Why Values are Always Apt for Technological Disruption

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A common claim in the philosophy of technology is that technologies can alter social values. That is to say, technologies can change both how we perceive and understand values, and the way in which we prioritise and pursue them. A classic example is the value of privacy. Some argue that the prevalence of surveillance technology, combined with the allure of convenient digital services, has rendered this value close-to-obsolete. When push comes to shove, most people seem willing to trade privacy for digital convenience. Contrariwise, there are those that think that the technological pressure placed on the value of privacy means that it is more precious than ever and that we must do everything we can to preserve it.

But how exactly does technology alter values? It must have something to do with the way technology mediates our relationship with the world around us. In this article, I want to briefly outline some of my own thinking on this topic. I do so in two parts. First, I argue that values exist in conceptual spaces, and that these spaces consist of internal conceptualisations and external conceptual relations. Within these conceptual spaces, values are always, somewhat, under pressure and open to disruption. Second, I argue that technology can have two main effects on these conceptual spaces: they can change the practical achievability of particular conceptualisations of a value, making it harder or easier to obtain; or they can change the priority ranking of a value relative to other external values. This can result in a number of different possible value changes.

The thoughts I elaborate here are distilled from previous work that I published with Henrik Skaug Sætra. We have written two articles on: (i) how technology changes the values of truth and trust and (ii) six different mechanisms of techno-moral change. Both articles are available in open access form. You can read them if you want to follow up on the ideas presented here. I should also add that there are other valuable contributions to the literature on technology and value change. These include the article by Jeroen Hopster and his colleagues on the history of value change, and Ibo van de Poel and Olya Kudina on pragmatism and value change (to name just two examples).

1. Values Exist in Conceptual Spaces

To start with, I suppose we must ask the question: What are values? There are many esoteric philosophical treatises on this topic. I will avoid getting drawn into their intricacies. For present purposes, I define values as things that are, in some sense, desirable, worth pursuing, and/or worth honouring. They are properties of events, states of affairs or people that make these things good and worthwhile. Freedom, pleasure, justice, friendship, sexual intimacy, cooperation, truth, fairness, love, knowledge, beauty are all classic examples of values. There are also disvalues, which are simply the opposite of values: things that are to be avoided, rejected, dishonoured. They are properties of events, states of affairs and people that make them bad.

The metaphysical grounding of values is not something I will discuss in this article. For the purposes of understanding technology and value change, we do not need to take a stance on this matter. For this inquiry, values can be understood in a descriptive and sociological sense: what is it that people say they value? What sort of values are revealed through their behaviour? How do these social facts change over time? Changes in social values may or may not track some ideal sense of values. This does not mean, however, that inquiry into technology and value change is irrelevant for understanding ideal values. It could be that technology pushes people closer to or further away from ideal values. It could also be that technology opens up or allows us to discover new ideal values. It all depends on the effect that technologies have on the conceptual space of values.

That's enough scene-setting. What about this conceptual space of values? This is an abstract space, not a tangible one. It is a bit like the space of possible novels or possible design specs for cars. The conceptual space of values is vast. I suspect it is theoretically infinite insofar as virtually anything could be a value under the right conditions. Nevertheless, for practical purposes, the space is more limited. Most societies have sets of basic values. Many of these basic values are shared, more or less, across most cultures.

There have been various anthropological, psychological and philosophical attempts to identify a core set of basic values. The philosopher Owen Flanagan, for instance, has written about the shared virtues (kinds of value that inhere in individuals) across Western and Eastern cultures. The anthropologist Donald Brown has created a list of 'human universals', based on a cross-comparison of cultures. While this list encompasses many features of human society, it includes values such as play, generosity, responsibility, communality, friendship and so on. More systematically, the psychologist Shalom Schwartz has developed a theory of basic human values. He argues that there are ten individual values shared across most cultures. These values are categorised into four main domains: self-transcendence values, openness to change values, self-enhancement values and conservation values. Schwartz claims that this theory has a good deal of empirical support. The image below summarises his ten values.

In addition to these academic efforts at identifying a core set of basic values, there are projects in the political/legal realm that do something similar. For example, international human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, could be viewed as attempts to identify and protect a basic set of human values (insofar as rights typically protect values).

I could go on, but I won't. This small sample of examples suffices for the point I wish to make: although the conceptual space of values is vast, it may be possible to make it more manageable by positing a list of basic values. Some people resist this idea. They think that universalising theories, such as those developed by Brown and Schwartz, simplify the messy complexity of human societies and underplay the real and substantive differences.

Although I lean in favour of universalisation, there is no need to take up a controversial position on the credibility of these theories here. Even if one accepts them, one is not obliged to accept that every society takes the same attitude or stance toward these values. Each theory posits a plurality of values. Societies (and individuals) can vary in how they order and rank these values, and how they deal with tradeoffs between the values. So, for example, if you accept Schwartz's idea that there are ten basic values, and that these values can be ranked in any order, there are (correct me if I'm wrong) 10! possible orderings of value. That's a lot of possible variation (over 3 million). Furthermore, nothing prevents you from adding to this list of basic values with more specific or unique values, relevant to particular societies.

In any event, what really matters for the inquiry into technology and value change is not getting precise about the number of values, nor demarcating the limits of the conceptual space of values. What matter is that values are, or at least are perceived to be, plural (there are many of them). A single value thus exists within a conceptual space of other values. The precise identities of these values matters less than their plurality.

2. How Values Change Within Conceptual Spaces

Turning then to value change, within the conceptual space of values, there are two main dimensions along which a single value can vary:

Internal dimension: How we conceive of or understand the individual value can vary, i.e. our particular conceptualisation of the value can vary.

External dimension: How the value relates to other values can vary, e.g. how it is ranked or traded off against other values within the same conceptual space can vary.

 

Let's consider both of these forms of variation in more detail.

Philosophers will be familiar with the idea that values can have different conceptualisations. Freedom is a value, but the concept of freedom is vague. To render it more precise and meaningful, people offer more detailed conceptualisations of it. On a previous occasion, I highlighted the work of the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner on the different conceptions of freedom that have vied for attention in liberal societies since the 1600s. Skinner, like many others, divided them into two main groups: models of positive freedom (i.e. to be free is to authentically realise oneself) and negative freedom (i.e. to be free is to be free from the influence and control of others). Within the negative freedom conceptualisation, Skinner identifies two further sub-conceptions freedom as non-interference (to be free is to be free from the actual interventions of other people through force or coercion) and freedom as non-domination (to be free is to be free from the dominion or authority of others). Further breakdowns of each of these sub-conceptualisations are possible. For example, Christian List and Laura Vallentini have developed a 'logical space' of different possible conceptualisations of freedom. In essence, this is a two-by-two matrix suggesting that theories of negative freedom vary along two main dimensions, resulting in four different possible conceptualisations of that value. If you are interested, I discussed their model in a previous article.

