Even after multiple cycles of ABET accreditation, many engineering programs are unsure of how much curriculum content is needed to meet the requirements of ABET’s Criterion 3.f (an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility). This study represents the first scholarly attempt to assess the impact of curriculum reform following the introduction of ABET Criterion 3.f. This study sought to determine how much professional and ethical responsibility curriculum content was used between 1995 and 2005, as well as how, (...) when, why, and to what effect changes in the amount of content occurred. Subsequently, the study sought to evaluate if different amounts of curriculum content generated differing student outcomes. The amount of curriculum content used by each of the participating programs was identified during semi-structured interviews with program administrators and a review of ABET Self-Study documents. Quantitative methods were applied to determine if a relationship existed between the curriculum content and performance on a nationally administered, engineering-specific standardized examination. The findings indicate a statistical relationship, but a lack of structure between the amount of required content in the curriculum and performance on the examination. Additional findings were also generated regarding the way that programs interpret the Criterion 3.f feedback generated during accreditation visits. The primary impact of this study is that it dispels the myth that more courses or course time on professionalism and ethics will necessarily lead to positive engineering education outcomes. Much of the impetus to add more curriculum content results from a lack of conclusive feedback during ABET accreditation visits. (shrink)

In “Abetting a Crime,” Husak puzzles over what, exactly, abettors are held liable for. Having dismissed the proposal that derivative liability can ground the imposition of punishment, he then turns to fair labeling concerns to further highlight problems surrounding current Anglo-American complicity laws. The best moral solution, according to Husak, is a drastic but ultimately unworkable revising of our laws. Loosely, he presents a two-horned dilemma: the laws are either insufficiently detailed to respect fair labeling practices or too detailed to (...) be workable. Though I agree with his assessment derivative liability, I advocate for a more optimistic outlook. Specifically, I advocate for having multiple new crimes of “abetting _____,” where the blank is filled in by reference to a particular existing crime for which we think it should be wrongful to help another. This framework offers significant advantages over current complicity laws while escaping the two pitfalls Husak highlights. (shrink)

I focus on the set of problems that arise in identifying both the actus reus and (to an even greater extent) the mens rea needed by an abettor before she should be criminally liable for complicity in a crime. No consensus on these issues has emerged in positive law; commentators are enormously dissatisfied with the decisions courts have reached; and critics disagree radically about what reforms should be implemented to rectify this state of affairs. I explicitly deny that I will (...) be able to solve these problems, although I hope at least to identify a central source of the confusion. In my view, the problem results largely from conceptualizing the liability of abettors as derivative. This diagnosis helps us to understand why the problem is likely to remain insoluble in positive law. If the test of an adequate theory consists primarily in its ability to produce results that conform to our moral intuitions about how particular cases should be resolved, no approach that can be implemented in the real world will prove wholly satisfactory. I advance a hypothesis about why failure is inevitable and what should be done in light of this predicament. Legal realities compel us to adopt a position that is suboptimal from a moral point of view. (shrink)

The article analyzes the recent ruling of the Italian Constitutional Court amending article 580 of the Italian Criminal Code, relating to aid and incitement to suicide. According to the first Assize Court of Milan, article 580, conceived in 1930, reflects the fascist culture of its author. The problem of the Constitutional Court was therefore to establish whether a democratic state can still place limits on aid for suicide and in what terms it can do so.

Modifications to the ABET Criterion 3 are suggested in support of the effort to promote the pursuit of peace in engineering education. The proposed modifications are the result of integrating the United Nations’ sponsored “Integral Model of Education for Peace, Democracy and Sustainable Development” into the modern engineering curriculum. The key elements of the model are being at peace with oneself, being at peace with others, and being at peace with the planet. In addition to proposing modifications, specific classroom (...) activities are described and implemented, and students’ reactions and the effectiveness of the various exercises are discussed. (shrink)

