Background: Ethical care in maternity is fundamental to providing care that both prevents harm and does good, and yet, there is growing acknowledgement that disrespect and abuse routinely occur in this context, which indicates that current ethical frameworks are not adequate. Care ethics offers an alternative to the traditional biomedical ethical principles. Research aim: The aim of the study was to determine whether a correlation exists between midwifery-led care and care ethics as an important first step in an action research (...) project. Research design: Template analysis was chosen for this part of the action research. Template analysis is a design that tests theory against empirical data, which requires pre-set codes. Participants and context: A priori codes that represent midwifery-led care were generated by a stakeholder consultative group of nine childbearing women using nominal group technique, collected in Perth, Western Australia. The a priori codes were applied to a predesigned template with four domains of care ethics. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was granted by the Edith Cowan University research ethics committee REMS no. 2019-00296-Buchanan. Findings: The participants generated eight a priori codes representing ethical midwifery care, such as: 1.1 Relationship with Midwife; 1.2 Woman-centred care; 2.1 Trust women’s bodies and abilities; 2.2. Protect normal physiological birth; 3.1. Information provision; 3.2. Respect autonomy; 4.1. Birth culture of fear and 4.2. Recognition of rite of passage. The a priori codes were mapped to the care ethics template. The template analysis found that midwifery-led care does indeed demonstrate care ethics. Discussion: Care ethics takes into consideration what principle-based bioethics have previously overlooked: relationship, context and power. Conclusion: Midwifery-led care has been determined in this study to demonstrate care ethics, which suggest that further research is defensible with the view that it could be incorporated into the ethical codes and conduct for the midwifery profession. (shrink)

Involuntary civil commitment to treatment for opioid use disorder prevents imminent overdose, but also restricts autonomy and raises other ethical concerns. Using the Kass Public Health Ethics Framework, we identified ICC benefits and harms. Benefits include: protection of vulnerable, underserved patients; reduced legal consequences; resources for families; and “on-demand” treatment access. Harms include: stigmatizing and punitive experiences; heightened family conflict and social isolation; eroded patient self-determination; limited or no provision of OUD medications; and long-term overdose risk. To use ICC ethically, (...) it should be recognized as comprising vulnerable patients worthy of added protections; be a last resort option; utilize consensual, humanizing processes; provide medications and other evidence-based-treatment; integrate with existing healthcare systems; and demonstrate effective outcomes before diffusion. ICC to OUD treatment carries significant potential harms that, if unaddressed, may outweigh its benefits. Findings can inform innovations for ensuring that ICC is used in an ethically responsible way. (shrink)

"This work is a valuable casebook, specifically for library and information science professionals, that presents numerous case studies that combine theories of ...

The Internet has been used as a place for and site of an array of research activities. From online ethnographies to public data sets and online surveys, researchers and research regulators have struggled with an array of ethical issues around the conduct of online research. This paper presents a discussion and findings from Buchanan and Ess's study on US-based institutional review boards and the state of internet research ethics.

: Pharmacogenetics offers the prospect of an era of safer and more effective drugs, as well as more individualized use of drug therapies. Before the benefits of pharmacogenetics can be realized, the ethical issues that arise in research and clinical application of pharmacogenetic technologies must be addressed. The ethical issues raised by pharmacogenetics can be addressed under six headings: regulatory oversight, confidentiality and privacy, informed consent, availability of drugs, access, and clinicians' changing responsibilities in the era of pharmacogenetic medicine. We (...) analyze each of these categories of ethical issues and provide policy approaches for addressing them. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of significant issues facing contemporary information professionals. As the world of information continues to grow at unprecedented speed and in unprecedented volume, questions must be faced by information professionals. Will we participate in the worldwide mythology of equal access for all, or will we truly work towards this debatable goal? Will we accept the narrowing of choice for our corresponding increasing diverse clientele? Such questions must be considered in a holistic context and an understanding of (...) the many levels of information inequities is requisite.Beginning with an historical perspective, Buchanan presents Mustapha Masmoudi''s seminal review of forms of information inequities. She then describes qualitative forms of inequities, such as information imperialism and cultural bias embedded in such practices as cataloging and classification. Following, a review of quantitative inequities is presented. Such issues as the growing commoditization of information and information services demand attention from the ethical perspective. And, finally, the Internet and implications surrounding the world-wide dissemination of information is discussed. (shrink)