The example of freedom illustrates the general phenomenon. For each value we care about, there are usually multiple possible conceptualisations of that value. This is true for values such as equality, love, and truth, just as much as it is true for freedom. This variation in the internal conceptualisations of a value matters because when we say that we care about a value, or a society commits to protecting that value in its constitution, it could mean very different things in practice. Which conceptualisation of the value wins out or dominates could vary across cultures and times. Shifting between different conceptualisations of the same value is one form of value change.

What about the external dimension? This is more straightforward. Single values (or their more precise conceptualisations) sit within plural spaces of other values. We are not just committed to freedom; we are also committed to equality. We are not just committed to love and pleasure; we are also committed to hard work and truth. Questions arise as to how we ought to promote or honour all these different values. Is it possible to promote or honour them all with equal zeal? Must we prioritise some over others? Are there genuine cases in which values conflict and we must pick and choose? In the midst of a pandemic, when the risk of death from infectious disease is high, is it okay to prioritise public health and well-being over freedom? Or is this a false dichotomy? Figuring out the answers to these questions is, I believe, an ongoing struggle for all societies. Even when there is temporary agreement reached on how to balance or prioritise values, this can be easily disrupted by changes in circumstances (natural disasters, war and, of course, new technologies).

Once we appreciate the complexity of the conceptual space of values, it is easier to appreciate the phenomenon of value disruption. Most values are subject to internal dispute as to their correct conceptualisations. Furthermore, most values must fit into a wider network of other values, with which they are not always compatible. As such, values are never really in a settled equilibrium state. It's more like there is constant Brownian motion in the conceptual space of values. Disruption is never far away.

3. How Technology Disrupts Values

Finally, we come to the question of how technology disrupts values. If you accept the argument to this point, you accept that values are always somewhat apt for disruption. They are never as stable nor settled as they may seem. Consequently, it may not take much for technology, particularly new technologies to unsettle the present equilibrium. I believe that there are two main ways in which this can happen.

The first is that technology can affect how salient and practically achievable a particular conceptualisation of a value is. This is a form of internal value disruption.

An example might be the affect of artificial intelligence on different conceptualisations of the value of equality. Broadly speaking, there are two main conceptualisations of equality: equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. These conceptualisations are not necessarily incompatible, but they are, in practice, in tension with one another. Equality of outcome is about making sure that everyone gets a roughly equal (or equitable) share of some social good, e.g. wealth, healthcare, housing. Equality of opportunity is about giving everyone a roughly equal chance to compete for desirable social opportunities (jobs and education being the most obvious two). Equality of opportunity is sometimes favoured over equality of outcome on the grounds that forcing everyone to have an equal share of some good is either impractical or impinges upon other rights and entitlements. At present, most societies pursue a mix of policies aimed at both types of equality, but most liberal societies tend to prioritise opportunities over any strict form of equal outcomes.

How might AI affect this? In a recent paper, I looked at a number of different scenarios, focusing in particular on the impact of generative AI on how we think about equality. On the one hand, I argued that recent empirical tests of the impact of generative AI on workplace productivity suggest that the technology is of greater benefit to less-skilled, less educated and less experienced workers (read the paper for a fuller review of the current empirical basis for this claim, with some important caveats). This suggests that generative AI might assist with the practical achievability of equality of opportunity, providing for a way to level the playing field at work over and above (and complementary to) existing forms of education and training. Thus, equality of opportunity is likely to be seen as more desirable and more practically feasible. That said, I also argued that this could be a short run disruption, particularly if AI comes to replace, rather than augment, many human workers. If that happens, then equality of opportunity (in its current form) may become less practically achievable because technology starts to suck up all the desirable workplace opportunities. This may force a reconceptualisation of equality of opportunity (i.e. focus on other kinds of desirable opportunity) or a switch to equality of outcome as the more practically achievable version of the value.

The second way in which technology could affect values is by changing the priority ranking of one value relative to another. This would be a form of external value disruption.

An example might be the effect of digital technologies, including AI, on the value of truth vis-a-vis other values such as tribal loyalty or individual psychological welfare. This is an example that Henrik and I discuss in more detail in our paper on the technological transformation of truth and trust. Very briefly, we argue that the pursuit of truth is an important social value and that truth is valuable for both instrumental and intrinsic reasons. But truth is always a somewhat unstable value since their can be uncomfortable truths (e.g. climate change) that conflict with individual and group preferences. Powerful people often have a reason to manipulate our perceptions of the truth to suit their own agenda; we often deceive ourselves by pursuing information that confirms our existing biases; and we often want to share the beliefs and opinions of our peers so as not to step out of line.

One danger with digital technologies is that they make it easier to manipulate and control the flow of information in a way that makes it more difficult to access the truth. Examples of this abound, but the obvious ones are the ways in which social media and the algorithmic curation of information push people into 'bubbles' and information silos, along with the ways in which AI facilitates the creation of hard-to-detect fake information (e.g. cheapfakes and deepfakes). These developments can make it harder for people to commit themselves to the pursuit of truth and more willing to trade the value of truth off against other more easily attainable values such as displaying tribal loyalty, virtue signalling to others and making themselves feel good by limiting their exposure to uncomfortable ideas. This could lead to a down-ranking of truth relative to other values.

These examples of value disruption are somewhat speculative, even though there is evidence for both of them. Nevertheless, I provide them here not because they are necessarily accurate but because they illustrate the general idea of how technology can disrupt the conceptual space of values.

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Are Seatbelt Mandates Unduly Paternalistic?

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A while back, I interviewed the philosopher Jessica Flanigan about her views on teaching and research. The interview was part of my series on the ethics of academia. In the midst of that interview, I asked her a question that I asked many of my guests: do you really believe in the ideas/arguments you develop in your research? The particular prompt for that question, in Flanigan's case, was an article she wrote about seatbelt mandates. Seatbelt mandates are laws that make it illegal not to wear a seatbelt. Flanigan, writing from a broadly libertarian perspective, argued that they were unduly paternalistic and, hence, should be revoked. I wondered if she really hoped that policy-makers would take that argument seriously. She said she did.

I didn't ask the question because I doubted her sincerity. I asked it because I sometimes lack confidence in my own arguments and ideas and so I quietly hope that others don't take them too seriously. It was refreshing to talk to someone that apparently backed themselves. Anyway, since I spoke to her, I have used Flanigan's article about seatbelt mandates in several of my classes. I think it is a thought-provoking piece and it's interesting to see what students make of it since the conclusion it defends is so contrary to their own preconceptions and the moral status quo. In my experience, very few students agree with her, but it can be hard for them to pinpoint exactly where her argument goes wrong.

