In this paper, I propose a deliberative model of the concept of the international community. The international community is a community of the world's people, peoples, and states insofar as they take themselves to be part of a potentially universal agency. I suggest that we distinguish the possibility that a more 'concrete' agent represents the international community from the practice that states, organizations, and individuals engage in of offering claims about the beliefs and attitudes of the international community (...) in support of their own actions. I argue that while any agent can act out of an appreciation of the importance of the perspective of the international community, only an organization the primary purpose of which is to represent the international community can represent it. I close with some remarks on how the United States might act responsibly not on behalf of the international community but as a member of it. (shrink)

Moral people (i) have good goals in acting in a challenging situation; and (ii) use their rightly disposed intellectual and voluntary capacities (virtues) and resources to choose a good action in that situation. This requires (iii) sound ethical deliberation and decision-procedures for realising practically the abstract values and principles relevant in the concrete situation. After deliberation about sub-goals and means, they (iv) choose to execute the best particular action plan. They will have canvassed possible outcomes of the intended act, (...) which, when executed, will have a particular result and (v) consequent outcomes for themselves, and for others; and (vi) it will show respect for the wellbeing of the community or wider society, represented by the state, and reflected in state law. A comprehensive third-party moral judgement on the act will encompass the intention and execution of the act in the situation.Part 1, Sections I-IV of this paper argue that organisations can be said to be quasi-persons, personal and moral. As artificial organisational quasi-persons, with a similar structure to natural persons, they can also have analogues of the moral features of natural persons’ moral acts: i)-vi): good goals, rightly disposed capacities and resources, ethical decision procedures, good acts or activities, with good outcomes for others, and respect for society’s norms represented in state law. An ethical acronym, GREAOS, capturing the six dominant features shared with natural persons, is suggested.In Part 2, an application of GREAOS is then made to assess a concrete organisational case, Mondragon Corporation, in order to show how if the analogy between persons and organisations is sound in principle, the acronym’s application can be made to ethically unpack a case. The acronym gives Mondragon Corporation at least a pass on ethics. Although a work in progress, its success in realising ideals of economic democracy can be an exemplar of stakeholder capitalism, an alternative to an unbridled shareholder capitalism, which has had its day. (shrink)

As technology advances and artificial agents (AAs) become increasingly autonomous, start to embody morally relevant values and act on those values, there arises the issue of whether these entities should be considered artificial moral agents (AMAs). There are two main ways in which one could argue for AMA: using intentional criteria or using functional criteria. In this article, I provide an exposition and critique of “intentional” accounts of AMA. These accounts claim that moral agency should only (...) be accorded to entities that have internal mental states. Against this thesis I argue that the requirement of internal states is philosophically unsound as it runs up against the problem of other minds. In place of intentional accounts, I provide a functionalist alternative, which makes conceptual room for the existence of AMAs. The implications of this thesis are that at some point in the future we may be faced with moral situations in which no human being is responsible, but a machine may be. Moreover, this responsibility holds, I claim, independently of whether the agent in question is “punishable” or not. (shrink)

A robot's decision to harm a person is sometimes considered to be the ultimate proof of it gaining a human‐like mind. Here, we contrasted predictions about attribution of mental capacities from moral typecasting theory, with the denial of agency from dehumanization literature. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated mind perception for intentionally and accidentally harmful robotic agents based on text and image vignettes. Experiment 3 disambiguated agent intention (malevolent and benevolent), and additionally varied the type of agent (robotic and (...) human) using short computer‐generated animations. Harmful robotic agents were consistently imbued with mental states to a lower degree than benevolent agents, supporting the dehumanization account. Further results revealed that a human moral patient appeared to suffer less when depicted with a robotic agent than with another human. The findings suggest that future robots may become subject to human‐like dehumanization mechanisms, which challenges the established beliefs about anthropomorphism in the domain of moral interactions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that many scholars involved in the contemporary free will debates have underappreciated the philosophical appeal of agent causation because the resources of contemporary emergentism have not been adequately introduced into the discussion. Whereas I agree that agent causation’s main problem has to do with its intelligibility, particularly with respect to the issue of how substances can be causally relevant, I argue that the notion of substance causation can be clearly articulated from an emergentist framework. According (...) to my proposal, a free agent is _a causally powerful substance that emerges in an anomic way from her constitutive mental events_, downwardly constraining, selecting and, in this way, having control on them. As we shall see, this particular concept of agent causation not only makes sense of the deep insight behind agent libertarianism, but it also provides us with the resources to solve some of the main objections that have been raised against it. It is true that here I cannot develop a complete defense of the evidential credentials of emergentism. Still, even if the considerations that follow do not serve to convince detractors of agent causal libertarian accounts of free will, they do suggest that libertarian agent causation is more promising than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

If individual moral agents do wrong they usually deserve and are liable to some kind of punishment. But how can states be punished for failing to comply with moral duties without therewith also punishing their citizens who are not necessarily deserving of any punishment?

