Ethicists have raised concerns about these systems, and these concerns are worth taking seriously, but Dr Nick Makins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, thinks they can be answered, & that the use of these systems can be justified, at least in some circumstances.

It is in fair (or at least fairer) social and political conditions that we can pursue both moral and personal ends and flourish.

Ultimately, in the Kantian picture, the task of moral self-improvement also has a social dimension: we must avoid being complicit with the injustices of our time and instead work towards overturning them.

However, although morality and happiness are not intrinsically incompatible, they are likely to conflict under unstable and unjust external conditions. Thus, the extent to which we can live a completely morally good life is not independent of social and political conditions.

On this reading, far from endorsing an ‘ascetic ideal’ of the moral agent, Kant embraces an ideal of the human life in which there is significant space, and even a duty, to pursue pleasurable endeavours.