Alumni Spotlight: Michael Dale, MA’16
From 2022-23, Michael was a postdoctoral fellow at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, as part of the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies Research Program.
Starting in 2023, he is an assistant professor of philosophy at Hampden-Sydney College.
Michael writes,
"In my research, I consider to what extent empirical findings can have implications for ethics. These days, I am thinking a lot about the evolution of reciprocity. Direct reciprocity involves individuals paying immediate costs to cooperate with a partner, and in a future interaction receiving benefits from that partner. Indirect reciprocity occurs when information is shared about people's cooperative (and uncooperative) tendencies, and individuals subsequently choose to cooperate with those who have cooperative reputations. This theory has for the most part gone unnoticed in modern discussions in ethics, and I am now working on a number of projects discussing its ethical implications. For instance, in a recent paper I argue that social robots should be capable of both direct and indirect reciprocity, if we want to most effectively enhance human-robot relations."
This update was published in June 2023