In what follows, I want to analyse and evaluate Flanigan's argument. I will outline its basic structure and consider how Flanigan defends each of the main premises. I will also offer some critical questions and reflections on these defences. This article is based on notes I have prepared for my classes so it may be a bit more disjointed and less conclusive than some of the other pieces on this blog. I tend to raise questions for discussion rather than offer firm opinions of my own. You have been warned.

1. The Basic Structure of the Argument

Flanigan sets out the main argument with admirable clarity. It is syllogistic in form. The major premise (1) states a general normative principle; the minor premise (2) makes a factual claim relating to the conditions stated in the normative principle; the conclusion follows. Here it is:

• (1) If a person’s autonomous choice is not harmful to others, then public officials should not paternalistically use force or threats of force to prevent him/her from making that choice

• (2) Riding in an automobile unbelted is an autonomous choice that is not harmful to others

• (3) Therefore, public officials should not paternalistically prevent people from riding unbelted.

The major premise echoes the Millian Harm Principle -- that the only moral justification for using force or the threat of force is to prevent harm to others -- but Flanigan offers a more elaborate and theoretically pluralist defence of it. She then evaluates three objections to premise (1) and two objections to premise (3). 

Before considering each aspect of her defence, it is worth briefly noting that in defending this argument Flanigan has an ulterior motive. She is honest about this in the introduction to her article. As already noted, she writes from a broadly libertarian perspective. This means she is generally opposed to government interventions and regulatory overreach. The argument against seatbelt mandates is a kind of Trojan horse argument. In other words, Flanigan knows that most people agree with seatbelt mandates and that opposing them will seem contrary to common sense. But if she can convince people that they are unjust, then this will make it easier to make the case for other limitations on regulatory interventions. As she puts it herself if "even seatbelt mandates are unjust", whither other forms of paternalistic intervention?

2. The Positive Defence of Premise (1): Against paternalistic intervention

Flanigan offers a pluralistic defence of premise (1). She suggests that it can be supported from different theoretical grounds (both deontological and consequentialist). You can count it up in different ways but, by my reading, she offers a least six lines of argument in support of premise 1. 

The first supporting argument is based on Kantian respect for autonomous choice. The idea is that we should each be given the authority to use our autonomous capacities to make decisions about how to live our own lives. This moral principle creates a ‘very strong presumption’ against interference. 

Of course, many people don't accept the Kantian view. And, even if they do, they tend to accept that there are limits to the scope of our own autonomy (Flanigan concedes this). The question then becomes: what are they and do seatbelt mandates fall inside or outside those limits? 

The second argument is a more constrained version of the first based on respect for autonomous choices relating to bodies. The idea here is that even if you reject the general Kantian view, you probably accept that we have a strong presumptive right to decide what happens to our own bodies. The argument then is that riding unbelted is a decision relating to what happens to our own bodies.  Flanigan fleshes this argument out by using some analogies such as base jumping and drinking to excess. If we allow those activities then why not allow riding unbelted? She also uses a thought experiment which is repeated or echoed various times in the article: Imagine someone threatened you for refusing to exercise. Would you accept such a threat? Surely not. So why accept it in the case of a threat if you don't wear a seatbelt.  

One danger with this argument is whether it is substantially different from the first one. Since we are embodied beings, virtually all decisions we make affect our bodies in some ways. If so, then it isn't clear that this sets a principled limit that is distinct from general Kantian view? More importantly, however, there is the important question as to whether the decision to ride unbelted is only about what happens to our own bodies. Aren't other people affected by that decision too? In class discussions, this tends to be the biggest stumbling block for students trying to accept Flanigan's argument. For them, the decision to ride unbelted poses risks to others and that's a major reason for seatbelt mandates. Flanigan addresses this counterargument later in her paper and we will consider it in more detail below.

The third argument is that paternalistic policies of this sort are unlikely to promote people’s well-being, at least in the long run. In making this argument, Flanigan offers a major concession: she accepts that seatbelt mandates would probably reduce overall deaths, maybe by up to 3,000 deaths per year in the US (according to a study she cites). But she counters that avoiding death is not the only thing that matters. Individuals are better than public officials to weigh the risk of death against other risks/benefits. Mandates take this choice away from people. 

This is a fairly standard libertarian argument and, in many instances, I agree with it. I am not sure that individuals are always the best judge of what is in their own interests, but I agree that in many cases they are no worse than other officials (etc). Still, the plausibility of this argument all boils down to how we draw the lines. Are there not some limits to an individual's determination of what is in their own interest. Do we have a strong right to self-harm?  How would the logic here apply to other cases? For example, should we have a right to sell ourselves into slavery? Or should there be a public prohibition against this? If so, then there are limits to what individuals can decide for themselves. And if so, it remains to be determined whether seatbelt mandates fall inside or outside those limits. 

The fourth argument is that there are often excessive costs to paternalistic interventions. The potential benefits of seatbelt mandates must be weighed against their likely costs, e.g. the waste of policing resources on enforcement; the administrative costs of the punishment system, and so on.

In my experience, students are often reluctant to accept this argument on the grounds that they are reluctant to put a price on the value of a human life (let alone 3000 of them). But since we do this all the time, there is some merit to the argument. If the economic value of a life is around 10 million dollars (which was a figure I saw cited for 2020) then the seatbelt mandate system must cost less than $30 billion for it to be cost effective (assuming 3000 lives saved). I'm not sure if that is the case, but I suspect it probably is. One danger, as well, with calculating costs in this area would be the risk of double-counting costs. The reality is that seatbelt mandates are likely to be enforced as part of a whole package of road traffic laws (speeding, drink driving, routine stops and checks for licences and registration etc). It might be hard to disentangle the costs and benefits of seatbelt mandates from the costs and benefits of these other laws.

The fifth argument is that the enforcement of such a paternalistic intervention would be inegalitarian. This is, perhaps, the most interesting of Flanigan's arguments. Her claim is that police are more likely to enforce the law on racial minorities and could use the law as a pretext for other interventions (Flanigan cites examples of how fatal shooting of black people arose from routine seatbelt stops). The punishments also impose a disproportionate cost on poor people. 

