Maximilian Kiener
Biographic Data
| ID | 4320489 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maximilian Kiener |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maximilian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kiener |
| SIGNATURE | KIENER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8454-8265 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Responsibility and the Special Question ‘Why?’
Anscombe defined intentional action in terms of what she called ‘the special question “Why?”’ In the first part of this article, we present four objections to defining intentional action in this way. Then, in the second part, we show that Anscombe’s special question can instead be used to define a much broader category of conduct, namely that for which an agent is responsible. We thereby repurpose one of the most influential ideas in twentieth-ce…
Simply Responsible
AI and Responsibility
The best‐performing AI systems, such as deep neural networks, tend to be the ones that are most difficult to control and understand. For this reason, scholars worry that the use of AI would lead to so‐called responsibility gaps , that is, situations in which no one is morally responsible for the harm caused by AI, because no one satisfies the so‐called control condition and epistemic condition of moral responsibility. In this article, I acknowled…
Strict Moral Answerability
Bernard Williams described the case of a lorry driver who runs over a child through no fault of his own. In this article, I pursue two aims. First, I want to motivate a puzzle about Williams’s case, which I call the Lorry Driver Paradox and which consists of three individually plausible but jointly inconsistent claims. Second, I want to offer a solution to this paradox based on a novel approach to so-called strict moral answerability. I conclude …
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility
In this chapter, I explore moral competence as a central condition on moral responsibility. I distinguish two main conceptions. On the first, a morally competent agent is someone who knows right from wrong. On the second, a morally competent agent is someone who responds aptly to reasons. These two conceptions merit separate treatment as they offer different insights on how and why moral competence might be compromised. This distinction is of par…
Can we Bridge AI’s responsibility gap at Will
Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly executes tasks that previously only humans could do, such as drive a car, fight in war, or perform a medical operation. However, as the very best AI systems tend to be the least controllable and the least transparent, some scholars argued that humans can no longer be morally responsible for some of the AI-caused outcomes, which would then result in a responsibility gap. In this paper, I assume, for the sa…
Consent and living organ donation
This paper focuses on voluntary consent in the context of living organ donation. Arguing against three dominant views, I claim that voluntariness must not be equated with willingness, that voluntariness does not require the exercise of relational moral agency, and that, in cases of third-party pressure, voluntariness critically depends on the role of the surgeon and the medical team, and not just on the pressure from other people. I therefore arg…
When do nudges undermine voluntary consent
The permissibility of nudging in public policy is often assessed in terms of the conditions of transparency, rationality, and easy resistibility. This debate has produced important resources for any ethical inquiry into nudging, but it has also failed to focus sufficiently on a different yet very important question, namely: when do nudges undermine a patient’s voluntary consent to a medical procedure? In this paper, I take on this further questio…
Artificial intelligence in medicine and the disclosure of risks
This paper focuses on the use of ‘black box’ AI in medicine and asks whether the physician needs to disclose to patients that even the best AI comes with the risks of cyberattacks, systematic bias, and a particular type of mismatch between AI’s implicit assumptions and an individual patient’s background situation. Pace current clinical practice, I argue that, under certain circumstances, these risks do need to be disclosed. Otherwise, the physici…
Conventions and The Normativity of Law
This essay criticises the attempt to explain the so-called normativity of law with reference to a model of coordination conventions. After specifying the explanandum of the normativity of law, I lay out the conceptions of ‘coordination’ and ‘convention’ and how the combination of both sets out to contribute to legal philosophy. I then present two arguments against such an account. Firstly, along a reductio ad absurdum , I claim that if an account…
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Conventions and The Normativity of Law
This essay criticises the attempt to explain the so-called normativity of law with reference to a model of coordination conventions. After specifying the explanandum of the normativity of law, I lay out the conceptions of ‘coordination’ and ‘convention’ and how the combination of both sets out to contribute to legal philosophy. I then present two arguments against such an account. Firstly, along a reductio ad absurdum , I claim that if an account…
Consent and living organ donation
This paper focuses on voluntary consent in the context of living organ donation. Arguing against three dominant views, I claim that voluntariness must not be equated with willingness, that voluntariness does not require the exercise of relational moral agency, and that, in cases of third-party pressure, voluntariness critically depends on the role of the surgeon and the medical team, and not just on the pressure from other people. I therefore arg…
When do nudges undermine voluntary consent
The permissibility of nudging in public policy is often assessed in terms of the conditions of transparency, rationality, and easy resistibility. This debate has produced important resources for any ethical inquiry into nudging, but it has also failed to focus sufficiently on a different yet very important question, namely: when do nudges undermine a patient’s voluntary consent to a medical procedure? In this paper, I take on this further questio…
Artificial intelligence in medicine and the disclosure of risks
This paper focuses on the use of ‘black box’ AI in medicine and asks whether the physician needs to disclose to patients that even the best AI comes with the risks of cyberattacks, systematic bias, and a particular type of mismatch between AI’s implicit assumptions and an individual patient’s background situation. Pace current clinical practice, I argue that, under certain circumstances, these risks do need to be disclosed. Otherwise, the physici…
Can we Bridge AI’s responsibility gap at Will
Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly executes tasks that previously only humans could do, such as drive a car, fight in war, or perform a medical operation. However, as the very best AI systems tend to be the least controllable and the least transparent, some scholars argued that humans can no longer be morally responsible for some of the AI-caused outcomes, which would then result in a responsibility gap. In this paper, I assume, for the sa…
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility
In this chapter, I explore moral competence as a central condition on moral responsibility. I distinguish two main conceptions. On the first, a morally competent agent is someone who knows right from wrong. On the second, a morally competent agent is someone who responds aptly to reasons. These two conceptions merit separate treatment as they offer different insights on how and why moral competence might be compromised. This distinction is of par…
Strict Moral Answerability
Bernard Williams described the case of a lorry driver who runs over a child through no fault of his own. In this article, I pursue two aims. First, I want to motivate a puzzle about Williams’s case, which I call the Lorry Driver Paradox and which consists of three individually plausible but jointly inconsistent claims. Second, I want to offer a solution to this paradox based on a novel approach to so-called strict moral answerability. I conclude …
Simply Responsible
AI and Responsibility
The best‐performing AI systems, such as deep neural networks, tend to be the ones that are most difficult to control and understand. For this reason, scholars worry that the use of AI would lead to so‐called responsibility gaps , that is, situations in which no one is morally responsible for the harm caused by AI, because no one satisfies the so‐called control condition and epistemic condition of moral responsibility. In this article, I acknowled…
Responsibility and the Special Question ‘Why?’
Anscombe defined intentional action in terms of what she called ‘the special question “Why?”’ In the first part of this article, we present four objections to defining intentional action in this way. Then, in the second part, we show that Anscombe’s special question can instead be used to define a much broader category of conduct, namely that for which an agent is responsible. We thereby repurpose one of the most influential ideas in twentieth-ce…
Political science (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Free Will and Agency (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · War, Ethics, and Justification (4 works) · Ethics in medical practice (3 works)