F. E. Guerra-Pujol (University of Central Florida; Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico) has posted Adam Smith’s Moral Machine on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper makes three contributions to the long-standing debate among Adam Smith scholars regarding the nature of Smith’s impartial spectator. First off, building on the recent work of Daniel Klein, Nicholas Swanson, and Jeffrey Young (KSY 2025), my paper highlights a puzzle in Smith’s presentation of the impartial spectator in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: sometimes Smith describes this imaginary magistrate as an external entity or all-seeing “beholder” (to borrow KSY’s helpful formulation), but at other times Smith “flattens,” so to speak, the figure of the impartial spectator, describing him as a mere mental or internal process, i.e. “the man within the breast.” Next, my paper surveys several possible motives Smith may have had for painting for such a confusing and contradictory picture of the impartial spectator. Lastly and most importantly, I present an alternative formulation of the impartial spectator: I reimagine Smith’s imaginary magistrate as a metaphorical moral machine.
Recommended.