The Ethics Blog

A research blog from the Centre for Resarch Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Category: Musings (Page 1 of 19)

The importance of letting things take their time

Stopwatch, photo by Bruno on Pixabay
11 November, 2025 / / 1 Comment

To be an ethicist and philosopher is to be an advocate for time: “Wait, we need time to think this through.” This idea of letting things take their time rarely gains traction in society. It starts already in school, where the focus is often on being able to calculate quickly and recite as many words as possible in one minute. It then continues at the societal level.

A good example is technological development, which is moving faster than ever. Humans have always used more or less advanced and functional technology, always searching for better ways to solve problems. With the Industrial Revolution, things began to accelerate, and since then, the pace has only increased. We got factories, car traffic, air travel, nuclear power, genetically modified crops, and prenatal diagnostics. We got typewriters, computers, and telephones. We got different ways to play and reproduce music. Now we have artificial intelligence (AI), which it is often said will revolutionize most parts of society.

The development and implementation of AI is progressing at an unparalleled speed. Various government authorities use AI, healthcare allows AI tools to take on more and more tasks. Schools and universities wrestle with the question of how AI should be used by students, teachers, and researchers. Teachers have been left at a loss because AI established itself so quickly, and different teachers draw different boundaries for what counts as cheating, resulting in great uncertainty for students about what applies. People use AI for everything from planning their day to getting help with mental health issues. AI is used as a relationship expert, but also as the very object of romantic or friendship relationships. Today, there are AI systems that can call elderly and sick people to ask how they are feeling, whether they have taken their medication, and perhaps whether they have had any social contact recently.

As with all technology, there are advantages and disadvantages to AI, and it can be used in both good and bad ways. AI can be used to improve life for people and the environment, but like all technology, it can also be harmful to people and the environment. People and societies can do things better and more easily with AI, but like all technology, it can also have negative consequences such as environmental damage, unemployment, and discrimination.

Researchers in the Netherlands have discussed the problems that arise with new technology in terms of “social experiments.” They argue that there is an important difference compared to the careful testing that, for example, new pharmaceuticals undergo before they are approved. New technologies are not tested in such a structured way.

The EU has introduced a basic legal framework for AI (the EU AI Act), which can be seen as an attempt to introduce the new technology in a way that is less experimental on people and societies: more “responsible” and “trustworthy” AI. The new law is criticized by some European tech companies, who claim that the law means we will fall behind countries that have no regulations, such as the USA and China. Doing things in a thoughtful and ethically sound way is apparently considered less important than quickly getting the technology in place. On the contrary, caution is seen as risky, which says something about the concept of risk that currently drives such rapid development that perhaps not even the technology can deliver what the market expects.

Just as with previous important technologies, we need to think things through beforehand. If AI is to help us without harmful consequences, development must be allowed to take its time. This is even more important with AI than with previous technologies because AI has an unusually large potential to affect our lives. Ethical research points to several problems related to justice and trust. One problem is that we cannot explain why AI in, for example, healthcare reaches a certain conclusion about a specific individual. With previous technology, someone human being – if not the user, then at least the developer – has always been able to explain the causality in the system. Can we trust a technology in healthcare that we cannot control or explain in essential ways?

There are technology optimists and technology pessimists. Some are enthusiastic about new technologies and believe it is the solution to all our problems. Others think the precautionary principle should apply to all new technology and do not want to accept any risks at all. Instead, we should see the middle way. The middle way consists of letting things take their time to show their real possibilities beyond the optimists’ and pessimists’ preconceived notions. Advocating an ethical approach is not about stopping development but about slowing down the process. We need time to reflect on where it might be appropriate to introduce AI and where we should refrain from using the technology. We should also consider how the AI we choose to use is introduced in a good way so that we have time to detect risks of injustice, discrimination, and reduced trust and can minimize them.

It is not easy and not popular to be the one who says, “Wait, we need to think this through.” Yet it is so important that we take the time. We must think ahead so that things do not go wrong when they could so easily have gone right. It might be worth considering what could happen if we learned in school that it is more important to do things right than to do them quickly.

Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist

Written by…

Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist, senior lecturer in biomedical ethics and associate professor in practical philosophy at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics.

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Approaching future issues

Can counseling be unphilosophical?

Chairs. Image by Ron Lach from Pexels
28 October, 2025 / / 1 Comment

A fascinating paper by Fredrik Andersen, Rani Lill Anjum, and Elena Rocca, “Philosophical bias is the one bias that science cannot avoid,” reminds us of something fundamental, but often forgotten, about the nature of scientific inquiry. Every scientist, whether they realize it or not, operates with fundamental assumptions about causality, determinism, reductionism, and the nature of reality itself. These “philosophical biases” are, they write, unavoidable foundations that shape how we see, interpret, and engage with the world.

