Matt Janot-Schuler
I primarily work in the philosophy of artificial intelligence (in particular, AI ethics & safety), the philosophy of mind, and applied ethics. My current research ranges across the ethics of advanced AI, scientific realism, the argument from evil, and metametaphysics.
Currently thinking about: the relationship between naturalism and scientific realism.
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.
Most of my work sits at the intersection 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 argument from 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
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 is below; the cards with a folded corner open that course’s syllabus:
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.
Come talk to me.
Whether you’re in one of my courses now or considering one, here’s how to reach me.
Office hours. Tuesdays, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. in my office; Thursdays, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. on Zoom. Since almost all my courses are online this semester, I plan – apart from these limited scheduled hours – to handle office hours mostly by appointment. (But don’t let that deter you! Rest assured that I’ll enjoy talking about whatever is on your mind.) Just shoot me an email & we’ll set up a time that works for both of us.
Reaching me. Email is best (see Contact, below). I usually reply within 24 hours. If something is genuinely time-sensitive, please say so in the subject line.
Recommendation letters. I’m glad to write one when I can speak to your work honestly and in detail. Ask at least three weeks ahead, and send me your CV, a note on where you’re applying, and a reminder of which course(s) we worked in together.
A selection of current projects. The through-lines are the ethics and metaphysics of artificial intelligence, the argument from evil, and questions in mind and methodology. A complete list lives in the CV.
Under Review
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Either a considered judgment is tainted by morally arbitrary factors, in which case Rawls’s own commitments bar it, or it isn’t, in which case the veil has already accounted for it. Reflective equilibrium – within justice as fairness – is left with no real work to do.
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The realist’s favorite ally is naturalism; Godfrey-Smith goes so far as to say a naturalist must be a realist. The argument here is not against naturalism but from it: run it to its conclusion and it changes sides. Our concepts are whatever natural selection made useful, with no assurance they are the ones reality is built from, so the very naturalism meant to secure realism is what dismantles it.
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Pain’s usefulness explains the warning system, not the agony. A patient with a somatosensory lesion has already had the one without the other; God could have built us all that way.
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…But it is piecemeal neuroprosthesis.
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The conceivability arguments that deliver dualism also deliver a world with all of pain’s function and none of the hurting. That world is fatal to theism, and most dualists are theists.
In Preparation
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The book-length case that phenomenal pain, not evil in general, is the thing theism cannot account for.
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You cannot launder desert into existence by endorsing what you were handed. The compatibilist’s own favorite mechanism is what shows it.
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Ought implies can, and no one could have done otherwise. Deontic incompatibilists like Haji and Schaefer stop at “morality undermined”; the conclusion actually available to them is that every atomic moral claim is false, reached entirely through philosophy of action.
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No regress required. Determinism leaves the self indistinguishable from its constitution; indeterminism leaves it unauthored anyway.
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Sider’s metaphysics needs the world to have joints. Drop that assumption and the whole apparatus of structure has nothing left to carve.
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Reasoning from first principles is a virtue in physics and a vice in a marriage. Virtue epistemology has no room for that.
Hard cases, argued in good faith.
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.
It rewards careful, honest moral reasoning and a willingness to follow the argument wherever it leads. That makes it, to my mind, some of the most worthwhile teaching I do – alongside my colleagues Angela Rodriguez of the Lincoln Center and Jed Young, one of our many exceptional Ph.D. students. I also judge and help run rounds during the competition season.
The Newsletter
I'm starting a Substack for public-facing philosophy soon-ish: short essays on AI ethics & safety, the broader questions my research circles, and the occasional detour into film, music, and whatever else is on my mind at the moment. Once finally live, new pieces will land in your inbox without paywall.
Subscribe on SubstackNew music, coming soon.
Away from philosophy, I write and record music under the name Count to Five, a project I'm in the middle of bringing back to life (new writing & recording, and – although definitely aging out of my aspiring rockstar days – perhaps the occasional live show somewhere down the line).