The Joint International Conference on Logic Programming, sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, is a major forum for presentations of research, applications, and implementations in this important area of computer science. Logic programming is one of the most promising steps toward declarative programming and forms the theoretical basis of the programming language Prolog and its various extensions. Logic programming is also fundamental to work in artificial intelligence, where it has been used for nonmonotonic and commonsense reasoning, expert systems (...) class='Hi'>implementation, deductive databases, and applications such as computer-aided manufacturing. Krzysztof R. Apt is project leader at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam and part-time Professor in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam. Topics covered: Theory Foundations. Programming Languages. Implementation. Programming Methodologies and Tools. Applications. Deductive Databases. Artificial Intelligence. Parallelism. (shrink)

The First International Workshop brings together researchers from the theoretical ends of the logic programming and artificial intelligence communities to discuss their mutual interests. Logic programming deals with the use of models of mathematical logic as a way of programming computers, where theoretical AI deals with abstract issues in modeling and representing human knowledge and beliefs. One common ground is nonmonotonic reasoning, a family of logics that includes room for the kinds of variations that can be found in human reasoning. (...) Topics covered: Stable Semantics. Default Logic. AutoEpistemic Logic. Truth Maintenance Systems. Implementation Issues. Diagnosis. Applications. Inheritance Reasoning. Logics of Belief. Inconsistency and Non-Monotonicity. (shrink)

This paper examines the availability and adequacy of schools’ infrastructural facilities for implementation of the Universal Basic Education program in Nigeria. Adopting the ex post facto design, the researchers used existing school data on physical facilities, including a survey of key stakeholders in the education sector. Data analysed revealed inadequacy of physical facilities for effective implementation of the UBE program. It was accordingly recommended that government at the national, state and local levels show better commitment to (...) the implementation of the Universal Basic Education program. (shrink)

The opioid epidemic demands the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, research-informed practices such as diversion programs. Aritürk et al. have articulated important bioethical considerations for implementing diversion programs in resource-constrained service environments. In this commentary, we expand and advance Aritürk et al.’s discussion by discussing existing resources that can be utilized to implement diversion programs that prevent or otherwise minimize the issues of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice identified by Aritürk et al.

This paper acknowledges the paucity of attention regarding the development of ethics programs within an academic environment and describes in a case study how the Duquesne University schools of business attempted to introduce, integrate and promote its own ethics program. The paper traces the business school’s attention to mission statements, curriculum development, ethics policy, program oversight and outcome assessment. Lessons learned are offered as suggestions for others seeking to develop and implement an ethics program in their school.

Another theme of the book is compilation techniques to boost performance. The field of static analysis for logic programs is a rapidly developing field that deserves a volume on its own. Implementations of Logic Programming Systems serves as an excellent reference and may be used as a text for a course on the subject.

Background: In recent decades, the amount of research on social and emotional learning programs in schools has increased significantly, showing a great number of positive student outcomes, including greater ability to perceive, understand and manage emotions, better attitudes about self and others, less aggressive and/or disruptive behavior, higher levels of psychological well-being and improvement in academic performance among others. The purpose of this research was the design and implementation of the OKAPI emotional education program. A multidimensional program (...) based on cooperative learning methodology. Methods: 86 students of Primary Education, from 3rd to 5th grade (45 students in the experimental unit and 41 in the control group). Results: The implementation of the OKAPI has a positive impact in academic achievement. Conclusion: This program shows the convenience of incorporating programs that can be integrated into the school life and can be applied by the teaching staff using both social emotional learning and school climate approaches. (shrink)

Inequities in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) use persist in the United States. Although scientific advancement in delivery options and social acceptance of PrEP has occurred in the past decade, gaps remain in ensuring that this sexual health program is available to all. Components of what a national PrEP program for all would look like are discussed.