Background: As a normative theory, care ethics has become widely theorized and accepted. However, there remains a lack of clarity in relation to its use in practice, and a care ethics framework for practice. Maternity care is fraught with ethical issues and care ethics may provide an avenue to enhance ethical sensitivity. Aim: The purpose of this scoping review is to determine how care ethics is used amongst health professions, and to collate the information in data charts to create a (...) care ethics framework and definition for midwifery practice. Method: The scoping review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) recommendations. The search was applied to the databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, PschInfo and Pubmed which were searched in September 2019 and again in July 2021. The inclusion criteria were guided by the mnemonic for search terms: Participants, Concept, and Context (PCC) and included variations of health care professionals, care ethics and utilization. The search was limited to qualitative studies published in English between 2010 and 2021. A data extraction tool was used to extract and synthesize data into categories. The articles were screened for eligibility by title, abstract and full text review, by two independent reviewers. Ethical Considerations: The scoping review was guided by ethical conduct respecting authorship and referencing sources. Results: Twelve of the initially identified 129 studies were included in the scoping review. Data synthesis yielded four categories of care ethics use by health professionals: relationship, context, attention to power and caring practices. In combination, the evidence forms a framework for care ethics use in midwifery practice. Conclusion: Care ethics use by health professionals enhances ethical sensitivity. A framework and definition for care ethics for midwifery practice is proposed. This review will be of interest to midwives and other health practitioners seeking to enhance ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

The Ninth International Conference on Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry was held in Milwaukee, WI. Four papers originally presented at that conference are included in this issue of Computers and Society. The selected papers examine a wide range of information/computer-ethics-related issues, and taken together, they show great diversity in the field of information/computer ethics. We are continually negotiating with ethics, law, and policy in our technology-driven activities in the interconnected global arena. As we consider the themes within and among the papers (...) here, we encourage readers to think deeply about fundamental principles such as trust, accountability, anonymity, and human rights. Each of these papers takes us back, philosophically, to seminal and long-standing principles of ethics, broadly speaking, and then, brings us forward, to significant and contemporary challenges in ethics. The authors each weave narratives about our place and space as individuals, as members of cultural collectives, and evolving socio-political-technical norms around us, governing us, defining us. (shrink)

E-games are a dramatically expanding dimension of contemporary exploitations of computing and computer network technologies - one that, thus far, has evoked much more heat among parents and politicians than light in the form of serious scholarly and philosophical analysis. We argue that e-games deserve such analysis in part because of their intrinsic philosophical interest as they raise primary philosophical questions of ontology, epistemology, human nature, the character of "gameplay," - and most especially, of ethics. We further suggest that such (...) analyses - exemplified by the articles collected here - may also contribute to resolving the larger social and political debates evoked by e-games. (shrink)

Although research integrity practices in institutional settings is not a new area of study, because of its foundational importance in university settings it remains a topic worthy of study. In addition, rarely are all members of the university community included as participants in studies focused upon research integrity and ethics. Thus, to add to the existent literature, the authors investigated research integrity practices in a medium-sized Midwestern polytechnic university setting, including 467 participants from across all divisions of the university community. (...) This mixed data survey study was comprised of six sections; presented is information for two sections—sample demographics and research integrity. The demographics appear reflective of those of the larger survey, as well as the university setting of study. In the research integrity section there were two parts—one qualitative and one quantitative. Implications with regard to research integrity and ethics in the institutional setting of study are presented. (shrink)