Students in my classes tend to find this argument the most persuasive but then wonder whether this an argument that works only in the USA. Racial discrimination in road traffic enforcement is (as far as I know) not a major problem where I live. Furthermore, fatal shootings in traffic stops are uncommon in most other jurisdictions. It is really the US police culture that is singled out by that argument. That said,  other forms of inequality arise in other jurisdictions and it's possible that these are reflected in how the laws are enforced. One final point, which is related to Flanigan's argument, is that if we assume seatbelt mandates are enforced through fines, then all flat rate fines impose disproportionate costs on poorer people. But is this a reason to abandon this form of punishment? Furthermore, it is possible to create a system of progressive fines for road traffic violations. Some European countries, for instance, have a system of fines calculated as a percentage of income.

The sixth argument is that paternalistic laws of this sort treat citizens like children and it is insulting and disrespectful to be treated like a child. Flanigan uses some analogies to make the case. She argues that it would be humiliating for a teacher to force a student to correct an addition mistake; it would be degrading for doctors to force patients to accept treatment. Her point is that there is an important moral distinction between pointing out someone’s error and forcing them to correct that error. It might be okay to point out to people that they are taking excessive risk by not wearing a seatbelt, but forcing them to wear one is going to far. She also argues that there is also some hypocrisy and inconsistency in the enforcement of such laws as they assume citizens are incapable of balancing risks and making compromises when public officials do this all the time, e.g. motorbikes are much more dangerous than cars and yet are routinely licenced.

There are several questions that can be raised about this argument. One is whether offensiveness/insult is an appropriate guide or restraint on legitimate criminalisation? Is it always insulting and offensive to be treated like a child? Are we not sometimes grateful when people force us to correct our errors? Furthermore, public administration is always complex and sometimes contradictory (e.g. drug laws versus alcohol laws). Is apparent contradiction/hypocrisy a good reason to object to a particular law (if that law is otherwise well justified)?

3. The Negative Defence of Premise (1): Can Paternalism be Justified?

Flanigan also offers a negative defence of premise (1) by considering potential objections to the premise. These arguments each try to offer justifications for paternalistic interventions in some cases.

Th first objection to premise (1) is to claim that we should be less worried about paternalistic interventions when the choices affected by them are relatively trivial or unimportant. The argument then would be that the preference for riding unbelted is trivial (not an important freedom) and so less worthy of respect.

Flanigan has three rebuttals to this argument. First, she says it doesn’t matter if it is trivial; the interference required to enforce it is non-trivial and we have a non-trivial reason to reject such interference. Second, she argues that some people may highly value the freedom to make the choice, even if they choose to buckle up all the time. Why discount or presume their subjective preference to be trivial? Who are we to make that judgment? Third, she argues that maybe we have developed an adaptive preference for riding belted (like being brainwashed) and if more people exercise the right to ride unbelted we wouldn’t see it as trivial anymore. 

To my mind, this third rebuttal is the most interesting and it is the one I often get students to reflect on in class. It is always worth asking whether we are victims of status quo bias when it comes to a tolerance for certain laws or interferences. What seems trivial or well-justified to us right now might not seem so trivial or well-justified to future generations.

The second objection to premise (1) is that if the paternalistic intervention ultimately promotes autonomy, it can be justified (we tolerate the intervention if it serves the greater good of autonomy overall). The argument then would be that seatbelt mandates do this by protecting us from a potentially deadly choice.

Flanigan has two rebuttals to this. First, she highlights an inconsistency potentially inherent in it. She points out that if we think people have a right to die, or to choose to die, we should think they have a right to ride unbelted. How persuasive this is depends on whether you think people have a right to die. Second, and perhaps more convincingly, she uses a slippery slope argument. She says that if this argument worked, it would also justify other, seemingly excessive, interferences with choice, e.g. mandated diet and exercise, visits to the doctor etc. I sympathise on the slippery slope point, but I wonder whether there is there an important difference between genuinely self-regarding decisions, such as right to die, and driving without a seatbelt which, given the nature of driving, always has the potential to harm others. Again, this potential for harm to others seems to be the main stumbling block for Flanigan's argument. 

The third objection to premise (1) is that people can consent to paternalistic interventions if, on balance, they promote long-term, higher order interests over short-term immediate preferences. The idea then is that seatbelt mandates to promote those long-term higher order interests by keeping us alive (or reducing the risk of death).

Flanigan offers two responses to this. The first is that, even if we did consent to such interventions, we would have a right to change our minds. She uses an analogy with joining a Weight Watchers programme. Imagine if we forced someone to continue with a weight loss programme that they really didn’t like. Second, she points out the obvious: we typically don’t get to consent or opt-in to seatbelt mandates. They are forced upon us. So this argument seems moot (of course, this leads to its own slippery slope since we don't consent to most laws).

4. Defending Premise (2): Don't Seatbelt Mandates Prevent Harm to Others?

Finally, we move on to Flanigan's defence of premise (2). As already noted, this is where, in my class discussions, most students tend to object. She considers two potential objections to that premise. The first is slightly weaker, in my view, but still interesting. The second is where most people have problems.

The first objection is that the decision to ride unbelted is not fully autonomous because it is irrational. Why so? Because it is shortsighted and not based on a proper understanding of the risks involves. The idea then is that irrational decisions need not be respected and can be paternalistically overruled. 

Flanigan offers four responses to this argument. The first is that the decision to ride unbelted may be undergirded by a rational preference for liberty/to be free from legal penalties. The second is that we may have rational grounds for favouring the decision to reserve for ourselves the right to decide irrationally. This is a convoluted idea, but Flanigan offers a simple analogy: falling in love. Love is often irrational yet we value the freedom to choose who we love. The third response is to appeal to another slippery slope. If we accepted the right to overrule irrational choices, this would justify many other, seemingly excessive, interferences, e.g. dietary preferences are often irrational yet no one thinks you should be forced not to eat another slice of cake. The fourth response is that, paradoxically, the apparent effectiveness of mandate laws is evidence for the autonomous nature of the choice to ride unbelted (b/c it shows people are swayed, rationally, by incentives).

Each of these rebuttals raises a host of issues that are worthy of further discussion. There isn't the space or time to do so in this post. One obvious point I would raise is whether the slippery slope really applies in this scenario. Are there not important differences between the levels of autonomy/irrationality involved in different decisions? Also, are there not important difference between activities that are wholly or largely self-regarding (e.g. diet) and activities that necessarily entail some interaction with or potential harm to others (e.g. driving on a public road)?

The leads us, finally, to the main objection to Flanigan's argument. This objection maintains that the decision to ride unbelted is harmful to others and so falls outside the scope of the normative principle stated in premise (1). In particular, the argument is that the decision to ride unbelted imposes harm, or a significant risk of harm, on (i) other passengers; (ii) traumatised bystanders (of road traffic accidents); and (iii) society at large due to medical costs and so on.