The authors show us, for instance, how molecular biologists and ecologists approached GM crop safety with entirely different philosophical frameworks. Molecular biologists focused on structural equivalence between GM and conventional crops, operating from an entity-based ontology where understanding parts leads to understanding wholes. Ecologists emphasized unpredictable environmental effects, working from a process-based ontology where relationships and emergence matter more than individual components. Both approaches were scientifically rigorous. Both produced valuable insights. Yet neither could claim philosophical neutrality.

If science cannot escape philosophical presuppositions, what about counseling and psychotherapy? When a counselor sits with a client struggling with identity, purpose, or belonging, what is actually happening in that encounter? The moment guidance is offered, or even when certain questions are asked rather than others, something interesting occurs. But what exactly?

Consider five questions that might help us see what’s already present in counseling practice:

How do we understand what makes someone themselves? When a counselor helps a client explore their identity, are they working with a theory of personal continuity? When they encourage someone to “be true to yourself,” what assumptions about authenticity are at play? Even the counselor who focuses purely on behavioral techniques is making a statement about whether human flourishing can be addressed without engaging questions about what it means to exist as this particular person. Can we really separate therapeutic intervention from some implicit understanding of selfhood?

What are we assuming about the relationship between mind and body, symptom and meaning? A client arrives with anxiety. One practitioner might reach for cognitive restructuring techniques, another for somatic awareness practices, another for meaning-making conversations. Each choice reflects philosophical commitments about how mind and body relate, whether psychological and physical wellbeing can be separated, and what we’re actually addressing when we work with distress. But do these commitments disappear simply because they remain unspoken?

When we speak of human connection and belonging, what vision of relationship are we already inhabiting? Counselors regularly address questions of intimacy, community, and social bonds. In doing so, might they be operating with implicit theories about what constitutes genuine connection? When guiding someone toward “healthier relationships,” are we working with philosophical assumptions about autonomy and interdependence, about what humans fundamentally need from each other? Can therapeutic work with relationships remain neutral about what relationships fundamentally are?

What understanding of human possibility guides our sense of what can change? Every therapeutic approach carries assumptions about human agency and potential. When we help someone envision different futures, when we work with hope or despair, when we distinguish between realistic and unrealistic goals, aren’t we already operating with philosophical commitments about what enables or constrains human possibility? A therapist who insists that their work deals only with “what’s practicable” seems to be making a philosophical claim; that human existence can be adequately understood through purely pragmatic or practical categories.

How do questions of meaning, purpose, and value show up in therapeutic work, even when uninvited? A client asks not just “How can I feel less anxious?” but “Why do I feel my life lacks direction?” or “What makes any of this worthwhile?” These questions of meaning arise in therapeutic encounters even in approaches that don’t explicitly address them. When such questions surface, can a counselor respond without engaging philosophical dimensions? And if we attempt to redirect toward purely behavioral or emotional terrain, aren’t we implicitly suggesting that questions of meaning and purpose are separate from genuine wellbeing?

Just as scientists benefit from making their philosophical presuppositions explicit and debatable, might therapeutic practitioners benefit from acknowledging and refining the philosophical commitments that already shape their work?

Read the full paper: Philosophical bias is the one bias that science cannot avoid.

Written by…

Luis de Miranda, philosophical practitioner and associated researcher at the Center for Research Ethics and Bioethics at Uppsala University.

Andersen, F., Anjum, R. L., & Rocca, E. (2019). Philosophical bias is the one bias that science cannot avoid. eLife, 8, e44929. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.44929

We like challenging questions

What is philosophical health and can it be mapped?

Compass. Photo by Ylanite Koppens.
23 September, 2025 / / 2 Comments

Philosophers such as Socrates and philosophical schools such as Stoicism have had a certain influence on psychology and psychotherapy, and thus also on human health. But if philosophy can support human health via psychology, can it not support health more directly, on its own? A growing trend today is to offer philosophical conversations as a form of philosophical practice that can support human health in existential dimensions. The trend to offer philosophical conversations is linked to a concept of health that is not only about physical and mental health, and which does not understand health as merely the absence of disease: philosophical health.

What does it mean to talk about philosophical health? Given all the health ideals that already affect self-esteem, should we now also be influenced by philosophical health ideals that make our lives feel hopelessly ill-conceived and pointless? No, on the contrary, the stress that human ideals and norms create can be an important topic to philosophize about, in peace and quiet. Instead of being burdened by more ideas about how we should live, instead of giving the appearance of fulfilling the ideals, we can freely examine this underlying stress: the daily feeling of being compelled to live the way we imagine we should. No wonder philosophical practice is a growing trend. Finally, we get time to think openly about what other trends usually make us hide: ourselves, when we do not identify with the trends, the norms and the ideals.

Philosophizing sounds heavy and demanding but can actually be the exact opposite. I have written an essay about how philosophical self-examination, in its best moments, can lighten the mind by unexpectedly illuminating our many tacit demands and expectations. Unfortunately, the essay is not published with open access, but here is the link: The Wisdom of Intellectual Asceticism.

