Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are actively revolutionizing the healthcare industry. While there is widespread concern that these advances will displace human practitioners within the healthcare sector, there are several tasks – including original and nuanced ethical decision making – that they cannot replace. Further, the implementation of artificial intelligence in clinical practice can be anticipated to drive the production of novel ethical tensions surrounding its use, even while eliminating some of the technical tasks which currently compete with ethical (...) deliberation for clinicians’ limited time. A new argument therefore arises to suggest that although these disruptive technologies will change the face of medicine, they may also foster a revival of several fundamental components inherent to the role of healthcare professionals, chiefly, the principal activities of moral philosophy. Accordingly, “machine medicine” presents a vital opportunity to reinvigorate the field of bioethics, rather than withdraw from it. (shrink)

Mild signs of postpartum depression or anxiety are present in up to half of all new mothers. However, the impact of having the “baby blues” on infant development remains largely unknown. The current study explores a potential relation between mother’s self-reported depression or anxiety symptoms and infant’s motor development in a longitudinal sample of 50 mother-infant dyads. Further, we examine whether engaging in fetal kick counting during pregnancy may reduce maternal psychopathology symptoms and thereby positively influence infant motor development and (...) parent-child engagement during the first months of life. We hypothesized that subclinical maternal psychopathology would negatively impact infant motor development, and that completing a fetal kick count activity during the third trimester would reduce overall signs of maternal psychopathology. Results only partially support these hypotheses. Postpartum maternal anxiety seems to negatively affect the emergence of infants’ fine motor skills. However, engaging in fetal kick counting during pregnancy did not reduce maternal depression or anxiety symptoms. Nevertheless, preliminary evidence suggests that engaging in fetal kick counting may impact early child development by altering the mother’s attitudes toward the child. Future research is needed to examine the value of this low-cost intervention strategy more closely. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 51-53.

This book sets out in plain language ethical questions of direct relevance to business today. This new edition expands the range of issues covered and includes a chapter on international business ethics, drawing extensively from Asian examples.

The shortages of baby formula in the US resulting from the voluntary recall of contaminated products and shutdown of manufacturing facility in February led to increases in the national out-of-stock rate of the baby formula from 18 to 70% over the summer of 2022. This study utilizes social media listening and data analysis to examine how online media reactions to the physical shortage changed over time and how the reaction to the shortage differed from to the initial recall announcements. Improved (...) understanding of reactions to emergent issues in foods through this lens may improve communication efficiency to mitigate potential consequences. (shrink)

Objective: To examine the role of explainability in machine learning for healthcare (MLHC), and its necessity and significance with respect to effective and ethical MLHC application. Study Design and Setting: This commentary engages with the growing and dynamic corpus of literature on the use of MLHC and artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine, which provide the context for a focused narrative review of arguments presented in favour of and opposition to explainability in MLHC. Results: We find that concerns regarding explainability are (...) not limited to MLHC, but rather extend to numerous well-validated treatment interventions as well as to human clinical judgment itself. We examine the role of evidence-based medicine in evaluating unexplainable treatments and technologies, and highlight the analogy between the concept of explainability in MLHC and the related concept of mechanistic reasoning in evidence-based medicine. Conclusion: Ultimately, we conclude that the value of explainability in MLHC is not intrinsic, but is instead instrumental to achieving greater imperatives such as performance and trust. We caution against the uncompromising pursuit of explainability, and advocate instead for the development of robust empirical methods to successfully evaluate increasingly inexplicable algorithmic systems. (shrink)

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary (...) view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one’s rational character, whether or not those activities are under one’s voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle. (shrink)