Although research integrity practices in institutional settings is not a new area of study, because of its foundational importance in university settings it remains a topic worthy of study. In addition, rarely are all members of the university community included as participants in studies focused upon research integrity and ethics. Thus, to add to the existent literature, the authors investigated research integrity practices in a medium-sized Midwestern polytechnic university setting, including 467 participants from across all divisions of the university community. (...) This mixed data survey study was comprised of six sections; presented is information for two sections—sample demographics and research integrity. The demographics appear reflective of those of the larger survey, as well as the university setting of study. In the research integrity section there were two parts—one qualitative and one quantitative. Implications with regard to research integrity and ethics in the institutional setting of study are presented. (shrink)

Using a queer theory and disrupting heteronormativity framework, we applied a model lesson in the elementary methods course to understand preservice teachers’ experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and their beliefs about utilizing children׳s literature portraying LGBTQ families in the elementary classroom. Participants reported a range of personal experiences with LGBTQ individuals and families and relatively positive responses to the family text set presented but wavered on LGBTQ themed books due to perceived conflict, religious beliefs, and ideas about what is (...) appropriate content for young learners. A discussion of the findings also includes preservice teachers’ intentions for future teaching related to LGBTQ topics. Implications for teacher education and social studies education are explored. (shrink)

The special issue collects a selection of papers presented during the Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiries 2013 conference. This is a series of conferences organized by the International Association for Ethics and Information Technology , a professional organization formed in 2001 and which gathers experts in information and computer ethics prompting interdisciplinary research and discussions on ethical problems related to design and deployment of information and communication technologies . During the past two decades, CEPE conferences have been a focal point for (...) the research concerning crucial topics , such as privacy , online trust , online identity , value-sensitive design , cyber-warfare , along with education and professional ethics (Buchanan .. (shrink)

This article explores recent developments inthe regulation of Internet speech, inparticular, injurious or defamatory speech andthe impact the attempts at regulation arehaving on the `body' in the sense of theindividual person who speaks through the mediumof the Internet and upon those harmed by thatspeech. The article proceeds in threesections. First, a brief history of the legalattempts to regulate defamatory Internet speechin the United States is presented; a shortcomparative discussion of defamation law in theUK and Australia is included. As discussedbelow, this (...) regulation has altered thetraditional legal paradigm of responsibilityand, as a result, creates potential problems forthe future of unrestricted and even anonymousspeech on the Internet. Second, an ethicalassessment is made of the defamatory speechenvironment in order to determine which actorshave moral responsibility for the harm causedby defamatory speech. This moral assessment iscompared to the developing and anticipatedlegal paradigm to identify possible conformityof moral and legal tenants or to recognize theconflict between morality and law in assigningresponsibility to defamatory actors. Thisassessment then concludes with possiblesuggestions for changes in the legal climategoverning the regulation of defamatory speechon the Internet, as well as prediction of theresult should the legal climate continue todevelop on its present course. This is not tosuggest that all law, or even the law ofdefamation, be structured to reflect thesubjectivity of a moral construct, but since itis the authors position that the legalassignment of liability in online settings ismisaligned, this reflection can serve asbeginning reassessment of that assignment. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions have been raised about the impact of face masks on communication in classroom settings. However, it is unclear to what extent visual obstruction of the speaker’s mouth or changes to the acoustic signal lead to speech processing difficulties, and whether these effects can be mitigated by semantic predictability, i.e., the availability of contextual information. The present study investigated the acoustic and visual effects of face masks on speech intelligibility and processing speed under varying semantic predictability. (...) Twenty-six children and twenty-six adults performed an internet-based cued shadowing task, in which they had to repeat aloud the last word of sentences presented in audio-visual format. The results showed that children and adults made more mistakes and responded more slowly when listening to face mask speech compared to speech produced without a face mask. Adults were only significantly affected by face mask speech when both the acoustic and the visual signal were degraded. While acoustic mask effects were similar for children, removal of visual speech cues through the face mask affected children to a lesser degree. However, high semantic predictability reduced audio-visual mask effects, leading to full compensation of the acoustically degraded mask speech in the adult group. Even though children did not fully compensate for face mask speech with high semantic predictability, overall, they still profited from semantic cues in all conditions. Therefore, in classroom settings, strategies that increase contextual information such as building on students’ prior knowledge, using keywords, and providing visual aids, are likely to help overcome any adverse face mask effects. (shrink)

