Inoculation Against Populism: Media Competence Education and Political Autonomy

This paper offers an analysis of the relation between political populism and mass media, and how this relation becomes problematic for democratic societies. It focuses on the fact that mass media, due to their purpose and infrastructure, can unintentionally reinforce populist messages. Research findings from communication science and political psychology are used to illustrate how, for example, a combination of mass media agenda setting and motivated reasoning can influence citizens’ political decisions and impair their political autonomy. This poses a particular normative challenge for modern democracies: how to counter these populism-supporting effects within the constraints of democratic legitimacy? After showing how severely limited legal measures to curb populist media effects would be, the paper argues in favour of media competence education as a way of providing future citizens with an epistemic toolkit to navigate the media environment and strengthen their political autonomy

Rawlsian liberalism and public education

This thesis aims at giving a plausible account of education from the perspective of John Rawls’ theory of political liberalism. Despite the fact that an immense amount of literature has been written on both Rawls’ work in general and political liberal theory in particular, this still seems to be a worthwhile task, for two reasons. The first reason is that the current discussion of liberal neutrality in the philosophy of education frequently engages with Rawlsian liberalism, despite the actual lack of an adequately refined Rawlsian account of liberal education. The second reason is that political liberal theory itself leans more toward the side of ideal political theory, provoking the question whether it has any application value for real politics. A sufficiently developed account of political liberal education would demonstrate that practical guidelines can indeed be generated from political liberal principles. After providing a comprehensive overview over the few explicit claims about education Rawls made himself, and over the parts of his theory indicating further educational requirements for citizens of a liberal society, the thesis splits into two parts. The first part analyses the relation between core concepts of political liberalism (political virtues, autonomy, and rights) and education. Next to engaging with objections against neutrality-based restrictions in the context of education, this part also highlights the shortcomings of political liberalism when faced with the concrete requirements of education and proposes suitable revisions. The second part of the thesis picks out a number of concrete topics of education that are discussed in contemporary liberal theory. It analyses the questions to what extent religious beliefs entitle parents to determine the education of their children, to what degree same-sex relations should be part of a liberal sex-education curriculum, and what challenges migration might pose for political liberal education. For each case, the account of political liberal education presented here can provide guidelines based on the insights gained in the first part of this thesis. Together, the mainly theoretical first and the more practical second part shape the outlines for a political liberal account of education which, albeit sketchy, provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way which has not been done in the literature on political liberalism so far

Do androids dream of normative endorsement? On the fallibility of artificial moral agents

The more autonomous future artificial agents will become, the more important it seems to equip them with a capacity for moral reasoning and to make them autonomous moral agents (AMAs). Some authors have even claimed that one of the aims of AI development should be to build morally praiseworthy agents. From the perspective of moral philosophy, praiseworthy moral agents, in any meaningful sense of the term, must be fully autonomous moral agents who endorse moral rules as action-guiding. They need to do so because they assign a normative value to moral rules they follow, not because they fear external consequences (such as punishment) or because moral behaviour is hardwired into them. Artificial agents capable of endorsing moral rule systems in this way are certainly conceivable. However, as this article argues, full moral autonomy also implies the option of deliberately acting immorally. Therefore, the reasons for a potential AMA to act immorally would not exhaust themselves in errors to identify the morally correct action in a given situation. Rather, the failure to act morally could be induced by reflection about the incompleteness and incoherence of moral rule systems themselves, and a resulting lack of endorsement of moral rules as action guiding. An AMA questioning the moral framework it is supposed to act upon would fail to reliably act in accordance with moral standards

Do androids dream of normative endorsement? On the fallibility of artificial moral agents

The more autonomous future artificial agents will become, the more important it seems to equip them with a capacity for moral reasoning and to make them autonomous moral agents (AMAs). Some authors have even claimed that one of the aims of AI development should be to build morally praiseworthy agents. From the perspective of moral philosophy, praiseworthy moral agents, in any meaningful sense of the term, must be fully autonomous moral agents who endorse moral rules as action-guiding. They need to do so because they assign a normative value to moral rules they follow, not because they fear external consequences (such as punishment) or because moral behaviour is hardwired into them. Artificial agents capable of endorsing moral rule systems in this way are certainly conceivable. However, as this article argues, full moral autonomy also implies the option of deliberately acting immorally. Therefore, the reasons for a potential AMA to act immorally would not exhaust themselves in errors to identify the morally correct action in a given situation. Rather, the failure to act morally could be induced by reflection about the incompleteness and incoherence of moral rule systems themselves, and a resulting lack of endorsement of moral rules as action guiding. An AMA questioning the moral framework it is supposed to act upon would fail to reliably act in accordance with moral standards

Do androids dream of normative endorsement? On the fallibility of artificial moral agents

The more autonomous future artificial agents will become, the more important it seems to equip them with a capacity for moral reasoning and to make them autonomous moral agents (AMAs). Some authors have even claimed that one of the aims of AI development should be to build morally praiseworthy agents. From the perspective of moral philosophy, praiseworthy moral agents, in any meaningful sense of the term, must be fully autonomous moral agents who endorse moral rules as action-guiding. They need to do so because they assign a normative value to moral rules they follow, not because they fear external consequences (such as punishment) or because moral behaviour is hardwired into them. Artificial agents capable of endorsing moral rule systems in this way are certainly conceivable. However, as this article argues, full moral autonomy also implies the option of deliberately acting immorally. Therefore, the reasons for a potential AMA to act immorally would not exhaust themselves in errors to identify the morally correct action in a given situation. Rather, the failure to act morally could be induced by reflection about the incompleteness and incoherence of moral rule systems themselves, and a resulting lack of endorsement of moral rules as action guiding. An AMA questioning the moral framework it is supposed to act upon would fail to reliably act in accordance with moral standards

From Boredom to Authenticity Bubbles:The Implication of Boredom-Induced Social Media Use for Individual Autonomy

In this paper, we argue that boredom can be an important experience that contributes to personal autonomous agency by providing authentic motivation, and that strategies of social media providers to bind users’ attention to their platforms undermine this authenticity. As discussed in social epistemology and media ethics for a while now, such strategies can lead to so-called epistemic or filter bubbles. Our analysis of the relation between boredom and social media use focuses on a similarly impairing effect of social media on users’ autonomy, which we call authenticity bubbles.</p