After discussing the distinction between artifacts and natural entities, and the distinction between artifacts and technology, the conditions of the traditional account of moral agency are identified. While computer system behavior meets four of the five conditions, it does not and cannot meet a key condition. Computer systems do not have mental states, and even if they could be construed as having mental states, they do not have intendings to act, which arise from an agent’s freedom. On (...) the other hand, computer systems have intentionality, and because of this, they should not be dismissed from the realm of morality in the same way that natural objects are dismissed. Natural objects behave from necessity; computer systems and other artifacts behave from necessity after they are created and deployed, but, unlike natural objects, they are intentionally created and deployed. Failure to recognize the intentionality of computer systems and their connection to human intentionality and action hides the moral character of computer systems. Computer systems are components in human moral action. When humans act with artifacts, their actions are constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact which, in turn, has been constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact designer. All three components – artifact designer, artifact, and artifact user – are at work when there is an action and all three should be the focus of moral evaluation. (shrink)

I present here a case against the evidentialist approach that claims that in so far as our interests are epistemic what should guide our belief formation and revision is always a strict adherence to the available evidence. I go on to make the stronger claim that some beliefs based on admittedly “insufficient” evidence may exhibit epistemic virtue. I propose that we consider a form of courage to be an intellectual or epistemic virtue. It is through this notion of courage that (...) we can see a weakness in the evidentialist position. Adopting a doxastically courageous approach allows us to acknowledge the role that evidence has in epistemic justification and its connection with promoting epistemic value, but it avoids the narrowness of an evidentialist position. The epistemically courageous agent is not one who disregards the evidence entirely, but she also realizes that taking risks will not necessarily keep her from her epistemic goals. Believing something in the face of insufficient evidence is not always an epistemic vice to be avoided, and the agent that recognizes this is better off for it. (shrink)

Artificial agents (AAs), particularly but not only those in Cyberspace, extend the class of entities that can be involved in moral situations. For they can be conceived of as moral patients (as entities that can be acted upon for good or evil) and also as moral agents (as entities that can perform actions, again for good or evil). In this paper, we clarify the concept of agent and go on to separate the concerns of morality (...) and responsibility of agents (most interestingly for us, of AAs). We conclude that there is substantial and important scope, particularly in Computer Ethics, for the concept of moral agent not necessarily exhibiting free will, mental states or responsibility. This complements the more traditional approach, common at least since Montaigne and Descartes, which considers whether or not (artificial) agents have mental states, feelings, emotions and so on. By focussing directly on mind-less morality we are able to avoid that question and also many of the concerns of Artificial Intelligence. A vital component in our approach is the Method of Abstraction for analysing the level of abstraction (LoA) at which an agent is considered to act. The LoA is determined by the way in which one chooses to describe, analyse and discuss a system and its context. The Method of Abstraction is explained in terms of an interface or set of features or observables at a given LoA. Agenthood, and in particular moral agenthood, depends on a LoA. Our guidelines for agenthood are: interactivity (response to stimulus by change of state), autonomy (ability to change state without stimulus) and adaptability (ability to change the transition rules by which state is changed) at a given LoA. Morality may be thought of as a threshold defined on the observables in the interface determining the LoA under consideration. An agent is morally good if its actions all respect that threshold; and it is morally evil if some action violates it. That view is particularly informative when the agent constitutes a software or digital system, and the observables are numerical. Finally we review the consequences for Computer Ethics of our approach. In conclusion, this approach facilitates the discussion of the morality of agents not only in Cyberspace but also in the biosphere, where animals can be considered moral agents without their having to display free will, emotions or mental states, and in social contexts, where systems like organizations can play the role of moral agents. The primary cost of this facility is the extension of the class of agents and moral agents to embrace AAs. (shrink)

Since some AI algorithms with high predictive power have impacted human integrity, safety has become a crucial challenge in adopting and deploying AI. Although it is impossible to prevent an algorithm from failing in complex tasks, it is crucial to ensure that it fails safely, especially if it is a critical system. Moreover, due to AI’s unbridled development, it is imperative to minimize the methodological gaps in these systems’ engineering. This paper uses the well-known Box-Jenkins method for statistical modeling as (...) a framework to identify engineering pitfalls in the adjustment and validation of AI models. Step by step, we point out state-of-the-art strategies and good practices to tackle these engineering drawbacks. In the final step, we integrate an internal and external validation scheme that might support an iterative evaluation of the normative, perceived, substantive, social, and environmental safety of all AI systems. (shrink)

