Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

Le mode infini immédiat de l’étendue (MIIE) est l’un des éléments les plus mystérieux de l’ontologie de Spinoza. Malgré son importance pour le système métaphysique de Spinoza, ce dernier nous dit très peu à propos de ce mode. Dans un effort pour faire progresser l’étude de cette question, j’examine trois hypothèses bien acceptées qui traitent de l’identité de ce mode : l’interprétation de la force, l’interprétation nomique et l’interprétation cinétique. J’affirme premièrement que l’interprétation de la force et l’interprétation nomique doivent (...) faire face à de sérieuses objections. Deuxièmement, je soutiens que malgré les affirmations contraires des spécialistes, l’interprétation cinétique du MIIE est une option valable. (shrink)

Anesthesiology training programs are tasked with equipping trainees with the skills to become medically and ethically competent in the practice of anesthesia and to be prepared to obtain board certification, yet there is currently no standardized ethics curriculum within anesthesia training programs in the United States. To bridge this gap, and to provide a validated ethics curriculum to meet the aforementioned needs, in July 2021, a survey was sent to anesthesia scholars in the field of biomedical ethics to identify key (...) areas that should be included in such an ethics curriculum. The responses were rated on a Likert scale and ranked. This paper identifies the top ten topics identified as high priority for inclusion in an anesthesiology training program and consequently deemed most relevant to meet the educational needs of graduates of an anesthesiology residency: (1) capacity to consent; (2) capacity to refuse elective versus lifesaving treatment; (3) application of surrogate decisionmaking; (4) approach to do not resuscitate (DNR) status in the operating room; (5) patient autonomy and advance directives; (6) navigating patient beliefs that may impair care; (7) “futility” in end-of-life care: when to withdraw life support; (8) disclosure of medical errors; (9) clinical criteria for “brain death” and consequences of this definition; and (10) the impaired anesthesiologist. (shrink)

“Vulnerability” is a key concept for research ethics and public health ethics. This term can be discussed from either a conceptual or a practical perspective. I previously proposed the metaphor of layers to understand how this concept functions from the conceptual perspective in human research. In this paper I will clarify how my analysis includes other definitions of vulnerability. Then, I will take the practical‐ethical perspective, rejecting the usefulness of taxonomies to analyze vulnerabilities. My proposal specifies two steps and provides (...) a procedural guide to help rank layers. I introduce the notion of cascade vulnerability and outline the dispositional nature of layers of vulnerability to underscore the importance of identifying their stimulus condition. In addition, I identify three kinds of obligations and some strategies to implement them. This strategy outlines the normative force of harmful layers of vulnerability. It offers concrete guidance. It contributes substantial content to the practical sphere but it does not simplify or idealize research subjects, research context or public health challenges. (shrink)

Explores how to identify future-proof science. Peter Vickers takes a transdisciplinary approach in his analysis of 'scientific fact' in order to defend science against potentially dangerous scepticism.

Virtue ethics has been challenged on empirical grounds by philosophical interpreters of situationist social psychology. Challenges are necessarily challenges to something or other, so it’s only possible to understand the situationist challenge to virtue ethics if we have an antecedent grasp on virtue ethics itself. To this end, I first identify the non-negotiable “hard core” of virtue ethics with the conjunction of nine claims, arguing that virtue ethics does make substantive empirical assumptions about human conduct. Next, I rearticulate the situationist (...) challenge in light of these nine claims. I then turn to a discussion of specifications of several responses typically made by defenders of virtue ethics against the situationist challenge, arguing that most of them either are unsound or give up one of the elements in the hard core. A few, however, survive this criticism, and so I conclude by suggesting ways in which the situationist challenge might be not so much resisted as co-opted. Situational influences can be used to help people simulate virtue, a phenomenon I call factitious virtue. (shrink)

