Purpose: Explore public attitudes towards the trade-offs between justice and medical outcome inherent in organ allocation decisions.Background: The US Task Force on Organ Transplantation recommended that considerations of justice, autonomy and medical outcome be part of all organ allocation decisions. Justice in this context may be modeled as a function of three types of need, related to age, clinical urgency, and quality of life.Methods: A web-based survey was conducted in which respondents were asked to choose between two hypothetical patients who (...) differed in clinical urgency , age, pretransplant and post-transplant quality of life, and life expectancy.Results: A pool of 1600 people were notified via email about the survey; 623 responded. Respondents preferred giving organs to younger people up to an age difference of <15.4 years and more clinically urgent people up to a difference in urgency of <2.54 months . Priority varied with the quality of life of the worst-off patient and the relative status of the patients. If both had worse than average quality of life, respondents preferred the better-off patient. When both had better than average quality of life, they preferred the worse-off patient. In analysis according to age versus clinical urgency, the older the patient, the more urgency needed to receive priority. In quality of life versus clinical urgency, the better the control’s quality of life, the more urgency the competing patient required. The worse the patient’s post-transplant outcome, the more urgency needed to receive priority.Conclusions: It appears that clinical urgency is only one of many factors influencing attitudes about allocation decisions and that respondents may invoke different principles of fairness depending the relative clinical status of patients. (shrink)

Purpose: Explore public attitudes towards the trade-offs between justice and medical outcome inherent in organ allocation decisions.Background: The US Task Force on Organ Transplantation recommended that considerations of justice, autonomy and medical outcome be part of all organ allocation decisions. Justice in this context may be modeled as a function of three types of need, related to age, clinical urgency, and quality of life.Methods: A web-based survey was conducted in which respondents were asked to choose between two hypothetical patients who (...) differed in clinical urgency , age, pretransplant and post-transplant quality of life, and life expectancy.Results: A pool of 1600 people were notified via email about the survey; 623 responded. Respondents preferred giving organs to younger people up to an age difference of <15.4 years and more clinically urgent people up to a difference in urgency of <2.54 months . Priority varied with the quality of life of the worst-off patient and the relative status of the patients. If both had worse than average quality of life, respondents preferred the better-off patient. When both had better than average quality of life, they preferred the worse-off patient. In analysis according to age versus clinical urgency, the older the patient, the more urgency needed to receive priority. In quality of life versus clinical urgency, the better the control’s quality of life, the more urgency the competing patient required. The worse the patient’s post-transplant outcome, the more urgency needed to receive priority.Conclusions: It appears that clinical urgency is only one of many factors influencing attitudes about allocation decisions and that respondents may invoke different principles of fairness depending the relative clinical status of patients. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual framework for studying the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. We draw on mood-congruency theory and the affect infusion model to propose that mood influences managerial ethical decision making through deliberate and conscious assessments of the moral intensity of an ethical issue. By accounting for proscriptive and prescriptive morality—i.e., harmful and prosocial behavior, respectively—we demonstrate that positive and negative mood may have asymmetrical and paradoxical effects on ethical decision making. Specifically, our analysis suggests (...) that individuals in a positive mood will be more likely to engage in prosocial behavior but less likely to refrain from activities that have harmful consequences for others, whereas individuals in a negative mood will be more likely to avoid activities that put others at risk or harm but at the same time less prone to engaging in activities that have positive consequences for others. Importantly, we account for the context within which managers make their decisions by examining how situational strength may moderate the influence of mood on managerial ethical decision making. Finally, we discuss how organizations can leverage the double-edged sword effect of mood on ethical decision making and prevent, control and manage the risk of unethical decision making on the part of managers. (shrink)

Despite its successes, to date Artificial Intelligence (AI) is still characterized by a number of shortcomings with regards to different application domains and goals. These limitations are arguably both conceptual (e.g., related to the underlying theoretical models, such as symbolic vs.connectionist), and operational (e.g., related to robustness and ability to generalize). Biologically inspired AI, and more specifically brain-inspired AI, promises to provide further biological aspects beyond those that are already traditionally included in AI, making it possible to assess and possibly (...) overcome some of its present shortcomings. This article examines some conceptual, technical, and ethical issues raised by the development and use of brain-inspired AI. Against this background, the paper asks whether there is anything ethically unique about brain-inspired AI. The aim of the paper is to introduce a method that has a heuristic nature and that can be applied to identify and address the ethical issues arising from brain-inspired AI (and from AI more generally). The conclusion resulting from the application of this method is that, compared to traditional AI, brain-inspired AI raises new foundational ethical issues and some new practical ethical issues, and exacerbates some of the issues raised by traditional AI. (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.