One major objection to social rights is a failure of determining which precise social and economic claims should be granted rights status. The social rights debate has grappled with this ‘indeterminacy problem’ for quite some time, and a number of proposals have emerged aimed at fixing the content of these rights. In what follows I examine three distinct approaches to fleshing out the idea of a minimum threshold: social rights as the fulfilment of basic needs, social rights as the securing (...) of a minimally decent life and social rights as a requirement of citizenship. Each of these proposals progressively expands on what the minimum threshold of social rights requires and, conversely, what obligations they generate on part of the state. I will show that none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory and suggest that the social rights debate look elsewhere to determine its content. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch a new model for the format of the content of understanding states, Compressible Graph Maximalism (CGM). In this model, the format of the content of understanding is graphical, and compressible. It thus combines ideas from approaches that stress the link between understanding and holistic structure (like as reported by Grimm (in: Ammon SGCBS (ed) Explaining Understanding: New Essays in Epistemollogy and the Philosophy of Science, Routledge, New York, 2016)), and approaches that emphasize the connection (...) between understanding and compression (like Wilkenfeld (Synthese 190(6):997–1016, 2018)). I argue that the combination of these ideas has several attractive features, and I defend the idea against some challenges. (shrink)

This thesis examines the key moral principles that should govern decision-making by police and military when using lethal force. To this end, it provides an ethical analysis of the following question: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally justified for the agents of state-sanctioned security institutions to use lethal force, in particular the police and the military? Recent literature in this area suggests that modern conflicts involve new and unique features that render conventional ways of thinking about (...) the ethics of armed conflict, and the use of lethal force, as inadequate or redundant. In particular, there is an increased concern with the moral difficulties created by “non-standard” cases. This is where the police or military are obliged to operate outside their conventional contexts. In such non-standard cases, on what moral basis can (or should) state actors – especially the police and military – use lethal force? One approach argues that there is nothing morally exceptional about the use of lethal force by police or military. This says the only available moral justification for using lethal force is killing in self-defence or defence of others. In contrast, I use an institutional approach to develop a moral framework for the state’s morally exceptional use of lethal force. The institutional approach is concerned with the ends (telos) or purpose of a social institution. It says that the moral purpose of a social institution alters the moral responsibilities of its agents; what is referred to as role morality. My analysis demonstrates that there is an important moral distinction between justified killing in self-defence and state-sanctioned uses of lethal force. My claim is that police and military uses of lethal force are not morally justified in the same way as the average person’s use of lethal force (i.e. self-defence or defence of others). Instead, I argue that the state-sanctioned institutional role of police and military give these state actors special moral duties, and therefore exceptional moral justification, for using lethal force. I argue that the institutional end of the police is the preservation of public safety. This includes using lethal force where it is necessary to protect life and prevent serious injury to jurisdictional inhabitants. In contrast, a morally responsible state uses military force to defend the “common good.” That is, when it is necessary to defend the peaceful functioning of a state from armed threats or other forms of political violence. I then conclude that non-standard cases require the addition of jus ad vim (or the just use of military force short-of-war) as a hybrid element to the moral framework for the state-sanctioned use of lethal force. This provides a better way of applying ethics to the use of military force when defending the common good against serious threats in non-standard cases. This is because jus ad vim complements the conventional military paradigm by permitting the use of military capabilities to defend the common good. But, at the same time, it inhibits the move towards the more destructive levels of violence characteristic of conventional warfighting. (shrink)

The argument laid out in this book discusses and interprets the work of Hobbes in relation to religion. It compares a traditional interpretation of Hobbes where Hobbes’ use of conventional terminology when talking about natural law is seen as ironic or merely convenient despite an atheist viewpoint, with the view that Hobbes’ morality is truly traditional and Christian. The book considers other thinkers of the age in tandem with Hobbes and discusses in detail his theology inspired by corporeal mechanics. The (...) position is that there are significant senses in which Hobbes can be said to be a traditional natural law theorist. (shrink)

The argument laid out in this book discusses and interprets the work of Hobbes in relation to religion. It compares a traditional interpretation of Hobbes where Hobbes’ use of conventional terminology when talking about natural law is seen as ironic or merely convenient despite an atheist viewpoint, with the view that Hobbes’ morality is truly traditional and Christian. The book considers other thinkers of the age in tandem with Hobbes and discusses in detail his theology inspired by corporeal mechanics. The (...) position is that there are significant senses in which Hobbes can be said to be a traditional natural law theorist. (shrink)

The argument laid out in this book discusses and interprets the work of Hobbes in relation to religion. It compares a traditional interpretation of Hobbes where Hobbes’ use of conventional terminology when talking about natural law is seen as ironic or merely convenient despite an atheist viewpoint, with the view that Hobbes’ morality is truly traditional and Christian. The book considers other thinkers of the age in tandem with Hobbes and discusses in detail his theology inspired by corporeal mechanics. The (...) position is that there are significant senses in which Hobbes can be said to be a traditional natural law theorist. (shrink)