A colleague at CRB, Luis de Miranda, has long worked with philosophical health both as a practitioner and researcher. He emphasizes that human health also includes existential dimensions such as harmony, meaning and purpose in life, and that in order to support wellbeing in these intimately universal dimensions, people also need opportunities to reflect on life. In a new article (written with six co-authors), he develops the concept in the form of a research tool that could map philosophical health: a philosophical health compass. The idea is that the compass will make it possible to study philosophical health in more quantitative ways, for example making comparisons between populations and assessing the effects of different forms of philosophical practice.

The compass consists of a questionnaire. Respondents are asked to consider statements about 6 existential dimensions of life, revolving around the body, the self, belonging, possibilities in life, purpose, and finally, their own philosophical reflection. Each dimension is explored through 8 statements. Respondents indicate on a 5-point scale how well the total of 48 statements apply to them.

I cannot judge how well the 48 statements are chosen, or how easy it is for people to take a position on them, but the statements are more concrete than you might think and it will be exciting to see what happens when the compass is put to the test. Will it be able to measure the wisdom of the crowd, can philosophically relevant differences and changes be mapped? If you want to take a closer look at the philosophical health compass, you can find the article here: The philosophical health compass: A new and comprehensive assessment tool for researching existential dimensions of wellbeing.

Luis de Miranda warns that the compass may risk not only supporting philosophical health, but also undermining it if the compass is interpreted as an ideal that determines the qualities that distinguish good philosophical health. Using the compass wisely requires great openness and sensitivity, he emphasizes. Yes, hopefully the compass will raise many philosophical questions about what philosophical health is, and how it can be studied. For what is the great openness and responsiveness that Luis de Miranda emphasizes, if not philosophical inquisitiveness itself?

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Pär Segerdahl; The Wisdom of Intellectual Asceticism. Common Knowledge 1 January 2025; 31 (1): 74–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-11580693

de Miranda, L., Ingvolstad Malmgren, C., Carroll, J. E., Gould, C. S., King, R., Funke, C., & Arslan, S. (2025). The philosophical health compass: A new and comprehensive assessment tool for researching existential dimensions of wellbeing. Methodological Innovations, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991251352420

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Thinking about thinking

Mind the gap between ethics in principle and ethics in practice

train passing station, photo by Ingo Joseph on Pexels
2 September, 2025 / / 1 Comment

When ethical dilemmas are discussed using case descriptions or vignettes, we tend to imagine the cases as taken from reality. Of course, the vignettes are usually invented and the descriptions adapted to illustrate ethical principles, but when we discuss the cases, we tend to have the attitude that they are real. Or at least real possibilities: “What should we do if we encounter a case like this?”

Discussing ethical cases is an extremely good exercise in ethical reasoning and an important part of the education and training of healthcare professionals. But sometimes we may also need to keep in mind that these discussions are adapted exercises in the ethics gym, so to speak. Reality rarely delivers separate dilemmas that can be handled one by one. Often, life is rather a continuous flow of more or less clearly experienced challenges that change faster than we can describe them. We cannot always say what the problem situation actually looks like. Therefore, it may sometimes be wise not to decide or act immediately, but to wait for the situation to take a different and perhaps clearer form. And then the ethical problem may in practice have been partially resolved, or become more manageable, or become obsolete.

Does that sound irresponsible? Judging by two texts that I want to recommend today, responsible healthcare professionals may, on the contrary, experience a friction between ethics in principle and ethics in practice, and that it would be unethical not to take this seriously. The first text is an essay by Joar Björk (who is both an ethicist and a palliative care physician). In the journal Palliative Care and Social Practice, he discusses a fictional patient case. A man with disseminated prostate cancer is cared for by a palliative care team. In the vignette, the man has previously expressed that he wants complete knowledge of his situation and what his death might look like. But when the team has time to talk to him, he suddenly changes his mind and says that he does not want to know anything, and that the issue should not be raised again. How to act now?

According to Joar Björk, the principle-based ethical standard recommendation here would probably be the following. Respect for the patient’s autonomy requires that the team not try to carry out the conversation. Only if there is good reason to believe that a conversation can have great medical benefit can one consider trying to inform the patient in some way.

Note that the principle-based recommendation treats the situation that has arisen as a separate case: as a ready-made vignette that cannot be changed. But in practice, palliative teams care for their patients continuously for a long time: so much is constantly changing. Of course, they are aware that they cannot impose information on patients who state that they do not want it, as it violates the principle of autonomy. But in practice, the unexpected situation is an unclear ethical challenge for the care team. What really happened, why did he change his mind? Does the man suddenly refuse to accept his situation and the proximity of death? Maybe the team should cautiously try to talk more to him rather than less? How can the team plan the man’s care – maybe soon a hospital bed will be needed in his home – if they are not allowed to talk to him about his situation? As palliative care teams develop good listening and communication skills, the situation may very well soon look different. Everything changes!

