This article provides a condensed chronological record of the formation of the Information Ethics Special Interest Group in the Association for Library and Information Science Education . The compressed account is comprised largely of documented SIG business archived by Toni Samek , during her time as both a founding member and the first SIG convener.

This is a direct challenge to the notion of library neutrality, especially in the present context of war, revolution, and social change. This book locates library and information workers as participants and interventionists in social conflicts. The strategies for social action worldwide were chosen because of their connection to elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that relate particularly to core library values, information ethics, and global information justice. This book also encourages readers to pay attention to links (...) between library and information work and the following solidarity rights not currently incorporated into any legally-binding human rights framework. The aim is primarily at librarians, archivists, educators and students. Content consists of essential concepts presented in accessible terms (e.g., critical librarianship, information ethics, global information justice, human rights), along with a practical orientation to action on contemporary issues (e.g., intellectual freedom, intellectual property, preservation, cultural destruction, censorship, public access to government information, commercialization, academic freedom, workplace speech, international relations, anonymity, privacy, confidentiality, human security, national security policies, transborder data flow, and information poverty). (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

Although recent research suggests that women are underrepresented in philosophy after initial philosophy courses, there have been relatively few empirical investigations into the factors that lead to this early drop-off in women’s representation. In this paper, we present the results of empirical investigations at a large American public university that explore various factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in philosophy at the undergraduate level. We administered climate surveys to hundreds of students completing their Introduction to Philosophy course and examined differences in (...) women’s and men’s feelings of belonging, comfort, and confidence in the philosophy classroom. We present findings suggesting various factors that contribute to women’s lower willingness to continue in philosophy compared to men’s, including perceptions about intuition-based methods in philosophy, the usefulness of the philosophy major, philosophy as a male discipline, and philosophical abilities as innate talents. We conclude by providing some suggestions for improving undergraduate philosophy courses in ways that would increase women’s willingness to continue in philosophy and may improve the courses for all students. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

In The Value Gap, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is argued, (...) as against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argumentation framework to support Issue-Based Information System style debates on design alternatives, by providing an automatic quantitative evaluation of the positions put forward. It also identifies several formal properties of the proposed quantitative argumentation framework and compares it with existing non-numerical abstract argumentation formalisms. Finally, the paper describes the integration of the proposed approach within the design Visual Understanding Environment software tool along with three case studies in engineering design. The case studies show the potential (...) for a competitive advantage of the proposed approach with respect to state-of-the-art engineering design methods. (shrink)

Conscientious Objection has become a highly contested topic in the bioethics literature and public policy. However, when CO is discussed, it is almost universally referred to as a single entity. Reality reveals a more nuanced picture. Healthcare professionals may object to a given action on numerous grounds. They may oppose an action because of its ends, its means, or because of factors that lay outside of both ends and means. Our paper develops a taxonomy of CO, which makes it possible (...) to describe the refusals of healthcare professional with greater finesse. The application of this development will potentially allow for greater subtlety in public policy and academic discussions – some species of CO could be permitted while others could be prohibited. (shrink)

This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or ...

This article examines parallels between the increasing mental burnout and environmental overshoot in the organisational context. The article argues that there is a particular philosophy of management that connects these two phenomena of overshoot and burnout, namely productivism. As there are boundaries in all ecological processes and systems, the productivist aim of having ever more output and growth is deemed absurd. It is proposed that productivity as a management philosophy not only leads to mental ill-health in organisations but also to (...) overshoot in the environment. The article concludes that productivism, which denies the limits in utilisation of humans and other natural resources, fits poorly with circular economy and sustainability. Hence, ecological management should be complemented with a more holistic and processual view of organizations, as well as have an aim of peaceful coexistence between all earthbound objects. This signifies acknowledging and caring for human and non-human needs both now and in future by applying the idea of moderation to production of goods and services. (shrink)