1492. The American continent was drawing Europeans on. Some saw in it the chance of a utopia, others saw it as utopia already coming about, in its natural state. All at once two processes of domination were triggered: one supported by the force of arms, and the other by the power of ideas and beliefs. If the defenders of utopian thinking were able to create a lasting achievement, it is because they managed to make their ideas fit with the principles (...) governing the social life of the indigenous peoples: thus a substantial part of what remains from the period of Don Vasco de Quiroga had preceded it. Cultures will not be able to transcend nationalisms and rise to the level of concerns shared by the whole of humanity until they can stand up for their own particular character against ‘globalizing’ trends. (shrink)

This short paper deals with the difficult articulation of a diverse cultural heritage within a society and the democratic forms of assuring its social cohesion. Special attention is paid to the links between immaterial culture and the environment that transforms it into a structural element of social cohesion. Culture is seen as a 'mould' which shapes a shared behaviour, and democracy can be conceived as a system made up of elements of a cultural nature that go as far as implying (...) safeguarding pluralism, respect and tolerance of all kinds of difference. This is the case with those countries where the structures of the modern state are in the process of disappearing and being redefined in new forms, whose essential feature is acceptance of cultural diversity. If we conceive democracy in terms of heritage and in terms of non-exclusion of cultures dominated by a dominant culture, then it results that Mexico has not experienced true democracy - either in the past or nowadays. (shrink)

RESUMEN La filosofía hegeliana en general, y en particular la “Ciencia de la lógica” y el tratamiento que en esta se hace sobre nociones como las de identidad y diferencia, generaron desde el momento mismo en que vio la luz, un sinnúmero de posiciones críticas tales como las de Schelling, los hegelianos de izquierda y, en general, de todos aquellos filósofos que, en virtud de las posibles implicaciones prácticas de una filosofía de la identidad buscaron “expurgar la semilla del dragón (...) del panteísmo hegeliano”, entre las cuales es necesario mencionar la legitimación de estados totalitarios y los genocidios asociados a ellos. Esta búsqueda, fue realizada sobre la afirmación de que el pensamiento hegeliano, al estar soportado sobre la identidad, implica una negación y, por tanto, aniquilación y reducción de la diferencia. En este sentido, el presente artículo busca examinar la noción hegeliana de la identidad, la correspondencia o no de las críticas que sobre el particular se han hecho sobre Hegel y, finalmente, analizar una de las salidas que, desde las interpretaciones hegelianas más recientes, se han hecho para responder a las críticas: la filosofía hegeliana in stricto sensu, una filosofía de la diferencia. ABSTRACT The Hegelian philosophy in general, and in particular the “Science of Logic” and the treatment that in this is made about notions as identity and difference, generated since its conception a countless critical positions such as those of Schelling, the left Hegelian and, in general, of all those philosophers who, accordingly with the posible practical implications of a philosophy of identity sought to “purge the dragon’s seed from Hegelian pantheism” among which it is worth to mention the legitimization of totalitarian states and genocide associated with them. This search was made on the assertion that Hegelian thought, being supported on the identity, implies a negation and, therefore, annihilation and reduction of the difference. In this sense, the present article seeks to examine the Hegelian notion of identity, the correspondence or not of the criticisms that have been made about Hegel and, finally, to analyze one of the outlets that, from the most recent Hegelian interpretations, have been made to respond to the criticisms: the Hegelian philosophy in stricto sensu, a philosophy of the difference. (shrink)

After the United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898, the new unincorporated territory sought to define its future. Seeking to shape the next generation and generate popular support for colonial rule, U.S. officials looked to education as a key venue for promoting the benefits of Americanization. At the same time, public schools became a site where Puerto Rican teachers, parents, and students could formulate and advance their own projects for building citizenship. In _Negotiating Empire_, Solsiree del Moral demonstrates (...) how these colonial intermediaries aimed for regeneration and progress through education. Rather than seeing U.S. empire in Puerto Rico during this period as a contest between two sharply polarized groups, del Moral views their interaction as a process of negotiation. Although educators and families rejected some tenets of Americanization, such as English-language instruction, they also redefined and appropriated others to their benefit to increase literacy and skills required for better occupations and social mobility. Pushing their citizenship-building vision through the schools, Puerto Ricans negotiated a different school project—one that was reformist yet radical, modern yet traditional, colonial yet nationalist. (shrink)

The state is often regarded as an abstract and neutral bureaucratic entity. Against this common sense idea, At the Heart of the State argues that it is also a concrete and situated reality, embodied in the work of its agents and inscribed in the issues of its time. The result of a five-year investigation conducted by ten scholars, this book describes and analyses the police, the court system, the prison apparatus, the social services, and mental health facilities in France. (...) Combining genealogy and ethnography, its authors show that these state institutions do not simply implement laws, rules and procedures: they mobilise values and affects, judgements and emotions. In other words, they reflect the morality of the state. Of immense interest to both social scientists and political theorists, this work will make an important contribution to the ever expanding literature on the contemporary state. (shrink)

