{"title":"Beyond Porn and Discreditation: Epistemic Promises and Perils of Deepfake Technology in Digital Lifeworlds","authors":"Catherine Kerner, Mathias Risse","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2020-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2020-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Deepfakes are a new form of synthetic media that broke upon the world in 2017. Bringing photoshopping to video, deepfakes replace people in existing videos with someone else’s likeness. Currently most of their reach is limited to pornography, and they are also used to discredit people. However, deepfake technology has many epistemic promises and perils, which concern how we fare as knowers. Our goal is to help set an agenda around these matters, to make sure this technology can help realize epistemic rights and epistemic justice and unleash human creativity, rather than inflict epistemic wrongs of any sort. Our project is exploratory in nature, and we do not aim to offer conclusive answers at this early stage. There is a need to remain vigilant to make sure the downsides do not outweigh the upsides, and that will be a tall order.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"61 1","pages":"81 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85550982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Must Realists Be Pessimists About Democracy? Responding to Epistemic and Oligarchic Challenges","authors":"Gordon Arlen, Enzo Rossi","doi":"10.1515/MOPP-2019-0060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/MOPP-2019-0060","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with (1) a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce (2) a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and (3) an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"101 1","pages":"27 - 49"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72597506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Respecting Children’s Choices","authors":"K. Grill","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The traditional liberal view on conflicts between care for wellbeing and respect for choice and desire is that we should look to degrees of competence and voluntariness to determine which moral imperative should take priority. This view has likely influenced the common view that children’s choices should be considered only to the extent that this promotes their future autonomy and helps us determine their best interests. I reject both the general traditional liberal view and its application to children. Competence and voluntariness, as well as maturity, are at best proxies for what really matters, which is wellbeing, choice and desire. We typically have reason to respect children’s choices, irrespective of any further positive consequences. If we should more often make children do what they do not want to do, this is mainly because, though we should care about respecting their choices, we should care even more about their wellbeing and future autonomy.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"174 1","pages":"199 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88156258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Social Injustice of Parental Imprisonment","authors":"William Bülow, L. Lindblom","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Children of prisoners are often negatively affected by their parents’ incarceration, which raises issues of justice. A common view is that the many negative effects associated with parental imprisonment are unjust, simply because children of prisoners are impermissibly harmed or unjustly punished by their parents’ incarceration. We argue that proposals of this kind have problems with accounting for cases where it is intuitive that prison might create social injustices for children of prisoners. Therefore, we suggest that in addition to the question of whether children of prisoners are impermissibly harmed, we should ask whether the inequalities that these children endure because of their parent’s incarceration are objectionable from a social justice perspective. To answer this latter question, we examine the negative effects associated with parental imprisonment from the perspective of luck egalitarianism. We develop a luck egalitarian account that incorporates insights from the philosophy of childhood. On our account, children of prisoners might endure two different types of objectionable inequalities, since they are often deprived of resources that are important for ensuring fair equality of opportunity in adulthood, but also because they are likely to suffer inequalities in terms of childhood welfare. After defending this account, we explore its implications for policy.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"56 1","pages":"299 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86686169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Irresistible Nudges, Inevitable Nudges, and the Freedom to Choose","authors":"Jens Kipper","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2020-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2020-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I examine how nudges affect the autonomy and freedom of those nudged. I consider two arguments put forth by Thaler and Sunstein for the claim that these effects can only be minor. According to the first of these arguments, nudges cannot significantly restrict a person’s autonomy or freedom since they are easy to resist. According to the second argument, the existence of nudges is inevitable, and thus, pursuing libertarian paternalism by nudging people doesn’t make a relevant difference to people’s autonomy and freedom. After arguing that both of these arguments fail, I elucidate the general conditions in which, and the degrees to which, a person’s autonomy and freedom are affected by nudges. One focus of this discussion concerns how people’s autonomy and freedom are affected if—for example, due to progress in information technology—nudges become more effective, more individualized and more common, and affect more people.