This paper describes a one-day workshop format for introducing ethics into the engineering curriculum prepared at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). It responds to the ethics criteria newly integrated into the accreditation process by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). It also employs an ethics across the curriculum (EAC) approach; engineers identify the ethical issues, write cases that dramatize these issues, and then develop exercises making use of these cases that are specially tailored to (...) mainstream engineering classes. The different activities and strategies employed in this workshop are set forth. Specific references are made to the cases and exercises developed as a result of these workshops. The paper ends by summarizing the different assessments made of the workshop by addressing the following questions: how did it contribute to the overall ABET effort at UPRM; could other universities benefit from a similar activity; and how did the participants evaluate the workshop? (shrink)

Common sense suggests that if a war is unjust, then there is a strong moral reason not to contribute to it. I argue that this presumption is mistaken. It can be permissible to contribute to an unjust war because, in general, whether it is permissible to perform an act often depends on the alternatives available to the actor. The relevant alternatives available to a government waging a war differ systematically from the relevant alternatives available to individuals in a position to (...) contribute to the war. Hence the conditions determining whether it is permissible for a government to wage a war often differ from the conditions determining whether it is permissible for others to promote that war. This difference is manifest most often in unjust wars with putatively humanitarian aims—an increasingly common type of war. (shrink)

Most people hold overly (though not excessively) positive self-views of themselves, their ability to shape environmental events, and their future. These positive illusions are generally (though not always) beneficial, promoting achievement, psychological adjustment, and physical well-being. Social processes conspire to produce these illusions, suggesting that affiliation patterns may have evolved to nurture and sustain them.

The course Science, Technology, and Society is taken by about 500 engineering students each year at Bilkent University, Ankara. Aiming to complement the highly technical engineering programs, it deals with the ethical, social, cultural, political, economic, legal, environment and sustainability, health and safety, reliability dimensions of science, technology, and engineering in a multidisciplinary fashion. The teaching philosophy and experiences of the instructor are reviewed. Community research projects have been an important feature of the course. Analysis of teaching style based on (...) a multi-dimensional model is given. Results of outcome measurements performed for ABET assessment are provided. Challenges and solutions related to teaching a large class are discussed. (shrink)

This paper details efforts by the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis to create a single instrument for honors science, technology, engineering and mathematics students wishing to demonstrate competence in the IUPUI Principles of Undergraduate Learning and Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Engineering Accreditation Criterion and Technology Accreditation Criterion 2, a through k. Honors courses in Human Behavior, Ethical Decision-Making, Applied Leadership, International Issues and Leadership Theories and Processes were created along with a (...) specific menu of activities and an assessment rubric based on PUL’s and ABET criteria to evaluate student performance in the aforementioned courses. Students who complete the series of 18 Honors Credit hours are eligible for an Honors Certificate in Leadership Studies from the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision. Finally, an accounting of how various university assessment criteria, in this case the IUPUI Principles of Undergraduate Learning, can be linked to ABET outcomes and prove student competence in both, using the aforementioned courses, menu of items, and assessment rubrics; these will be analyzed and discussed. (shrink)

ABET 2000 Criteria encourages development of proficiency in professional responsibility in engineering as part of the undergraduate curriculum. This paper discusses the use of industrially sponsored capstone design projects to encourage active discussion of professional responsibility in engineering that naturally occurs during the engineering design process. The paper also discusses student participation in designing responses and approaches to issues such as engineering ethics. The paper includes specific examples of topics addressed by students and the approaches developed (by students) in (...) addressing these issues. (shrink)

The author has surveyed a quarter of the accredited undergraduate computer science programs in the United States. More than half of these programs offer a “social and ethical implications of computing” course taught by a computer science faculty member, and there appears to be a trend toward teaching ethics classes within computer science departments. Although the decision to create an “in house” computer ethics course may sometimes be a pragmatic response to pressure from the accreditation agency, this paper argues that (...) teaching ethics within a computer science department can provide students and faculty members with numerous benefits. The paper lists topics that can be covered in a computer ethics course and offers some practical suggestions for making the course successful. (shrink)