Background When conducting qualitative research, participants usually share lots of personal and private information with the researcher. As researchers, we must preserve participants’ identity and confidentiality of the data. Objective To critically analyze an ethical conflict encountered regarding confidentiality when doing qualitative research. Research design Case study. Findings and discussion one of the participants in a study aiming to explain the meaning of living with HIV verbalized his imminent intention to commit suicide because of stigma of other social problems arising (...) from living with HIV. Given the life-threatening situation, the commitment related to not disclosing the participant’s identity and/or the content of the interview had to be broken. To avoid or prevent suicide, the therapist in charge of the case was properly informed about the participant’s intentions. One important question arises from this case: was it ethically appropriate to break the confidentiality commitment? Conclusion confidentiality could be broken if a life-threatening event is identified during data collection and participants must know that. This has to be clearly stated in the informed consent form. (shrink)

This short paper deals with the difficult articulation of a diverse cultural heritage within a society and the democratic forms of assuring its social cohesion. Special attention is paid to the links between immaterial culture and the environment that transforms it into a structural element of social cohesion. Culture is seen as a 'mould' which shapes a shared behaviour, and democracy can be conceived as a system made up of elements of a cultural nature that go as far as implying (...) safeguarding pluralism, respect and tolerance of all kinds of difference. This is the case with those countries where the structures of the modern state are in the process of disappearing and being redefined in new forms, whose essential feature is acceptance of cultural diversity. If we conceive democracy in terms of heritage and in terms of non-exclusion of cultures dominated by a dominant culture, then it results that Mexico has not experienced true democracy - either in the past or nowadays. (shrink)

Many physicians are involved in relationships that create tension between a physician's duty to work in her patients’ best interest at all times and her financial arrangement with a third party, most often a pharmaceutical manufacturer, whose primary goal is maximizing sales or profit. Despite the prevalence of this threat, in the United States and globally, the most common reaction to conflicts of interest in medicine is timid acceptance. There are few calls for conflicts of interest to be banned, (...) and, to our knowledge, no one calls for conflicted practitioners to be reprimanded. Contrast our attitudes in medicine with public attitudes toward financial conflicts among government employees. When enforcement of rules against conflict of interest slackens in the public sector, news organizations investigate and publish their criticism. Yet even when doctors are quoted in the media promoting specific drugs, their personal financial ties to the drug maker are rarely mentioned. Policies for governmental employees are strict, condemnation is strong, and criminal statutes exist. Yet the evidence that conflict is problematic is, if anything, stronger in medicine than in the public sector. Policies against conflicts of interest in medicine should be at least as strong as those already existing in the public sector. (shrink)

This thesis develops a theory about the structure of modal judgment and knowledge. Arguing in favour of pluralism about the source of modal knowledge, it focuses on the questions of the varieties of modal judgment and their relations, the function of modal judgment and the scope of modal knowledge. It offers a hypothesis about the development of the framework of modal knowledge, grounding it on the capacity to evaluate temporal judgments, from which the capacity to evaluate alternatives comes from, and (...) it suggests that the most basic framework of modal judgments consists in that of agentive modality, and in particular, about what one can do, and how. Then, it is argued that the rest of the framework of modal judgment can be developed on this basis, although this imposes certain restrictions about the scope of modal knowledge. Additionally, the thesis provides analyses of various agentive modal notions, such as imaginability, what is a way to do something, and discusses how to understand counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, Mexican feminists mobilized transnationally to demand state accountability for the feminicidios of women in Ciudad Juarez. Feminicidio refers to the misogynous killing of women and the state’s complicity in this violence by tolerating it with impunity. Drawing on debates of the Mexican Federal Congress and interviews with feminist state and non-state actors, I examine feminist legislators’ response to transnational activism, which was to pass the “General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence” and (...) to create the penal-type code of feminicidio, which includes provisions to punish negligent state actors. These laws make the state a target of its own punitive power. To pass these acts, feminist legislators faced resistance from male legislators and the Federal Executive. I build on feminist institutionalism to theorize this resistance as gendered. Gendered state resistance was pervasive because feminist legislators practiced accountability by identifying the complicity of state institutions, including Congress, in perpetuating feminicidio. As part of the process, they built alliances with other female legislators and framed their arguments with notions of modern statehood. Although this framing strategy resulted in innovative legal change, I interrogate the assumption that modernity is the solution to feminicidio, because it can lead gendered state resistance to manifest as a simulation of accountability. (shrink)

Artificial agents, particularly but not only those in the infosphere Floridi (Information – A very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010a), extend the class of entities that can be involved in moral situations, for they can be correctly interpreted as entities that can perform actions with good or evil impact (moral agents). In this chapter, I clarify the concepts of agent and of artificial agent and then distinguish between issues concerning their moral behaviour vs. (...) issues concerning their responsibility. The conclusion is that there is substantial and important scope, particularly in information ethics, for the concept of moral artificial agents not necessarily exhibiting free will, mental states or responsibility. This complements the more traditional approach, which considers whether artificial agents may have mental states, feelings, emotions and so forth. By focussing directly on “mind-less morality”, one is able to by-pass such question as well as other difficulties arising in Artificial Intelligence, in order to tackle some vital issues in contexts where artificial agents are increasingly part of the everyday environment (Floridi L, Metaphilos 39(4/5): 651–655, 2008a). (shrink)

In this paper, I give an overview of different models of understanding attribution and advance a contextualist account of understanding attribution. Whereas other contextualist accounts make the degree in which the epistemic states of the relevant agents satisfy certain invariant conditions context-sensitive, the proposed account makes the conditions themselves context-sensitive.

