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Virtual Reality (VR) experiences have arrived for a wide audience, and some worry that VR experience entices us to abandon experience In Real Life (IRL). While such worries cannot be dismissed out of hand, they are liable to be imprecise and distorted without careful analysis of the opportunity costs of VR experience. Generally, we are not liable to abandon real experience for its virtual analogue. Even a perfect VR experience is generally not a perfect substitute for a like experience IRL. Instead, the success of VR will depend on its ability to produce experiences valued for what they actually are.

The information ethics (IE) of Floridi and Sanders is evaluated here in the light of an alternative in virtue ethics that is antifoundationalist, particularist, and relativist in contrast to Floridi's foundationalist, impartialist, and universalist commitments. Drawing from disparate traditional sources like Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Emerson, as well as contemporary advocates of virtue ethics like Nussbaum, Foot, and Williams, the essay shows that the central contentions of IE, including especially the principle of ontological equality, must either express commitments grounded in the particular perspectives we already inhabit, or be without rational or ethical force for us. © 2010 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the nature of computer ethics as a field of study in light of 20 years of Ethicomp, arguing that computer ethics beyond mere compliance will have to be pluralistic and sensitive to the starting places of various audiences. Design/methodology/approach – The essay offers a philosophical rather than empirical analysis, but the ideal of open inquiry is observed to be manifest in the practice of Ethicomp. Findings – If computer ethics is to constitute a real engagement with industry and society that cultivates a genuine sensitivity to ethical concerns in the creation, development and implementation of technologies, a genuine sensitivity that stands in marked contrast to ethics as “mere compliance”, then computer ethics will have to persist in issuing an open invitation to inquiry. Originality/value – The celebration of 20 years of Ethicomp is an occasion to reflect on who we are and what we mean to be doing. Inclusive of previous accounts (e.g. Moor and Gotterbarn), while going beyond them, an inquiry-based conception of computer ethics makes room for all the various dimensions of computer ethics. ©Emerald Group Publishing Limited

This paper defends the thesis that privacy as a right is derived from fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property and does not permit restricting the commodification of bodily material; however, privacy as life, liberty, property does require conventions that ensure a robust and just market in bodily material. The analysis proceeds by defending a general commitment to liberty and markets, but not in the manner one might expect from a 'doctrinaire' libertarian. Ethical concerns about commodification are legitimate in the context of new medical and information technologies, but these concerns are not sufficiently well defined to justify political conclusions, since not every ethical concern is in itself a political concern, and the best way to resolve certain ethical difficulties is to draw up political boundaries that facilitate the discovery and testing of various solutions to our ethical puzzles. To illustrate the point, I will indicate how privacy as life, liberty, property defines such a dynamic solution to the problems of commodification of human bodily material and slippery information in insurance markets.

In light of the relation between culture and markets, an analysis of cultural evolution reveals that globalization will not lead to the homogenization of world cultures. © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

The cluster of concerns usually identified as matters of privacy can be adequately accounted for by unpacking our natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Privacy as derived from fundamental natural rights to life, liberty, and property encompasses the advantages of the control and restricted access theories without their attendant difficulties., (C)2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers

This sabbatical leave was devoted to revising and editing material for a book project with the working title, Meditations on Heroic Individualism. The principle objective was to have a finished manuscript, ready for submission to publishers. Additionally, a proposal was developed to add Special Topics course, Ethical Individualism, as a permanent course.

Business ethics education is experiencing a renaissance as recurring corporate scandals and malpractice over the last decade have ensured that most universities now see the subject as an important and necessary component of any business degree course. As well as integrating professional ethics into their curriculum, Business Schools are also developing standalone ethics courses, showing that they take seriously their responsibility to help prepare the next generation of managers to improve business' track record of transparency, accountability and sustainable development. However what are the learning approaches that will help to bring about real improvements in business ethics learning at university? This paper argues that a holistic approach to ethics teaching is needed, in which students are encouraged to develop ethical knowledge and skills within their personal value systems. In this way ethics does not become something apart but integrated into one's terms of reference. The paper discusses a particular pedagogic approach designed to develop a student's 'critical consciousness' using a student-led learning method in which students actively engage with important concepts and discuss the issues amongst themselves within an environment where they can speak freely. Qualitative interviews with a selection of undergraduates on the compulsory first year professional ethics module provide insight into the impact of the method on attitudes and behaviours. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Several proposals for moral enhancement would use AI to augment (auxiliary enhancement) or even supplant (exhaustive enhancement) human moral reasoning or judgment. Exhaustive enhancement proposals conceive AI as some self-contained oracle whose superiority to our own moral abilities is manifest in its ability to reliably deliver the ‘right’ answers to all our moral problems. We think this is a mistaken way to frame the project, as it presumes that we already know many things that we are still in the process of working out, and reflecting on this fact reveals challenges even for auxiliary proposals that eschew the oracular approach. We argue there is nonetheless a substantial role that ‘AI mentors’ could play in our moral education and training. Expanding on the idea of an AI Socratic Interlocutor, we propose a modular system of multiple AI interlocutors with their own distinct points of view reflecting their training in a diversity of concrete wisdom traditions. This approach minimizes any risk of moral disengagement, while the existence of multiple modules from a diversity of traditions ensures pluralism is preserved. We conclude with reflections on how all this relates to the broader notion of moral transcendence implicated in the project of AI moral enhancement, contending it is precisely the whole concrete socio-technical system of moral engagement that we need to model if we are to pursue moral enhancement.

Practical wisdom is the intellectual virtue relating to the ability to fix ends and discern in a concrete circumstance how to achieve those ends. It is cultivated through engagement with experience rather than book learning. However, a whole matrix of convergent technologies, such as headsets, haptic suits, AI-driven chatbots, and extended realities, such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), creates new conditions for training practical wisdom. How can moral educators facilitate practical wisdom in this extended reality (XR)? Drawing on Nussbaum’s account of phronesis, we contend the job of moral education in XR is mostly about ensuring students’ critical engagement. We suggest AI assistants can contribute to this task, so long as these technologies and the people using them manifest Socratic humility ensuring that no single interaction serves as an ‘oracle of truth’, leaving critical thinking and judgment firmly in the hands of the student.