Joar Björk’s reflections give the reader an idea of ​​how ethical challenges in practice take on different forms than in the vignettes that are so important in ethics teaching and training. How does he deal with the gap between ethics in principle and ethics in practice? As I understand him, Joar Björk does not advocate any definite view on how to proceed. But he is trying to formulate what he calls a palliative care ethos, which could provide better ethical guidance in cases such as the one just described. Several authors working in palliative care have attempted to formulate aspects of such a care ethos. In his essay, Joar Björk summarizes their efforts in 11 points. What previously sounded passive and irresponsible – to wait and see – appears in Joar Björk’s list in the form of words of wisdom such as “Everything changes” and “Adaptation and improvisation.”

Can healthcare professionals then find better ethical guidance in such practical attitudes than in well-established bioethical principles? Joar Björk tentatively discusses how the 11 points taken together could provide guidance that is more sensitive to the practical contexts of palliative care. I myself wonder, however – but I do not know – whether it would not be wise to allow the gap between ethics in principle and ethics in practice to be as wide as it is. The 11 points probably have their origin in an ethical care practice that already functions as the points describe it. The practice works that way without healthcare professionals using the points as some kind of soft guidance. Joar Björk thus describes a palliative care ethics in practice; a description that can help us think more clearly about the differences between the two forms of ethics. Reflecting on the 11 points can, for example, make healthcare professionals more aware of the specifics of their practice, so that they do not wrongly blame themselves if they do not always relate to situations that arise as if they were separate cases that illustrate ethical principles.

Perhaps it is impudent of me to suggest this possibility in a blog post that recommends reading, but Joar Björk’s reflections are so thought-provoking that I cannot help it. Read his essay here: Ethical reflection: The palliative care ethos and patients who refuse information.

You will certainly find Joar Björk’s reflections interesting. Therefore, I would like to mention a new book that also reflects on the gap between ethics in principle and ethics in practice. The book is written by Stephen Scher and Kaisa Kozlowska and is published with open access. You can find it here: Revitalizing Health Care Ethics. The Clinician’s Voice.

So, I think it is difficult to see clearly the difference between ethics in principle and ethics in practice. We tend to transfer characteristics from one to the other, and become dissatisfied when it does not work. The book by Scher and Kozlowska therefore uses the warning “Mind the gap” to draw attention to the difference. If we mind the gap between the platform and the train – if we do not imagine the train as an overly mobile platform, and the platform as an overly stationary train – then perhaps the two forms of ethics can accept and find better support in each other. More often than we think, we are dissatisfied for the simple reason that we fail to keep different things apart.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Björk J. Ethical reflection: The palliative care ethos and patients who refuse information. Palliative Care and Social Practice. 2025;19. doi:10.1177/26323524251355287

Stephen Scher, Kasia Kozlowska. 2025. Revitalizing Health Care Ethics. The Clinician’s Voice. Palgrave Macmillan Cham.

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We recommend readings

Is this really true?

snowball fight
15 April, 2025 / / 3 Comments

Why is the question of truth so marvelous? A common attitude is that the question can make us check that our opinions really are correct before we express them. By being as well-informed as possible, by examining our opinions so that they form as large and coherent a system as possible of well-considered opinions, we can in good conscience do what we all have a tendency to do: give vent to our opinions.

Letting the question of truth raise the demands on how we form our opinions is, of course, important. But the stricter requirements also risk reinforcing our stance towards the opinions that we believe meet the requirements. We are no longer just right, so to speak, but right in the right way, according to the most rigorous requirements. If someone expresses opinions formed without such rigor, we immediately feel compelled to respond to their delusions by expressing our more rigorous views on the matter.

Responding to misconceptions is, of course, important. One risk, however, is that those who are often declared insufficiently rigorous soon learn how to present a rigorous facade. Or even ignore the more demanding requirements because they are right anyway, and therefore also have the right to ignore those who are wrong anyway!

Our noble attitude to the question of truth may not always end marvelously, but may lead to a harsher climate of opinion. So how can the question of truth be marvelous?

Most of us have a tendency to think that our views of the world are motivated by everything disturbing that happens in it. We may even think that it is our goodness that makes us have the opinions, that it is our sense of justice that makes us express them. These tendencies reinforce our opinions, tighten them like the springs of a mechanism. Just as we have a knee-jerk reflex that makes our leg kick, we seem to have a knowledge reflex that makes us run our mouths, if I may express myself drastically. As soon as an opinion has taken shape, we think we know it is so. We live in our heads and the world seems to be inundated by everything we think about it.

“Is this really true?” Suppose we asked that question a little more often, just when we feel compelled to express our opinion about the state of the world. What would happen? We would probably pause for a moment … and might unexpectedly realize that the only thing that makes us feel compelled to express the opinion is the opinion itself. If someone questions our opinion, we immediately feel the compulsion to express more opinions, which in our view prove the first opinion.