Potential ethical issues can arise during the process of epidemiological classification. For example, unnatural infant deaths are classified as accidental deaths or homicides. Societal sensitivity to the physical abuse and neglect of children has increased over recent decades. This enhanced sensitivity could impact reported infant homicide rates. Infant homicide and accident mortality rates in boys and girls in the USA from 1940 to 2005 were analysed. In 1940, infant accident mortality rates were over 20 times greater than infant homicide rates (...) in both boys and girls. After about 1980, when the ratio of infant accident mortality rates to infant homicide rates decreased to less than five, and the sum of infant accident and homicide rates became relatively constant, further decreases in infant accident mortality rates were associated with increases in reported infant homicide rates. These findings suggest that the dramatic decline of accidental infant mortality and recent increased societal sensitivity to child abuse may be related to the increased infant homicide rates observed in the USA since 1980 rather than an actual increase in societal violence directed against infants. Ethical consequences of epidemiological classification, involving the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and justice, are suggested by observed patterns in infant accidental deaths and homicides in the USA from 1940 to 2005. (shrink)

The phenomena of perception have been used by philosophers to kindle and fuel doubts about the reality of ‘the external world’, a phrase which points roughly in the direction of our natural environment. After grappling with problems, which trade under this title, one often discovers that the issues have less to do with the reality of anything which might be called ‘the external world’ and more to do with the reality of the problems themselves. In this paper I propose to (...) examine three approaches to what might deserve to be labelled, ‘problems about theexternal world’. (shrink)

The phenomena of perception have been used by philosophers to kindle and fuel doubts about the reality of ‘the external world’, a phrase which points roughly in the direction of our natural environment. After grappling with problems, which trade under this title, one often discovers that the issues have less to do with the reality of anything which might be called ‘the external world’ and more to do with the reality of the problems themselves. In this paper I propose to (...) examine three approaches to what might deserve to be labelled, ‘problems about theexternal world’. (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)

Limits to Action: The Allocation of Individual Behavior presents the ideas and methods in the study of how individual organisms allocate their limited time and energy and the consequences of such allocation. The book is a survey of individual resource allocation, emphasizing the relationships of the concepts of utility, reinforcement, and Darwinian fitness. The chapters are arranged beginning with plants and general evolutionary considerations, through animal behavior in nature and laboratory, and ending with human behavior in suburb and institution. Topics (...) discussed include operant conditioning; the principle of diminishing returns; and issues in relation to mating strategies. Biologists, sociologists, economists, and psychologists will find the book interesting. (shrink)

What are physical quantities, and in particular, what makes them quantitative? This book presents an original answer to this question through the novel position of substantival structuralism, arguing that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces.

Analogies must be symmetric. If a is like b, then b is like a. So if a has property R, and if R is within the scope of the analogy, then b (probably) has R. However, analogical arguments generally single out, or depend upon, only one of a or b to serve as the basis for the inference. In this respect, analogical arguments are directed by an asymmetry. I defend the importance of this neglected – even when explicitly mentioned – (...) feature in understanding analogical arguments. (shrink)

Manuscript Add. 3965, section 13, folios 541r–542r and 545r–546r is in the Portsmouth Collection of manuscripts and housed in the University Library, Cambridge. These drafts contain a careful account, in Newton's hand, of his views on place, time, and God. They are part of a large number of drafts relating to the three official editions of the Principia published in Newton's lifetime.

'To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking' In An Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke sets out his theory of knowledge and how we acquire it. Eschewing doctrines of innate principles and ideas, Locke shows how all our ideas, even the most abstract and complex, are grounded in human experience and attained by sensation of external things or reflection upon our own mental activities. A thorough examination of (...) the communication of ideas through language and the conventions of taking words as signs of ideas paves the way for his penetrating critique of the limitations of ideas and the extent of our knowledge of ourselves, the world, God, and morals. Locke's masterpiece laid the foundation of British empiricism and is of enduring interest to anyone exploring the development of philosophical thought. This sensitive abridgement uses P. H. Nidditch's authoritative text, and together with an illuminating introduction and other features, makes Locke's arguments more accessible. (shrink)

: This article is concerned with Newton's appropriation of Descartes' ontology of true and immutable natures in developing his theory of infinitely extended space. It contends that unless the part played by the Platonic distinction between "being a nature" and "having a nature" in Newton's thinking is properly appreciated the foundation of his doctrine of space in relation to God will not be fully understood. It also contends that Newton's Platonism is consistent with his empiricism once the mediating role is (...) made clear that the geometry of moving loci play in grounding his intuitions concerning infinite natures. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Measurement realism, the view that measurement targets quantitative attributes and that not all attributes are quantitative, has come under attack both from metrologists and philosophers. In this paper, I take a close look at two influential arguments against measurement realism: the argument from obsolescence and the argument from coordination. I concede that these arguments do challenge the epistemological position traditionally taken by measurement realists, but argue that the metaphysical core of measurement realism survives the challenge posed by these arguments. This (...) metaphysical core is vital to maintaining a clear and ambitious standard for successful measurement. (shrink)