This is, obviously, a complicated argument since there are different kinds of harm to others at stake. In my view (and the view of most students I have discussed this paper with) the harm to other passengers tends to be the most significant objection to Flanigan's argument. Many years, in Ireland, there was a famous road safety ad which depicted, graphically, the potential impact of an unbelted rider on other passengers in a road traffic accident. You can watch it here. This ad has been imprinted on my memory and so probably biases my view on this matter.

But an ad is not reality. What is that the actual increased risk to other drivers? Flanigan cites figures from one study suggesting that the increased risk (of death) is only 20%. She then argues that this increased risk is comparable to (and perhaps less than) other risks that we do not legally protect, e.g. the risk of driving with an inexperienced driver, or driving late at night. She also suggested that, in many cases (but not all) the passengers consent to the additional risk by agreeing to ride in a car with an unbelted driver. 

I find these arguments unpersuasive and most people I discuss the argument with tend to agree. For one thing, it is not clear that a 20% increased risk of dying is trivial, nor that this figure is the correct one. You can find other studies suggesting that the risk is much higher, and that death alone is not the only risk to be factored in: there is also an increased risk of other kinds of injury. It is probably true that we are not consistent in how we legally protect people from the risks associated with driving. But, as noted above, inconsistencies are rife in legal policy: their presence, alone, does not mean that a particular law is unjustified if good arguments can be offered in support. There is also the relative ease of stipulating and enforcing a seatbelt mandate vis-a-vis other kinds of mandate (e.g. not driving late at night), and the different costs and benefits associated with those other potential mandates. Finally, on the consent point, it seems an implausible reading of human psychology to suggest that people can easily refuse to drive with an unbelted passenger. For young men, for instance, peer pressure and a sense of machismo might make it hard for someone to act on their true preferences. The mandate provides a useful fallback for such people. Similarly, there are many people who cannot easily choose who they ride with: children, elderly people and so on (Flanigan acknowledges this, to be fair).

Flanigan's objections to the relevance of the other two categories of harm are more plausible to me. She argues that potential psychic distress to third parties others is not a good reason to interfere with an autonomous choice. That seems right to me. And on the healthcare costs, she argues that if people have a right to healthcare, then they cannot be denied this right simply as a consequence of making bad choices that make it more likely they will need to exercise that right. By way of analogy she argues that protestors do not waive their right to police protection simply because they protest the police. Furthermore, if people do not have a right to healthcare, then we have no duty to pay for their treatment, so they do not impose any additional cost on us. If we treat them, it is a supererogatory act. 

That's the end of this summary of Flanigan's paper (along with some critical commentary of my own). As I say, the paper is thought-provoking. It raises a number of interesting issues in moral and legal theory and thus provides good fodder for classroom discussions, even if most people don't agree with it.

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Generative AI and the Future of Equality Norms

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The Romans in their Decadence - by Thomas Couture

I have a new paper in a special edition of the journal Cognition. It's about generative AI and its capacity to affect how we understand and pursue the value of equality. The paper is part of my ongoing work on how technology can affect social morality and involves some (hopefully informed) speculation on future scenarios involving generative AI. Check out the abstract below. The paper is available in Open Access format at the journal webpage.

Abstract: This article will consider the disruptive impact of generative AI on moral beliefs and practices associated with equality, particularly equality of opportunity. It will first outline a framework for understanding the mechanisms through which generative AI can alter moral beliefs and practices. It will argue that actual and perceived cognitive ability is one of the determinants of social outcomes in modern information economies, and that one of the potential impacts of generative AI is on the distribution of this ability. Emerging, tentative, evidence suggests that generative AI currently displays an ‘inverse skills bias’, which favours those with less actual and perceived cognitive ability. This could have a disruptive impact on current norms of equality of opportunity, particularly with respect to the means and the purpose of such norms. The longer-term impact of generative AI on equality norms is less clear. Generative AI may shift the entire focus of equality norms or deprioritise the value of equality.

Check out the full paper here (it's not that long!).

This is my first paper in a psychology journal. Thanks to Jean Francois Bonnefon for inviting me to submit to the special issue.

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The Ethics of Personalised Digital Duplicates: A Minimally Viable Permissibility Principle

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It's now possible, with the right set of training data, for anyone to create a digital copy of anyone. Some people have already done this as part of research projects, and employers are proposing to do it for employees. What are the ethics of this practice? Should you ever consent to having a digital copy made? What are the benefits and harms of doing so? In a new paper with Sven Nyholm, we propose a minimally viable permissibility principle for the creation and use of digital duplicates. Overall, we think there are significant risks associated with the creation of digital duplicates and that it is hard to mitigate them appropriately. The full paper is available open access here.

Here's the abstract.

Abstract: With recent technological advances, it is possible to create personalised digital duplicates. These are partial, at least semi-autonomous, recreations of real people in digital form. Should such duplicates be created? When can they be used? This article develops a general framework for thinking about the ethics of digital duplicates. It starts by clarifying the object of inquiry– digital duplicates themselves– defining them, giving examples, and justifying the focus on them rather than other kinds of artificial being. It then identifies a set of generic harms and benefits associated with digital duplicates and uses this as the basis for formulating a minimally viable permissible principle (MVPP) that stipulates widely agreeable conditions that should be met in order for the creation and use of digital duplicates to be ethically permissible. It concludes by assessing whether it is possible for those conditions to be met in practice, and whether it is possible for the use of digital duplicates to be more or less permissible.

 

And here's the minimally viable permissibility principle that we propose in the text:

Minimally viable permissibility principle (MVPP) = In any context in which there is informed consent to the creation and ongoing use of a digital duplicate, at least some minimal positive value realised by its creation and use, transparency in interactions between the duplicate and third parties, appropriate harm/risk mitigation, and there is no reason to think that this is a context in which real, authentic presence is required, then its creation and use is permissible.

Read the rest. 

 

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Mind the Anticipatory Gap: Genome Editing, Value Change and Governance

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I was recently a co-author on a paper about anticipatory governance and genome editing. The lead author was Jon Rueda, and the others were Seppe Segers, Jeroen Hopster, Belén Liedo, and Samuela Marchiori. It's available open access here on the Journal of Medical Ethics website. There is a short (900 word) summary available on the JME blog. Here's a quick teaser for it: 

 "Transformative emerging technologies pose a governance challenge. Back in 1980, a little-known academic at the University of Aston in the UK, called David Collingridge, identified the dilemma that has come to define this challenge: the control dilemma (also known as the ‘Collingridge Dilemma’). The dilemma states that, for any emerging technology, we face a trade-off between our knowledge of its impact and our ability to control it. Early on, we know little about it, but it is relatively easy to control. Later, as we learn more, it becomes harder to control. This is because technologies tend to diffuse throughout society and become embedded in social processes and institutions. Think about our recent history with smartphones. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone back in 2007, we didn’t know just how pervasive and all-consuming this device would become. Now we do but it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle (as some would like to do). 