The article examines the role played by policy advice institutions in the governance of ethically controversial new and emerging science and technology in Europe. The empirical analysis, which aims to help close a gap in the literature, focuses on the evolution, role and functioning of national ethics advisory bodies (EABs) in Europe. EABs are expert bodies whose remit is to issue recommendations regarding ethical aspects of new and emerging science and technology. Negative experiences with the impacts of science and technology (...) in the past have resulted in calls for increased transparency and broader participation and pluralism in expert advice and policy decision-making. Do national EABs function as inclusive, anticipatory “hybrid forums”? Or do they resemble more “classical” expert-oriented bodies, inspired by technocratic or decisionist approaches? As part of the empirical analysis of the role and functioning of institutional ethical advisory structures in 32 European countries, an extensive analysis of EAB websites and the content of publicly available documents on such institutions has been carried out, supplemented by an online survey of representatives of the EABs. One major finding of the empirical analysis is the very uneven distribution of “hybrid forum” features of EABs across Europe. (shrink)

The paper argues that the final value of an object, i.e., its value for its own sake, need not be intrinsic. It need not supervene on the object’s internal properties. Extrinsic final value, which accrues to things in virtue of their relational features, cannot be traced back to the intrinsic value of states that involve these things together with their relations. On the opposite, such states, insofar as they are valuable at all, derive their value from the things involved. The (...) endeavour to reduce thing-values to state-values is largely motivated by a mistaken belief that appropriate responses to value must consist in preferring and/or promoting. A pluralist approach to value analysis obviates the need for reduction: the final value of a thing or a person can be given an independent interpretation in terms of the appropriate thing- or person-oriented responses: admiration, love, respect, protection, cherishing, etc. (shrink)

Newborn neurons are generated in the adult hippocampus from a pool of self‐renewing stem cells located in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus. Their activation, proliferation, and maturation depend on a host of environmental and cellular factors but, until recently, the contribution of local neuronal circuitry to this process was relatively unknown. In their recent publication, Song and colleagues have uncovered a novel circuit‐based mechanism by which release of the neurotransmitter, γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA), from parvalbumin‐expressing (PV) interneurons, can (...) hold radial glia‐like (RGL) stem cells of the adult SGZ in a quiescent state. This tonic GABAergic signal, dependent upon the activation of γ2 subunit‐containing GABAA receptors of RGL stem cells, can thus prevent their proliferation and subsequent maturation or return them to quiescence if previously activated. PV interneurons are thus capable of suppressing neurogenesis during periods of high network activity and facilitating neurogenesis when network activity is low. (shrink)

The much endorsed idea that reasons are facts, gives raise to several issues, not least when it is applied to the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. The paper distinguish in broad terms between two important views on the nature of facts. Given in particular a view that conceives of facts as abstract entities, the dichotomy is not particularly problematic. We might run into problems when it comes to identifying which facts are reasons and which are not, but the very (...) dichotomy itself seems sound. On this, the so-called thin approach, it is at least a possibility that some reasons will be (in some sense of the dichotomy) agent-neutral and some will be agent-relative. The second approach, the thick account, is, much less popular. It is argued that the thin approach trivializes an interesting issue among practical philosophers. The thin account is also in one respect less appealing than its thick cousin. The thick account is not flawless, though. At the end, a couple of objections to it will be considered. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants should show bold moral courage in discharging their duties to patients, families, and healthcare providers. Given the corrosive impact on trust, and on the appropriate d...

Section 2.1 identifies three notions of intrinsic value: the finality sense understands it as value for its own sake, the supervenience sense identifies it with value that depends exclusively on the bearer’s internal properties, and the nonderivative sense describes intrinsic value as value that provides justification for other values and is not justified by any other value. A distinction between final intrinsic and final extrinsic value in terms of supervenience is subsequently introduced. Section 2.2 contains a discussion of the debate (...) about instrumental value and other varieties of nonfinal extrinsic value. Finally, section 2.3 focuses on recent attacks on the very coherence of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction and its role as a demarcation line between fundamental and nonfundamental value. (shrink)

It is argued that the so-called fitting attitude- or buck-passing pattern of analysis may be applied to personal values too if the analysans is fine-tuned in the following way: An object has personal value for a person a, if and only if there is reason to favour it for a’s sake. One benefit with it is its wide range: different kinds of values are analysable by the same general formula. Moreover, by situating the distinguishing quality in the attitude rather than (...) the reason part, the analysis admits that personal value is recognizable as a value not only by the person for whom it has personal value, but for everyone else too. We thereby avoid facing two completely different notions of value, viz., one pertaining to impersonal value, and another to personal value. The analysis also elucidates why we are justified in our concern for objects that are valuable for us; if value just is, as it is suggested, the existence of reasons for such a concern, the justification is immediately forthcoming. (shrink)

Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen | : This paper explores a novel metaethical theory according to which value judgments express conditional beliefs held by those who make them. Each value judgment expresses the belief that something is the case on condition that something else is the case. The paper aims to reach a better understanding of this view and to highlight some of the challenges that lie ahead. The most pressing of these revolves around the correct understanding of the nature of the (...) relevant cognitive attitudes. It is suggested that the distinction between “dormant attitudes” and “occurrent attitudes” helps us to understand these conditional beliefs. | : Cet article explore une nouvelle théorie méta-éthique selon laquelle les jugements de valeur expriment les croyances conditionnelles des sujets qui les font. Chaque jugement de valeur exprimerait la croyance selon laquelle quelque chose est le cas à la condition que quelque chose d’autre le soit. L’objectif de cet article est de parvenir à une meilleure compréhension de ce point de vue et de souligner certaines de ses difficultés. La plus urgente d’entre elles concerne la compréhension adéquate de la nature des attitudes cognitives pertinentes. Nous suggérons que la distinction entre « attitudes dormantes » et « attitudes occurrentes » permettrait de mieux comprendre les croyances conditionnelles. (shrink)

Up until the end of the twentieth century, the dystopia was a practically nonexistent genre in Finnish literature. However, since the turn of the century, there has been a marked dystopian turn. In addition to the anxieties associated with the passing of the millennium, emerging global issues such as digital development, environmental problems, and terrorism have contributed to the ongoing popularity of dystopian fiction.1 At the same time, Finnish literature has been strongly influenced by the trends of international book markets. (...) For example, the unprecedented popularity of dystopian young adult literature has inspired Finnish authors. In the past ten years, a number of writers have published... (shrink)

Recent works in Explainable AI mostly address the transparency issue of black-box models or create explanations for any kind of models (i.e., they are model-agnostic), while leaving explanations of interpretable models largely underexplored. In this paper, we fill this gap by focusing on explanations for a specific interpretable model, namely pattern-based logistic regression (PLR) for binary text classification. We do so because, albeit interpretable, PLR is challenging when it comes to explanations. In particular, we found that a standard way to (...) extract explanations from this model does not consider relations among the features, making the explanations hardly plausible to humans. Hence, we propose AXPLR, a novel explanation method using (forms of) computational argumentation to generate explanations (for outputs computed by PLR) which unearth model agreements and disagreements among the features. Specifically, we use computational argumentation as follows: we see features (patterns) in PLR as arguments in a form of quantified bipolar argumentation frameworks (QBAFs) and extract attacks and supports between arguments based on specificity of the arguments; we understand logistic regression as a gradual semantics for these QBAFs, used to determine the arguments’ dialectic strength; and we study standard properties of gradual semantics for QBAFs in the context of our argumentative re-interpretation of PLR, sanctioning its suitability for explanatory purposes. We then show how to extract intuitive explanations (for outputs computed by PLR) from the constructed QBAFs. Finally, we conduct an empirical evaluation and two experiments in the context of human-AI collaboration to demonstrate the advantages of our resulting AXPLR method. (shrink)

The endeavour to locate value in moral progress faces various substantive as well as more formal challenges. This paper focuses on challenges of the latter kind. After some preliminaries, Section 3 introduces two general kinds of “evaluative moral progress-claims”, and outlines a possible novel analysis of a descriptive notion of moral progress. While Section 4 discusses certain logical features of betterness in light of recent work in value theory which are pertinent to the notion of moral progress, Sections 5 and (...) 6 outline the ambiguous character of “making moral progress”. (shrink)

People are prone to ascribe value to persons they love. However, the relation between love and value is far from straightforward. This is particularly evident given certain views on the nature of love. Setting out from the idea that what causes us to have an attitude towards an object need not be found in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper depicts love as an attitude that takes non‐fungible persons as intentional objects. Taking this view as a starting point, (...) the paper shows why it is difficult to combine with certain views on value. The main challenge comes from the idea that value judgments are universalizable. This view squares badly with the thought that the people whom we love are irreplaceable. Introducing the idea that properties may have different functions in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper determines what precisely it is about love that makes it hard to combine with universalizability. Moreover, it suggests two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)