Scholars have noted persistent high rates of agricultural health and safety incidents and the need to develop more effective interventions. Participatory research provides an avenue to broaden the prevailing research paradigms and approaches by allowing those most impacted to illuminate and work to solve those aspects of their lives. One such approach is photovoice, an emancipatory visual narrative approach. Yet, despite its broad appeal, photovoice can be hard to implement. In this article, we leverage our experience using photovoice for a (...) farm children safety project to describe and reflect on the ethical and methodological aspects broadly relevant to agricultural health and safety topics. We first contextualize the tensions of navigating between photovoice, the research ethics committees (RECs) regulatory frameworks, and competing views on visual representations in agriculture. We then discuss the sources of risks to participants and researchers, how we addressed these risks, and how these risks unfolded during the research phase of the photovoice activity. We conclude with three lessons we (re)learned: the importance of collaborating with RECs, the need to increase preparation to limit psychological risks to participants and researchers, and avenues to augment the emancipatory power of photovoice in a virtual environment. (shrink)

Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) and Robert Browning (1812-1889) first fell in love through letters, which they began to write to each other in 1845 (Figures 1 and 2). Their growing relationship, slowly progressing from letter to first encounter and eventual secret marriage in 1846, is documented in two volumes of letters, with a plot that unfolds as warmly and compellingly as the best page-turner invented by a novelist. Both were master wordsmiths, so the beauty of their letters is (...) no surprise. But one reason Barrett Browning was such a prolific correspondent is that she spent much of her life housebound, due to an illness whose nature was never truly explained when she was alive and that has been .. (shrink)

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

This book articulates a systematic vision of an international legal system grounded in the commitment to justice for all persons. It provides a probing exploration of the moral issues involved in disputes about secession, ethno-national conflict, "the right of self-determination of peoples," human rights, and the legitimacy of the international legal system itself. Buchanan advances vigorous criticisms of the central dogmas of international relations and international law, arguing that the international legal system should make justice, not simply peace among (...) states, a primary goal, and rejecting the view that it is permissible for a state to conduct its foreign policies exclusively according to what is in the "national interest." He also shows that the only alternatives are not rigid adherence to existing international law or lawless chaos in which the world's one superpower pursues its own interests without constraints. This book not only criticizes the existing international legal order, but also offers morally defensible and practicable principles for reforming it. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination will find a broad readership in political science, international law, and political philosophy. (shrink)

Radical moral encroachment is the view that belief itself is morally evaluable, and that some moral properties of belief itself make a difference to epistemic rationality. To date, almost all proponents of radical moral encroachment hold to an asymmetry thesis: the moral encroaches on rational belief, but not on rational credence. In this paper, we argue against the asymmetry thesis; we show that, insofar as one accepts the most prominent arguments for radical moral encroachment on belief, one should likewise accept (...) radical moral encroachment on credence. We outline and reject potential attempts to establish a basis for asymmetry between the attitude types. Then, we explore the merits and demerits of the two available responses to our symmetry claim: (i) embracing moral encroachment on credence and (ii) denying moral encroachment on belief. (shrink)

