The Sunday paper tells us of an odd phenomenon:  a number of young people report

falling deeply in love with their chatbot-- an imaginary person taught to talk by 

Artificial Intelligence (AI). These reports include the admission that the chatbot 

is not a real person but one that is animated by the person who loves them. The 

attraction is often also sexual even though a sexual relationship is not a possibility.

These lovers of imaginary persons acknowledge that they are unable to have loving 

relationships with real persons. This  is not an unusual experience. I remember as 

a young person being so needy that I could never give a new relationship the time 

it needed to grow and develop to see whether a deeper friendship was possible.  

Having met a person who seemed interesting, my next thought was of marriage and a 

lifetime commitment. I could not even wait for another encounter to see whether 

the person remained interesting after meeting more than once.

The neediness of those falling in love with their chatbot manifests their lack of 

self-esteem, their sense that they cannot live a successful and enjoyable life 

without an intimate relationship with someone else. Their worth as persons derives 

from being loved completely and unconditionally.  Their lives, by themselves, are 

barren and filled with sadness. Somehow they seem empty and pointless. They need 

For myself, I was fortunate to grow up and to learn to enjoy a life not enveloped 

in an intimate relationship but rendered enjoyable by different friends and 

different sorts of friendships. Perhaps that will also happen to the people who 

today console themselves with loving imaginary beings. But now they think they need 

to depend on loving a creature of their own making with the help of their computer.

But what, if anything, does the story tell us about life for young people in our 

society? Is our culture failing them by leaving them without robust confidence in 

their own being, potential victims of the self deception of loving an imaginary 

creature? Are we leaving them isolated , unsure of themselves without a solid 

confidence of their worth and how they deserve love and affection? 

These are questions that need to be taken very seriously.

 Environmental Ethics 

This should not be a strange topic. Everyone knows that the environment is in 

trouble and the victim of many threats. Environmentalism is the concern of many. 

There are only too many questions about methods of saving the environment. 

In the western states such as California or Washington there is a real threat 

of wildfires every summer and, at the same time, there is a serious shortage 

of water to put out those fires, to irrigate farmland, and to maintain 

astonishingly green golf courses. Different parts of the country face different 

threats but nowhere is the environment safe. 

But are these problems problems in ethics? Everyone, whether they live in houses 

or in apartments or in rooms are admonished about the safety of the spaces they 

live in. They need smoke alarms; the windows need to open easily and, in the winter,

they need to shut very tight. Would you think of these as ethical commandments? 

No, they are just reminders of what safety requires. It is in everyone's best 

interest to obey rules like this. Ethical rules tell us what we must do, whether 

it is in our immediate self-interest or not. 

Suppose your car scrapes the fender of another car as you leave the grocery store 

parking lot. Should you just leave, or leave a note on the other car with your 

name and telephone number? What is in your self-interest? What is the morally right 

thing to do? You could just leave and hope that no one sees you. Or you could 

leave your address, name, and telephone number so that the owner of the damaged 

car can be in touch. 

Often what ethics demands is that you do something that is not in your immediate 

best interest, that you would rather not do. If you try to sell your house, 

ethics demands that you not misrepresent it to potential buyers. If you make an 

offer of marriage to a person, you must not lie about yourself, your past, about 

possible reasons why you would not be a good marriage candidate. Don't forget 

to mention that you spent years being addicted to alcohol or that you have been 

married and divorced three times before. 

You must not misrepresent who you are. 

It is clearly in everyone's interest to reduce how much coal or oil we burn 

to generate electricity. But if you have money invested in a coal mine or an oil 

company, it is in your interest that this company make a sizable profit by selling 

more coal or more oil. Taking good care of the environment is not in the best 

interest of many citizens, such as all the elderly whose savings, that now support 

them, may well be invested in coal, or oil, or natural gas. 

Environmental ethics tells us not to profit from products that further damage our 

environment, already threatened by excessive heat in the summer, by major droughts, 

overwhelmed by rain storms and floods. Around the planet farmland loses its 

fertility and the families it once supported are now moving to countries that 

are very reluctant to accept them. Millions of persons are on the move because 

their homeland is no longer able to support them. 

This situation confronts us with a serious ethical dilemma: Shall we withdraw our 

money from investments that further damage the environment? What shall we do with 

our life savings that must support us for our waning years? Or shall we ignore the

terrible damages these investments do to millions of persons in Africa and Asia? 

Environmental ethics tells us clearly that we must do everything we can to minimize 

the damage we do in many countries because we burn so much coal and oil. Self-

interest tells us to maintain our investments in those damaging industries. 

How will we respond to the demands of environmental ethics?