Although there are differences among critical thinking (hereafter CT) theorists about aspects of critical thinking, there is consensus about its importance in education. Several Saudi scholars argue that there is a lack of CT among Saudi students at high school which is attributed to the lack of teacher knowledge and practice of CT. This qualitative case study based on Paul’s theoretical framework (1992) investigates the implementation of CT at two secondary preservice teacher education programs in Saudi Arabia. The results (...) reveal that none of the lecturers taught CT, either explicitly or implicitly. While they all acknowledged the importance of CT, most maintained that they have never been instructed, advised or encouraged to teach CT. This study aims to build on the CT literature and address the gap in this literature in the Saudi context. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to describe the implementation and outcomes of an Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing treatment-program for women with posttraumatic stress disorder after childbirth.MethodsA prospective cohort-study with pre- and post-measurements was carried out in the setting of an academic hospital in the Netherland. Included were women who gave birth to a living child at least 4 weeks ago, with a diagnosis of PTSD, or severe symptoms of PTSD combined with another psychiatric diagnosis. All received (...) up to 8 sessions of EMDR-therapy. The posttraumatic stress disorder Checklist for DSM-5 was administered before and after treatment. Trauma history was assessed before treatment with the Life Events Checklist for the DSM-5, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and the Childbirth Perception Scale. Descriptive statistics were used.ResultsForty-four women were referred, 26 met the inclusion criteria. After treatment, none of the women met the criteria for diagnosis of PTSD after on average 5 weekly sessions of EMDR- therapy. These outcomes are promising, as they were achieved in women with relatively high levels of psychiatric comorbidity and high rates of previous mental health treatment.ConclusionImplementing an EMDR-treatment program for women with PTSD after childbirth in the setting of an academic hospital is feasible and effective. Key factors for success include a close collaboration between the relevant hospital departments and a thorough case conceptualization addressing the etiology of the PTSD. (shrink)

Graduate nursing students should have a strong ethical theoretical foundation to identify and explore scientific and technological ethical issues impacting nursing care, to assume leadership positions in practice and education, and to conduct research contributing to nursing’s knowledge base. This paper reports the implementation and evaluation of a new ethics course at Turkish doctoral nursing programs. The first section describes course design and implementation. The second section evaluates the course and discusses results. Students’ evaluations indicated that the concept (...) of caring in key ethical theories, particularly care ethics, was vital to course content. The most preferred teaching method was case analysis. Students suggested increase in course length and credits, content inclusion of feminist ethics, and real-world knowledge application by other teaching strategies such as clinical practice visits and hospital ethics committee member participation. (shrink)

La formación profesional tiene un carácter contextualizado que responde a las exigencias que la época, la sociedad y el país reclaman a las universidades. La Estomatología en Cuba no se encuentra al margen de estos preceptos por lo que desarrolla un plan de estudio que acentúa la flexibilidad para realizar modificaciones necesarias y pertinentes. El estudiante al culminar la carrera debe brindar una atención estomatológica integral donde las anomalías dentomaxilofaciales constituyen la tercera línea de trabajo. Estas ocasionan afectaciones estéticas que (...) repercuten en la autoestima y adaptación social de niños y adolescentes por lo que se necesita de una orientación sicoeducativa, acción para la cual el profesional deberá estar preparado. A partir de las insuficiencias detectadas en el proceso formativo del estomatólogo, el objetivo del presente trabajo es proponer un curso propio sobre la temática para favorecer la graduación de un profesional capaz de resolver los problemas que afectan el complejo estomatognático con un enfoque biosicosocial. Los métodos empleados fueron el histórico-lógico y análisis-síntesis. Professional training has a contextualized nature which reflects the demands that the time, society and the country require from universities. In Cuba, Stomatology is not out of these precepts and therefore it carries out a syllabus that emphasizes flexibility to make necessary and appropriate changes. When students graduate, they must provide a complete stomatological care where dental maxillofacial anomalies are the third line of work. They cause aesthetic harm that affects children and teenagers' self-esteem and social adaptation which makes psych educational guidance necessary; a situation professional must be prepared for. Starting from the weak points discovered in the training process of stomatologists, a crash course in the subject is suggested in order to favor the graduation of professionals who are able to solve problems that affect the stomatognatic complex with a biopsychosocial approach, through the use of required methods, techniques and procedures. (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)

The conditions animals experience during the early developmental stages of their lives can have critical ongoing effects on their future health, welfare, and proper development. In this paper we draw on evolutionary theory to improve our understanding of the processes of developmental programming, particularly Predictive Adaptive Responses (PAR) that serve to match offspring phenotype with predicted future environmental conditions. When these predictions fail, a mismatch occurs between offspring phenotype and the environment, which can have long-lasting health and welfare effects. Examples (...) include metabolic diseases resulting from maternal nutrition and behavioral changes from maternal stress. An understanding of these processes and their evolutionary origins will help in identifying and providing appropriate developmental conditions to optimize offspring welfare. This serves as an example of the benefits of using evolutionary thinking within veterinary science and we suggest that in the same way that evolutionary medicine has helped our understanding of human health, the implementation of evolutionary veterinary science (EvoVetSci) could be a useful way forward for research in animal health and welfare. (shrink)