“Is this really true?” For a brief moment, the question of truth can take our breath away. The compulsion to express our opinions about the state of the world is released and we can ask ourselves: Why do I constantly feel the urge to express my opinions? The opinions are honest, I really think this way, I don’t just make up opinions. But the thinking of my opinions has a deceptive form, because when I think my opinions, I obviously think that it is so. The opinions take the form of being the reality to which I react. – Or as a Stoic thinker said:

“People are disturbed not by things themselves, but by the views they take of them.” (Epictetus)

“Is this really true?” Being silenced by that question can make a whole cloud of opinions to condense into a drop of clarity. Because when we become silent, we can suddenly see how the knowledge reflex sets not only our mouths in motion, but the whole world. So, who takes truth seriously? Perhaps the one who does not take their opinions seriously.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

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We challenge habits of thought

Why does science ask the question of artificial consciousness?

Two little girls facing each other. One of them is smiling and dancing, the other one has an old TV screen on her head. Photo: Ryunosuke Kikuno, from Unsplash.
4 March, 2025 / / 1 Comment

The possibility of conscious AI is increasingly perceived as a legitimate and important scientific question. This interest has arisen after a long history of scientific doubts about the possibility of consciousness not only in other animals, but sometimes even in humans. The very concept of consciousness was for a period considered scientifically suspect. But now the question of conscious AI is being raised within science.

For anyone interested in how such a mind-boggling question can be answered philosophically and scientifically, I would like to recommend an interesting AI-philosophical exchange of views in the French journal Intellectica. The exchange (which is in English) revolves around an article by two philosophers, Jonathan Birch and Kristin Andrews, who for several years have discussed consciousness not only among mammals, but also among birds, fish, cephalopods, crustaceans, reptiles, amphibians and insects. The two philosophers carefully distinguish between psychological questions about what might make us emotionally attracted to believe that an AI system is conscious, and logical questions about what philosophically and scientifically can count as evidence for conscious AI. It is to this logical perspective that they want to contribute. How can we determine whether an artificial system is truly conscious; not just be seduced into believing it because the system emotionally convincingly mirrors the behavior of subjectively experiencing humans? Their basic idea is that we should first study consciousness in a wide range of animal species beyond mammals. Partly because the human brain is too different from (today’s) artificial systems to serve as a suitable reference point, but above all because such a broad comparison can help us identify the essential features of consciousness: features that could be used as markers for consciousness in artificial systems. The two philosophers’ proposal is thus that by starting from different forms of animal consciousness, we can better understand how we should philosophically and scientifically seek evidence for or against conscious AI.

One of my colleagues at CRB, Kathinka Evers, also a philosopher, comments on the article. She appreciates Birch and Andrews’ discussion as philosophically clarifying and sees the proposal to approach the question of conscious AI by studying forms of consciousness in a wide range of animal species as well argued. However, she believes that a number of issues require more attention. Among other things, she asks whether the transition from carbon- to silicon-based substrates does not require more attention than Birch and Andrews give it.

Birch and Andrews propose a thought experiment in which a robot rat behaves exactly like a real rat. It passes the same cognitive and behavioral tests. They further assume that the rat brain is accurately depicted in the robot, neuron for neuron. In such a case, they argue, it would be inconsistent not to accept the same pain markers that apply to the rat for the robot as well. The cases are similar, they argue, the transition from carbon to silicon does not provide sufficient reason to doubt that the robot rat can feel pain when it exhibits the same features that mark pain in the real rat. But the cases are not similar, Kathinka Evers points out, because the real rat, unlike the robot, is alive. If life is essential for consciousness, then it is not inconsistent to doubt that the robot can feel pain even in this thought experiment. Someone could of course associate life with consciousness and argue that a robot rat that exhibits the essential features of consciousness must also be considered alive. But if the purpose is to identify what can logically serve as evidence for conscious AI, the problem remains, says Kathinka Evers, because we then need to clarify how the relationship between life and consciousness should be investigated and how the concepts should be defined.

Kathinka Evers thus suggests several questions of relevance to what can logically be considered evidence for conscious AI. But she also asks a more fundamental question, which can be sensed throughout her commentary. She asks why the question of artificial consciousness is even being raised in science today. As mentioned, one of Birch and Andrews’ aims was to avoid the answer being influenced by psychological tendencies to interpret an AI that convincingly reflects human emotions as if it were conscious. But Kathinka Evers asks, as I read her, whether this logical purpose may not come too late. Is not the question already a temptation? AI is trained on human-generated data to reflect human behavior, she points out. Are we perhaps seeking philosophical and scientific evidence regarding a question that seems significant simply because we have a psychological tendency to identify with our digital mirror images? For a question to be considered scientific and worth funding, some kind of initial empirical support is usually required, but there is no evidence whatsoever for the possibility of consciousness in non-living entities such as AI systems. The question of whether an AI can be conscious has no more empirical support than the question of whether volcanoes can experience their eruptions, Kathinka Evers points out. There is a great risk that we will scientifically try to answer a question that lacks scientific basis. No matter how carefully we seek the longed-for answer, the question itself seems imprudent.