In order to fulfill ABET requirements, Northern Arizona University’s Civil and Environmental engineering programs incorporate professional ethics in several of its engineering courses. This paper discusses an ethics module in a 3rd year engineering design course that focuses on the design process and technical writing. Engineering students early in their student careers generally possess good black/white critical thinking skills on technical issues. Engineering design is the first time students are exposed to “grey” or multiple possible solution technical problems. To (...) identify and solve these problems, the engineering design process is used. Ethical problems are also “grey” problems and present similar challenges to students. Students need a practical tool for solving these ethical problems. The step-wise engineering design process was used as a model to demonstrate a similar process for ethical situations. The ethical decision making process of Martin and Schinzinger was adapted for parallelism to the design process and presented to students as a step-wise technique for identification of the pertinent ethical issues, relevant moral theories, possible outcomes and a final decision. Students had greatest difficulty identifying the broader, global issues presented in an ethical situation, but by the end of the module, were better able to not only identify the broader issues, but also to more comprehensively assess specific issues, generate solutions and a desired response to the issue. (shrink)

In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation--describes (...) Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest--his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work--to uncover the roots of consciousness. (shrink)

Acupoint Biophoton Emissions Testing (ABET), an alternative diagnostic technique used by practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine, illustrates a case of non-linguistic Delome-level semiosis that is understood to form an interface between endosemiotic and linguistic semiotic levels of human (bio-)communication. Performed manually, the technique employs an array of Hypoiconic and Indexical Symbols that, when used in combination, enable practitioners to “listen in” and learn with biocommunicational processes, re-embodying them in a manner that renders them available to conscious recognition and linguistic (...) representation. The Delome formations of the ABET technique afford the gradual accumulation and transformation of practitioner understanding through sign co-performances that achieve triadic relationality mediationally—prefiguring fully representational forms of learning. They demonstrate embodied capacities for pattern recognition, coordination, exploration, articulation, explication and self-governance that may have evolved in advance of representational sign formations, setting the evolutionary stage for them. (shrink)

Despite the enormity of the financial losses flowing from the 2008 financial crisis and the outrageousness of the conduct that led up to it, almost no individual involved has been prosecuted for criminal conduct, much less actually gone to prison. What this chapter argues is that the failure to punish those in management for their role in this misconduct stems from a misunderstanding of the need to prove that they personally knew of this wrongdoing and harbored an intent to defraud. (...) But not only would negligence be a sufficient legal and moral basis for imposing terms of imprisonment in these cases, mere causal responsibility would also be enough, for causal responsibility has embed in it all we need to find those causally responsible morally responsible too, and once some basis for moral responsibility is established, the imposition of terms of imprisonment is both legally permitted and morally just. (shrink)

Informed by ABET accreditation criteria and broader societal needs, ethics has been emphasized as important for engineering professionals. Engineering students are thus exposed to professional ethics and related concerns throughout their college experiences both within and beyond the formal engineering curriculum, but little is known about what learning experiences and lessons engineering students view as most memorable and salient as they approach graduation. Therefore, this paper answers the following research questions: RQ1) What types of experiences do senior engineering students (...) report as salient learning experiences for their ethical and moral formation as they approach graduation? and RQ2) What do students learn from the most commonly discussed types of experiences? To address these questions, we conducted semi-structured interviews with senior engineering students and performed inductive thematic analysis on the resulting transcripts. Among various types of experiences that students reported as influencing their ethical and moral perspectives, this paper highlights work experiences, formal education, and family environment as the most frequently mentioned. Our results suggest that work experiences were especially significant for students’ learning of engineering ethics in a professional context, followed by academic experiences as a source of both professional/ethical and more general moral lessons. Many students also described family and friends as influential, especially as related to their general perceptions of morality. Based on these findings, a variety of educational implications are discussed. (shrink)

Over 90% of the organs transplanted in China before 2010 were procured from prisoners. Although Chinese officials announced in December 2014 that the country would completely cease using organs harvested from prisoners, no regulatory adjustments or changes in China’s organ donation laws followed. As a result, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China if consent is obtained. We have collected and analysed available evidence on human rights violations in the organ procurement practice in China. We demonstrate that the (...) practice not only violates international ethics standards, it is also associated with a large scale neglect of fundamental human rights. This includes organ procurement without consent from prisoners or their families as well as procurement of organs from incompletely executed, still-living prisoners. The human rights critique of these practices will also address the specific situatedness of prisoners, often conditioned and traumatized by a cascade of human rights abuses in judicial structures. To end the unethical practice and the abuse associated with it, we suggest to inextricably bind the use of human organs procured in the Chinese transplant system to enacting Chinese legislation prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners and making explicit rules for law enforcement. Other than that, the international community must cease to abet the continuation of the present system by demanding an authoritative ban on the use of organs from executed Chinese prisoners. (shrink)

