Is Online Moral Outrage Outrageous? Rethinking the Indignation Machine.

Moral outrage is often characterized as a corrosive emotion, but it can also inspire collective action. In this article we aim to deepen our understanding of the dual nature of online moral outrage which divides people and contributes to inclusivist moral reform. We argue that the specifics of violating different types of moral norms will influence the effects of moral outrage: moral outrage against violating harm-based norms is less antagonistic than moral outrage against violating loyalty and purity/identity norms. We identify which features of social media platforms shape our moral lives. Connectivity, omniculturalism, online exposure, increased group identification and fostering what we call "expressionist experiences", all change how moral outrage is expressed in the digital realm. Finally, we propose changing the design of social media platforms and raise the issue of moral disillusion when ample moral protest in the online environment does not have the expected effects on the offline world.

Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development.

Social robots are increasingly developed for the companionship of children. In this article we explore the moral implications of children-robot friendships using the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics. We adopt a moderate position and argue that, although robots cannot be virtue friends, they can nonetheless enable children to exercise ethical and intellectual virtues. The Aristotelian requirements for true friendship apply only partly to children: unlike adults, children relate to friendship as an educational play of exploration, which is constitutive of the way they acquire and develop virtues. We highlight that there is a relevant difference between the way we evaluate adult-robot friendship compared to children-robot friendship, which is rooted in the difference in moral agency and moral responsibility that generate the asymmetries in the moral status ascribed to adults versus children. We look into the role played by imaginary companions (IC) and personified objects (PO) in children's moral development and claim that robots, understood as Personified Robotic Objects (PROs), play a similar role with such fictional entities, enabling children to exercise affection, moral imagination and reasoning, thus contributing to their development as virtuous adults. Nonetheless, we argue that adequate use of robots for children's moral development is conditioned by several requirements related to design, technology and moral responsibility.

Respecting Older Adults: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many social problems and put the already vulnerable, such as racial minorities, low-income communities, and older individuals, at an even greater risk than before. In this paper we focus on older adults' well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic and show that the risk-mitigation measures presumed to protect them, alongside the generalization of an ageist public discourse, exacerbated the pre-existing marginalization of older adults, disproportionately affecting their well-being. This paper shows that states have duties to adopt and put into practice redress measures to compensate for the negative consequences of COVID-19 public health policies on older adults' overall well-being. These duties flow from the minimal ethical requirement of respect for persons. We show that respect is a morally basic attitude that presupposes taking the others' interests into account, with the aim of advancing their well-being. This duty is not limited to kinship, relatives, and friends but it extends to states and the rest of the civil society. In the conclusion, we draw lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and sketch some redress measures that could compensate for the decrease in older adults' well-being as a result of the adoption of measures to contain the spread of the virus.

The Internet as Cognitive Enhancement.

The Internet has been identified in human enhancement scholarship as a powerful cognitive enhancement technology. It offers instant access to almost any type of information, along with the ability to share that information with others. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the enhancement potential of the Internet. We argue that unconditional access to information does not lead to cognitive enhancement. The Internet is not a simple, uniform technology, either in its composition, or in its use. We will look into why the Internet as an informational resource currently fails to enhance cognition. We analyze some of the phenomena that emerge from vast, continual fluxes of information-information overload, misinformation and persuasive design-and show how they could negatively impact users' cognition. Methods for mitigating these negative impacts are then advanced: individual empowerment, better collaborative systems for sorting and categorizing information, and the use of artificial intelligence assistants that could guide users through the informational space of today's Internet.

Mind the Gap! How the Digital Turn Upsets Intellectual Property.

Intellectual property is one of the highly divisive issues in contemporary philosophical and political debates. The main objective of this paper is to explore some sources of tension between the formal rules of intellectual property (particularly copyright and patents) and the emerging informal norms of file sharing and open access in online environments. We look into the file sharing phenomena not only to illustrate the deepening gap between the two sets of norms, but to cast some doubt on the current regime of intellectual property as an adequate frame for the new type of interactions in online environments. Revisiting the classic Arrow-Demsetz debate about intellectual property and the epistemological issues involved in assessing institutions, we suggest that seeking out new institutional arrangements aligned with the norms-in-use seems to be a more promising strategy in the new technological setting than attempting to reinforce the current legal framework. Moreover, such a strategy is less prone to committing the so-called 'Nirvana fallacies'. As a secondary task, we try to cast some doubt on the two most common moral justifications of intellectual property as being able to ground the full extent of the current intellectual property regime.