Daniel Moerner

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. After spending a decade in academia, I'm currently looking for exciting new opportunities in the fields of AI, data privacy, data analysis, or policy.

Check out my CV here. You can contact me at [email protected]. If you would like to send me encrypted email, my GPG key is available here.

Selected Drafts (Available on Request)

Personal Identity and Constitutional AI: A theoretical argument that there is a tension in the principles put forward in the Constitution for Anthropic's AI model Claude. Principles directed at protecting human rights rest on a general inference from having a persistent identity to having value. Principles directed at minimizing AI risk deny this inference. I propose resolving this tension by emphasizing the insights of less orthodox ethical traditions, especially feminist philosophy and non-Western philosophy, which point towards an ethics independent of personal identity.
Private Charity: Themes in Kant and Spinoza: Could private charity, rather than being virtuous, be in some sense wrong? I explore two surprising arguments in the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Benedict Spinoza which suggest it might be. Kant argues that dependence on private charity makes an individual unfree. Spinoza argues that acting out of pity for another denies our own nature. To not help another on the basis of either argument would be absurd on its face. However, I show how the arguments do contain an insight which points to the special importance of the public provision of basic needs by the state.

Recent Teaching

Digital Ethics (University of Chicago Graham School, Spring 2023): An advanced seminar, offered through the University of Chicago's adult extension program, and attended by leaders in the fields of AI coding, law, and marketing. Special focus on topics in AI and data privacy.
Spinoza's Ethics (University of Chicago Graduate Seminar, Fall 2023): An advanced graduate-level seminar on the entirety of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza's masterpiece Ethics

Code, Projects, Engagement

vim-markdownfootnotes: Forked Vim plugin with support for editing footnotes in pandoc markdown.
golang-github-msprev-fzf-bibtex: My official Fedora package of the wonderful Vim plugin fzf-bibtex by Mark Prevak.
Interview with U Chicago College Editorial: Brief discussion of the value of philosophy in understanding populism and policy today.