Current Research
My current research addresses a pressing question in the ethics of technology: is attention a commodity that should be bought and sold in a market?
The attention economy is a large-scale market in which people exchange their attention for access to a new media service or product (e.g. Facebook). These companies then sell this attention (and the data it generates) to advertisers.
In the following papers, I argue that this market is an impediment to autonomy, to human flourishing, to intimate personal relationships, and to the crucial virtues that involve attention.
The attention economy is a large-scale market in which people exchange their attention for access to a new media service or product (e.g. Facebook). These companies then sell this attention (and the data it generates) to advertisers.
In the following papers, I argue that this market is an impediment to autonomy, to human flourishing, to intimate personal relationships, and to the crucial virtues that involve attention.
“Dating Apps and The Limits of Markets” explains why the core moral problem with dating apps, an attention economy service, is that they undermine ways of thinking that are needed for long-term commitments and properly valuing others in intimate social contexts. First, dating apps are at odds with the important goal of forming and maintaining a committed relationship. Their new choice framework facilitates exit over voice, optimization, and an inconstant mindset. The attention economy is a key factor here, because the attention-capturing business model of dating apps promotes an environment and mindset that undermines commitment. Second, I explain why these apps encourage users to think of themselves and others as market products. I argue that this objectifying, transactional attitude is inapt for fostering and valuing intimate relationships.
Now, if the downsides of dating apps (and other attention-capturing services) are so bad, why do people remain on them? This paper provides an analysis using tools from PPE. The technology-induced social change shifted the dating culture and hence the types of dating options available to people. By initially appearing to add more choices for how to date, dating apps in fact diminished pre-existing options (e.g. in-person connections and organic development) as the culture changed over time. And even if most people dislike the status quo, given the difficulty of organizing and the conflicting interests of app companies, these app users are faced with a challenging collective action problem.
Now, if the downsides of dating apps (and other attention-capturing services) are so bad, why do people remain on them? This paper provides an analysis using tools from PPE. The technology-induced social change shifted the dating culture and hence the types of dating options available to people. By initially appearing to add more choices for how to date, dating apps in fact diminished pre-existing options (e.g. in-person connections and organic development) as the culture changed over time. And even if most people dislike the status quo, given the difficulty of organizing and the conflicting interests of app companies, these app users are faced with a challenging collective action problem.
“The Attention Economy, Virtue, and the Value of Attention” develops an account of how key forms of attention, which are inhibited by the attention economy, are essential to virtue and to living well. I focus on sustained attention, but also analyze mind-wandering and flow. Moreover, the attention market, paired with smart phones, inhibits our ability to develop and maintain the specific virtues of aloneness and stillness (as well as tolerance for boredom). These capacities are valuable both intrinsically and for realizing important values like commitments and self-knowledge. I examine other key virtue ethics-based issues with the attention economy, including positional status competition (e.g. for 'likes'). I argue that the zero-sum positional competition for attention, fostered by social media, damages individual well-being and social relationships.
“Attention, Corruption, and The Attention Economy” argues that by treating attention as a primary currency, the attention economy expresses and promotes corrupt attitudes about attention and its value: namely, that attention is fungible and commensurable with other goods, discrete and quantifiable, instrumentally valuable, and to be used as a means of exchange. I lay out a threshold view of when this corruption occurs for certain goods like attention. I also rebut Brennan & Jaworski’s argument that the meaning of markets is contingent and is of little moral weight, by which they attempt to bypass the corruption objection. Their argument for the contingency thesis is unsound, and the persistent meaning of typical modern markets, particularly the attention economy, carries significant moral weight.
“Why the Attention Economy Violates our Autonomy” argues that the attention economy violates our autonomy in fundamental ways. Because autonomy requires control over sustaining and directing our attention, the attention economy’s interference with this capacity is a deeper autonomy violation than addiction per se. The attention economy also interferes with internally forming one’s preferences, with satisfying important second-order preferences, and with the power to choose freely whether to engage with this market. Moreover, our obligation to attend properly to the social and political world is at odds with our obligation to protect ourselves from the moral harms of the attention economy.
Works In Progress and Future Directions
Attention and AI: In future research, I will incorporate my work on the attention economy to raise serious moral concerns about emerging technologies like AI and virtual reality. Emerging tech companies should not be driven by a profit motive to capture our attention because of the impact this may have on our autonomy, our ability to sustain attention, our intimate personal relationships, and our attitudes about attention. Powerful new technologies risk supercharging the ways in which our attention is problematically captured and diverted. For instance, AI has the potential to learn about us and shape our preferences to a much greater degree, and AI chatbots that simulate close human relationships could be a more potent way to capture our attention. Because of the difficulty of collectively changing the status quo once a technology becomes entrenched, preventative action is crucial.
Plato, Aristotle, and the Moral Limits to Markets: I am working on an examination of the historical roots of the recent debate concerning the moral limits to markets, and what light this may shed on it. I am developing an argument that the core components of the corruption objection, as well as the broader debate about the limits of markets, are present in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics. A plausible interpretation of Plato is that wisdom, honor, and money are incommensurable, that preference optimization and freedom to exchange need to be constrained by virtue, and that unfettered markets degrade community, including its educative function. This implies very tight constraints on markets and the economic way of thinking that markets rely upon and foster. Aristotle responds that Plato’s communal ideal in Republic is both unattainable, due to the human propensity for self-interest, and undesirable because certain virtues like generosity require private property.