The subjective impression that statements are true increases when statements are presented repeatedly. There are two sources for this truth effect: An increase in validity based on recollection and increase in processing fluency due to repeated exposure . Using multinomial processing trees , we present a comprehensive model of the truth effect. Furthermore, we show that whilst the increase in processing fluency is indeed automatic, the interpretation and use of that experience is not. Experiment 1 demonstrates the standard use of (...) the fluency experience and Experiment 2 demonstrates that people can change the interpretation of the experience according to its ecological validity. By implication, the truth effect represents the adaptive usage of feedback received from internal processes. (shrink)

Statements’ rated truth increases when people encounter them repeatedly. Processing fluency is a central variable to explain this truth effect. However, people experience processing fluency positively, and these positive experiences might cause the truth effect. Three studies investigated positivity and fluency influences on the truth effect. Study 1 found correlations between elicited positive feelings and rated truth. Study 2 replicated the repetition-based truth effect, but positivity did not influence the effect. Study 3 conveyed positive and negative correlations between positivity and (...) truth in a learning phase. We again replicated the truth effect, but positivity only influenced judgments for easy statements in the learning phase. Thus, across three studies, we found positivity effects on rated truth, but not on the repetition-based truth effect: We conclude that positivity does not explain the standard truth effect, but the role of positive experiences for truth judgments deserves further investigation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTGeneralisation in learning means that learning with one particular stimulus influences responding to other novel stimuli. Such generalisation effects have largely been overlooked within res...

Many studies have emphasized the importance of medical, insurance, and workplace systems treating individuals fairly in work disability prevention and return-to-work. However, ethical theories and perspectives from these different systems are rarely discussed in relation to each other, even though in practice these systems constantly interact. This paper explores ethical theories and perspectives that may apply to the WDP–RTW field, and discusses these in relation to perspectives attributed to dominant stakeholders in this field, and to potential differences in different jurisdictional (...) contexts. Literature was sought primarily in biomedical ethics, business ethics, and public administration ethics. In biomedical ethics, four ethical principles are dominant: autonomy, beneficence, nonmalevolence, and justice. Business ethics involve theories on Corporate Social Responsibility, social contracts, and organizational justice. Public administration ethics focus on constitutional theory, citizenship, social equity, virtue, and public interest. Several concepts were identified as relevant for ethical analyses in the WDP–RTW field, including justice; individual autonomy; nonmalevolence; economic and social responsibility; and social contracts. These concepts provide a vocabulary that may be used to analyze stakeholders’ actions and interactions in RTW processes. It was also noted how the power balance between stakeholders will influence which ethical perspectives will influence RTW. Jurisdictional differences that influence RTW processes with regard to stakeholder responsibilities were identified, as well as varying beliefs as to who is the client in different compensation systems. A social contractual approach may inform an analysis of cultural and legal differences. (shrink)

Wie lässt sich der Bereich des Privaten heute genau beschreiben? Welchen Wert besitzt Privatheit in digitalisierten Gesellschaften für den Einzelnen und die Gesellschaft als Ganzes? Welche Werte und Lebensformen werden durch Privatheit geschützt, welche eingeschränkt? Entstehen durch die Informationsasymmetrie zwischen Technologieunternehmen, staatlichen Verdatungsinstitutionen und Verbrauchern/Bürgern möglicherweise neue Machtstrukturen? Welche rechtlichen Implikationen ergeben sich hieraus? Dieser Band geht diesen und anderen Fragen, die sich im Hinblick auf die etablierte Gleichung von Freiheit und Privatheit stellen, nach und versucht Antworten zu finden.

Let Carolyn Jane Bohler inspire you to consider a wide range of images of God in order to refine how you imagine God to have and use power, and how God wills ...

