Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The present chapter provides a review of the literature addressing changes in memory performance in older adults (often retired individuals with an age between 60 and 80 years), compared to younger adults (often college students around age 20). While it is well-established that memory performance declines in older adults (e.g., Kausler, 1994; Ryan, 1992), it is now clear that not all aspects of memory are impaired (e.g., Balota & Duchek, 1988; Burke & Light, 1981; Craik, 1983; Schacter, Kihlstrom, Kaszniak (...) & Valdiserri, 1993; Shimamura, 1989). Dissociations across age groups with respect to impairments in different memory types/processes have provided (a) insights into the influence of aging on neuropsychological underpinnings of memory, and (b) leverage for memory theorists to develop a better understanding of normal memory functioning. This chapter involves three sections: First, we provide a summary of selected empirical findings that document the nature of age-related changes across a wide set of memory tasks. Although it is beyond the scope of the present chapter to review the rich literature concerning memory and aging, this section will acquaint the reader with examples of paradigms used to study distinct aspects of memory and the conclusions that researchers have reached regarding the influence of age on each memory type/process. Second, we discuss the major theoretical perspectives that have been proposed as explanatory constructs for these age-related memory deficits. Finally, we provide an overview of recent developments that shed some light on understanding the possible neurological underpinnings of aging on memory functioning. (shrink)

This collection of short stories and essays call into question the medical-scientific narrative, its understandings of psychoanalysis and madness, and the identity, purpose and ethics that flow from and sustain its narrative. These stories are gathered from meetings with people on in-patient units and in private practice. Emphasis is placed on the centrality of the Freudian unconscious in the process of listening, understanding and responding in the analytic discourse. Collectively, they reintroduce the identity of the analytic practitioner as the shaman (...) of contemporary times, a mind-poet who sees the world through a magical--as opposed to a scientific--visionary experience. "With a wry humour and piercing intellect, Dr. Kavanaugh's Stories from the Bog... evokes the Celtic legacy of story-telling in psychoanalysis."--David L. Downing. "A scintillating book that dances on edges of the human mind. At once, challenging, reflective and enriched by details of therapeutic work."--Michael Eigen, author, Contact with the depths. "Dr. Kavanaugh captures the essence of the psychoanalytic enterprise.... this book is a work of psychoanalytic art by one of its most creative practitioners."--Marvin Hyman. (shrink)

Corporations, which in the past have been hesitant to contribute to conversations regarding political and social issues, are increasingly speaking out on current issues such as race, sexual orientation, gender, immigration, and environmental issues. Despite this trend, limited academic research has focused on how corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) efforts impact firm value. In addition, extant studies have not fully identified the extent to which the firm and their message influence the outcomes of this approach. The current study explores how sociopolitical (...) stances communicated on Twitter affect firms’ stock prices. Results from an event study of 260 incidents of CSA show that CSA efforts decrease firm value by an average of 0.22%, indicating that wading into social or political issues is a risky strategy. However, further analysis highlights the importance of clearly articulating stances on social issues that align with the firm’s core values. (shrink)

Smith scholars have become interested of late in his thoughts on religion, and particularly the question of the degree to which Smith's understanding of religion was indebted to the influence of his close friend Hume. Until now this debate has largely focused on three elements of Smith's religious thought: his personal beliefs, his conception of natural religion, and his treatment of revealed religion. Yet largely unexplored has been one of the most important elements of Smith's thinking about religion: namely his (...) treatment of ‘the natural principles of religion’ in TMS 3.5. What follows aims to reconstruct this treatment and thereby shed light on what Smith might have meant by ‘the natural principles of religion’, and how he understood the relationship of religion and morality more generally – an understanding, it is argued, that significantly differs from Hume's, and reveals Smith to have been a critic of Hume's vision of the relationship of religion to morality, for all their agreements on other fronts. (shrink)