Traditional terms for theology of work, including co-creation and vocation, tend to overvalue work, abetting the alienating conditions of postindustrial labor. To develop a theology that can help workers make sense of work's expansion, abstractness, and precarity, this essay proposes a postindustrial ethic of selective detachment from work. The Benedictine tradition offers a model. According to the Benedictine Rule, monastic work is important as a penitential practice but is strictly circumscribed, with prescriptions to forestall overinvestment in work. By detaching themselves (...) from work, monastics cannot place labor ahead of prayer. In the medieval economy, monastic labor demonstrated work's role in sanctification. Today, the Benedictine Rule demonstrates the need for worldly ascetical practices that will limit work so it does not inhibit someone seeking holiness. (shrink)

Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But a piece of (...) the argument has been missing, and individuals at levels distinct from organisms have been denied potency (although granted existence within the undeniable logic of the theory), because they do not achieve individuality with the same devices used by organisms and therefore seem weak by comparison. We show here that different features define Darwinian individuality across scales of size and time. In particular, species-individuals may develop few emergent features as direct adaptations. The interactor approach works with emergent fitnesses, not with emergent features; and species, as a consequence of their different mechanism for achieving individuality (reproductive exclusivity among subparts, that is, among organisms), express many effects from other levels. Organisms, by contrast, suppress upwardly cascading effects, because the organismic style of individuality (by functional integration of subparts) does not permit much competition or differential reproduction of parts from within. Species do not suppress the operation of lower levels; such effects therefore become available as exaptations conferring emergent fitness—a primary source of the different strength that species achieve as effective Darwinian individuals in evolution. (shrink)

Consider the kinds of macroscopic concrete objects that common sense and the sciences allege to exist: tables, raindrops, tectonic plates, galaxies, and the rest. Are there any such things? Opinions differ. Ontological liberals say they do; ontological radicals say they don't. Liberalism seems favored by its plausible acquiescence to the dictates of common sense abetted by science; radicalism by its ontological parsimony. Priority theorists claim we can have the virtues of both views. They hold that tables, raindrops, etc., exist, but (...) they aren't fundamental. The ontological liberal's ontology provides the correct inventory of existent individuals. The ontological radical's more restricted ontology provides the correct inventory of fundamental individuals. The priority theorist claims that the derivative individuals are "no addition in being" to the fundamental ones, so we can have our cake and eat it too. It would be nice if priority theorists were right. In this paper I argue, with regret, that they are not. One upshot is that the sort of explanations which underwrite the priority theorist's distinction between fundamental and derivative individuals do not mitigate our ontological commitments. Another is that we still have to choose between the charms of liberalism and radicalism. (shrink)

Growing concern has been expressed that we have entered a “post-truth” era in which each of us willfully believes whatever we choose, aided and abetted by alternative and social media that spin alternative realities for boutique consumption. A prime example of the belief in alternative realities is said to be acceptance of “conspiracy theories”—a term that is often used as a pejorative to indict claims of conspiracy that are so obviously absurd that only the unhinged could believe them. The epistemological (...) standard often involved in this indictment, however—the standard of “obvious” falsity—invites subjectivity in its application, because what is obviously false to one person can be common sense to another. This is not just a truism; considerable research suggests that people’s political beliefs, in general, and their acceptance or rejection of conspiracy theories in particular, tends in large part to be determined by partisan, ideological, and other priors. (shrink)