There exists in academic medicine a core ethical issue that is seldom pursued: trainees are frequently not the best person in the operating room at a given intervention being performed, and yet as a profession we understand a fundamental need to afford them opportunities to perform. Academic centres are traditionally associated with a higher quality of care than non-academic centres, suggesting that practical measures exist within teaching hospitals that effectively mask the clinical discrepancies between trainees and their preceptors. Nonetheless, we (...) are bound by our ethical commitments as physicians to balance the obligations of care with the duty to teach. In order to ethically validate the model of ‘surgeon as teacher’, we propose that there must be a reconciliation of the tensions between traditional professional values in medicine with the constraints inherent in a time-bound utilitarian medical system. Ultimately, we must consciously accept that ensuring the longitudinal availability of skilled surgeons in society aligns more closely with our core ethical obligations as outlined in the social contract that medical professionals maintain with the general public than does the ethical demand to provide unreservedly individual-focused patient care. It is the duty of individual practitioners, as a necessity of lineage to maintain and fulfil our greater duties to society, to foster deontological relationships where possible within this utilitarian system while accepting short-term imperfection in our practice. There are no data in this manuscript. (shrink)

In their forthcoming article, ‘What makes a medical intervention invasive?’ De Marco, Simons, and colleagues explore the meaning and usage of the term ‘invasive’ in medical contexts. They describe a ‘Standard Account’, drawn from dictionary definitions, which defines invasiveness as ‘incision of the skin or insertion of an object into the body’. They then highlight cases wherein invasiveness is employed in a manner that is inconsistent with this account (eg, in describing psychotherapy) to argue that the term invasiveness is often (...) used to explicitly or implicitly reference interventions that do not fall under the standard account. The authors offer an alternative ‘schematic’ definition of invasiveness, whereby medical interventions entail an underlying context-independent property of ‘basic invasiveness’ and may be understood both relative to each other and to a context-specific threshold of what is ‘invasive’. 1 We propose that the meaning of terms such as ‘invasiveness’ is necessarily heterogeneous,... (shrink)

In this article the author examines Fitzpatrick’s foundational critique of liberal legality and racism, a theme which remained central to his decades-long excavation of modern law’s self-identity. After considering Fitzpatrick’s ‘separation thesis’, the author then turns to consider the ways in which neoliberal legality is parasitic upon liberal legal racial formations while at the same time, obscuring the foundational place of race in contemporary capitalism by subsuming material life within its modes of value extraction.

ArgumentBy the mid-eighteenth century, governors of the major European states promoted the study of nature as part of natural-resource based schemes for improvement and economic self-sufficiency. Procuring beneficial knowledge about nature, however, required observers, collectors, and compilers who could produce usable and useful descriptions of nature. The ways governments promoted scientific explorations varied according to the form of government, the makeup of the civil society, the state's economic ideologies and practices, and the geographical situation. This article argues that the roots (...) of a major natural history initiative in Denmark-Norway were firmly planted in the state-church organization. Through the clergymen and their activities, a bishop, supported by the government in Copenhagen, could gather an impressive collection of natural objects, receive observations and descriptions of natural phenomena, and produce natural historical publications that described for the first time many of the species of the north. Devout naturalists were a common species in the eighteenth century, when clergymen and missionaries involved themselves in the investigation of nature in Europe and far beyond. The specific interest here is in how natural history was supported and enforced as part of clerical practice, how specimen exchange was grafted on to pre-existing institutions of gift exchange, and how this influenced the character of the knowledge produced. (shrink)

As Alfandre and colleagues describe in “Between Usual and Crisis Phases of a Public Health Emergency: The Mediating Role of Contingency Measures”, efforts to maintain standards of care durin...

Newcomers and more experienced feminist theorists will welcome this even-handed survey of the care/justice debate within feminist ethics. Grace Clement clarifies the key terms, examines the arguments and assumptions of all sides to the debate, and explores the broader implications for both practical and applied ethics. Readers will appreciate her generous treatment of the feminine, feminist, and justice-based perspectives that have dominated the debate.Clement also goes well beyond description and criticism, advancing the discussion through the incorporation of a broad (...) range of insights into a new integration of the values of care and justice. Care, Autonomy, and Justice marks a major step forward in our understanding of feminist ethics. It is both direct and helpful enough to work as an introduction for students and insightful and original enough to make it necessary reading for scholars. (shrink)

