The Modern-Day Moral Philosopher
By Lucas Principe, Environmental Science & Philosophy, 2020
This article was originally published as part of Issue 38: People.
Sitting in his office, looking out the window from the third floor of Holmes Hall, Professor John Basl is as close to a stock photo of a philosopher as you can get: great, long beard, hair down to his shoulders, deep in thought. As a moral philosopher specializing in applied ethical issues in relation to non-sentient beings and artificial intelligence (AI), he thinks about the stranger questions in life: are our current machines morally considerable? Do non-sentient beings like trees have a welfare? How should autonomous vehicles be programmed to manage accidents? Not things you’d typically start daydreaming about on the commute home. It’s these interesting philosophy of science and technology focuses that make Dr. Basl a perfect on-campus figure to highlight for our “People” issue.
Professor Basl, who received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, began teaching at Northeastern in 2013. Originally a biology student as an undergraduate here at Northeastern, Dr. Basl said a boring co-op spent experimenting with bacteria resulted in him thinking about switching his focus. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he says. “I was doing a lot of philosophy reading on the side, not useful stuff, but I knew I was interested in it. Then I decided to take some classes in it and immediately fell in love.”
Originally a biology student as an undergraduate here at Northeastern, Dr. Basl said a boring co-op spent experimenting with bacteria resulted in him thinking about switching his focus.
Currently, one of his more relevant interests lies in the ethics of artificial intelligence, which he describes as a “small but growing” field. The field aims to address issues concerning the moral relationships between humans and machines, including such subjects as our moral obligations to machines and their capacities for interests and intelligence. With the boom in AI development in recent years, Professor Basl thinks these questions are more pertinent than ever, and while there are many people, mostly engineers and developers, working on AI ethics, there “just aren’t a lot of philosophers” working on this.
One of Professor Basl’s main focuses within the field involves evaluating moral patiency, which he described as “anything to whom or to which we have direct moral obligations.” He believes:
“If there’s an AI that has attitudes, or the capacity for enjoyment or suffering, if it has a welfare in any plausible sense, then it’s a moral patient. The question, though, of when we turn one on, will we recognize its patiency, is much harder to answer. And I don’t think we have a good answer for that yet.”
The field aims to address issues concerning the moral relationships between humans and machines, including such subjects as our moral obligations to machines and their capacities for interests and intelligence.
In his public writings, he has stated that our current machines, even our most advanced AI’s, are only “mere machines,” so we should not view them as moral patients. However, when asked if he had any timeline about when we may have to start thinking of AIs as moral patients, he told me he didn’t have a prediction, mostly because of “the hard problem of consciousness, which means we don’t really have a good theory of what makes things conscious.”
Another of his focuses lies in ethical problems surrounding autonomous vehicles (AVs), which have been in the news recently due to high profile cases involving accidental fatalities. This risk, among others, is what has many experts thinking about the potential implications of these vehicles on the road. For Professor Basl, though, the biggest risk is our “unpreparedness.” He thinks “we’re not ready yet. We haven’t answered the important philosophical questions we need to answer before we turn our lives over to the machines.”
When asked about who should be the ones answering these questions, he had a suggestion: “it’s tempting to say philosophers… but I think the answer is an oversight model where you use a committee that’s constituted by experts from different fields.”
“We haven’t answered the important philosophical questions we need to answer before we turn our lives over to the machines.”
Lastly, after being asked why a science major should take a philosophy class at Northeastern, he had much to say. “Multiple answers. First, it will make you a better candidate for jobs….second, you can’t take an ethics course with us and not leave being a better reasoner. I think that skill applies in every domain….third, it’ll just be good for you. It will make you think more clearly about your values and beliefs.”
If any of these reasons persuade you, or you’d simply like to take a class with him, Professor Basl will be teaching two courses next semester: “Moral Philosophy” and “Research Ethics”. And look out for his new book, “The Death of the Ethic of Life”, which further explores the welfare of non-sentient beings and multiple other philosophy of biology issues, set to be released this February.