This article considers the methodological limits and possibilities of a cultural turn in comparative religious ethics by “translating” the Latin American Indigenous meanings of buen vivir (living well), a subsistent mode of interdependent flourishing resistant to Western models of extractive development amid the Anthropocene. It problematizes the methodological challenge of translating Indigenous cultures from within a Western colonial political economy that has historically relegated Indigenous Americans to the primitive level of savage inferiority according to a stadial theory of socioeconomic development. (...) However, constructive methodological options for translating Indigenous cultures emerge from the Journal of Religious Ethics's existing conversations about comparative religious ethics. On the one hand, recent critical anthropology and ethnography, abetted by intellectual history, provide tools for ethicists in the recovery of Indigenous critiques and meanings against longstanding Western cultural patterns. On the other hand, nativizing the concept of the religious classic thematizes the normative dimensions of Indigenous cultures, demonstrating how the translation of buen vivir points to intercultural dialogue rather than cooptation and manipulation. (shrink)

Introduction to Engineering Ethics provides the background for discussion of the basic issues in engineering ethics. Emphasis is given to the moral problems engineers face in the corporate setting. It places those issues within a philosophical framework, and it seems to exhibit both their social importance and their intellectual challenge. The primary goal is to stimulate critical and responsible reflection on moral issues surrounding engineering practice and to provide the conceptual tools necessary for pursuing those issues. As per new (...) class='Hi'>ABET 2000 guidelines, more and more introductory engineering courses cover engineering ethics as part of their instruction. Students preparing to function within the engineering profession need to be introduced to the basic issues in engineering ethics. This book places those issues within a wider philosophical framework than has been customary in the past and aims to stimulate critical and responsible reflection on the moral issues surrounding engineering practice and to provide the conceptual tools necessary for pursuing those issues. (shrink)

The Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) has declared that to achieve accredited status, “engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.” Many engineering professors struggle to integrate this required ethics instruction in technical classes and projects because of the lack of a formalized ethics-in-design approach. However, one methodology developed in human-computer interaction research, the Value-Sensitive Design approach, can serve as an engineering education tool which bridges the gap between design and (...) ethics for many engineering disciplines. The three major components of Value-Sensitive Design, conceptual, technical, and empirical, exemplified through a case study which focuses on the development of a command and control supervisory interface for a military cruise missile. (shrink)

The article provides an account of the unlikely revival of the medieval Just War Theory, due in large part to the efforts of Michael Walzer. Its purpose is to address the question: What is a just war theorist? By exploring contrasts between scholarly activity and forms of international activism, the paper argues that just war theorists appear to be just war criminals, both on the count of aiding and abetting aggression and on the count of inciting troops to commit war (...) crimes. (shrink)

The title of the film Avatar specifically refers to the extension of the consciousness or spirit of a human individual into the body of an artificially created human–Na'vi hybrid. In his Philosophy of Nature, Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argues that Nature is the embodiment – or, as we might say, the “avatar” – of what he calls the Absolute Spirit or God. Scientists, with their mechanistic models of nature, are essentially in league with the practical exploitation of the Earth. Their arid (...) abstractions abet the arrogant approach of commercial interests, whose dismissive attitude toward nature is captured well in Selfridge's remark: “They're just goddamn trees.” When Jake passes through “the eye of Eywa” at the conclusion of Avatar, leaving his former body and his former life behind and becoming fully embodied as part of “the people,” he implicitly recognizes the truth of Hegel's definition of Spirit. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making is essential to professionalism in engineering. For that reason, ethics is a required topic in an ABET approved engineering curriculum and it must be a foundational strand that runs throughout the entire curriculum. In this paper the curriculum approach that is under development at the Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) at Grand Valley State University will be described. The design of this program draws heavily from the successful approach used at the service academies — in particular West (...) Point and the United States Naval Academy. As is the case for the service academies, all students are introduced to the “Honor Concept” (which includes an Honor Code) as freshmen. As an element of professionalism the PSE program requires 1500 hours of co-op experience which is normally divided into three semesters of full-time work alternated with academic semesters during the last two years of the program. This offers the faculty an opportunity to teach ethics as a natural aspect of professionalism through the academic requirements for co-op. In addition to required elements throughout the program, the students are offered opportunities to participate in service projects which highlight responsible citizenship. These elements and other parts of the approach will be described. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” King Solomon. (shrink)