Recently a call has gone up for a revival of the "politics of humanity." But what exactly is the "politics of humanity"? For illumination this paper turns to Hume's analysis of humanity's foundational role in morality and modern politics. Its aims in so doing are twofold. First, it aims to set forth a new understanding of the unity of Hume's practical and epistemological projects in developing his justifications for and the implications of his remarkable and underappreciated claim that humanity is (...) the only sentiment on which a moral system can be founded. Second, by attending to Hume's substantive definition of humanity and its relationship to benevolence and sympathy in particular, it aims to clarify the relationship between the principal elements of the politics of humanity: "humanism" or secularism, "humane" or other-directed values, and mutual recognition of our shared "humanness.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Another Look at Silence and Knowledge of God in Ignatius's Letter to the EphesiansRyan Patrick Budd"The man whose delight is in the Lord's teaching knows the art of sitting still in the right place."—Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical PoetryIn this essay, I attempt to supplement the better analyses of St. Ignatius of Antioch's Epistle to the Ephesians (Ign. Eph.) 14.1 through 15.3 with structural insights. The main (...) fruit of the analysis will be to affirm the "mystical" meaning of Ignatius's concept of "hearing Christ's silence": the mature believer, who truly understands Christ's word, will be able to hear the silence of Christ—meaning, to understand Christ's hidden and mysterious Godhead—because Christ dwells within the believer as in a temple. The essay will proceed in three sections: First, a review of the more substantive commentaries on "silence" in Ign. Eph. 14–15; second, a presentation of a potential structure of the passage and a commentary on what that structure, if correct, would yield; and third, a very brief confirmation of the findings by reference to themes in St. Paul's own Epistle to the Ephesians.Scholarly Commentary on Ignatius and "Silence"In discussing Ign. Eph. 14–15, scholars have come to a wide variety of views, for almost as many reasons, as to what Ignatius means when he says the following: [End Page 451]It is better to be silent and to be, than to speak and not be. Teaching is good, if the one speaking should do. There is, then, one Teacher, who "spoke and it came to be," and even the things he has done silently are worthy of the Father. The one truly hearing the word of Jesus can also hear his [Jesus's] silence, that he might be fully made, that he might act through what he says and be understood through his (the believer's) silence.(15.1–2)1There are, however, two predominant camps into which one could group the different scholarly opinions: the first camp holds that Ignatius merely is speaking about integrity, the correspondence between words and deeds;2 the second camp holds that he is enunciating a kind of Christian mysticism.3 Two prominent members of the second camp, Virginia Corwin and Gregory Vall, though quite distinct in their views of the bishop of Antioch, provide reasoning that I find decisive in favor of recognizing that Ignatius—while certainly emphasizing a true correspondence between words and deeds—carries the point further than simple moralizing.Virginia Corwin's "Reserve of Deity" and the Believer's Knowledge of ChristCorwin, in her analysis of the passage, points toward a "reserve" existing "behind" the visible works of Christ, which is to be identified with his invisible, and thus "silent," Godhead, which one who truly hears his word can also "hear." She acknowledges, however, that Ignatius first recognizes Christ as an example of a truly effective teacher due to the absolute [End Page 452] correspondence between his words and his acts. She writes, "Christ... is a teacher unlike most, since there is no contrast at all between his profession and his actions.... He has an absolute clarity and a complete lack of any hypocrisy."4 The result of this recognition is not to stress ethical integrity, however important: it is to argue that, because of the correspondence between Christ's words and his silent acts and his even more silent person, the one who knows his words can come to a deep, profound, and infallible knowledge of who he is, himself.Corwin argues that there is something more about this Teacher than the mere—though impressive—integrity of his message:But it is not only the integrity of the teacher that distinguishes him, but his unique power: "He spoke and it came to pass"; at these words to the minds of both the writer and the hearers of the letter must have occurred the image of the mighty acts of creation.... It is precisely because the words of Jesus are in a sense mighty acts that they must be seen in the larger perspective.5Which "larger perspective" she means... (shrink)