I am reminded of the myth of Narcissus. After a long history of rejecting the love of others (the consciousness of others), he finally fell in love with his own (digital) reflection, tried hopelessly to hug it, and was then tormented by an eternal longing for the image. Are you there? Will the reflection respond? An AI will certainly generate a response that speaks to our human emotions.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Birch Jonathan, Andrews Kristin (2024/2). To Understand AI Sentience, First Understand it in Animals. In Gefen Alexandre & Huneman Philippe (Eds), Philosophies of AI: thinking and writing with LLMs, Intellectica, 81, pp. 213-226.

Evers Kathinka (2024/2). To understand sentience in AI first understand it in animals. Commentary to Jonathan Birch and Kristin Andrews. In Gefen Alexandre & Huneman Philippe (Eds), Philosophies of AI: thinking and writing with LLMs, Intellectica, 81, pp. 229-232.

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We challenge habits of thought

Columbo in Athens

A man standing in front of ancient greek ruins. Photo: AI-generated in Microsoft Designer by Ashkan Atry.
17 December, 2024 / / 3 Comments

One of the most timeless TV crime series is probably Columbo. Peter Falk plays an inquisitive police lieutenant who sometimes seems so far beyond ordinary time reckoning that he can make Los Angeles resemble ancient Athens, where an equally inquisitive philosopher cared just as little about his appearance.

I hope you have seen a few Columbo episodes. I also take the liberty of opening this post by revealing why I want to write about him. Because he not only exposes the murderers but at the same time frees them from living entangled in their own brilliant plans. You might remember the unusual disposition of the episodes, that we immediately learn who the perpetrator is. The murderers in the series are distinguished not only by their high social and economic status, but also by their high intelligence (and their overconfidence in it). Before the murder takes place, we get to follow how ingeniously the killer plans the deed. The purpose is to give the appearance of having a watertight alibi, to avoid leaving unintended clues at the murder scene, and to leave those clues that clearly point to someone else. Everything is perfectly thought out: BANG! In the next act, Columbo enters the scene of the murder in his worn coat and with a cigar that has usually gone out. In one episode he arrives with a boiled egg in his pocket which he cracks against the murder weapon when he has not had time to eat breakfast.

The murder was just the prelude. Now the episode begins for real, the interaction between the absent-minded Columbo and the shrewd murderer who planned everything in detail and now feels invincible. Especially considering that the police lieutenant leading the investigation is clearly just a confused poor thing constantly fumbling for his notepad and pencil and asking irrelevant questions. I have soon dealt with this fellow, the killer thinks.

Columbo often immediately knows who the murderer is. He can reveal this in a final conversation with the murderer where both can unexpectedly find each other and speak openly, almost like old friends. Soon even the murderer begins to understand that Columbo knows, even though the lieutenant’s absent-minded demeanor at first made this unlikely. Usually, however, the murderer’s confidence is not shaken by knowing that Columbo knows, for everything is perfectly thought out: Columbo “knows” without being able to prove anything! Columbo spends many sleepless nights wondering about the murderer’s alibi and motive, or about seemingly irrelevant details at the murder scene: the “loose ends” that Columbo often talks about, without the murderer understanding why. They seem too trivial to touch the ingenious plan! The murderer almost seems to enjoy watching Columbo rack his brain with immaterial details that cannot possibly prove what both already “know.” Little does the killer know that Columbo’s uncertainty will soon bear fruit.

Finally, Columbo manages to tie up the loose ends that the murderer did not see the point of (they looked so plain compared to the elegant plan). When Columbo reveals how the alibi was only apparent, how the all-too-obvious clues were deliberately placed at the murder scene, and the murderer’s cheap selfish motive, the murderer expects to be arrested by Columbo. “No, others will come and arrest you later,” says Columbo, who suddenly seems uninterested in the whole matter. Columbo seems to have only wanted to expose the illusory reality the killer created to mislead everyone. The murderer is the one who walks into the trap first. To make everything look real, the murderer must live strictly according to the insidious plan from the very first act. Maybe that is why the murderer often seems to breathe a sigh of relief in the final act. Columbo not only exposes the criminal, but also frees the criminal mind from constantly living trapped in its own calculations.

In the conversation at the end, the otherwise active killer seems numbed by Columbo, calm and without a winning smile. Even the murderer is for the first time happily absent-minded.

How does Columbo manage to uncover the insidious plan? We like to think that Columbo succeeds in exposing the murderer because Columbo is even smarter. If Columbo switched sides and planned crimes, no one could expose him! He would be a super-intelligence that could satisfy every wish, like the genie in the lamp. Sometimes even the murderer seems to think along these lines and offers Columbo employment and a brilliant career. With Columbo as accomplice, the murderer would be invincible. But Columbo does not seem to care more about his future than about his appearance: “No, never, I couldn’t do that.” He loves his work, he explains, but hardly gives the impression of being a police lieutenant, but is sometimes mistaken for a vagrant who is kindly asked to remove himself from the scene of the murder. Nuns can offer him food and clothes. Is Columbo the one actually creating the false appearance? Is he the one with the most cunning plan? Is his absent-mindedness just a form of ironic pretense to lure the murderer into the trap?