The field of anticipatory governance tries to address the control dilemma. It aims to carefully manage the rollout of an emerging technology so as to avoid the problem of losing control just as we learn more about the effects of the technology. Anticipatory governance has become popular in the world of responsible innovation and design. In the field of bioethics, approaches to anticipatory governance often try to anticipate future technical realities, ethical concerns, and incorporate differing public opinion about a technology. But there is a ‘gap’ in current approaches to anticipatory governance.

They fail to factor in the mismatch between present and future moral views about a technology. We know, from our own social histories, that moral beliefs and practices can change over time. Things our grandparents thought were morally unexceptionable have become quite exceptionable. It is possible that future generations will have very different attitudes to genome editing than we do today. That’s something we need to consider when governing its rollout..."

More at this link. 

 

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The Structure of Academic Writing: Lessons from John McPhee

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In the world of literary non-fiction, John McPhee is a god. Through his New Yorker essays, and prize-winning books McPhee has mastered the art of narrative non-fiction. In fact, he pretty much invented the genre. He has many fans; many of whom are themselves well-known writers. They gush about his capacity to make the most turgid-sounding topics -- oranges, boats, plate tectonics -- fascinating explorations of people, culture, science and history.

Ironically, I have never warmed to him. I've tried. Honestly, I've tried. I have started reading several of his books, each time hoping I would find the hook that has lured in other readers. It doesn't seem to work for me. I usually give up after a few dozen pages. Perhaps his prose belongs to another era. A more thoughtful, more languid era. Perhaps I lack the patience to 'get it'.

There is, however, one aspect of McPhee's writing that I have warmed to: his writing about writing. In his essay collection, Draft No 4, he shares lessons from a lifetime of writing. Some of these essays contain insightful and useful advice. In this article, I want to reflect on one of his primary lessons: the importance of structure in non-fiction writing. I then want to see how that lesson can be applied to academic writing, using one of my own academic articles as a guinea pig.

As you shall see, McPhee has quite an elaborate and playful way of thinking about the structure of writing. A lot of academic writing is formulaic and routine. Rarely does anything break out of the conservative mould of traditional article structures. I think academics could benefit from adopting McPhee's elaborate and playful approach. If nothing else, they might have fun in the process.

1. McPhee on Structure

McPhee says that he learned about the importance of structure from his high school English teacher, Olive McKee. She taught him in the 1950s. She made him, and the rest of his class, do three writing assignments every week (which, wearing my teaching hat, sounds like an exercise in self-punishment from her perspective). They could write about anything but they had to prepare a structural outline for each and every piece. This encouraged him to foreground structure in his approach to writing. He has since passed the lesson on to his own students, telling them:

You can build a strong, sound, and artful structure. You can build a structure in such a way that it causes people to want to keep turning pages. A compelling structure in nonfiction can have an attracting effect analogous to a storyline in fiction." 

(McPhee 2018, 20)

 

But he adds some important nuance to this. Noting that (a) structure should be relatively invisible to the reader and (b) that structure must serve a purpose. In his own words:

"Readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone's bones...A piece of writing has to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there." 

(McPhee 2018, 34)

 

Indeed. These aphorisms aside, the most interesting aspect of McPhee's exploration of structure is his attempt to bring the reader under the skin of some of his most famous works, and to explain how he came up with the structure of those pieces. Draft No. 4 is full of examples of this. I'll just summarise a few of them, including along the way some of McPhee's infamously bizarre structural diagrams, to illustrate his process.

I'll start with profile pieces. Early on in Draft No. 4, McPhee notes that most magazine profile pieces have the same basic structure. You interview a person and the people around that person, and you thereby triangulate on a vision or perspective on that person. That gives each profile piece the following basic structure, where the X in the middle represents the person being profiled and the dots around the edge represent the people being interviewed about that person.

After about a decade of professional writing, McPhee grew tired with this structure and wondered if he could try something different. He came up with the idea of a dual-profile piece, in which two connected people could be profiled, incorporating the perspectives somewhat overlapping circles of interviewees. The structure is illustrated below.

Of course, this was a structure in search of a subject. Eventually, McPhee hit upon the pair of profiles he could use to fill out the structure: Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Both of whom were well-known US tennis players in the 1960s. They had very different backgrounds. Graebner came from a privileged background; Ashe, an African-American, did not. Nevertheless, due to their talent, they had known and interacted with one another from an early age. They played each other in the semi-final of the US Open in 1968. Watching the game, McPhee realised they provided the perfect fodder for his experiment in the dual-profile. The resulting book -- Levels of the Game -- is considered a classic in sports' journalism. For added structural nuance, McPhee built the profiles around a description of that semi-final game.

McPhee felt that this experiment in structure was a success: that the dual profile had a depth and range that was lacking in the traditional single profile. This led him to consider further experiments in structure. One such experiment was based on a very simple structural diagram:

Translated into English, the idea was to write a series of three connected dual profile pieces featuring a common protagonist (the common denominator in the diagram). In a sense, the common denominator would be the main character in the work, but the other three characters would be given a good share of the spotlight and through their interactions they would shed a unique light on the main character. McPhee found a suitable subject matter for this piece. The end result was one of his most celebrated pieces of writing Encounters with the Archdruid. This was about Dave Brouwer, a famous American climber, environmentalist and conservationist, who founded Friends of the Earth. The book was based on Brouwer's clashes with people that did not share his worldview. They were, respectively: (i) Charles Park, a mineral engineer and proponent of mining; (ii) Charles Fraser, a property developer; and (iii) Floyd Dominy, a federal bureaucrat and evangelist for hydroelectric power dams.

Admittedly, these two examples are not representative of McPhee's typical approach to structure. Both of these examples involve structures in search of subjects. Most of the time, McPhee had subjects in search of structure. In other words, he had researched a topic, accumulated an abundance of material, and then needed to reduce it all to some manageable, informative and insightful structure. One example of this, which is probably my favourite in his book, is an essay he wrote about a canoeing trip in Alaska. (The essay appears in his collection, about Alaska, entitled Coming into the Country).

The trip took place over 9 days, from the 13th to the 21st of a particular month (I don't know which one since I have not read the essay itself, only descriptions of it). The natural structure and the one that most writers would probably follow, would be to write a chronological story of the trip, starting on day one and ending on day nine. McPhee decided not to do that. Why not? Because it didn't fit with the themes he wanted to explore in his writings about Alaska. Those themes included the hardship of nature, the struggle for existence and, perhaps most importantly, the cycles of time in the natural world (birth, life, death, seasonality etc).