In this paper I argue for an association between impurity and explanatory power in contemporary mathematics. This proposal is defended against the ancient and influential idea that purity and explanation go hand-in-hand (Aristotle, Bolzano) and recent suggestions that purity/impurity ascriptions and explanatory power are more or less distinct (Section 1). This is done by analyzing a central and deep result of additive number theory, Szemerédi’s theorem, and various of its proofs (Section 2). In particular, I focus upon the radically impure (...) (ergodic) proof due to Furstenberg (Section 3). Furstenberg’s ergodic proof is striking because it utilizes intuitively foreign and infinitary resources to prove a finitary combinatorial result and does so in a perspicuous fashion. I claim that Furstenberg’s proof is explanatory in light of its clear expression of a crucial structural result, which provides the “reason why” Szemerédi’s theorem is true. This is, however, rather surprising: how can such intuitively different conceptual resources “get a grip on” the theorem to be proved? I account for this phenomenon by articulating a new construal of the content of a mathematical statement, which I call structural content (Section 4). I argue that the availability of structural content saves intuitive epistemic distinctions made in mathematical practice and simultaneously explicates the intervention of surprising and explanatorily rich conceptual resources. Structural content also disarms general arguments for thinking that impurity and explanatory power might come apart. Finally, I sketch a proposal that, once structural content is in hand, impure resources lead to explanatory proofs via suitably understood varieties of simplification and unification (Section 5). (shrink)

As robots slip into more domains of human life - from the operating room to the bedroom - they take on our morally important tasks and decisions, as well as create new risks from psychological to physical. This book answers the urgent call to study their ethical, legal, and policy impacts.

Deep brain stimulation is an experimental procedure for treatment-resistant depression. Some results show promise, but blinded trials had limited success. Ethical questions center on vulnerability: especially on whether depressed patients can weigh the risks and benefits effectively, whether depression causes “desperation,” and whether media portrayals create unrealistic hopes. We interviewed 24 psychiatric inpatients with treatment-resistant depression, qualitatively analyzing their comments. Most had minimal interest in deep brain stimulators. Some might consider them if their depression worsened, if alternatives were exhausted, or (...) if the evidence were stronger. Fears focused on the surgery, adverse effects, and the novelty of the device. Patients felt the depression interfered with their ability to weigh the risks and benefits. Patients seemed highly attuned to the risks, and were skeptical that the treatment would be effective. We conclude that ethical concerns about vulnerability remain, yet patients with treatment-resistant depression were thoughtful and cautious about trying a novel therapy. (shrink)

A common view holds that consciousness is needed for knowledge acquired in one domain to be applied in a novel domain. We present evidence for the opposite; where the transfer of knowledge is achieved only in the absence of conscious awareness. Knowledge of artificial grammars was examined where training and testing occurred in different vocabularies or modalities. In all conditions grammaticality judgments attributed to random selection showed above-chance accuracy , while those attributed to conscious decisions did not. Participants also rated (...) each string’s familiarity and performed a perceptual task assessing fluency. Familiarity was predicted by repetition structure and was thus related to grammaticality. Fluency, though increasing familiarity, was unrelated to grammaticality. While familiarity predicted all judgments only those attributed to random selection showed a significant additional contribution of grammaticality, deriving primarily from chunk novelty. In knowledge transfer, as in visual perception , the unconscious may outperform the conscious. (shrink)

The problem : commerce and corruption -- Smith's defense of commercial society -- What is corruption? : political and psychological perspectives -- Smith on corruption : from the citizen to the human being -- The solution : moral philosophy -- Liberal individualism and virtue ethics -- Social science vs. moral philosophy -- Types of moral philosophy : natural jurisprudence vs. ethics -- Types of ethics : utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics -- Virtue ethics : modern, ancient, and Smithean -- Interlude (...) : the what and the how of TMS VI -- The what : Sith's "practical system of morality" -- The how : rhetoric, audience, and the methods of practical ethics -- The how : the ascent of self-love in three stages -- Prudence or commercial virtue -- The challenge : from praise to prudence -- Educating the vain : fathers and sons -- Self-interest rightly understood -- The advantages and disadvantages of prudence -- Magnanimity or classical virtue -- The problems of prudence and the therapy of magnanimity -- Up from individualism : desert, praiseworthiness, conscience -- Modernity, antiquity, and magnanimity -- The dangers of magnanimity -- Beneficence or christian virtue -- Between care and caritas -- Benevolence and beneficence and the human telos -- The character and purposes of the wise and virtuous man -- Wisdom and virtue and Adam Smith's apology -- Epilogue: The "economy of greatness". (shrink)