:In 2012, Despret published an abecedary entitled What Would Animals Say, If … They Were Asked the Right Questions? Covering a range of subjects, themes, authors, and animals, Despret carefully and playfully demonstrates the ability of animals to continuously force us to re-examine our most basic and arrived at human conceptions, understandings, and biases. Excerpted from this book are two chapters on art and gender. “O for Œuvres” looks at the question of animal agency and intentionality in the making of (...) a work of art. Drawing from Alfred Gell, Étienne Souriau, and bower-birds, Despret expands the notion of agency in art and questions the tendency towards human exceptionalism. In “Q for Queer,” king penguins come out of the closet to reveal and question certain preconceived human ideas about gender, sexuality, and cultures of heteronormativity within animal worlds. (shrink)

Focuses on the encounters of feminist and queer theories, on the ways in which basic terms such as - sex, gender, and sexuality change meaning as they move from one body of theory to another. This book includes essays by Judith Butler, Evelynn Hammonds, Biddy Martin, Kim Michasiw, Carole-Anne Tyler, and Elizabeth Weed.

The conviction that Gilles Deleuze is doing something radical in his work has been accompanied by a corresponding anxiety as to how to read it. In this rigorous and lucid work, Ian Buchanan takes up the challenge by answering the following questions: How should we read Deleuze? How should we read _with_ Deleuze? To show us how Deleuze’s philosophy works, Buchanan begins with Melville’s notion that “a great book is always the inverse of another book that could only (...) be written in the soul, with silence and blood.” Buchanan demonstrates that the figure of two books—one written in ink and the other written in blood—lies at the center of Deleuze’s hermeneutics and that a special relation must be established in order to read the second book from the first. This relation is Deleuzism. By explicating elemental concepts in Deleuze—desire, flow, the nomad—Buchanan finds that, despite Deleuze’s self-declared moratorium on dialectics, he was in several important respects a dialectician. In essays that address the “prehistory” of Deleuze’s philosophy, his methodology, and the utopic dimensions of his thought, Buchanan extracts an apparatus of social critique that arises from the philosopher’s utopian impulse. _Deleuzism_ is a work that will engage all those with an interest in the twentieth-century’s most original philosopher. (shrink)

Steven Pinker has said that one of the most important questions humans can ask of themselves is whether moral progress has occurred or is likely to occur. Buchanan and Powell here address that question, in order to provide the first naturalistic, empirically-informed and analytically sophisticated theory of moral progress--explaining the capacities in the human brain that allow for it, the role of the environment, and how contingent and fragile moral progress can be.

Ethical guidelines for conducting clinical trials have historically been based on a perceived therapeutic obligation to treat and benefit the patient-participants. The origins of this ethical framework can be traced to the Hippocratic oath originally written to guide doctors in caring for their patients, where the overriding moral obligation of doctors is strictly to do what is best for the individual patient, irrespective of other social considerations. In contrast, although medicine focuses on the health of the person, public health is (...) concerned with the health of the entire population, and thus, public health ethics is founded on the societal responsibility to protect and promote the health of the population as a whole. From a public health perspective, research ethics should be guided by giving due consideration to the risks and benefits to society in addition to the individual research participants. On the basis of a duty to protect the population as a whole, a fiduciary obligation to realise the social value of the research and the moral responsibility to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly across society, how a public health perspective on research ethics results in fundamental re-assessments of the proper course of action for two salient topical issues in research ethics is shown: stopping trials early for reasons of efficacy and the conduct of research on less expensive yet less effective interventions. (shrink)

Traditional conservative arguments against the possibility of moral progress relied on underevidenced assumptions about the limitations of human nature. Contemporary thinkers have attempted to fill this empirical gap in the conservative argument by appealing to evolutionary science. Such “evoconservative” arguments fail because they overstate the explanatory reach of evolutionary theory. We maintain that no adequate evolutionary explanation has been given for important features of human morality, namely cosmopolitan and other “inclusivist” moral commitments. We attribute these evolutionarily anomalous features to a (...) capacity for open-ended normativity, which presents a serious obstacle to theorists who wish to draw substantive moral and political lessons from human evolutionary history. (shrink)

