Moral uncertainty in the Anthropocene: moral circle and precautionary animism

Creaturehood Under Conditions of Optimization: AI and the Externalization of Moral Formation

Contemporary AI systems are increasingly designed to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, and cognitive burden. This article argues that such systems do not merely expand human capacities but progressively externalize forms of judgment and existential burden that Christian traditions have historically understood as necessary conditions for the cultivation of moral agency. Drawing on the theological anthropologies of Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the article develops a theological-anthropological critique of what it terms optimization culture: the normative logic through which the reduction of friction and existential difficulty becomes a dominant telos of technological design. Contemporary articulations of this logic are examined through the work of Jacques Ellul, Byung-Chul Han, Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and William Davies. The article argues that AI systems shaped by this logic risk progressively externalizing the practices of disciplined attention, existential responsibility, and costly judgment through which mature moral agency has historically been cultivated. In response, it proposes a formative anthropology of technology as a framework for evaluating AI not only according to functional criteria such as safety or efficiency, but according to the kinds of human beings such systems actively help to form.

A Jewish Ethical Account of the Abyss of Responsibility in the Anthropocene

This article addresses the “abyss of responsibility” in the Anthropocene, where accountability for climate change is routinely outsourced to institutions. By analyzing a global consumer society that reduces both humans and nature to mere commodities, this study develops a Jewish ethical framework for individual and collective ecological agency. Methodologically, it expands the tort liabilities of Seder Nezikin (Mishnayot)—originally addressing unintentional, successive, and shared damages—into a blueprint for systemic environmental accountability. To animate this legal structure, the paper puts rabbinic sources into conversation with modern Jewish thinkers. It utilizes Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of infinite responsibility, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s covenantal politics, and Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik’s account of a co-responsibility between the human and earth to shift accountability from the state to the individual, calling for moral agency and active citizenship. Crucially, the study argues that environmental and human spheres are deeply intertwined; as long as human suffering is ignored for economic profit, nature will remain exploited. By integrating the legal principles of Nezikin, the inescapable responsibility of Levinas, Sacks’ politics of hope, and earth’s sensitivity towards sinfulness as formulated by Soloveitchik, this paper provides actionable theological resources to democratize responsibility and mend a world in distress.

MORAL OBLIGATION UNDER CONSTRAINT: A SITUATIONIST ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POVERTY RELIEF

Standing Your Ground on Moral Disagreement

Moral disagreement is often invoked to support skeptical conclusions about moral judgment, typically by modeling it on the epistemology of peer disagreement. On the dominant picture, disagreement with a peer supplies higher‐order evidence of error and thereby rationally requires suspension of judgment or a substantial reduction in confidence. We argue that this evidential picture is problematic, especially in the moral domain. First, the conditions for epistemic peerhood are difficult to specify and apply without arbitrariness, and this undermines the assumption that disagreement is a uniform sign of error. Second, even where peerhood conditions are plausible, moral disagreement need not play the specific evidential role presupposed by the skeptical argument. Drawing on resources from social epistemology, we develop an alternative framework on which persistent moral disagreement can function as a structured form of collective inquiry, regulated by argumentative practices and epistemic institutions. On this view, steadfastness is not automatically a sign of epistemic arrogance; under appropriate conditions, it is compatible with epistemic humility, and it can contribute to both epistemic and moral improvement.

The Great Cosmic Silence: What Does the Fermi Paradox Tell About the Future of Humanity?

This article examines how institutional time horizons shape the long‐term survival prospects of human technological civilisation. While research on global catastrophic and existential risks has expanded, the temporal structures of political‐economic institutions remain underexamined. Using the Fermi paradox as a heuristic lens, I argue that the capacity of complex technological societies to sustain long‐term, risk‐minimising and cooperative action represents a civilisational bottleneck. The challenge of organising extended temporal responsibility raises fundamental questions for political economy and international relations. From this perspective, the article considers the institutional conditions required for a cooperative global order capable of safeguarding humanity's future and the flourishing of life. It explores pathways to extend collective time horizons globally, including strengthened long‐term governance frameworks, mechanisms for intergenerational representation and integrated forms of global political authority. The intertwining of questions, for example, through discounting and justice, suggests that new umbrella concepts are needed to translate such analysis into concrete policy or institutional design. The article concludes by discussing ‘temporal socialism’ and processual ‘world statehood’ as demanding yet viable concepts for institutionalising longer‐term policy orientation of the world system.

From Biology to Normativity

The genesis of morality has remained a subject of perennial debate, and philosophers have yielded variegated and irreconcilable accounts regarding its origins and application. The argument has been between rationalist-transcendental approaches (e.g., Plato, Kant) and naturalist-evolutionary accounts (e.g., Hume, Darwin). The former derive universal, objective and absolute moral principles from articulated rational theories, and de-emphasise the factors of empirical and biological conditions of human life upon ethical discourse. However, evolutionary ethics establishes a descriptive or biological account of our natural moral capacity, and never treats it as an external imposition or as pure rational discovery. Yet such a natural account of morality is challenged (as Hume, Moore and Street noticed) to corroborate how normative authority can be derived from biological and experiential origins. Unless this gap is resolved, we remain caught between the extremes of “ethical absolutism”, which maximises abstract normativity, and a “biological reductionism” that reduces complex moral reasoning to biochemical or genetic facts. Thus, I contend that the fact-value dichotomy, the biological reductionism and the moral absolutism or essentialism can be reconciled through the synthesis of evolutionary ethics and Deweyan pragmatism. Against the two extreme views, Dewey’s ethical inquiry (characterised by its experimental, practical, and context-sensitive nature) can provide normative justification for evolutionary ethics. Accepting the biological origins of morality and treating moral judgment as a problem-solving tool, Dewey proposes pragmatic alternatives that transform natural capacities into normative authority. Methodologically, I follow a critical-analytical approach and combine philosophical exegesis with conceptual reconstruction. Through engaging with key thinkers (Dewey, Darwin, Dawkins, De Waal, and Churchland), comparative analyses, and integrative argumentation, I construct a systematic account of moral origins and growth that is both empirically grounded and normatively strong.