Women’s pain remains underappreciated, undertheorized, and undertreated in both medicine and theology. The ascetic practices of women in pain, however, can help Christians understand and navigate their own pain and suffering, particularly because they are experienced in the context of chronic illness and disability. In what follows, I argue that Christians would do better to view the pain that accompanies disability and chronic illness as a potential resource for spiritual practice rather than an example of sin or evil. I begin (...) with a brief overview of the most common theological explanations for the relationship between disability and sin within contemporary Christian writings on disability. What is often neglected in these conversations is the acknowledgment of pain in the disability experience. Likewise, discussions of evil often attempt to explain the existence of pain and suffering, but rarely address the practical realities of pain. As a way to begin to remedy the lack of attention to the experience of chronic pain for those living with illness and disability, I consider what it would mean to live faithfully with pain by examining the lives of three holy women who provide examples of what it means to interpret, manage, and share their pain within the body of Christ. (shrink)

Christians have an obligation to attend to the voices of persons who are crying out that their dignity and very lives are in jeopardy when physician-assisted suicide becomes legalized. The following essay begins with an account of the concept of “disability moral psychology,” which elucidates the unique ways persons with disabilities perceive the world, based on their phenomenological experience. The author then explores the disability critique of PAS and the shared social conditions of persons who are chronically disabled and terminally (...) ill. Finally, the author positions the disability critique within Christian moral deliberations on PAS to unearth its significance for Christian ethics. To bear witness to a compassionate God, theological and ethical judgments concerning PAS must seek perspectives from persons who claim that their dignity and even their lives are in jeopardy by the practice. (shrink)

This book uses insights from disability studies to understand in a deeper way the ethical implications that genetic technologies pose for Christian thought. Theologians have been debating genetic engineering for decades, but what has been missing from many theological debates is a deep concern for persons with genetic disabilities. In this ambitious and stimulating book, Devan Stahl argues that engagement with metaphysics and a theology of nature is crucial for Christians to evaluate both genetic science and the moral use (...) of genetic technologies, such as human genetic engineering, gene therapy, genetic screenings, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and gene editing. Using theological notions of creation ex nihilo and natural law alongside insights from disability studies, the book seeks to recast the debate concerning genetic well-being. Following the work of Stanley Hauerwas, Stahl proposes the church as the locus for reimagining disability in a way that will significantly influence the debates concerning genetic therapies. Stahl's project in "genethics" proceeds with an acute awareness of her own liberal Protestant tradition's early embrace of the eugenics movement in the name of scientific and medical advancement, and it constructively engages the Catholic tradition's metaphysical approach to questions in bioethics to surpass limitations to Protestant thinking on natural law. Christianity has all too frequently been complicit in excluding, degrading, and marginalizing people with disabilities, but the new Christian metaphysics developed here by way of disability perspectives provides normative, theological guidance on the use of genetic technologies today. As Stahl shows in her study, only by heeding the voices of people with disabilities can Christians remain faithful to the call to find Christ in "the least of these" and from there draw close to God. This book will be of interest to scholars in Christian ethics, bioethics, moral theology, and practical theology. (shrink)

Disability theology has been a small but growing field over the past thirty years. This paper reviews the current methods used in the discipline and proposes ways to move the field forward. Two intersections between disability studies and Christian theological ethics are explored in particular: bioethics and critical theory. Bioethics helps to address the material health and wellbeing concerns of people with disabilities and the discriminatory attitudes about disability that stem from the medical field. Critical theory on the other (...) hand, examines disability through cultural productions that shape our ableist imaginary. Critical theory offers resources for countering or “disciplining” our imaginations. Both bioethics and critical theory offer unique entry points into disability, but each also contains limitations that reveal why disability theology must continue to engage multiple methods and discourses. (shrink)

Examines the promises and perils of bioenhancement technologies for those most vulnerable to health disparities: persons with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, and women.

