Matt Janot-Schuler
I primarily 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.
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
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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 work.
- A Naturalistic Argument Against Scientific Realism
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Pain’s usefulness explains the warning system, not the agony. A patient with a cortical 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.
- From Deontic Incompatibilism to Moral Error Theory
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No regress required. Determinism leaves the self indistinguishable from its constitution; indeterminism leaves it unauthored anyway.
- Moral Luck and the Blameworthiness of Thwarted Attempts
- Natural Selection and Biological Laws
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Sider’s metaphysics needs the world to have joints. Suppose it doesn’t.
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Reasoning from first principles is a virtue in physics and a vice at a dinner party. Virtue epistemology has no room for that.
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 – the cards with a folded corner open that course’s current (provisional) 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.
Following the argument where it leads.
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: short essays on AI and its ethics, the broader questions my research circles, and the occasional detour into film, music, and whatever else is on my mind at the moment. 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, which keeps its own separate home – linked to below.
I'm in the middle of bringing it back to life: new writing & recording, and, although aging out of my aspiring rockstar days, perhaps an occasional live show in the offing.