A basic income is typically defined as an individual’s entitlement to receive a regular payment as a right, independent of other sources of income, employment or willingness to work, or living situation. In this article, we examine what it means for the state to institute a right to basic income. The normative literature on basic income has developed numerous arguments in support of basic income as an inextricable component of a just social order, but there exists little analysis about basic (...) income within a jurisprudential or philosophical rights perspective. In our view, strong reasons of either a principled or a pragmatic nature in support of instituting a basic income scheme nevertheless often fall short of ascribing to basic income a distinctive Hohfeldian rights status. This article aims to partially redress this gap by examining two sets of questions. First, what are the implications – ethical and practical – of adopting basic income as a legal right as opposed to a mere policy? Second, we also enquire whether there should be such a right: what, if anything, is the ethical foundation that warrants granting basic income a distinctive legal rights status? This article suggests that any such foundation must be grounded in comparative evaluation and discusses several comparative strategies available to basic income advocates. The aim of this article is not to offer a definite argument in favor of a legal right to basic income, but to chart several lines of argument that a rights perspective might add to the contemporary discussion. (shrink)

Although prior work on ethical decision-making has examined the direct impact of magnitude of consequences as well as the direct impact of emotions on ethical judgments, the current research examines the interaction of these two constructs. Building on previous research finding disgust to have a varying impact on ethical judgments depending on the specific behavior being evaluated, we investigate how disgust, as well as happiness and sadness, moderates the effect of magnitude of consequences on an individual’s judgments of another person’s (...) unethical behavior. Specifically, we propose and find that because disgust and happiness are both associated with more heuristic-based processing, they both lead to a stronger reliance on the magnitude of consequences when forming ethical judgments. In contrast, because sad and neutral emotional states are associated with more systematic processing, they both result in a weaker reliance on the magnitude of consequences. As such, the effect of magnitude of consequences on judgments of unethical behaviors is stronger when individuals making the judgments are experiencing disgust or happiness versus sadness or a neutral state. This research shows that ethical judgment severity is contingent on individual-level factors, particularly the current emotional state being experienced by the individual, interacting with magnitude of consequences to impact the ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such (...) a construction by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics. (shrink)

According to some collectivists, purposive groups that lack decision-making procedures such as riot mobs, friends walking together, or the pro-life lobby can be morally responsible and have moral duties. I focus on plural subject- and we-mode-collectivism. I argue that purposive groups do not qualify as duty-bearers even if they qualify as agents on either view. To qualify as a duty-bearer, an agent must be morally competent. I develop the Update Argument. An agent is morally competent only if the (...) agent has sufficient positive and negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. Positive control involves the general ability to update one’s goal-seeking states, whereas negative control involves the absence of other agents with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with updating one’s goal-seeking states. I argue that even if purposive groups qualify as plural subjects or we-mode group agents, these groups necessarily lack negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. This creates a cut-off point for groups as duty-bearers: Organized groups may qualify as duty-bearers, whereas purposive groups cannot qualify as duty-bearers. (shrink)

The starting point of the paper is the frequent ascription of moral duties to states, especially in the context of problems of global justice. It is widely assumed that industrialized or wealthy countries in particular have a moral obligation or duties of justice to shoulder burdens of poverty reduction or climate change adaptation and mitigation. But can collectives such as states actually hold moral duties? If answering this affirmatively: what does it actually mean to say (...) that a state has moral obligations or duties of justice? In this paper I argue that states can be considered collective agents which can hold moral duties. If a collective holds moral duties this entails duties for its individual members. I show how depending on their position within the collective these duties differ. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of prison inmates' right to privacy from an ethical perspective. I argue that the right to privacy is important because of its connection to moral agency and that the protection of privacy is warranted by different established philosophical theories about the justification of legal punishment. I discuss the practical implications of this argument by addressing two potential problems. First, how much privacy should be allowed during imprisonment in order to meet the criteria of respecting (...) inmates as moral agents? Second, how should the conflict between privacy and other rights, including the rights of the public and the prison staff, as well as those of the prison inmates, be handled? Consequently, from an ethical perspective, the invasion of privacy should be minimized to the greatest extent possible without compromising other important values and rights to safety and security. In defending this position, I argue that respect for inmates' privacy should be part of the objective of creating and upholding a secure environment to better effect in the long run. (shrink)