Communication strategies to shape public opinion can be applied to the philosophical program of conceptual engineering. I propose to look for answers to the implementation challenge for conceptual engineering on similar challenges that arise in other contexts, such as that of social movements. I claim that conceptual engineering is successfully practiced in other areas with direct consequences on the political landscape, and that we can apply to philosophy what we might learn from those successful practices. With that end (...) in mind, I explain the psychological approach to conceptual engineering. I present what has been called “the implementation challenge”, which is the problem that emerges from the possibility of control over the content of our concepts. The challenge consists in that if there is not such a control, conceptual engineering is not implementable. Then, I review some of the reactions that have been given to that challenge, and I defend the feasibility of conceptual engineering appealing to the collective action frames that social movements endorse as an instance of a successful kind of conceptual engineering and derive some strategies that might be of use for conceptual engineering in philosophy. Finally, I reply to some anticipated objections to my proposal. (shrink)

Consciousness supervenes on activity; computation supervenes on structure. Because of this, some argue, conscious states cannot supervene on computational ones. If true, this would present serious difficulties for computationalist analyses of consciousness (or, indeed, of any domain with properties that supervene on actual activity). I argue that the computationalist can avoid the Superfluous Structure Problem (SSP) by moving to a dispositional theory of implementation. On a dispositional theory, the activity of computation depends entirely on changes in the intrinsic properties (...) of implementing material. As extraneous structure is not required for computation, a system can implement a program running on some but not all possible inputs. Dispositional computationalism thus permits episodes of computational activity that correspond to potential episodes of conscious awareness. The SSP cannot be motivated against this account, and so computationalism may be preserved. (shrink)

Background Clinical moral case deliberation consists of the systematic reflection on a concrete moral case␣by health care professionals. This paper presents the study of a 4-year moral deliberation project.Objectives The objectives of this paper are to: (a) describe the practice and the theoretical background of moral deliberation, (b) describe the moral deliberation project, (c) present the outcomes of␣the evaluation of the moral case deliberation sessions, and (d) present the implementation process.Methods The implementation process is both monitored and supported (...) by an interactive responsive evaluation design with: (a) in-depth interviews, (b) Maastricht evaluation questionnaires, (c) evaluation survey, and (d) ethnographic participant observation. In accordance with the theory of responsive evaluation, researchers acted both as evaluators and moderators (i.e. ethicists).Results Both qualitative and quantitative results showed that the moral case deliberations, the role of the ethics facilitator, and the train-the-facilitator program were regarded as useful and were evaluated as (very) positive. Health care professionals reported that they improved their moral competencies (i.e. knowledge, attitude and skills). However, the new trained facilitators lacked a clear organisational structure and felt overburdened with the implementation process. The paper ends with both practical and research suggestions for future moral deliberation projects. (shrink)

Imam Hatip schools (religious vocational schools) in Turkey have been taught teaching Arabic for many years. However, the objectives of learning Arabic have not yet been realized. The Education Council of the Ministry of Education prepares educational plans and programs for Arabic lessons in order to increase the quality of Arabic language teaching, the first of these programs was in 1973. This research is a field study carried out in 2016 on how to implement the educational programs prepared in 2011 (...) for Arabic lessons in Imam Hatip schools, and the problems facing the teacher in practical reality. The scope of the research is limited to Tekirdağ Anadolu Religious High School for boys, Süleymanpaşa Anadolu Religious High School for girls, Süleymanpaşa Religious Secondary school, and the teachers working in these schools. The research was based on the views of those educators as to how the educational programmes for Arabic lessons and the problems they faced during their exercise were implemented. The research was formulated through interviews with teachers. The results of the research according to the data received from the teachers were processed in the statistical program SPSS and then converted to frequency values and percentage values. These values were presented in tabular form. As a result of the findings, it was seen that most of the teachers did not read the Arabic lesson teaching program they were practicing, and they were unaware of the program’s vision, approach and goals; and they did not understand the program’s approach, vision, and objectives. Moreover, it was understood that the minds of the teachers were not clear about whether the Arabic language was a foreign language lesson or a religious vocational lesson, that the teaching practices and behaviors of teachers are incompatible with the educational program and they also had one view that the goals of the Arab lesson were largely unfulfilled. After the main results have been revealed and discussed, finally, following the disputed results, some suggestions were made to increase the quality of teaching Arabic such as making Arabic an effective, active and influential element in the lives of students and teachers through various awards and scholarships and the examination of Arabic as a foreign language in the university entrance examinations as an element of motivation and quality. In addition, in order to improve the quality of the Arabic teacher, we have made the Arabic exams as periodic, an increase in salaries according to the teachers’ receivables score, the continuation of in-service trainings, etc. (shrink)