The article draws upon the work of two people, Lawrence Stenhouse and Derek Morrell, who in the 1960s offered a vision of education based upon,first, the moral conviction that a liberal and humane education was essential for all and for society, second, the belief in a curriculum agenda in which such moral conviction might be reconciled with moral uncertainty, and, third, the recognition of the indispensability of a democratic approach to making that reconciliation possible. The article shows how that vision (...) has been dimmed by a prevailing social philosophy and political practice, sadly abetted by some in universities who should know better. (shrink)

Agenda Relevance is the first volume in the authors' omnibus investigation of the logic of practical reasoning, under the collective title, A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems. In this highly original approach, practical reasoning is identified as reasoning performed with comparatively few cognitive assets, including resources such as information, time and computational capacity. Unlike what is proposed in optimization models of human cognition, a practical reasoner lacks perfect information, boundless time and unconstrained access to computational complexity. The practical reasoner is (...) therefore obliged to be a cognitive economizer and to achieve his cognitive ends with considerable efficiency. Accordingly, the practical reasoner avails himself of various scarce-resource compensation strategies. He also possesses neurocognitive traits that abet him in his reasoning tasks. Prominent among these is the practical agent's striking (though not perfect) adeptness at evading irrelevant information and staying on task. On the approach taken here, irrelevancies are impediments to the attainment of cognitive ends. Thus, in its most basic sense, relevant information is cognitively helpful information. Information can then be said to be relevant for a practical reasoner to the extent that it advances or closes some cognitive agenda of his. The book explores this idea with a conceptual detail and nuance not seen the standard semantic, probabilistic and pragmatic approaches to relevance; but wherever possible, the authors seek to integrate alternative conceptions rather than reject them outright. A further attraction of the agenda-relevance approach is the extent to which its principal conceptual findings lend themselves to technically sophisticated re-expression in formal models that marshal the resources of time and action logics and label led deductive systems. Agenda Relevance is necessary reading for researchers in logic, belief dynamics, computer science, AI, psychology and neuroscience, linguistics, argumentation theory, and legal reasoning and forensic science, and will repay study by graduate students and senior undergraduates in these same fields. Key features: relevance action and agendas practical reasoning belief dynamics non-classical logics labelled deductive systems. (shrink)

The philosopher Rudolf Carnap, although not himself an originator of mathematical advances in logic, was much involved in the development of the subject. He was the most important and deepest philosopher of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, or, to use the label Carnap later preferred, logical empiricists. It was Carnap who gave the most fully developed and sophisticated form to the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth: the view that the truths of mathematics and logic do not describe (...) some Platonistic realm, but rather are artifacts of the way we establish a language in which to speak of the factual, empirical world, fallouts of the representational capacity of language. Carnap was also the thinker who, after Russell, most emphasized the importance of modern logic, and the distinctive advances it enables in the foundations of mathematics, to contemporary philosophy. It was through Carnap's urgings, abetted by Hans Hahn, once Carnap arrived in Vienna as Privatdozent in philosophy in 1926, that the Vienna Circle began to take logic seriously and that positivist philosophy began to grapple with the question of how an account of mathematics compatible with empiricism can be given.A particular facet of Carnap's influence is not widely appreciated: it was Carnap who introduced Kurt Gödel to logic, in the serious sense. Although Gödel seems to have attended a course of Schlick's on philosophy of mathematics in 1925–26, his second year at the University, he did not at that time pursue logic further, nor did the seminar leave much of a trace on him. In the early summer of 1928, however, Carnap gave two lectures to the Circle which Gödel attended, or so I surmise. At these occasions, Carnap presented material from his manuscript treatise, Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik, that is, “Investigations into general axiomatics”, which dealt with questions of consistency, completeness and categoricity. Carnap later circulated this material to various people including Gödel. (shrink)

It's natural to think of scientists as truth seekers, people driven by an intense curiosity to understand the natural world. Yet this picture of scientists and scientific inquiry sits uncomfortably with the reality and prevalence of scientific fraud. If one wants to get at the truth about nature, why lie? Won't that just set inquiry back, as people pursue false leads? To understand why this occurs – and what can be done about it – we need to understand the social (...) structures scientists work within, and how some of the institutions which enable science to be such a successful endeavour all things considered, also abet and encourage fraud. (shrink)

