzusetzen. Wir unterstreichen, dass die meisten Nudges, die derzeit entweder diskutiert werden oder (...) bereits implementiert sind, nicht Teil eines Rechtssystems sind und keinen normativen Charakter haben. Dazu unterscheiden wir zwischen zwei Idealtypen, um menschliches Verhalten zu beeinflussen, die wir als normativ bzw. instrumentell bezeichnen. Diese Idealtypen stehen für verschiedene Weisen, in denen öffentliche Regeln strukturiert werden können; sie erlauben uns, die institutionellen Implikationen von Nudges zu verstehen und zu bewerten. Hier betonen wir den Wert des Rechts als Absicherung gegenüber den möglichen schädlichen Konsequenzen von in der Politik und Regierungsführung eingesetzten Nudges. Unser Beitrag schließt mit Reaktionen auf einige Einwände, die unsere Vorschläge bereits erhalten haben. (shrink)

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2008) contend that mandated choice is the most practical nudge for increasing organ donation. We argue that they are wrong, and their mistake results from failing to appreciate how perceptions of meaning can influence people's responses to nudges. We favor a policy of default to donation that is subject to immediate family veto power, includes options for people to opt out (and be educated on how to do so), and emphasizes the role of organ procurement (...) organizations and in-house transplant donation coordinators creating better environments for increasing the supply of organs and tissues obtained from cadavers. This policy will provide better opportunities for offering nudges in contexts where in-house coordinators work with families. We conclude by arguing that nudges can be introduced ethically and effectively into these contexts only if nudge designers collaborate with in-house coordinators and stakeholders. (shrink)

Andreas Schmidt and Neil Levy have recently defended nudging against the objection that nudges fail to treat nudgees as rational agents. Schmidt rejects two theses that have been taken to support the objection: that nudges harness irrational processes in the nudgee, and that they subvert the nudgee’s rationality. Levy rejects a third thesis that may support the objection: that nudges fail to give reasons. I argue that these defences can be extrapolated from nudges to some nonconsensual neurointerventions; if Schmidt’s and (...) Levy’s defences succeed, then some nonconsensual neurointerventions neither harness irrationality, nor subvert rationality, nor fail to give reasons. This, I claim, poses a challenge both to opponents of nonconsensual neurointerventions, and to defenders of nudging. (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism is a concept derived from cognitive psychology and behavioural science. It is behind policies that frame information in such a way as to encourage individuals to make choices which are in their best interests, while maintaining their freedom of choice. Clinicians may view their clinical consultations as far removed from the realms of cognitive psychology but on closer examination there are a number of striking similarities.

T. M. Scanlon posits a universal moral relationship in response to the worry that his relational approach to blame cannot answer the question of how strangers can fittingly blame one another. However, commentators have noted that appealing to universal moral standards seems to explicitly deviate from a relational approach’s basis in actual relationship norms. This paper argues that Scanlon’s idea of a moral relationship can nevertheless provide a basis for response to the problem of strangers if we recognize that actual (...) and ideal moral relationships both play a role within the relational approach. An interesting consequence of this recognition is that it seems to undermine the moral relationship’s universality. However, a presumptive case for assuming the relationship exists even between strangers can be found in seeing our blaming practices as akin to public policy nudges, where blame operates like an opt-out choice architecture with respect to the moral relationship. On this understanding, though the moral relationship is escapable, individuals are naturally encouraged to participate through the expression of interpersonal attitudes that communicate relational norms and expectations. (shrink)

Nudge is a popular public policy tool that harnesses well-known biases in human judgement to subtly guide people’s decisions, often to improve their choices or to achieve some socially desirable outcome. Thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) methods new possibilities emerge of how and when our decisions can be nudged. On the one hand, algorithmically personalized nudges have the potential to vastly improve human daily lives. On the other hand, blindly outsourcing the development and implementation of nudges to (...) “black box” AI systems means that the ultimate reasons for why such nudges work, that is, the underlying human cognitive processes that they harness, will often be unknown. In this paper, we unpack this concern by considering a series of examples and case studies that demonstrate how AI systems can learn to harness biases in human judgment to reach a specified goal. Drawing on an analogy in a philosophical debate concerning the methodology of economics, we call for the need of an interdisciplinary oversight of AI systems that are tasked and deployed to nudge human behaviours. (shrink)