Propositions are the things we believe, intend, desire, and so on, but discussions are often less precise than they could be and an important driver of this deficiency has been a focus on the objects but a neglect of the attitudinal relations we bear to them. In what follows, we will offer some thoughts on what it means for a proposition to be the object of an attitude and we will argue that an important part of the story lies with (...) the attitude relations rather than the propositions. As we will see there are infinitely many relations we might bear to a proposition, but the propositional attitude relations are special amongst them. Accounting for what makes them special will be an important component in the discussion that follows. We will argue that once one appreciates certain facts about propositional attitude relations, various claims that metaphysicians often make regarding propositions themselves begin to look undermotivated. In fact, many views on the metaphysical nature of propositions come to look like plausible candidates for being that to which our propositional attitudes relate us. As will emerge, we will see that the principle role of propositions in the theory of mind is simply to keep track of how our attitudinal states represent things as being. But, we argue, in order to do this work, very few constraints must be placed on the nature of propositions themselves. In particular, contra much of the recent work on the metaphysics of propositions, they need not represent nor must they be structured. In light of these observations, we conclude by sketching our own favored minimalist view of propositions. (shrink)

The distinctive aim of applied ethics is to provide guidance as to how we ought to act, as individuals and as shapers of social policies. In this essay, I argue that applied ethics as currently practiced is inadequate and ought to be transformed to incorporate what I shall call social moral epistemology. This is a branch of social epistemology, the study of the social practices and institutions that promote the formation, preservation, and transmission of true beliefs. For example, social epistemologists (...) critically evaluate the comparative advantages of adversarial versus inquisitorial criminal proceedings as mechanisms for the discovery of truth. (shrink)

_Examines the significance of animal environments in contemporary continental thought._.

Appeals to the idea of human nature are frequent in the voluminous literature on the ethics of enhancing human beings through biotechnology. Two chief concerns about the impact of enhancements on human nature have been voiced. The first is that enhancement may alter or destroy human nature. The second is that if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good because, for us, the good is determined by our nature. The first concern assumes (...) that altering or destroying human nature is in itself a bad thing. The second concern assumes that human nature provides a standard without which we cannot make coherent, defensible judgments about what is good.I will argue (1) that there is nothing wrong, per se, with altering or destroying human nature, because, on a plausible understanding of what human nature is, it contains bad as well as good characteristics and there is no reason to believe that eliminating some of the bad would so imperil the good as to make the elimination of the bad impermissible, and (2) that altering or destroying human nature need not result in the loss of our ability to make judgments about the good, because we possess a conception of the good by which we can and do evaluate human nature. I will argue that appeals to human nature tend to obscure rather than illuminate the debate over the ethics of enhancement and can be eliminated in favor of more cogent considerations. (shrink)

The distinctive aim of applied ethics is to provide guidance as to how we ought to act, as individuals and as shapers of social policies. In this essay, I argue that applied ethics as currently practiced is inadequate and ought to be transformed to incorporate what I shall call social moral epistemology. This is a branch of social epistemology, the study of the social practices and institutions that promote the formation, preservation, and transmission of true beliefs. For example, social epistemologists (...) critically evaluate the comparative advantages of adversarial versus inquisitorial criminal proceedings as mechanisms for the discovery of truth. (shrink)

Introduction: human rights in healthcare -- A right to treatment? the allocation of resouces in the National Health Service -- Ensuring quality healthcare: an issue of rights or duties? -- Autonomy and consent in medical treatment -- Treating incompetent patients: beneficence, welfare and rights -- Medical confidentiality and the right to privacy -- Property right in the body -- Medically assisted conception and a right to reproduce? -- Termination of pregnancy: a conflict of rights -- Pregnancy and freedom of choice (...) -- The right to life at the end of life -- The law and ethics of assisted dying: is there a right to die? (shrink)