For many persons with chronic illness and disability, medical images can come to represent their stigmatized “otherness.” A growing group of artists, however, are transforming their medical images into works of visual art, which better represent their lived experience and challenge viewers to see disability and illness differently. Although few of these artists are self-professed Christians, they challenge the Church to live into the communion to which it has been called. Using a method of correlation, Christian ethicists can find (...) within this art the potential for: creative resistance to modern deployments of biopower, a celebration of divine poiesis, opportunities for communion, and prophetic challenges to the cult of normalcy. Disability art encourages a new ethic of communion in which embodied vulnerabilities are shared, celebrated, and reoriented toward the ground of being. (shrink)

The hope for a better future can, and frequently does, motivate political action. Political hope is therefore often considered a positive force. However, not all forms of political hope are beneficial. Some scholars and activists claim that some kinds of hope also function as an ideology. I argue that we can give a precise meaning to the notion of ‘ideological hope,’ and I argue that to say of a given instance of hope that it is ‘ideological’ means more than that (...) it is irrational or immoral. I distinguish two forms of ideological hope: forms where the ideological nature of hope derives from underlying ideological beliefs and judgments, and structural forms. The case of structurally ideological hope shows that even the rational hopes of political agents can undermine their purposes by binding them to distorted political self-understandings. (shrink)

Traditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can undermine the capacity of citizens (...) to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination. (shrink)

This book discusses the concept of immanent critique, i. e. whether there is a form of critique which neither just applies empirically accepted standards nor independently justified norms but rather reconstructs norms which are immanent to social practices. -/- It surveys both political theories of criticism (Walzer, Taylor, MacIntyre) and contemporary critical theories (Habermas, Honneth) for how they describe such forms of critique and develops a new model of immanent critique. For this purpose, it takes up both contemporary social ontology (...) theories and the discussion about rule-following. The book argues that we can speak of immanent rules as far as persons can practically recognize each other as members of rule-governed practices if they attribute each other defeasible normative authority. -/- Finally, it describes the consequences of the adoption of such a model for our description of a practice of critique and analyzes both first-order immanent critique and the second-order critique of reification. (shrink)

The link between the right to privacy and the right to democratic self-determination is often understood to imply that privacy rights have only instrumental value for democratic participation, and that they consist solely in the possibility to retreat from participation in a public. I examine three arguments for an internal link between both sets of rights: The right to privacy protects political public spheres from epistemic inequality, it protects groups in public from a loss of their deliberative autonomy and it (...) blocks the colonisation of deliberative publics by strategic action orientations. These arguments suggest a genuine political purpose of the right to privacy. (shrink)

The problem of the social foundations of normativity can be illuminated by discussing the narrower question whether rule-following is necessarily a social matter. The problems with individualistic theories of rule-following seem to make such a conclusion unavoidable. Social theories of rule-following, however, seem to only push back one level the dilemma of having to choose either an infinite regress of interpretations or a collapse into non-normative descriptions. The most plausible of these models, Haugeland's conformism, can avoid these objections if it (...) is supplemented with an ontologically reasonable concept of the collective attitude of a group. Groups of individuals who are bound to shared norms by recognizing each other as equipped with a standard authority of criticism have the necessary properties for ascribing to those groups such collective attitudes. Given such a weak notion of a collective attitude, there is hope for a plausible collectivist theory of rule-following. (shrink)

This paper discusses recent evidence that violations of core knowledge offer special learning opportunities for infants and young children. Children make predictions about the world from the youngest ages. When their fail to match observed data, they show an enhanced drive to seek and retain new information about entities that violated their expectations. Finally, the authors draw comparisons between children and adults, and with other species, to explore how surprise shapes thought more broadly.

These are the questions that Gary H. Stahl addresses in this original and provocative work.

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

Computer-based design environments for skilled domain workers have recently graduated from research prototypes to commercial products, supporting the learning of individual designers. Such systems do not, however, adequately support the collaborative nature of work or the evolution of knowledge within communities of practice. If innovation is to be supported within collaborative efforts, thesedomain-oriented design environments (DODEs) must be extended to becomecollaborative information environments (CIEs), capable of providing effective community memories for managing information and learning within constantly evolving collaborative contexts. In (...) particular, CIEs must provide functionality that facilitates the construction of new knowledge and the shared understanding necessary to use this knowledge effectively within communities of practice. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the (...) vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