Source: "This book addresses the fundamentals of machine ethics. It discusses abilities required for ethical machine reasoning and the programming features that enable them. It connects ethics, psychological ethical processes, and machine implemented procedures. From a technical point of view, the book uses logic programming and evolutionary game theory to model and link the individual and collective moral realms. It also reports on the results of experiments performed using several model implementations. Opening specific and promising inroads into the terra incognita (...) of machine ethics, the authors define here new tools and describe a variety of program-tested moral applications and implemented systems. In addition, they provide alternative readings paths, allowing readers to best focus on their specific interests and to explore the concepts at different levels of detail. Mainly written for researchers in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics, philosophy of technology and engineering of ethics, the book will also be of general interest to other academics, undergraduates in search of research topics, science journalists as well as science and society forums, legislators and military organizations concerned with machine ethics.". (shrink)

Taken at face value, a programming language is defined by a formal grammar. But, clearly, there is more to it. By themselves, the naked strings of the language do not determine when a program is correct relative to some specification. For this, the constructs of the language must be given some semantic content. Moreover, to be employed to generate physical computations, a programming language must have a physical implementation. How are we to conceptualize this complex package? Ontologically, what (...) kind of thing is it? In this paper, we shall argue that an appropriate conceptualization is furnished by the notion of a technical artifact. (shrink)

This article draws on an empirical investigation of how Australia’s cervical screening program came to be the way it is. The study was carried out using grounded theory methodology and primarily uses interviews with experts involved in establishing, updating or administering the program. We found strong differences in experts’ normative evaluations of the program and beliefs about optimal ways of achieving the same basic outcome: a reduction in morbidity and mortality caused by invasive cervical cancer. Our analysis (...) demonstrates how variations in values and preferences associated with key concepts underpinning public health such as benefit, harm and burden led to different perspectives on the purpose of an organized cervical screening program. These variations were largely driven by different bases of professional experience. Differently conceived purposes in turn led to conflict over how the program should be operationalized. Following Frith’s model of empirical bioethics, the results of the study both draw on and inform the existing public health and screening ethics literature. (shrink)

A genuine commitment to ethics and compliance (E&C) programs means that top management adopt them for what they represent and not for other purposes. Only then can they truly build socially responsible behavior and a successful and sustainable business, as stated in the latest international standard for compliance management practice (ISO 37301:2021), which we found to be consistent with a new business narrative as conceptualized in Freeman's work. However, it also requires that top managers place a moral value on these (...) practices, rather than simply using them for instrumental reasons. Building on Kohlberg's six stages of moral development as applied to managers' moral thinking, this manuscript offers a model to explain how top managers' moral valuing of these practices varies along a moral reasoning continuum, resulting in four distinct modes. It also theorizes that each mode of moral valuing yields an archetype of E&C programs. It thus offers a new approach that contributes to the business ethics and management literature by incorporating a morally grounded perspective on the adoption and implementation of E&C practices and how it might shape their features and characteristics. It also aims to improve professional practice and business contributions to Freeman's ideas through genuine ethics‐based E&C programs. (shrink)

Turner argues that computer programs must have purposes, that implementation is not a kind of semantics, and that computers might need to understand what they do. I respectfully disagree: Computer programs need not have purposes, implementation is a kind of semantic interpretation, and neither human computers nor computing machines need to understand what they do.

Faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are typically expected to pursue grant funding and publish to support their research or teaching agendas. Providing effective professional development programs on grant preparation and management and on research publications is crucial. This study shares the design and implementation of such a program for Native STEM faculty from two tribal colleges and one public, non-tribal, Ph.D. granting institution during a 3-year period. The overall development and implementation of the (...) program is centered on the six R’s Indigenous framework – Respect, Relationship, Representation, Relevance, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. The role of NAF-STEM and their interactions with the program, as members of the community formed by their participation, impacted the program. Their practices and the program co-emerged over time, each providing structure and meaning for the other. Through such reciprocity, NAF-STEM and the program research team continually refined the program through their mutual engagement. They took on the shared responsibility of the program while they participated in and shaped its practices. The process and results of formative and summative assessment and the impact of COVID-19 on the program are reported. Results of the program offer lessons on the implementation of six R’s framework in professional development at institutions of higher education. (shrink)

Implementation of Solar Thermal Technology describes the successes and failures of the commercialization efforts of the U.S. solar thermal energy program, from the oil embargo of 1973 through the demise of the program in the early Reagan administration and its afterlife since then. The emphasis throughout is on lessons learned from the solar experience, with an eye toward applications to other projects as well as toward possible renewal of efforts at commercialization. Part I discusses the history of (...) government involvement in solar development and the parallel development of the market for solar products. Part II looks at the histories of specific commercialization programs for five areas. Parts III-VIII focus in turn on demonstration and construction projects, quality assurance, information dissemination programs, efforts to transfer technology to industry, incentive programs, and organizational support. Solar Heat Technologies: Fundamentals and Applications, Volume 10. (shrink)

Background: Hospitalized children have the right to “partake in practices related to their treatment and care.” Midwives and nurses have important roles and responsibilities regarding the protection and enforcement of these rights, such as providing information and advocating for children. Objectives: This study aims to determine the attitudes of midwives and nurses toward their roles and responsibilities in the implementation of child rights in healthcare services and the factors affecting their attitudes. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study included 122 midwives (...) and nurses in total. The data were collected through a questionnaire. Ethical considerations: Written permission was obtained from an ethics committee in the center of the city where the research was conducted. Results: The mean age of the participants was 36.70 ± 8.03 years; 58.9% of midwives and nurses stated that they understood the child’s consent about the treatment by looking at the child’s facial expression; 36% of midwives and nurses stated that children could not participate in decisions regarding their own health. It was observed that obtaining the child’s consent in matters related to treatment does not make any difference between midwives and nurses. The rate of the midwives stating that they would report suspicious violence-neglect and abuse was found to be higher. Conclusion: The variables of the unit of employment, the state of having children, choosing the profession and practicing in it willingly, and getting training on children’s rights make a difference in terms of children’s rights in healthcare services. Midwives and nurses should be reminded of child rights in healthcare services through regular in-service training programs. (shrink)

The need to integrate ethics into professional life, from the grassroots up, has been recognized, and a comprehensive ethics program has been proposed as a model. The model includes the four dimensions of: consensus building, ethics guidelines development and review, education, and implementation. The activities of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) are presented as examples and compared with the proposed model. Several innovative activities are described and incentives for ethical professional conduct are highlighted. The examples are (...) provided for emulation by other professional organizations in the hope that, thereby, greater protection of the public interest will be achieved. (shrink)

This article examines capacity development for collective action and institutional change through the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. We integrate Hargrave and Van de Ven's, 864-888) Collective Action Model with capacity development literature to develop a framework that can be used to clarify the nature of CSR involvement in capacity development, help identify alternative CSR response options, consider expected impacts of these options on stakeholders, and highlight trade-offs across alternative CSR investments. Our framework encompasses CSR program investments (...) in the capacities of individuals, organizations, and collaborations, as also their impact on the larger enabling environment. We then use this framework to provide descriptive evidence of two implementations: The PhD Project, whose mission is to increase the diversity of corporate America by increasing the diversity of business school faculty, and Involve, the community involvement program at KPMG, one of the Big Four Accounting firms. We discuss implications of our framework for managerial practice and future research. (shrink)

