According to ‘Excluders’, descriptive uncertainty – but not normative uncertainty – matters to what we ought to do. Recently, several authors have argued that those wishing to treat normative uncertainty differently from descriptive uncertainty face a dependence problem because one's descriptive uncertainty can depend on one's normative uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the phenomenon of dependence poses a decisive problem for Excluders. I argue that existing arguments fail to show this, and that, while stronger ones (...) can be found, Excluders can escape them. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence systems based on transformers, including both text-generators like GPT-4 and image generators like DALL-E 3, have recently entered the popular consciousness. These tools, while impressive, are liable to reproduce, exacerbate, and reinforce extant human social biases, such as gender and racial biases. In this paper, we systematically review the extent to which DALL-E Mini suffers from this problem. In line with the Model Card published alongside DALL-E Mini by its creators, we find that the images it produces (...) tend to represent dozens of different occupations as populated either solely by men (e.g., pilot, builder, plumber) or solely by women (e.g., hairdresser, receptionist, dietitian). In addition, the images DALL-E Mini produces tend to represent most occupations as populated primarily or solely by White people (e.g., farmer, painter, prison officer, software engineer) and very few by non-White people (e.g., pastor, rapper). These findings suggest that exciting new AI technologies should be critically scrutinized and perhaps regulated before they are unleashed on society. (shrink)

We sometimes seem to face fundamental moral uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about what is morally good or morally right that cannot be reduced to ordinary descriptive uncertainty. This phenomenon raises a puzzle for noncognitivism, according to which moral judgments are desire-like attitudes as opposed to belief-like attitudes. Can a state of moral uncertainty really be a noncognitive state? So far, noncognitivists have not been able to offer a completely satisfactory account. Here, we argue that noncognitivists should exploit the formal analogy between (...) moral uncertainty and moral multi-objective decision problems. Our ‘multi-objective story’ enables noncognitivists to save our moral uncertainty thought and talk by explaining how the underlying phenomenon could be noncognitive. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent systems will be used to make increasingly important decisions about us. Many of these decisions will have to be made without universal agreement about the relevant moral facts. For other kinds of disagreement, it is at least usually obvious what kind of solution is called for. What makes moral disagreement especially challenging is that there are three different ways of handling it. Moral solutions apply a moral theory or related principles and largely ignore the details of the disagreement. (...) Compromise solutions apply a method of finding a compromise and taking information about the disagreement as input. Epistemic solutions apply an evidential rule that treats the details of the disagreement as evidence of moral truth. Proposals for all three kinds of solutions can be found in the AI ethics and value alignment literature, but little has been said to justify choosing one over the other. I argue that the choice is best framed in terms of moral risk. (shrink)

Kevin McCain’s Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification is the most thorough defense of evidentialism to date. In this work, McCain proposes insightful new theses to fill in underdeveloped parts of evidentialism. One of these new theses is an explanationist account of evidential fit that appeals to dispositional properties. We argue that this explanationist account faces counterexamples, and that, more generally, explanationists should not understand evidential fit in terms of dispositional properties.

During the last 10 years or so, a number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have been introduced in global supply chains, which aim to improve the conditions of workers engaged in producing goods for export. This article discusses the observations of CSR in practice in the Costa Rican-United Kingdom (UK) banana chain. The banana chain makes for an interesting case study because there are dominant corporate actors at each end who are in a position to influence the conditions experienced (...) by workers on banana plantations. At the top of the chain there are four major UK supermarket groups who control access to the retail market and as selfappointed guardians of consumer interest are demanding that producers adopt more socially responsible practices. At the other end, banana production is highly integrated and controlled by three large North American agri-businesses who have developed their own social and environmental certification programmes. Costa Rica also makes for an interesting country to locate the study as it has a tradition of state-led policies to protect worker rights. Yet, in spite of CSR commitments made by both supermarkets and producers that emphasise health and safety and the country's established Labour Law, this article shows that there are problems for workers when they are forced to meet demanding production schedules. Furthermore, it suggests that whilst supermarkets continue to drive down consumer prices and put pressure on producers to reduce costs, a downward spiral of working conditions is created regardless of the CSR policies in place. However, this article also identifies that changes to supermarket behaviour is possible when consumer trust is at stake. (shrink)