'The Moral Status of Artifacts'

Ronald Sandler presents "A Defense of the Moral Status of Artifacts?” It is a common view in applied ethics that artifacts – things created by us for our ends (e.g. computers, cars, water bottles, and pencils) – do not have direct moral status. They do not have interests that need to be consider when our actions or policies impact them, so we can treat them however we like. In this talk Sandler will discuss whether this view is reasonable and explore the possibility that we might have responsibilities to the artifacts that we create. Ronald Sandler is an associate professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University—and a Denison alum. Winner of Northeastern's Excellence in Teaching Award, he is a leading figure in the "environmental virtue ethics" movement. He is the author of Character and Environment (Columbia) and the forthcoming Ethics and Species (Cambridge), and has published widely on issues in environmental ethics, environmental justice, and the philosophy of technology with special emphasis on nanotechnology. Free and open to the public.