Columbo probably benefits from his disarming simplicity and absent-minded demeanor. But although we sometimes see him setting traps for the killer, we never see him disguise himself as a vagrant. When his wife has given him a nicer coat, he seems genuinely bothered by it, as if he were dressed up. Is Columbo’s confusion sincere after all? Is it the confusion he loves about his work? Is it perhaps the confusion that eventually reveals the murderer’s watertight plan?

Columbo’s colleagues are not confused. They follow the rules of the game and soon have exactly the conviction the murderer planned for them according to the manual: the murderer has no motive, has a watertight alibi, and cannot be tied to the scene of the murder. Technical evidence, on the contrary, clearly points in a different direction. If the colleagues were leading the investigation, the murderer would have already been removed from the list of suspects. This is how a colleague complains when he feels that Columbo is slowing down the investigation by not following the plan of the criminal mastermind:

Sergeant Hoffman: Now what do you think Lieutenant, do you really think that Deschler didn’t shoot Galesko in the leg?

Columbo: I’ll tell you something, Sergeant, I don’t know what to think.

The injured Galesko is in fact the murderer. He shot himself in the leg after killing Deschler, to make the killing look like self-defense against “his wife’s kidnapper.” Galseko has already murdered his wife, having staged the kidnapping and planted the clues that point to Deschler. Why did Galesko murder his wife? Because he felt she was obscuring his bright future. The murderers in the TV series not only plan their deeds, but also their lives. Without ideas of bright futures, they would lack motive to plan murder.

Neither the killer nor the colleague suffers from uncertainty, they both sleep well. Only Columbo is awake: “I don’t know what to think.” Therefore, he tries to tie up loose ends. Like the philosopher Socrates in ancient Athens, Columbo knows that he does not know. Therefore, he torments the murderer (and the colleagues) with vexing questions that do not belong to the game, but rather revolve around it. Now you probably want to direct Columbo’s most famous line at me: “Oh, just one more thing!” For did I not say that Columbo immediately knows who the murderer is? Yes, I did. Columbo already “knows” who the murderer is. How? Does he know it through his superior intelligence that reveals the whole case in a flash? No, but because the murderer does not react like someone who does not know. When informed of the murder, the killer reacts strangely: like someone who already knows. Lack of confusion is the hallmark of the murderer.

When Columbo reveals the tangle of thoughts that already in the first act ensnared the murderer, the perpetrator goes to prison without complaint. Handcuffs are redundant when the self-made ones are finally unlocked. Columbo has calmed the criminal mind. The culprit is free from the murder plan that would secure the future plan. Suddenly everything is real, just real.

Just one more thing: Merry Christmas and do not plan too much!

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

The dialogue between Hoffman and Columbo is from the episode Negative Reaction (1974). Columbo’s response to the career offer is from The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case (1977).

The image is AI-generated in Microsoft Designer by Ashkan Atry.

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Thinking about thinking

AI is the answer! But what is the question?

Question marks on paper. Photo: Lee Loo The First, Pexels.
3 December, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Many projects are underway in Sweden regarding AI systems in healthcare. The testing of AI solutions is in full swing. But many systems do not seem to be implemented and used. Why? Often it is a matter of poor preparatory work. Without a carefully considered strategy and clear goals, we risk scaling up AI systems that cannot cope with the complexity of healthcare.

The atmosphere around many AI ​​ventures can almost be a little religious. You must not be negative or ask critical questions. Then you are quickly branded as a cynic who slows down development and does not understand the signs of the times. You almost have to blind yourself to potential pitfalls and speak and act like a true believer. Many justify the eager testing of AI by saying that we must dare to try and then see which solutions turn out to be successful. It is fascinating how willingly we apply AI to all sorts of tasks. But are we doing it the right way, or do we risk rushing on without giving ourselves time to think?

There are indeed economical and practical challenges in healthcare. It is not only about a lack of financial resources, but also about a lack of personnel and specialists. Before we can allow technologies like AI to become part of our everyday lives, we need to ask ourselves some important questions: What problems are we trying to solve? How do our solutions affect the people involved? We may also need to clarify whether the purpose of the AI ​​system is to almost take over an entire work task or rather to facilitate our work in certain well-defined respects. The development of AI products should also pay extra attention to socially created categories of ethnicity and gender to avoid reinforcing existing inequalities through biased data selection. Ethically well-considered AI implementations probably lead to better clinical outcomes and more efficient care. It is easy to make hasty decisions that soon turn out to be wrong: accuracy should always be a priority. It is better to think right and slow than fast and wrong. Clinical studies should be conducted even on seemingly not so advanced AI products. In radiology, this tradition is well established, but it is not as common in primary care. If a way of working is to be changed with the help of AI, one should evaluate what effects it can have.

