The Ethicist Column
Since 2015, Kwame Anthony Appiah has written 'The Ethicist' column for the New York Times Magazine, addressing the moral dilemmas that readers submit — the friend who lied, the colleague who cheated, the inheritance that split a family, the medical decision that divided a couple, the professional choice that implicated conscience. The column exemplifies in practice what Appiah has argued in theory across four decades: that ethical guidance is rooted in specific lives lived in specific circumstances, that moral reasoning cannot be separated from the biographical particularity of both advisor and advice-seeker, and that the work of ethical counsel is a form of cosmopolitan conversation — sustained engagement with the particular claims of particular lives, conducted from a position earned across decades of thought and experience. The column became the empirical benchmark for the Wharton and UNC studies that tested AI's ethical reasoning against Appiah's own — the experiments that made the distinction between output and position urgent in the AI discourse.
In the AI Story
Appiah took over 'The Ethicist' column in the New York Times Magazine in 2015, succeeding Randy Cohen, Ariel Kaminer, and Chuck Klosterman. Under his authorship, the column became notable for the depth of its philosophical engagement with what might otherwise be read as merely personal questions.
Appiah's approach treats each submitted dilemma as an opportunity to draw out the particular considerations that structure the situation, to identify the competing moral claims at stake, and to reason toward a response that honors the complexity rather than reducing it. The column's readers often remark on the specificity of his engagement — the sense that he has thought about their specific situation rather than applying generic principles.
The column became the basis for the Wharton School experiment led by Christian Terwiesch in 2023 and for the subsequent UNC Chapel Hill and Allen Institute study. Both studies used Appiah's column as the benchmark against which GPT-4's ethical reasoning was tested. The results — that evaluators rated the machine's responses as comparable or superior to Appiah's — became the empirical provocation that anchors this simulated book.
The framework that Appiah brings to the column — rooted cosmopolitanism, identity as project, the obligation to strangers, the honor-code mechanism — makes visible in weekly practice what his theoretical work articulates in more abstract form. The column is not a separate project from his philosophy. It is the practice of his philosophy, in public, at the scale of the Times readership.
Origin
'The Ethicist' column has appeared in the New York Times Magazine since the 1990s under various authors. Appiah became the columnist in 2015.
Key Ideas
Philosophy in practice. The column is the public exercise of Appiah's theoretical framework on the specific dilemmas readers submit.
Specificity over principle. Appiah's responses engage the particular considerations of each situation rather than applying generic principles.
The AI benchmark. The column became the benchmark against which GPT-4's ethical reasoning was tested — the empirical provocation for this book.
Rooted counsel. The advice is given from the position of a specific philosopher with specific training and specific experience, not from a view from nowhere.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- 'The Ethicist,' New York Times Magazine, ongoing
- Appiah, Experiments in Ethics (2008)
- Terwiesch et al., Wharton study on GPT-4 ethical reasoning (2023)