So, instead of adopting a linear chronological structure, he adopted a circular structure. He started the narrative (using the present tense) on day five of the trip (the 17th of the month) and then continued it right to the end of the trip on day nine (the 21st). The narrative, however, didn't end there: there was a flashback to day one of the trip (the 13th) and the story continued, told in the past tense, back to day five (the 17th). In addition to this structure replicating the cyclical nature of time in the natural world, it also created dramatic tension. On day one of the trip, the intrepid river explorers, encountered a grizzly bear. This was, as you might imagine, a tense moment, encouraging some reflections on mortality and the mismatch between humans and bears. But if he had adopted a linear chronological structure, the encounter with the bear would have been near the start of the narrative. By switching to the circular structure, the encounter came just after the half-way point. The diagram below illustrates the circular structure adopted.

There is a lot more in McPhee's essay on structure. Hopefully, this is enough to give you a sense of his method. Two things stand out for me. First, is the care and attention that he pays to the structure of his writing. I probably haven't conveyed this effectively in my summary but it is clear that McPhee agonises over structure, often taking weeks or months to figure out how best to structure his pieces. He uses props and diagrams to help him map them out. The illustrations I provided above were created by McPhee himself to explain his thought process to students. Second, is his willingness to play with and experiment with structures. He doesn't follow structural cliches. He tries to alter structures in order to better serve the purpose of the writing.

Could academic writing benefit from taking a similar approach?

2. Experimenting with the Structure of Academic Writing

I think it can. As I already said, a lot of academic writing is formulaic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sciences, where the typical academic journal article, particularly if it is reporting on the results of an experiment, tends to follow the same basic structure: introduction/literature review, methods, results, discussion. This structure is so deeply engrained in the academic culture that people are often penalised (or simply ignored) for deviating from it.

Even in non-science disciplines, articles tend to follow the same routine structures. So, for example, in philosophy writing (which is what I am most familiar with), articles will usually set out some problem or puzzle, then introduce an argument that solves that problem, and then defend that argument from counterattacks. The sub-sections within a philosophy article may not be prescripted (as they are in the sciences) and there may be some more experimenting with form, but usually those elements are there and they occur in the same sequence.

Most of the time it makes sense to follow the norms of your given academic discipline. I say this to students all the time. Go back to McPhee's comments on structure: writing should serve a purpose; it should bring the reader somewhere and then sit down. Most of the time, academic articles serve an argumentative or persuasive purpose. The goal is to convey an argument to a reader. The conclusion is the location to which you bring them. You want them to sit down once the conclusion is reached. If there are tried and tested structures for doing this, then most people, most of the time, should adopt those structures. Otherwise, they risk haphazard, hard to follow and nonfunctional writing. This risk is probably highest for beginning students, who haven't yet grasped the purpose of academic writing. At the very least, they should try to master the basic forms of academic writing before experimenting with structures.

This doesn't however, mean that academic writing must be formulaic and boring. And it doesn't mean that some creativity with structure is off limits. One of the reasons that McPhee's comments on structure appeal to me is that, without realising it, I think I have long adopted a similar approach to how I think about the structure of academic writing. In theory if not in practice.

As I just said, the purpose of most academic writing (and certainly most of the academic writing that I do) is argumentative. I think of arguments as having a natural structure. They are chained sequences of premises, leading to conclusions, responding to or rebutting objections and counterarguments. The many many argument diagrams that I have prepared for this blog, and for my classes with students, illustrate these argumentative structures. Consider the diagram below, taken from a piece I wrote on this blog earlier this year (it was about Anselm's ontological argument).

Anselm's Ontological Argument with Objections

The purpose of writing is to get the structures of those arguments into the reader's head. That doesn't mean, however, that you have to follow the same, predictable course through the argument. You don't have to start at premise 1 and work forward from there. You don't have to follow your own pathway through the argument. Just because you started with premise 1 doesn't mean the reader has to do so too. It is possible to divide it up in different ways. When you translate the multidimensional (or at the very least two-dimensional) structure of an argument into a linear sequence of prose, you can make creative choices that could, if done right, accentuate the argumentative purpose of the piece.

3. A Worked Example: My Article on 'Tragic Choices and Responsibility Gaps"

Sadly, I don't always practice what I preach. When it comes to the majority of my academic writing, I tend not to experiment much with structure. Usually, I come up with an argument, I map it out -- sometimes on paper; sometimes just in my head -- and then I write it up, typically following the journey I took through the argumentative structure myself on the page. I don't agonise and second-guess myself in the same way that McPhee appears to do.

I'm not sure why this is the case. It may be due to my own character: I'm quite impatient and, once I come up with an idea, I like to just write it up and not overthink it. I've said in interviews before that, for me, the first draft is usually the last draft. I don't enjoy rewriting and editing. I am not one of these people that 'finds' their writing in the edit. It may also be due to the pressures of academic work. The publish or perish incentive scheme doesn't lend itself to lengthy meditations on structure. McPhee, for instance, talks about spending weeks lying on his back, pondering the best structure for his writing. Most academics don't have that luxury (or, at least, don't feel like they have that luxury).

But that's a pity. Recently, as life has filled with other, more pleasant, distractions, and I have slowed down my rate of academic productivity, I've been thinking that I should play more with the structure of my academic writing. Rather than think about this in the abstract, I thought it might be fun, and instructive, to do a worked example with a piece of my own writing.

The piece in question is my article "Tragic Choices and the Virtue of Techno-Responsibility Gaps". To be very clear, when I wrote this piece, I did not think much about its structure. I just came up with the idea and I wrote it. Some of the structure was added later in response to critical reviewers of the piece. If I were to go back and reconsider its structure -- play with its form a bit more -- how might I do it?

It helps if I break the article down into its main component parts. I won't provide a detailed argument map. Instead, I will break the article down into a few main structural elements. Overall, the purpose of the article (as I conceived it) was to argue that, contrary to received opinion, the responsibility gaps created by autonomous machines could, in some cases at least, be a good thing. Something to be welcomed, not feared.

To argue for this conclusion, the article had the following structural elements:

The Problem: This is the bit of the article in which I outlined the received wisdom, i.e. the common view that responsibility gaps are a problem and something ought to be done to eliminate or minimise them. This required a review and analysis of the existing literature on the topic. Having stated the problem, I then introduced my alternative view, i.e. the proposition I wished to defend.

 

I then introduced three main claims which, when combined, led to my desired conclusion. These claims were numbered Claim 1, 2 and 3 in the article:

Claim 1: There are such things as tragic choices, i.e. moral decisions in which there is no clear 'right' answer and in which every choice seems to leave behind a moral 'taint' or 'remainder'. These tragic choices pose a problem for responsible moral agents.