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"25 1","pages":"285 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84757503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disenfranchisement and the Capacity/Equality Puzzle: Why Disenfranchise Children but Not Adults Living with Cognitive Disabilities","authors":"Attila Mráz","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0054","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I offer a solution to the Capacity/Equality Puzzle. The puzzle holds that an account of the franchise may adequately capture at most two of the following: (1) a political equality-based account of the franchise, (2) a capacity-based account of disenfranchising children, and (3) universal adult enfranchisement. To resolve the puzzle, I provide a complex liberal egalitarian justification of a moral requirement to disenfranchise children. I show that disenfranchising children is permitted by both the proper political liberal and the proper political egalitarian understandings of the relationship between cognitive capacity and the franchise. Further, I argue, disenfranchising children is required by a minimalistic, procedural principle of collective competence in political decision-making. At the same time, I show that political equality requires the enfranchisement of all adults, regardless of cognitive capacities, and that the collective competence principle does not ground adult disenfranchisement. This justifies the progressive legal trend that holds the capacity-based disenfranchisement of adults to be incompatible with liberal democratic principles.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"143 1","pages":"255 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80302989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Trust Model of Children’s Rights","authors":"K. Pike","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Is parental control over children best understood in terms of trusteeship or similar fiduciary obligations? This essay contemplates the elements of legal trusts and fiduciarity as they might relate to the moral relationship between children and parents. Though many accounts of upbringing advocate parent-child relationship models with structural resemblance to trust-like relationships, it is unclear who grants moral trusts, how trustees are actually selected, or how to identify proper beneficiaries. By considering these and other classical elements of relationships of trust, this essay seeks to clarify and explore the trust model’s role, if any, in understanding children’s rights. Such exploration raises the possibility that another element of common law, the duty to rescue, may serve to enhance the trust model of children’s rights.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"66 1","pages":"219 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73768519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should Children Have a Veto over Parental Decisions to Relocate?","authors":"Bouke de Vries","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0053","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many people move house at some point during their childhood and not rarely more than once. While relocations are not always harmful for under-aged children, they can, and frequently do, cause great disruption to their lives by severing their social ties as well as any attachments that they might have to their neighbourhood, town, or wider geographical region, with long-lasting psychological effects in some cases. Since it is increasingly recognised within normative philosophy as well as within Western societies that older minors should have the final say over certain issues that significantly affect their lives (think, for instance, of custody disputes, decisions about whether to get specific vaccinations or use contraceptives), this raises the question: Can it be morally incumbent upon parents to give their minor children a veto over family relocation? This article argues that the answer is affirmative. Specifically, it suggests that such duties exist if and only if (i) parents are not morally required to either relocate their families or stay put, (ii) the stakes of the decision about a family relocation are fairly low, and (iii) the children have the competence to make these decisions, as many older minors do.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"50 1","pages":"321 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90416408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Moral Principles to Political Judgments: The Case for Pragmatic Idealism","authors":"P. Vandamme","doi":"10.1515/mopp-2019-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2019-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Political judgments usually combine a normative principle or intuition with an appreciation of empirical facts regarding the achievability of different options and their potential consequences. The interesting question dividing partisans of political idealism and realism is whether these kinds of considerations should be integrated into the normative principles themselves or considered apart. At first sight, if a theorist is concerned with guiding political judgments, non-ideal or realist theorizing (directly integrating such considerations) can seem more attractive. In this article, however, I argue that ideal theorizing might be considered valuable even by theorists moved by a pragmatic concern (guiding political judgments) because it is less exposed to conservatism. I nonetheless contend that the aim to guide action in the world as it is should not be abandoned. Therefore, I outline a four-step method for proceeding from abstract moral principles to concrete political judgments and apply it to a test case.","PeriodicalId":37108,"journal":{"name":"Moral Philosophy and Politics","volume":"93 1","pages":"261 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76731279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}