Matt Janot-Schuler
I work in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, applied ethics, and the philosophy of mind. My current research ranges across the ethics of advanced AI, scientific realism, the problem of evil, and metametaphysics.
I am an Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, where I am also an affiliate of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics and faculty coach for the ASU Ethics Bowl. I also hold an appointment at Valencia College in Orlando.
My work primarily sits at the meeting point of ethics and the mind. Lately a good deal of it concerns artificial intelligence: the moral stakes of building advanced systems, what such systems would have to be (and would have to lack), and how questions about consciousness and personal identity bear on both. Alongside that runs a longstanding interest in the problem of evil, philosophical methodology, and the metaphysics of science.
I have taught philosophy for more than fifteen years, across bioethics, professional and applied ethics, philosophy of mind, logic, and epistemology. I care a great deal about teaching it well: clearly, honestly, and in a way that takes students seriously as thinkers.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence; Applied Ethics; Philosophy of Mind
Areas of Competence
Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Religion; Logic
A selection of current projects. The through-lines are the ethics and metaphysics of artificial intelligence, the problem of evil, and questions in mind and methodology. A complete list lives in the CV.
Under Review
- What Is Reflective Equilibrium Good For?
- A Naturalistic Argument Against Scientific Realism
- The Moral Impermissibility of Creating AGI
- A Recipe for AGI (It’s Not Transformers)
- Theists Must Reject Most Arguments for Dualism
In Preparation
- The Problem of Evil as the Problem of PainBook manuscript
- Theism and the Is–Ought Gap
- Theism and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- A Proof from Considerations of Personal Identity That the Mind Is Nonphysical
- Moral Luck and the Blameworthiness of Thwarted Attempts
- Natural Selection and Biological Laws
- Unstructured Metaphysics
- Animal Abuse and Drug Use
- Inconsistent Positions on Prostitution and Pornography
Selected Presentations
- The Ethics of Hippocampal Prosthesis as a Potential Future Treatment for Alzheimer’s DiseaseWMU, 2016
At ASU I teach across ethics, mind, logic, and epistemology, with recurring courses in bioethics and applied ethics and the occasional Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) on whatever has my attention that term. A representative recent slate:
Earlier appointments include the University of South Florida, Valencia College, and the University of Arizona. The full teaching record, by term and institution, is in the CV.
Moral reasoning,
out loud.
I coach the ASU Ethics Bowl through the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. The Ethics Bowl is a structured competition in which student teams reason through hard real-world cases (in medicine, technology, business, and public life) and defend their judgments under questioning from a rival team and a panel of judges.
Unlike debate, it does not reward winning at any cost; it rewards careful, honest moral reasoning and a willingness to follow the argument where it leads. That makes it, to my mind, some of the most worthwhile teaching I do. I also judge and help run rounds during the competition season.
The Newsletter
I am starting a Substack for public-facing philosophy: short essays on AI and its ethics, the questions my research circles, and the occasional detour into film, music, and whatever else is on my mind at the moment. New pieces land in your inbox without paywall.
Subscribe on SubstackNew music, coming
Away from philosophy, I write and record music under the name The Soft Focus [New Name Coming!]. It is a separate world from the work on this site, and it keeps its own home.
I am in the middle of bringing it back to life: new writing, new recordings, and perhaps some live shows in the offing.