Catherine Malabou's concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to _Plastic Materialities_—whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy—use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. _Plastic Materialities_ also includes three essays by Malabou (...) and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time. Contributors. Brenna Bhandar, Silvana Carotenuto, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Jairus Victor Grove, Catherine Kellogg, Catherine Malabou, Renisa Mawani, Fred Moten, Alain Pottage, Michael J. Shapiro, Alberto Toscano. (shrink)

Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...) empathy gaps arise when one projects one’s own current state into a simulation about another. Second, we argue that this process does not typically confer knowledge, even when the predictions it produces happen to be accurate. Third, we suggest that these results can be used to develop a challenge for L.A. Paul's view that authentic action sometimes requires subjective knowledge of one’s own values and how these values relate to relevant outcomes. We then sketch an alternative view of the epistemic grounds of authenticity, one on which authenticity requires a kind of understanding. The relevant form of understanding can be achieved by subjective knowledge but can also be achieved elsewise, such as through testimony from a close friend about what one values. (shrink)

Analgesia and amnesia represent two complimentary pillars of anesthesia directed, respectively, at mitigating the experience of pain and the processes of encoding that experience into memory. These elements are typically combined in modern anesthetic techniques, but some circumstances exist – such as conscious sedation – in which the conditions of amnesia are satisfied while analgesia plays an auxiliary and often incomplete role. These activities reflect a widely held yet underrecognized belief in clinical practice that although pain experiences may be short-lived, (...) their representation in memory and its subsequent effects on thought and emotion can have enduring consequences for patients. In this exploratory article, we delineate phenomenal and abstract ontological categories of pain experience; advance a claim that they are treated by analgesic and amnestic agents, respectively; and describe how each class of experience is uniquely able to bring about individual harm. Beginning with the question of how it can be permissible to allow any preventable experiences or memories of pain, we identify that both phenomenal and abstract pain manifest on a spectrum of severity, each with an enigmatic threshold – unique to circumstance and individual – that determines whether or not pain will translate into harm, and what permissions therefore surround its treatment. Ultimately, we find that there are compelling physiological reasons for the concurrent use of analgesics and amnestics when pain experience exceeds these thresholds, while the treatment of “sub-threshold” experience in either class is a purely ethical imperative to be balanced with considerations of the potential harms posed by the treatments themselves. (shrink)

In many jurisdictions, legal frameworks afford patients the opportunity to make prospective medical decisions or to create directives that contain a special provision forfeiting their own ability to object to those decisions at a future time point, should they lose decision‐making capacity. These agreements have been described with widely varying nomenclatures, including Ulysses Contracts, Odysseus Transfers, Psychiatric Advance Directives with Ulysses Clauses, and Powers of Attorney with Special Provisions. As a consequence of this terminological heterogeneity, it is challenging for healthcare (...) providers to understand the terms and uses of these agreements and for ethicists to engage with the nuances of clinical decision‐making with such unique provisions surrounding patient autonomy. In theory, prospective self‐binding agreements may safeguard patient's “authentic” wishes from future “inauthentic” changes of mind. In practice, it is unclear what may be comprised within these agreements or how—and to what effect—they are used. The primary focus of this integrative review is to curate the existing literature describing Ulysses Contracts (and analogous decisions) used in the clinical arena, in order to empirically synthesize their shared essence and provide insights into the traditional components of these agreements when used in practice, the requirements of their consent processes, and the outcomes of their utilization. (shrink)

How should business deal with society's increasing demands for ethical and social responsibility? In plain language this book considers these and other ethical questions of direct relevance to business in the 1990s. It discusses the nature of ethics, ethical reasoning, the use of stakeholder analysis, and other central concepts used in business ethics. Using mainly, but not exclusively, Australian cases and specific examples, the book covers issues such as fairness in business dealings, advertising ethics, discrimination, and codes of ethics.