The ontogeny of the vertebrate retina has been a topic of interest to developmental biologists and human geneticists for many decades. Understanding the unfolding of the genetic program that transforms a field of progenitors cells into a functionally complex and multi‐layered sensory organ is a formidable challenge. Although classical genetic studies succeeded in identifying the key regulators of retina specification, understanding the architecture of their gene network and predicting their behavior are still a distant hope. The emergence of next‐generation sequencing (...) platforms revolutionized the field unlocking the access to genome‐wide datasets. Emerging techniques such as RNA‐seq, ChIP‐seq, ATAC‐seq, or single cell RNA‐seq are used to characterize eye developmental programs. These studies provide valuable information on the transcriptional and cis‐regulatory profiles of precursors and differentiated cells, outlining the trajectories that connect each intermediate state. Here, recent systems biology efforts are reviewed to understand the genetic programs shaping the vertebrate retina. (shrink)

Many physicians are involved in relationships that create tension between a physician's duty to work in her patients’ best interest at all times and her financial arrangement with a third party, most often a pharmaceutical manufacturer, whose primary goal is maximizing sales or profit. Despite the prevalence of this threat, in the United States and globally, the most common reaction to conflicts of interest in medicine is timid acceptance. There are few calls for conflicts of interest to be banned, (...) and, to our knowledge, no one calls for conflicted practitioners to be reprimanded. Contrast our attitudes in medicine with public attitudes toward financial conflicts among government employees. When enforcement of rules against conflict of interest slackens in the public sector, news organizations investigate and publish their criticism. Yet even when doctors are quoted in the media promoting specific drugs, their personal financial ties to the drug maker are rarely mentioned. Policies for governmental employees are strict, condemnation is strong, and criminal statutes exist (allowing for corruption charges). Yet the evidence that conflict is problematic is, if anything, stronger in medicine than in the public sector. Policies against conflicts of interest in medicine should be at least as strong as those already existing in the public sector. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to carry out a psychosocial analysis of child-to-parent violence (CPV) in a sample of school adolescents, considering a set of individual variables (psychological distress, problematic use of social networking sites, and perceived non-conformist social reputation) and family variables (open and problematic communication with parents) according to sex. The sample consisted of 3,731 adolescents (54% boys), aged between 14 and 16 years (M = 14.6 years, SD = 0.567), from the state of Nuevo León, Mexico. (...) The scores of the boys and girls were analyzed to check for differences. Also, correlations between all the study variables were calculated. Finally, a multiple stepwise regression analysis was carried out for the total sample and also for boys and girls separately. Results confirmed the important role of individual variables as predictors of CPV in boys and girls. The main difference between boys and girls was observed in the predictive weight of problematic use of social networking sites, which was higher in girls than in boys. Open communication with the father was a significant factor for predicting the decrease of CPV levels in the case of boys, while open communication with the mother predicted the decrease of CPV in girls. Problematic communication with the mother showed similar values in boys and girls when predicting CPV, however, the predictive weight of problematic communication with the father was higher in girls than in boys. These results are interesting and have important implications for the prevention of CPV. (shrink)

This chapter explores the possibility of identifying core moral claims with the states of mind which are called bodily imperatives—e.g. the ‘make it stop’ state of mind which is plausibly an aspect of, if not identical with, severe pain states and states such as severe thirst, hunger, sleeplessness, humiliation, terror, and torment. The chapter combines this idea with another, that the desire-like, conative, or ‘world-guiding’ states of mind which make normative claims on agents need (...) not belong to the agent on whom the claim is made, on a broadly Humean or desire-based view in metaethics. On the view defended, any subject’s bodily imperatives can make moral claims on any moral agent. The case is made that bodily imperatives are a good candidate for constituting the core moral claims or basic imperatives of morality, which all others are either built from, or at least constrained by. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo da cuenta de la forma en que el liberalismo del filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), al conceder un rol activo al Estado en la “habilitación de la masa desheredada”, responde al adjetivo “social”. En Abasolo, el deber de asegurar en lo posible la prosperidad de las personas, se sostiene en el derecho natural y en una teología de la historia pan[en]teísta afín al krausismo. Abasolo piensa que la redención del desheredado en naciones aun juveniles debe apoyarse en (...) una forma de Estado “casi socialista”. Esto implica una acción de centralización y de tutela del pueblo que enfrenta a los autores del artículo a la gran dificultad de determinar cómo el autor chileno realiza la transición de una habilitación consumada a través de un buen grado de despotismo, hacia la libertad. Es decir, resulta controversial establecer la factibilidad de la realización de esta vía cuasi socialista a un liberalismo contrafácticamente orientado por el laissez faire. Abstract This article shows how the liberalism of the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), by granting an active role to the State in the “empowerment of the disinherited mass”, responds to the adjective “social”. In Abasolo, the duty to ensure as far as possible the prosperity of the people is based on natural law and on a pan[en]theistic theology of history akin to Krausism. Abasolo thinks that the redemption of the disinherited in even juvenile nations must be supported by an “almost socialist” form of state. This implies an action of centralization and guardianship of the people that confronts the authors of the article with the great difficulty of determining how the Chilean author makes the transition from an empowerment consummated through a good degree of despotism, towards freedom. That is to say, it is controversial to establish the feasibility of the realization of this quasi-socialist path to a liberalism counterfactually oriented by laissez faire. (shrink)