A number of prominent moral philosophers and political theorists have recently called for a recovery of love. But what do we mean when we speak of love today? Love's Enlightenment examines four key conceptions of other-directedness that transformed the meaning of love and helped to shape the way we understand love today: Hume's theory of humanity, Rousseau's theory of pity, Smith's theory of sympathy, and Kant's theory of love. It argues that these four Enlightenment theories are united by a shared (...) effort to develop a moral psychology that can provide both justificatory and motivational grounds for concern for others in the absence of recourse to theological or transcendental categories. In this sense, each theory represents an effort to redefine the love of others that used to be known as caritas or agape - a redefinition that came with benefits and costs that have yet to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

The author aims to retrieve and creatively develop a strand of Christian thought, stretching from early Christian interpretations of biblical data through the hagiographies of the saints into modern Christian thought, which provides a foundation for concern over the welfare of nonhuman animals. To provide the framework for this strand, the author explores the theology of Irenaeus of Lyons and Ephrem the Syrian. First, he considers their positions regarding the place of nonhuman animals in protology and eschatology. Then, he notes (...) their view that the created order is in via toward its eschatological consummation. With this framework in place, he turns to other voices in the Christian tradition, including the hagiographies of the saints, in order to further develop the framework. Ultimately, the author suggests that, within this particular strand of Christian thought, the further a human being progresses along the path of redemption, the more he or she ought to serve as a prolepsis of eschatological hope, which includes peaceful relationships between humans and animals. (shrink)

"Fénelon is arguably the most neglected of all the major philosophers of early modernity. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet to now we have lacked a single interpretive monograph in English devoted specifically to his thought. This monograph aims to correct this by providing the first such book-length study. In focusing specifically on Fénelon's political thought, it has three primary aims. The first is to provide a reconstruction of Fénelon's political ideas accessible (...) to those who might be encountering Fénelon directly or at length for the first time. The second is to demonstrate the connections between Fénelon's political thought and several other fields to which he made significant and long-recognized contributions, including not only philosophy and political science but also economics, education, literature, theology, and spirituality. Third, the book aims to cut several new edges in our extant understanding and appreciation of Fénelon's political thought and its significance. On this front, it specifically argues that Fénelon is better understood as a moderate and modern thinker rather than as a radical or reactionary, and that Fénelon deserves to be seen not merely as a political thinker but as a political philosopher. Finally, The Political Philosophy of Fénelon argues for Fénelon's relevance to our political world today. Fénelon was a nuanced and insightful diagnostician of ills from egocentrism and social atomism to authoritarianism and imperialism, and our understanding of these phenomena so familiar to us today can benefit from attending to his insights"--. (shrink)

Scheduling surgical procedures among operating rooms is mistakenly regarded as merely a tedious administrative task. However, the growing demand for surgical care and finite hours in a day qualify OR time as a limited resource. Accordingly, the objective of this manuscript is to reframe the process of OR scheduling as an ethical dilemma of allocating scarce medical resources. Recommendations for ethical allocation of OR time—based on both familiar and novel ethical values—are provided for healthcare institutions and individual surgeons.