The role of power in healthcare can raise many ethical challenges. Power is ownership, whether given, ceded, or taken of another person’s autonomy. When a person has power over someone else, they can control or strongly influence the decision-making freedom of that person. From the principalist perspective1,2 of healthcare ethics, denying a person their freedom to choose, should only occur when justifying conditions related to beneficence and nonmaleficence are sufficiently satisfied. In healthcare, it is rare to be able to identify (...) situations where paternalism is justified. However, experience suggests that abusive power in healthcare is used too frequently without justifying criteria. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of (...) how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas’ approach to political discourse, which requires ‘translation’ of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a ‘methodology of translation’ which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience and other disciplines are producing large-scale brain data consisting of datasets from multiple organisms, disciplines, and jurisdictions in different formats. However, due to the lack of an international data governance framework brain data is currently being produced under various contextual ethical and legal principles which may influence key stakeholders involved in the generation, collection, processing and sharing of brain data thereby raising ethical and legal challenges. In addition, despite the demand for a brain data governance framework that (...) accounts for culture, there is a gap in empirical research and actions to understand how key stakeholders around the world view these issues using neuroscientists who are affected by these ethical and legal principles. Therefore, using the research question how do ethical and legal principles influence data governance in neuroscience? we attempt to understand the perceptions of key actors on the principles, issues and concerns that can arise from brain data research. We carried out interviews with 21 leading international neuroscientists. The analytical insights revealed key ethical and legal principles, areas of convergence, visibility, and the contextual issues and concerns that arise in brain data research around these principles. These issues and concerns circulate around intimately connected areas which include ethics, human rights, regulations, policies and guidelines, and participatory governance. Also, key contextual insights around animal research and ethics were identified. The research identifies key principles, issues, and concerns that need to be addressed in advancing the development of a framework for global brain data governance. By presenting contextual insights from neuroscientists across regions, the study contributes to informing discussions and shaping policies aimed at promoting responsible and ethical practices in brain data research. The research answers the call for a cross cultural study of global brain data governance and the results of the study will assist in understanding the issues and concerns that arise in brain data governance. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is clearly illustrate this convergence and the prescriptive recommendations that such documents entail. There is a significant amount of research into the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence. This is reflected by many outputs across academia, policy and the media. Many of these outputs aim to provide guidance to particular stakeholder groups. It has recently been shown that there is a large degree of convergence in terms of the principles upon which these guidance documents are (...) based. Despite this convergence, it is not always clear how these principles are to be translated into practice. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors move beyond the high-level ethical principles that are common across the AI ethics guidance literature and provide a description of the normative content that is covered by these principles. The outcome is a comprehensive compilation of normative requirements arising from existing guidance documents. This is not only required for a deeper theoretical understanding of AI ethics discussions but also for the creation of practical and implementable guidance for developers and users of AI. Findings In this paper, the authors therefore provide a detailed explanation of the normative implications of existing AI ethics guidelines but directed towards developers and organisational users of AI. The authors believe that the paper provides the most comprehensive account of ethical requirements in AI currently available, which is of interest not only to the research and policy communities engaged in the topic but also to the user communities that require guidance when developing or deploying AI systems. Originality/value The authors believe that they have managed to compile the most comprehensive document collecting existing guidance which can guide practical action but will hopefully also support the consolidation of the guidelines landscape. The authors’ findings should also be of academic interest and inspire philosophical research on the consistency and justification of the various normative statements that can be found in the literature. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMoran and Bar-Anan. The effect of object-valence relations on automatic evaluation. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 743–752) demonstrated that evaluations on...