There is a long-standing discussion on the positive interactions between enterprise value creation and business competitiveness. The corporate value can be seen as being created from three major sources within the cycle - from employees, from processes, and from customers or investors through reinvestment. To achieve competitive advantages, a firm must create more value than its competitors in the industry. Emphasizing that, firms should explore the positive drivers of customer value creation, allowing for a true value creation that will lead (...) to increments in competitiveness. In reality, however, there are also barriers that hinder customer value creation. Targeting the above issues that have not yet been explored or analyzed, we have collected related literature at the first stage. Based on these presumable assumptions, this paper then conducts an empirical study by surveying and analyzing the relevance given by the investigated leading machinery measuring equipment firms in Taiwan, regarding the concerns as drivers and barriers in relation to customer value creation. This paper expecially aims to answer several key questions: What drivers revolving around employees and processes can facilitate the organization to create more value for its customers? Conversely, what barriers block the organization from creating value for customers in examining the same dimensions? Does value creation direct an organization's profitability and competitiveness? Our questionnaire survey results show that the most recognized and agreed drivers of customer value creation in consideration of employees are "distinctive skills", "personal experience", "learning and training", and "team work"; and, in regard to the firm's processes, the key drivers are "innovation and evolution", "R&D capability", and "capability for differentiation". Conversely, the most recognized and agreed barriers to customer value creation in relation to employees are a "distrustful environment" and "inadequate knowledge"; and, in terms of processes, they are "short of core technology", "poor resource support", and "bad services and attitudes". Furthermore, our in-depth interview outcomes reveal that "capital sufficiency" and "mergers and acquisitions" are in practice considered to be other important customer value creation drivers; in contrast, "cultural and structural barriers" and "short of mechanisms to measure customer value creation effectively" are viewed as additional critical barriers to customer value creation. (shrink)

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception (...) and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

Amodal completion is the representation of occluded parts of perceived objects. We argue for the following three claims: First, at least some amodal completion-involved experiences can ground knowledge about the occluded portions of perceived objects. Second, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not sensitive, that is, it is not the case that in the nearest worlds in which the relevant claim is false, that claim is not believed true. Third, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge (...) are not safe, that is, it is not the case that in all or nearly all near worlds where the relevant claim is believed true, that claim is in fact true. Thus, certain instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge refute both the view that knowledge is necessarily sensitive and the view that knowledge is necessarily safe. (shrink)

I argue that we sometimes visually perceive the intentions of others. Just as we can see something as blue or as moving to the left, so too can we see someone as intending to evade detection or as aiming to traverse a physical obstacle. I consider the typical subject presented with the Heider and Simmel movie, a widely studied ‘animacy’ stimulus, and I argue that this subject mentally attributes proximal intentions to some of the objects in the movie. I further (...) argue that these attributions are unrevisable in a certain sense and that this result can be used to as part of an argument that these attributions are not post-perceptual thoughts. Finally, I suggest that if these attributions are visual experiences, and more particularly visual illusions, their unrevisability can be satisfyingly explained, by appealing to the mechanisms which underlie visual illusions more generally. (shrink)

Health professionals around the world have played an integral role in state-sponsored torture during numerous historical episodes, at times providing “expertise and a veneer of legitimacy to a process that involved violations of basic human rights.” These incidents demonstrate why legal and ethical standards among health professionals should be upheld, no matter the context. For example, health professionals during the Third Reich in Germany notoriously worked with the Nazi government to perform painful medical experiments on individuals without their consent and (...) to supervise systematic killings. During the dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay and during apartheid in South Africa, medical professionals also participated in torture. In recent years, government documents, news reports, articles, books, and testimonies by detainees and health professionals have exposed the involvement of health professionals in the abuse and torture of detained individuals at U.S. detention facilities around the world. (shrink)

Health professionals around the world have played an integral role in state-sponsored torture during numerous historical episodes, at times providing “expertise and a veneer of legitimacy to a process that involved violations of basic human rights.” These incidents demonstrate why legal and ethical standards among health professionals should be upheld, no matter the context. For example, health professionals during the Third Reich in Germany notoriously worked with the Nazi government to perform painful medical experiments on individuals without their consent and (...) to supervise systematic killings. During the dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay and during apartheid in South Africa, medical professionals also participated in torture. In recent years, government documents, news reports, articles, books, and testimonies by detainees and health professionals have exposed the involvement of health professionals in the abuse and torture of detained individuals at U.S. detention facilities around the world. (shrink)

