Moral Psychology and Artificial Agents (Part Two) : The Transhuman Connection

Part 1 concluded by introducing the concept of the new ontological category – explaining how our cognitive machinery does not have natural and intuitive understanding of robots and AIs, unlike we have for animals, tools, and plants. Here the authors review findings in the moral psychology of robotics and transhumanism. They show that many peculiarities arise from the interaction of human cognition with robots, AIs, and human enhancement technologies. Robots are treated similarly, but not completely, like humans. Some such peculiarities are explained by mind perception mechanisms. On the other hand, it seems that transhumanistic technologies like brain implants and mind uploading are condemned, and the condemnation is motivated by our innate sexual disgust sensitivity mechanisms.Peer reviewe

The Role of Passive Evil in Perpetuating Downward Academic Mobbing

Downward academic mobbing occurs when unethical administrators initiate a pattern of bullying, intimidation, and the commission of personal and career damage on undeserving faculty members (most often principled, tenured professors who question their decisions or call attention to unethical behavior such as policy violations and lack of academic due process). Once these unethical administrators succeed in framing a faculty victim as a target (often through innuendo, factual distortions, or outright lies), the victim\u27s colleagues—many of whom have known and benefited from the victim for years—either fail to support the victim (a problem known as passive evil) or begin actively participating in the persecution themselves (often in pursuit of personal gain). The purpose of this chapter is to focus on the first instance (i.e., passive evil), and to discuss how passive evildoers\u27 failure to stand up for victims of downward academic mobbing effectively encourages future acts of persecution—including against the passive evildoers themselves

The Changing Global Context of Victimization: A Need for Cross-Continental Synergy

A cross-continental synergy is paramount when addressing victimization in genocide. The definition of victim of genocide is however challenging, complex, and open to controversies, especially when dealing with a large number of casualties. By proposing a reshaping of the purely legal framework which defines genocide victims, in support of a characterisation that includes all the multiple and sometimes conflicting voices of those who are direct or indirect witnesses of the “crime of all crimes,” this contribution argues for the need of a global legal framework that embeds both collective victimization in genocide as well as the uniquely different and diverse experiences of the victims