Background Despite recent developments aimed at creating international guidelines for ethical global health research, critical disconnections remain between how global health research is conducted in the field and the institutional ethics frameworks intended to guide research practice. Discussion In this paper we attempt to map out the ethical tensions likely to arise in global health fieldwork as researchers negotiate the challenges of balancing ethics committees’ rules and bureaucracies with actual fieldwork processes in local contexts. Drawing from our research experiences with (...) an implementation and evaluation project in Jamaica, we argue that ethical research is produced through negotiated spaces and reflexivity practices that are centred on relationships between researchers and study participants and which critically examine issues of positionality and power that emerge at multiple levels. In doing so, we position ethical research practice in global health as a dialectical movement between the spoken and unspoken, or, more generally, between operationalized rules and the embodied relational understanding of persons. Summary Global health research ethics should be premised not upon passive accordance with existing guidelines on ethical conduct, but on tactile modes of knowing that rely upon being engaged with, and responsive to, research participants. Rather than focusing on the operationalization of ethical practice through forms and procedures, it is crucial that researchers recognize that each ethical dilemma encountered during fieldwork is unique and rooted in social contexts, interpersonal relationships, and personal narratives. (shrink)

Includes tutorials, invited lectures, and refereed papers on all aspects of logic programming including: Constraints, Concurrency and Parallelism, Deductive Databases, Implementations, Meta and Higher-order Programming, Theory, and Semantic Analysis. September 2-6, 1996, Bonn, Germany Every four years, the two major international scientific conferences on logic programming merge in one joint event. JICSLP'96 is the thirteenth in the two series of annual conferences sponsored by The Association for Logic Programming. It includes tutorials, invited lectures, and refereed papers on all aspects of (...) logic programming including: Constraints, Concurrency and Parallelism, Deductive Databases, Implementations, Meta and Higher-order Programming, Theory, and Semantic Analysis. The contributors are international, with strong contingents from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Japan. Logic Programming series, Research Reports and Notes. (shrink)

Many organizations have adopted an organizational ethics program to prevent unethical behavior within the organization. Decoupling the adoption of ethics programs from their implementation has been identified in the literature as an explanation for the ineffectiveness of such programs. In addition to this so-called policy–practice decoupling, means–ends decoupling may also occur when a well-implemented ethics program is nevertheless ineffective. This study investigates whether team ethical culture (TEC) acts as a coupling mechanism that mediates the effects of a (...) well-implemented ethics program on unethical behavior in teams. We conducted a survey of 202 teams working in a business organization in the UK. The results of a structural equation analysis support the claim that TEC mediates this relationship. Based on this team-level case study, we argue that organizations that aim to implement an effective ethics program should acknowledge and manage TECs to avoid means-ends decoupling. (shrink)

Experts identified water quality, manure, good handling practices (including personal hygiene and equipment sanitation), and traceability as critical farm problem areas that, if addressed, are likely to decrease risk associated with microbial contamination of fresh produce from all scales of agriculture. However, the diverse nature of production strategies used by produce farmers presents multiple options for addressing foodborne illness issues while simultaneously creating potential complications. We use a mental models methodology to enhance our understanding of the underlying factors and assumptions (...) of small, medium, and large produce growers that influence their decision-making processes for contamination prevention and control. This empirical evidence demonstrates how challenges and opportunities to food safety are related to the scale of production and marketing strategies. We believe that refining the development of standards and existing extension and outreach food safety programs are important to both consumer protection and supporting agricultural communities. Additionally, this approach will help develop and refine food safety programs that will result in empirically grounded recommendations based on identified grower information needs. (shrink)

Is implementing the beneficent nudge program morally permissible in worlds like ours? I argue that there is reason for serious doubt. I acknowledge that beneficent nudging is highly various, that nudges are in some circumstances morally permissible and even called for, and that nudges may exhibit respect for genuine autonomy. Nonetheless, given the risk of epistemic injustice that nudges typically pose, neither the moral permissibility of beneficent nudging in the abstract, nor its case-by-case vindication, appears sufficient to justify implementing (...) a nudge program in worlds like ours. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice, I argue that the cogent defense of any nudge program, relative to worlds like ours, stands in need of serious attention to its potential for fostering or sustaining epistemic injustice. A more specific point hinges on recognizing a form of epistemic injustice not enough attended to in the literature to date, which I call reflective incapacitational injustice. This includes relative disadvantages in the attaining of the capacity to engage in critical reason, such as the capacity to go in for potentially critical reasoned deliberation and discursive exchange concerning ends. Since Cass Sunstein’s First Law of behaviorally informed regulation would be taken, in worlds like ours, to justify indeterminately many nudges leading to such epistemic injustice we have general grounds for doubting the moral permissibility of this nudge program. We should hence oppose the implementation of any such program until it is shown not to violate the demands of epistemic justice. (shrink)