Human infants begin very early in life to take advantage of multisensory information by extracting the invariant amodal information that is conveyed redundantly by multiple senses. Here we addressed the question as to whether infants can bind multisensory moving stimuli, and whether this occurs even if the motion produced by the stimuli is only illusory. Three- to four-month-old infants were presented with two bimodal pairings: visuo-tactile and audio-visual. Visuo-tactile pairings consisted of apparently vertically moving bars (the Barber Pole illusion) moving (...) in either the same or opposite direction with a concurrent tactile stimulus consisting of strokes given on the infant’s back. Audio-visual pairings consisted of the Barber Pole illusion in its visual and auditory version, the latter giving the impression of a continuous rising or ascending pitch. We found that infants were able to discriminate congruently (same direction) vs. incongruently moving (opposite direction) pairs irrespective of modality (Experiment 1). Importantly, we also found that congruently moving visuo-tactile and audio-visual stimuli were preferred over incongruently moving bimodal stimuli (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that very young infants are able to extract motion as amodal component and use it to match stimuli that only apparently move in the same direction. (shrink)

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider whether those solutions (...) extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys. (shrink)

1. Empire, Colonialism, and Globalization -- 2. Consumerism and Overconsumption -- 3. Nature and "Han" -- 4. Transformative Power of the Spirit -- Conclusion.

Postcolonialism has made an impact in today’s world as it affects one’s understanding of self, the other and community. Colonialism has had devastating consequences on many people around the globe. It has created a sense of alienation, dislocation, exile and subordination for many women. Due to colonialism, globalization and migration, many women are living in other places than their birth places. Asian American women are not exempt from the affects of colonialism and they are experiencing the affect of being the (...) other and the foreigner. In light of postcolonial studies, it may be important and helpful to discuss hybridity as a way of understanding identity in an ever changing world. (shrink)

People today live within the context of a globalized world with people of many cultures and religions living together. This intermixing of peoples, cultures, societies and religions creates the opportunity for different religions and thoughts to combine into new perspectives and develop a more relevant Christianity. The basic tenets of Asian culture, religion and thought can instruct and develop theology so that theology can remain relevant to our modern world. In particular, the Asian understanding of Chi can nurture a stronger (...) theological perspective of the Holy Spirit. This paper will examine Chi and illustrate the similarities it shares with the Holy Spirit to work towards a pneumatology which will encourage people to live harmoniously and peacefully with one another. (shrink)

Korean American women are the foundation of the Korean American church. We are devoted, contributing members in the church, but we are seldom given positions of leadership or power. From our subordinate role in the church and wider society, Korean American women have been perpetually subject to racial and gender injustice. To work toward equal empowerment, it is imperative to reimagine historical Christian teaching about God so that it liberates rather than oppresses. As we engage in theological reform, we can (...) begin to experience the wholeness that comes from a Spirit God who embraces all people regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or social status. As a result, Korean American women can finally feel included and contributive to a society which has historically treated them as “perpetual foreigners.” They can also push for multicultural excellence rather than sustaining the dominant white criterion of value. As hybrid spaces proliferate in diversifying America, Korean American women can be an integral source of reimagining the places we inhabit, something that proves to be increasingly necessary to keep the church accessible and contemporary. (shrink)

Through its analysis of history, race, and theology, this essay offers a unique and compelling approach to the discussion of ministry among women and child migrants. The critical discussion of Asian immigration and sociological patterns will be new and challenging to many readers.

Traditional Western Christology, focussed on the maleness of Christ, has skewed and limited Christian understandings of God away from female images of the divine and towards masculine language and imagery. The creation of a male norm within the Western Christian tradition has marginalized women of all colours and cultures. Asian North American women have struggled not only to make new sense of 'God-language', but also to harmonize traditional Christian claims with the world-view and culture of the East. Since Christian feminists (...) have attempted to recover a more positive God-language by use of the concept of Sophia Wisdom, this article suggests that an effective strategy would be for Asian women to inculturate the language of Sophia into Eastern philosophical categories. This could be achieved by way of harmonization with the Buddhist concept of wisdom, prajna. (shrink)