The author reviews the work of select theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars who suggest that the difference between humans and animals should serve not solely as an ascription of a special status to humans but also as the foundation for a responsibility that humans bear toward animals. As an added reflection, the author explores common categorical differentiations in systematic theology: God and creation, human and nonhuman, elect and non-elect. In the first and last of these categorical differentiations, unique identity entails (...) both a special status and a responsibility. The latter is normatively directed to those who are categorically different. As such, the categorical difference between humans and animals establishes a foundation for moral concern. (shrink)

Modern commercial society has been criticized for attenuating virtue and inhibiting the ethical self-realization of its participants. But Adam Smith, a founding father of liberal commercial modernity, anticipated precisely this critique and took specific measures to circumvent it. This article presents these measures via an analysis of his response to the critique of liberal commercial modernity set forth by Rousseau. It principally argues that Smith's distinctions of the love of praise from the love of praiseworthiness, and the love of glory (...) from the love of virtue, were elements of a normative moral education that sought to elevate civilized man's corrupted self-love, and thereby recover within modern commercial society a respect for ethical nobility. (shrink)

David Hume and Adam Smith are often regarded as founding fathers of modern social science and champions of self-interested material acquisitiveness. Against this view I argue that their moral and political philosophies are better understood as modern installments in the classical tradition of virtue ethics. By focusing on Hume and Smith's conception of self-love and particularly on their distinction of self-love from self-interest, I demonstrate their dedication to encouraging virtues beyond the instrumental virtues of the market. ;Hume and Smith regard (...) egoism as a natural and inescapable element of human nature, but they also believe that egoism is educable. Untrained egoism manifests itself in such basic forms of selfishness as vanity and ambition, but a properly educated and elevated egoism heightens our sensitivity to the well-being of others. Through a careful analysis of their dialectical rhetoric, I show how Hume and Smith educate the egoism of their readers in their moral works. By so doing I demonstrate that the Scots understood themselves not merely as advocates of the pursuit of wealth, but as moral educators aspiring to introduce their readers to a life beyond the furious pursuit of external goods. Their portraits of magnanimous statesmen and wise and virtuous sages serve as models of this higher life, a life distinguished by the pursuit of moral nobility through beneficent activity. By tracing the Aristotelian and Ciceronian origins of their understanding of the relationship of self-love to benevolence, I thus show that far from celebrating commercial self-interest and denigrating virtue, Hume and Smith draw on classical sources in their attempts to ennoble modern liberalism and encourage decency and respect for the dignity of others. And by focusing particularly on their conception of the proper magnanimity for modernity, that of the wise and virtuous man, I argue that Hume's and Smith's practical writings on history, politics and economics are best regarded as attempts to discharge the beneficent duties they describe in their moral philosophy, and thereby claim wisdom and virtue for themselves. (shrink)

This paper examines heterogeneous impacts of gendered household headship and control of resources on food security in rural Tanzania. Analysis with minimal attention to heterogeneity in gender considerations indicates no differences in household food security between male and female-headed households. But with a more differentiated household headship variable and accounting for gendered differences in resource ownership, the results differ markedly. Using more gender-disaggregated variables, our results show significant differences between female-headed and male-headed households. In these results we find support for (...) the claim that gender norms in the study villages often restrict women’s access to resources, resulting in more vulnerable female-headed households. Female-headed households with no male adults present are particularly vulnerable. The study also points to specific opportunities for enhanced food security with attention to female and joint ownership of livestock. These results represent a hopeful sign that efforts to enhance female livestock ownership could be a useful strategy to address lower levels of food consumption in these Tanzanian villages. (shrink)

Rousseau’s moral and political philosophy is grounded in a largely overlooked virtue epistemology. This essay reconstructs this epistemology with a particular focus on Rousseau’s conception of how our capacity for sensation might be cultivated to develop the judgment and wisdom that distinguish the developed virtuous agent. It proceeds in three sections. The first section focuses on Rousseau’s conception of the first stage of development, and especially his sensationist claim that all knowledge originates in sensory impressions. The second section examines the (...) maturing agent’s transition from mere sensation to the cultivation of the capacity for judgment, particularly focusing on Rousseau’s account of the agent’s shift from the passive reception of sensory impressions of discrete objects to the active and synthetic processes of comparison and association that give rise to complex ideas and to moral conceptions. The third section turns to Rousseau’s conception of the developed mind, focusing on his claim that the intellectual virtues not only require cultivation but are indispensible to the proper exercise of freedom that distinguishes the fully moral human being. (shrink)