In the context of business, interactions between individuals generate social systems that emerge anywhere within a corporation or in its relations with external agents. These systems influence the behaviors of individuals and, as a result, the collective actions we usually attribute to corporations. Social systems thus make a difference in processes of action that are often morally evaluated by internal and external agents to the firm. Despite this relevance, social systems have not yet been the object of specific (...) attention in the literature on moral agency in business. To fill this gap, I construct a theoretical framework based on Luhmann’s ideas on social systems and morality. In particular, I argue that morality is a phenomenon that occurs in communication, and an agent can engage in morality in three different ways (as a _moral factor_, an _expressive moral agent_, or a _reflective moral agent_) depending on the functions it plays in communicative interactions. Based on this framework, I argue that social systems in business can be considered moral agents of those types. (shrink)

The political discourse of Rafael Caldera and Carlos Andrés Pérez is here analyzed. Thess leaders share features in exercising power as presidents of Venezuela, and in their being members of the traditional political parties that ruled the country in the second half of the XXth century. A crit..

It has been asserted that the socio-emotional challenges associated with autism spectrum disorder may be explained, in part, by the higher rates of alexithymia in individuals with autism. Alexithymia refers to difficulties in identifying one’s own emotional states and describing those states to others. Thus, one goal of the present study was to examine levels of alexithymia in relation to ASD symptomatology and trait emotion intelligence. Trait EI is a multifaceted concept that captures emotional competencies and behavioral dispositions (...) A second goal was to assess whether alexithymia, ASD symptomatology and trait EI served as significant predictors of adjustment to college, including academic, social, and personal-emotional adjustment. In addition to keeping with the spectrum nature of autism, our research strategy allowed us to capture those students who may not have received a formal diagnosis of ASD but report symptoms that can be indicative of ASD. This includes women, who are less likely to receive a diagnosis of ASD even when ASD symptomatology is present. The results of the study showed that students reporting higher levels of ASD symptomatology also reported significantly higher levels of alexithymia and lower trait emotional intelligence than those with less or no symptomatology. Alexithymia was also negatively related to trait EI, and both alexithymia and ASD symptomatology were found to be significant predictors of trait EI. However, only trait EI was a significant predictor of adjustment to college and only for social adjustment. These findings suggest that support programs that develop trait EI skills may improve the college experience for students with ASD, regardless of alexithymia or ASD symptomatology. (shrink)

In the research field of machine ethics, we commonly categorize artificial moral agents into four types, with the most advanced referred to as a full ethical agent, or sometimes a full-blown Artificial Moral Agent (AMA). This type has three main characteristics: autonomy, moral understanding and a certain level of consciousness, including intentional mental states, moral emotions such as compassion, the ability to praise and condemn, and a conscience. This paper aims to discuss various aspects (...) of full-blown AMAs and presents the following argument: the creation of full-blown artificial moral agents, endowed with intentional mental states and moral emotions, and trained to align with human values, does not, by itself, guarantee that these systems will have _human_ morality. Therefore, it is questionable whether they will be inclined to honor and follow what they perceive as incorrect moral values. we do not intend to claim that there is such a thing as a universally shared human morality, only that as there are different human communities holding different sets of moral values, the moral systems or values of the discussed artificial agents would be different from those held by human communities, for reasons we discuss in the paper. (shrink)

The idea that business firms qualify as group moral agents offers an attractive basis for understanding corporate moral responsibility. However, that idea gives rise to the “corporate autonomy problem” (CAP): if firms are moral agents, then it seems we must accept the implausible conclusion that firms have basic moral rights, such as the rights to life and liberty. The question, then, is how one might retain the fruitful idea of firms as moral (...) class='Hi'>agents, yet avoid CAP. A common approach to avoiding CAP appeals to specific features of human embodiment, such as vulnerability to pain, as the basis for attributing moral rights to human persons but not to firms. But that response has less purchase in a Kantian framework, which does not ground moral status in such particularities of human embodiment, but rather in the rational nature that humans share with other rational beings. To avoid CAP while retaining a (broadly) Kantian framework, one does better to rely on features of firms as cooperative, compositionally derivative moral agents, created for the pursuit of specific ends. As derivative agents, firms do not qualify as Kantian ends in themselves, and thus are not appropriate bearers of basic moral rights. To further clarify the level of consideration we owe to firms, I draw on Darwall’s distinction between recognition respect and moral esteem, arguing that we should not respect firms as unconditional ends in themselves, but rather esteem morally autonomous firms as collective achievements of their human members. (shrink)