The perception of meaningful patterns in random arrangements and unrelated events takes place in our everyday lives, coined apophenia, synchronicity, or the experience of meaningful coincidences. However, we do not know yet what predicts this phenomenon. To investigate this, we re-analyzed a combined data set of two daily diary studies with a total of N = 169 participants (mean age 29.95 years; 54 men). We investigated if positive or negative affect (PA, NA) predicts the number of meaningful coincidences on the (...) following day (or vice versa). By means of a cross-lagged multilevel modelling approach (Bayesian estimation) we evaluated with which of two theoretical assumptions the data are more in line. First, if meaningful coincidences are facilitated by a broader and more flexible thinking style, PA should positively predict meaningful coincidences at the following day. However, if the experience of meaningful coincidences signifies a strategy to cope with negative feeling states, NA should predict the experience of meaningful coincidences during the following day. In favour of a more flexible thinking style, we found that PA predicted the number of perceived coincidences the following day. We did not find any effect for NA, and therefore, no evidence arguing for the coping mechanism hypothesis of meaningful coincidences. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to advances research on walking, at a neighbourhood level of analysis for people with disabilities, by proposing a theoretical model that combines the knowledge of two disciplines: traffic planning and environmental psychology. The aim is to provide a guidance for a discussion and a planning of future interdisciplinary investigations, by proposing a model that accounts for the dynamic interaction between environmental characteristics, human processes, and walking experience among individuals with a disability. For this purpose, traffic (...) planners and environmental psychologists came together to discuss theories, concepts, and thematic of relevance in a series of focus group meetings. These meetings led to the selection of the Human Environment Interaction (HEI) model, originally developed from the field of environmental psychology, and operationalised to describe how walking experiences result from the interplay between individual abilities, emotional processes and physical and social characteristics of the environment (Küller, 1991). The proposed model aims to sustain interdisciplinary discussion and research planning around the topic of neighbourhood walking for people with disabilities. By operationalising each dimension in the model, a good fit between groups with disabilities and individual differences associated with walking experiences is assumed, which in turn will have the potential to provide a more conscious analysis of wellbeing-related outcomes such as, usability of the environment, frequency of mobility, and quality of life. However, to improve understanding of urban walking at a neighbourhood level for people with disabilities, empirical studies must be carried out to test the proposed model. (shrink)

The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk (like Pascal's Mugging), and intolerably paradoxical in cases like the St. Petersburg and Pasadena games. In this paper I show that, under certain conditions, stochastic dominance reasoning can capture most of the plausible implications of expectational reasoning while avoiding most of its pitfalls. Specifically, given sufficient background uncertainty (...) about the choiceworthiness of one's options, many expectation-maximizing gambles that do not stochastically dominate their alternatives "in a vacuum" become stochastically dominant in virtue of that background uncertainty. But, even under these conditions, stochastic dominance will not require agents to accept options whose expectational superiority depends on sufficiently small probabilities of extreme payoffs. The sort of background uncertainty on which these results depend looks unavoidable for any agent who measures the choiceworthiness of her options in part by the total amount of value in the resulting world. At least for such agents, then, stochastic dominance offers a plausible general principle of choice under uncertainty that can explain more of the apparent rational constraints on such choices than has previously been recognized. (shrink)

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide a response to Christiansen's paper, Ellen Christiansen “From ‘ethics of the eye’ to ‘ethics of the hand’ by collaborative prototyping”,Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, Vol. 12 No. 1.Design/methodology/approach– Reflection and critique of Christiansen's position.Findings– The paper raises questions about the conceptual basis, the realisation of participation and the conditions required for participative practice to be more broadly employed.Originality/value– It is an original response.

Nudge is a popular public policy tool that harnesses well-known biases in human judgement to subtly guide people’s decisions, often to improve their choices or to achieve some socially desirable outcome. Thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) methods new possibilities emerge of how and when our decisions can be nudged. On the one hand, algorithmically personalized nudges have the potential to vastly improve human daily lives. On the other hand, blindly outsourcing the development and implementation of nudges to (...) “black box” AI systems means that the ultimate reasons for why such nudges work, that is, the underlying human cognitive processes that they harness, will often be unknown. In this paper, we unpack this concern by considering a series of examples and case studies that demonstrate how AI systems can learn to harness biases in human judgment to reach a specified goal. Drawing on an analogy in a philosophical debate concerning the methodology of economics, we call for the need of an interdisciplinary oversight of AI systems that are tasked and deployed to nudge human behaviours. (shrink)