It is well-known that the global structure of every space-time model for relativistic cosmology is observationally underdetermined. In order to alleviate the severity of this underdetermination, it has been proposed that we adopt the Cosmological Principle because the Principle restricts our attention to a distinguished class of space-time models (spatially homogeneous and isotropic models). I argue that, even assuming the Cosmological Principle, the topology of space remains observationally underdetermined. Nonetheless, I argue that we can muster reasons to prefer various topological (...) properties over others. In particular, I favor the adoption of multiply connected universe models on grounds of (i) simplicity, (ii) Machian considerations, and (iii) explanatory power. We are able to appeal to such grounds because multiply connected topologies open up the possibility of finite universe models (consistent with our best data), which in turn avoid thorny issues concerning the postulation of an actually infinite universe. (shrink)

For a book that implores its readers to “simplify, simplify,” Walden has more than its fair share of obscurity. Lovers of simplicity have long mined it for its clear and comforting maxims, only to leave behind more than a few tough nuts for those who incline towards the esoteric—which, for Thoreau, is the essence of the philosophical. To the former set of readers he offers an apology: “You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than (...) in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.” To the latter he offers advice: “Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” The mysteries of the best books, Thoreau insists, are revealed only to those who, through their patience and persistence, prove themselves worthy of their teachings. “The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have” (p. 83). Thoreau’s Walden, I mean to show, was both conceived and meant to be read as just such a heroic book, not only because of its author’s “epic ambition” to create a national literature, but also because a unique understanding of heroism is the subject of its most esoteric chapters. (shrink)

Scholars of eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy today tend to agree that Adam Smith, while deeply indebted to Hume, was also engaged in a comprehensive and creative transformation and extension of certain of Hume’s fundamental concepts. But what exactly did Smith take from Hume, and precisely how did he transform these concepts? This chapter traces Smith’s appropriation and transformation along five fronts: sympathy and humanity, justice and utility, judgment and impartiality, virtue and commercial society, and epistemology and religion. In so doing, it (...) aims to provide a synthetic account of previous scholarship on the Hume–Smith relationship and to supplement these accounts with an examination of several further points of contact that have yet to receive significant attention. (shrink)

The aim of the SI is to bring to the fore the places in which cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are formed; how place shapes the dynamics of CSPs, and how CSPs shape the specific settings in which they develop. The papers demonstrate that partnerships and place are intrinsically reciprocal: the morality and materiality inherent in places repeatedly reset the reference points for partners, trigger epiphanies, shift identities, and redistribute capacities to act. Place thus becomes generative of partnerships in the most profound (...) sense: by developing an awareness of their emplacement, CSPs commit to place, and through their place-based commitments produce three intertwined modalities of place-specific ethics that bind CSPs and place: ethic of recognition, an ethic of care, and an ethic of resilience. Our authors have found vivid examples of how emplaced CSPs embody these ethics, signaling hope for the sustainability of our (always hyper-local) life-worlds. (shrink)

ABSTRACT David Hume and Adam Smith are often regarded as preeminent contributors to the eighteenth-century Scottish ‘science of man.’ For our understanding of Hume’s and Smith’s contributions to this project, scholars today are especially indebted to Nicholas Phillipson, who influentially and persuasively demonstrated how the science of man that they developed sought to account for social progress as the result of man’s natural love of improvement in the face of conditions of indigence and want. Yet Phillipson’s work also helps us (...) see the ways in which the Scottish science of man sought to account for man’s moral development as well as our material development, and specifically the ways in which individual human beings come to develop virtue. This contribution thus extends Phillipson’s pioneering insights into the methodology of the Scottish science of man to show how Smith conceived of the love of improvement not only as the engine driving society towards civilization and opulence, but also as an important element in the ethical development of the individual. (shrink)

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where either (...) human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)