The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...) focuses on normative theories (and the aims they provide to agents), David McNaughton and Piers Rawling focus on rules and reasons, Skorupski on predicates, and there are other suggestions too. Some writers suspect that we fundamentally talk about one and the same distinction. This work is about practical reasons for action rather than theoretical reasons for belief. Moreover, focus is on whether reasons do or do not essentially refer to particular agents. A challenge that undermines the dichotomy in this sense is posed. After having rejected different attempts to defend the distinction, it is argued that there is a possible defence that sets out from Jonathan Dancy’s recent distinction between enablers and favourers. (shrink)

The Nordic countries have often been regarded as ideal states with respect to their organization of society, including, among other things, their democracy, public education systems, gender equality, and strong concern for nature. From the late twentieth century onward, an increasing interest in Nordic literature, film, and design—genres where social and environmental themes have been strongly highlighted—can be noted internationally.This discourse of the Nordic societies can be considered to contain both utopian and dystopian aspects. As Kjerstin Aukrust and Cecilie Weiss-Andersen (...) show in their article on French democracy, the Nordic, understood as a utopian motif, has been a long-standing topic in modern French... (shrink)

Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 is a highly controversial issue, and many members of the public oppose it on the grounds that they should be free to determine what happens to their own body. Opinion has generally favored parental authority with respect to vaccination of children, but less attention has been paid to the ethical complexities of how to respond when mature minors refuse vaccination that is requested by their parents. We present a case in which a mature minor, who was (...) psychiatrically hospitalized, refused vaccination that had been requested by her parents, which led to significant moral distress for her caregivers. (shrink)

Alongside the photographs are short pieces of critical commentary by Vicki Karaminas and Toni Johnson-Woods, shedding light on the city's changing culture and how this is expressed through the clothing choices of ordinary city-dwellers ...

As systems based on opaque Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to flourish in diverse real-world applications, understanding these black box models has become paramount. In response, Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged as a field of research with practical and ethical benefits across various domains. This paper not only highlights the advancements in XAI and its application in real-world scenarios but also addresses the ongoing challenges within XAI, emphasizing the need for broader perspectives and collaborative efforts. We bring together experts from diverse (...) fields to identify open problems, striving to synchronize research agendas and accelerate XAI in practical applications. By fostering collaborative discussion and interdisciplinary cooperation, we aim to propel XAI forward, contributing to its continued success. Our goal is to put forward a comprehensive proposal for advancing XAI. To achieve this goal, we present a manifesto of 27 open problems categorized into nine categories. These challenges encapsulate the complexities and nuances of XAI and offer a road map for future research. For each problem, we provide promising research directions in the hope of harnessing the collective intelligence of interested stakeholders. (shrink)

The development of the Values History instrument for use in advance directive decision making has raised the question of the importance of values in eliciting advance directives. This pilot study examines the relationship between the domains of values and advance directives drawn from the Values History in three generation intrafamily triads. Significant correlations between values and advance directives were found primarily within the youngest generation. Results reveal a relatively high familiarity by the participants of the various established forms of advance (...) directives. Also, a significant percentage of parents and grand- parents was found to have signed some form of advance directive. (shrink)

Sanitary engineering is burdened by several challenges that attract bioethical attention: there are many ambiguities regarding the definition of the profession; its methodology seems to be a combination of several approaches from different sciences; and it often appears to be an amalgam of different disciplines. We argue that the bioethical perspective helps to show that these features can be taken as a stimulating challenge. Moreover, bioethics may illuminate how these features can become an asset to sanitary engineering in light of (...) the growing need for holistic approaches. First, we present a bioethical analysis of the aforementioned features as a useful way to clarify and strengthen the identity of the profession. Second, we argue that professional ethics have received the least attention, but are crucial to giving the profession stronger independence and professional identity and to creating a unique worldview at the crossroads of environmental and public health ethics. Finally, we propose a general framework of sound professional ethics of sanitary engineering as a necessary step towards rethinking the core values of the profession, clearly articulating a genuine professional ethic, and reforming educational politics related to professional education. (shrink)