The majority of people show persistent poor performance in reasoning about “stock-flow problems” in the laboratory. An important example is the failure to understand the relationship between the “stock” of CO2 in the atmosphere, the “inflow” via anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and the “outflow” via natural CO2 absorption. This study addresses potential causes of reasoning failures in the CO2 accumulation problem and reports two experiments involving a simple re-framing of the task as managing an analogous financial budget. In Experiment 1 a (...) financial version of the task that required participants to think in terms of controlling debt demonstrated significant improvements compared to a standard CO2 accumulation problem. Experiment 2, in which participants were invited to think about managing savings, suggested that this improvement was fortuitous and coincidental rather than due to a fundamental change in understanding the stock-flow relationships. The role of graphical information in aiding or abetting stock-flow reasoning was also explored in both experiments, with the results suggesting that graphs do not always assist understanding. The potential for leveraging the kind of reasoning exhibited in such tasks in an effort to change people's willingness to reduce CO2 emissions is briefly discussed. (shrink)

I argue, contrary to standard claims, that accomplice liability need not be a causal relation. One can be an accomplice to another’s crime without causally contributing to the criminal act of the principal. This is because the acts of aid and encouragement that constitute the basis for accomplice liability typically occur in contexts of under- and over-determination, where causal analysis is confounded. While causation is relevant to justifying accomplice liability in general, only potential causation is necessary in particular cases. I (...) develop this argument through the example of the role of U.S. legal officials in abetting the acts of unlawful interrogation that have taken place since 2001. I also suggest that there may be a limited justification for ex post ratificatory accomplice liability. (shrink)

Sumantra Ghoshal’s condemnation of “bad management theories” that were “destroying good management practices” has not lost any of its salience, after a decade. Management theories anchored in agency theory (and neo-classical economics generally) continue to abet the financialization of society and undermine the functioning of business. An alternative approach (drawn from a more classic institutional, new ecological, and refocused ethical approaches) is reviewed.

All of us in the computing community understand the importance of recognizing and promoting ethical behavior in our profession. Instruction in ethics is rapidly becoming a part of most computing-related curricula, whether as a stand-alone course or infused into existing courses. Both Computing Curricula 2005 and the current discussions on Computing Curricula 2013 recognize the significance of ethics, generally considering it a core topic across the various computing disciplines. Additionally, in their criteria for the accreditation of computing programs, ABET (...) specifies that a student must attain by the time of graduation an understanding of ethical issues and responsibilities. What has been missing is a formal rite-of-passage ceremony to prompt student recognition and self-reflection on the transition from being a student to a computing professional. In 2009, seventeen faculty members and industry representatives from a wide range of institutions began to address this open problem by forming The Pledge of the Computing Professional [1], [2]. The Pledge exists to promote and recognize the ethical and moral behavior and responsibilities in graduates of computing-related degree programs as they transition to careers of service to society. The Pledge does not seek to define or enforce ethics --- this is the role of other organizations. Specifically, The Pledge is modeled after the Order of the Engineer [3] and provides a rite-of-passage ceremony at the time of graduation. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore political identity for African Americans in an era where the stated aim of the U.S. is global dominance. In ordinary language, I am interested in how blacks can effectively engage in dissent, civil disobedience, protest, insurrection, and revolutionary actions while surviving in an atmosphere where the majority believe either Bush I’s “A friend of my enemy is my enemy,” or Bush II’s “If you harbor terrorists, you’re a terrorist; if you aid and abet terrorists, (...) you’re a terrorist—and you’ll be treated like one.” This paper attempts to interrogate how African Americans—who identify with globally oppressed and distressed peoples—can survive while actively protesting within an armed camp. Or does being black in America mean that one is either a terrorist sympathizer or anUncle Tom? The answers to these questions require a coalition of the unwilling. (shrink)

This book investigates how Homo sapiens thrived in and nurtured a certain social condition that happened to abet our continual survival. This condition of individual autonomy shaped our species and led humans to demand social equality to this day.