We must therefore not neglect three things: We must first of all define the need for an AI solution. We must then consider that the AI ​​tool is not trained with biased data. Finally, we need to evaluate the AI ​​solution before implementing it.

With the rapid data collection that apps and digital tools allow today, it is important not to get carried away, but to carefully consider the ethics of designing and implementing AI. Unfortunately, the mantra has become: “If we have data, we should develop an AI.” And that mantra makes anyone who asks “Why?” seem suspicious. But the question must be asked. It does not hinder the development of AI solutions, but contributes to it. Careful ethical considerations improve the quality of the AI ​​product and strengthens the credibility of the implementation.

I therefore want to warn against being seduced by the idea of ​​AI solutions for all sorts of tasks. Before we say AI is the answer, we need to ask ourselves: What is the question? Only if we can define a real issue or challenge can we ensure that the technology becomes a helping hand instead of a burden. We do not want to periodically end up in the situation where we suddenly have to pull the emergency brake, as in a recent major Swedish investment in AI in healthcare, called Millennium. We must not get stuck in the mindset that everything can be done faster and easier with AI. We must also not be driven by the fear of falling behind if we do not immediately introduce AI. Only a carefully considered evaluation of the need and the design of an AI solution can ensure appropriate care that is also effective. To get correct answers quickly, we must first give ourselves time to think.

Written by…

Jennifer Viberg Johansson, who is an Associate Professor in Medical Ethics at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics.

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We challenge habits of thought

Philosophy on a chair

Wooden chair
25 June, 2024 / / 2 Comments

Philosophy is an unusual activity, partly because it can be conducted to such a large extent while sitting still. Philosophers do not need research vessels, laboratories or archives to work on their questions. Just a chair to sit on. Why is it like that?

The answer is that philosophers examine our ways of thinking, and we are never anywhere but where we are. A chair takes us exactly as far as we need: to ourselves. Philosophizing on a chair can of course look self-absorbed. How can we learn anything significant from “thinkers” who neither seem to move nor look around the world? If we happen to see them sitting still in their chairs and thinking, they can undeniably appear to be cut off from the complex world in which the rest of us must live and navigate. Through its focus on human thought, philosophy can seem to ignore our human world and not be of any use to the rest of us.

What we overlook with such an objection to philosophy is that our complex human world already reflects to a large extent our human ways of thinking. To the extent that these ways of thinking are confused, limited, one-sided and unjust, our world will also be confused, limited, one-sided and unjust. When we live and move in this human world, which reflects our ways of thinking, can it not be said that we live somewhat inwardly, without noticing it? We act in a world that reflects ourselves, including the shortcomings in our ways of thinking.

If so, maybe it is not so introverted to sit down and examine these ways of thinking? On the contrary, this seems to enable us to free ourselves and the world from human thought patterns that sometimes limit and distort our perspectives without us realizing it. Of course, research vessels, laboratories and archives also broaden our perspectives on the world. But we already knew that. I just wanted to open our eyes to a more unexpected possibility: that even a chair can take us far, if we practice philosophy on it.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

We challenge habits of thought

Finding the way when there is none

Greenhouse. Photo by Abigail Lynn on Unsplash
7 May, 2024 / / 1 Comment

A difficulty for academic writers is managing the dual role of both knowing and not knowing, of both showing the way and not finding it. There is an expectation that such writers should already have the knowledge they are writing about, that they should know the way they show others right from the start. As readers, we are naturally delighted and grateful to share the authors’ knowledge and insight.

But academic writers usually write because something strikes them as puzzling. They write for the same reason that readers read: because they lack the knowledge and clarity required to find the way through the questions. This lack stimulates them to research and write. The way that did not exist, takes shape when they tackle their questions.

This dual role as a writer often worries students who are writing an essay or dissertation for the first time. They can easily perceive themselves as insufficiently knowledgeable to have the right to tackle the work. Since they lack the expertise that they believe is required of academic writers from the outset, does it not follow that they are not yet mature enough to begin the work? Students are easily paralyzed by the knowledge demands they place on themselves. Therefore, they hide their questions instead of tackling them.

It always comes as a surprise, that the way actually takes shape as soon as we ask for it. Who dares to believe that? Research is a dynamic interplay with our questions: with ignorance and lack of clarity. An academic writer is not primarily someone who knows a lot and who therefore can show others the way, but someone who dares and is even stimulated by this duality of both knowing and not knowing, of both finding and not finding the way.

If we have something important to learn from the exploratory writers, it is perhaps that living knowledge cannot be separated as pure knowledge and nothing but knowledge. Knowledge always interacts with its opposite. Therefore, essay writing students already have the most important asset to be able to write in an exploratory way, namely the questions they are wondering about. Do not hide the questions, but let them take center stage. Let the text revolve around what you do not know. Knowledge without contact with ignorance is dead.  It solves no one’s problem, it answers no one’s question, it removes no one’s confusion. So let the questions sprout in the soil of the text, and the way will soon take shape.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

Thinking about authorship

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