Claim 2: There are three different strategies we can use to cope with the problem of tragic choices -- illusionism (i.e. pretend its not a problem), responsibilisation (pretend there is a right answer and we bear responsible for it), and delegation (make it someone else's problem) -- each of which has a unique blend of costs and benefits, none of which is ideal.

Claim 3: Autonomous machines could be a useful tool in addressing tragic choices because they allow for a reduced cost form of delegation, but in order to embrace this possibility we have to welcome, not reject, responsibility gaps.

My view is that claim 1 + claim 2 + claim 3 supports my desired conclusion. But claim 3, in particular, is controversial. So, to bulk up the argument, I responded to four objections to claim 3. Some of these I came up with myself; some of which I added in response to critical feedback. They were:

Objection 1 (O1): The randomisation objection - why not use randomisers, not machine learning devices, to address the problem of tragic choice?

O2: The impossibility objection - you cannot delegate responsibility to a machine (or any other entity) in a way that reduces the moral costs of the delegated decision. This is because, in delegating, you retain moral control.

O3: The agency laundering objection - even if the argument is correct isn't there a danger that unscrupulous actors will use it as an excuse to hide their responsibility (launder their agency) for decisions they have made?

O4: The explicit tradeoff objection - because decisions need to be coded into algorithms, doesn't this make them more explicit, and the moral tradeoffs inherent in them, more salient, not less? In other words, doesn't delegating to machines heighten the moral costs associated with tragic choices, not lessen them?

 

I offered, what I thought were appropriate, responses to each of these objections, thus leading me back to the desired conclusion: we should embrace delegation to machines, and the associated responsibility gaps, at least in the case of some tragic choices.

Obviously, there is a lot more nuance in the original article, which, as always, I encourage you to read. If you wanted to find additional structural elements in it, you could. But this should give a clear enough outline of its main contents.

When I wrote it, I essentially wrote it in the sequence I just outlined to you. I started with the problem, I then introduced and justified the three claims, before responding to the four objections. The diagram below illustrates this structure.

Original structure - Tragic choices with focus on the problem of responsibility gaps

How could I have done it differently? Taking the diagram above as a starting point, it is easy to think about ways in which the material could have been rearranged and presented in a different order. Doing so, the same argument would be conveyed, but the emphasis and focus would vary. Altering the structure in this way could also affect the framing of the argument. In the original version, the article was clearly intended to be a contribution to the debate about responsibility gaps and autonomous AI (this was, to some extent, forced on me since the article was part of special collection of articles on that topic). But shifting the initial entry point into the argument, and the point at which the argument ends, could have helped to reframe the argument as a contribution to a different debate.

Let's consider some alternative structures. I could, for instance, have started the article with Claim 1, the problem of tragic choices itself. I could have said to the reader "hey, there is this problem with moral decision-making and it poses a threat to responsible agency. How can we address this problem?" This would have made tragic choices, not responsibility gaps, the main focus/frame for the paper. I could then have proceeded to consider a potential solution to the problem, namely the randomisation solution (Objection 1 in the original draft). I could have argued that this was a partial solution at best and that a better alternative needed to be found. This could have led, naturally, to a discussion of Claim 2 and the different costs and benefits associated with the different solutions to the problem of tragic choice. From there, I could have introduced my preferred solution -- reduced cost delegation to machines -- which is, of course, Claim 3. This would have led to a discussion of the remaining objections to Claim 3 (O2, O3, O4). Then, by way of a general conclusion, I could have pointed out the ramifications of my argument for the responsibility gap debate. The diagram below illustrates this structure.

Alternative Structure 1 - Tragic choices with focus on tragic choices

Here's another possibility. In the middle of my original discussion of Claim 2, I talked a bit about the phenomenon of delegation and its importance in human social life. I used Joseph Raz's famous (in the legal philosophy world!) service conception of legal authority to illustrate this idea. Roughly, one of Raz's claims is that legal authorities sometimes mediate between humans and their moral reasons for action. When there are disputes between multiple agents about the right or desirable thing to do, a legal authority can resolve that dispute by doing the moral reasoning for us and giving us a decision to implement/enforce. We don't always second-guess or question the reasoning of the legal authority because that would defeat the point of having the authority in the first place. It performs a service for us, obviating the need for certain moral debates and disputes.

Properly expressed, I think this is an interesting idea and does highlight something important about the role of delegation in moral life. I could have started the argument there, saying to the reader "Hey look, delegation is a really important, and perhaps misunderstood, aspect of moral agency: sometimes, as moral agents, we need to delegate to others". But delegation is just one of several strategies we use to address the challenges of moral agency (Claim 2). I could then have started to talk about the particularly acute challenges associated with tragic choices (Claim 1), leading to my proposed solution (Claim 3). This would have entailed a discussion of reduced cost delegation as an important new form of delegation. This would have introduced a 'Delegation: Part 2' into to the article. In other words, there would be a degree of circularity in the structure of the article, akin, perhaps, to McPhee's circular journey down the river. Albeit, in my case, I would need to defend this proposed form of delegation 3 from the four objections, leading finally to some mention, perhaps peripheral, of the responsibility gap literature.

Alternative Structure 2 - Tragic Choices with Focus on Delegation

That's two suggestions. No doubt more could be proposed. Hopefully, even with this limited discussion, you can see how restructuring is possible and the potential benefits of doing so. Each of the proposed restructurings I have presented changes, in important ways, the emphasis and focus of the article. All the elements are still present, but the rearrangement allows those elements to serve a new purpose, and appeal to a different audience.

Since I work in the ethics of technology, it made most sense for me to frame my article as a contribution to the debate about responsibility gaps. But perhaps I should not have been so conservative in my approach. I could have presented the article as a contribution to legal and political theories of legitimate authority and delegation. I could have presented it as a contribution to moral philosophy and the resolution of moral dilemmas.

4. Conclusion

This brings me to the end of this article. To briefly recap, I started out looking at John McPhee's reflections on the importance of structure to non-fiction writing. Structure ensures that the writing serves a purpose - that it brings the reader somewhere and then sits down. McPhee has developed his thoughts about structure to a high level, constantly playing with and experimenting with form in order to improve the quality of his writing.

Structure is important in academic writing too. Most academic writing serves an argumentative purpose - it brings the reader to a conclusion and then sits down. But many academics are quite conservative and rigid in how they structure their writing. What I have tried to suggest in this article is that they should reconsider this conservatism. This doesn't require radical experimentation with form, per se. Once you have decided on the main elements of your argument, you can rearrange them to serve (subtly) different purposes. Doing so might allow you to see potentialities in your own writing that would be missed by following the well-trodden path.

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