Achieving food system sustainability is one of the more pressing challenges of this century. Over the last decades, experts from diverse disciplines and intellectual traditions have worked to document the critical threats to food system sustainability and to define an appropriate agenda for action. Nevertheless, these efforts have tended to focus selectively on only a few components of the food system or have tended to be framed in particular discourses. Depending on the point of departure, what aspects of the food (...) system are considered threatened, and what must be sustained, can differ greatly between perspectives. In this article, we draw from systems-thinking and social-ecological systems concepts to focus on the underlying process-related attributes that could support a more sustainable food system. We then examine the support for specific system attributes in six different knowledge domains addressing sustainable agriculture and food. From this review, we identify five system attributes—diversity, modularity, transparency, innovation and congruence—that are repeatedly featured in the different knowledge domains as critical aspects of food system sustainability. We argue that in the face of considerable complexity and high uncertainty, these attributes can serve as a guide to conceptualizing food system choices adaptively and iteratively. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics consult services are well established, but often remain underutilized. Our aim was to identify the barriers and perceptions of the Ethics consult service for physicians, advance practice providers (APPs), and nurses at our urban academic medical center which might contribute to underutilization.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional single-health system, anonymous written online survey, which was developed by the UCSD Health Clinical Ethics Committee and distributed by Survey Monkey. We compare responses between physicians, APPs, and nurses using standard parametric and non-parametric statistical (...) methods. Satisfaction with ethics consult and likelihood of calling Ethics service again were assessed using a 0–100 scale using a 5-likert response structured (0 being “not helpful at all” to 100 being “extremely helpful”) and results presented using box plots and interquartile ranges (IQR).ResultsFrom January to July 2019, approximately 3800 surveys were sent to all physicians, APPs and nurses with a return rate of 5.5—10%. Although the majority of respondents had encountered an ethical dilemma (85–92.1%) only approximately half had ever requested an Ethics consult. The primary reason for physicians never having requested a consult was that they never felt the need for help (41%). For APPs the primary reasons were not knowing an Ethics consult service was available (33.3%) or not knowing how to contact Ethics (27.8%). For nurses, it was not knowing how to contact the Ethics consult service (30.8%) or not feeling the need for help (26.2%). The median satisfaction score (IQR) for Ethics consult services rated on a 0–100 scale, from physicians was 76 (29), for AAPs 89 (49), and nurses 70 (40) (p = 0.62). The median (IQR) of likelihood of consulting Ethics in the future also on a 0–100 scale was 71 (47) for physicians, 69 (45) for APPs, and 61 (45) for nurses (p = 0.79). APP’s and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to believe that the team did not act on the Ethics consult’s recommendations.ConclusionsBased on the results presented, we were able to identify actionable steps to better engage healthcare providers—and in particular APPs and nurses—and scale up institutional educational efforts to increase awareness of the role of the Ethics consult service at our institution. Actionable steps included implementing a system of ongoing feedback that is critical for the sustainability of the Ethics service role. We hope this project can serve as a blueprint for other hospital-based Ethics consult services to improve the quality of their programs. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has been challenged on empirical grounds by philosophical interpreters of situationist social psychology. Challenges are necessarily challenges to something or other, so it’s only possible to understand the situationist challenge to virtue ethics if we have an antecedent grasp on virtue ethics itself. To this end, I first identify the non-negotiable “hard core” of virtue ethics with the conjunction of nine claims, arguing that virtue ethics does make substantive empirical assumptions about human conduct. Next, I rearticulate the situationist (...) challenge in light of these nine claims. I then turn to a discussion of specifications of several responses typically made by defenders of virtue ethics against the situationist challenge, arguing that most of them either are unsound or give up one of the elements in the hard core. A few, however, survive this criticism, and so I conclude by suggesting ways in which the situationist challenge might be not so much resisted as co-opted. Situational influences can be used to help people simulate virtue, a phenomenon I call factitious virtue. (shrink)

Objects appear to fall into different sorts, each with their own criteria for identity. This raises the question of whether sorts overlap. Abstractionists about numbers—those who think natural numbers are objects characterized by abstraction principles—face an acute version of this problem. Many abstraction principles appear to characterize the natural numbers. If each abstraction principle determines its own sort, then there is no single subject-matter of arithmetic—there are too many numbers. That is, unless objects can belong to more than one sort. (...) But if there are multi-sorted objects, there should be cross-sortal identity principles for identifying objects across sorts. The going cross-sortal identity principle, ECIA2 of Cook and Ebert (2005), solves the problem of too many numbers. But, I argue, it does so at a high cost. I therefore propose a novel cross-sortal identity principle, based on embeddings of the induced models of abstracts developed by Walsh (2012). The new criterion matches ECIA2’s success, but offers interestingly different answers to the more controversial identifications made by ECIA2. (shrink)

Most early studies of consciousness have focused on human subjects. This is understandable, given that humans are capable of reporting accurately the events they experience through language or by way of other kinds of voluntary response. As researchers turn their attention to other animals, “accurate report” methodologies become increasingly difficult to apply. Alternative strategies for amassing evidence for consciousness in non-human species include searching for evolutionary homologies in anatomical substrates and measurement of physiological correlates of conscious states. In addition, creative (...) means must be developed for eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness. In this paper, we explore whether necessary conditions for consciousness can be established for species as disparate as birds and cephalopods. We conclude that a strong case can be made for avian species and that the case for cephalopods remains open. Nonetheless, a consistent effort should yield new means for interpreting animal behavior. (shrink)

Agnotology concerns the creation and preservation of confusion and ignorance. Certain positions are advocated in science in order to promote sociopolitical interests with the result of launching mock controversies or epistemically unjustified dissent. I propose to identify agnotological ploys by the discrepancy between the conclusions suggested by the design of a study and the conclusions actually drawn or intimated. This mechanism of “false advertising” serves to implement agnotological endeavors and helps identify them without having to invoke the intentions of the (...) relevant agents. I discuss three agnotological cases, i.e., studies on bisphenol A, Bt-maize/Roundup, and Oslo’s airport Gardermoen. Pinpointing agnotological endeavors is a means for weeding out approaches that look fitting at first glance, but are blatantly inappropriate, in fact. (shrink)

Recent advancements in neuroengineering research have prompted neuroethicists to propose a variety of “ethical guidance” frameworks (e.g., principles, guidelines, framing questions, responsible research innovation frameworks, and ethical priorities) to inform this work. In this chapter, we offer a comparative analysis of five recently proposed ethical guidance frameworks (NIH neuroethics guiding principles, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Global Neuroethics Summit Delegates, the Center for Neurotechnology’s neuroethical principles and guidelines, and the Neurotechnology Ethics Taskforce’s ethical priorities). We identify some common themes among these (...) frameworks, making explicit significant areas of convergence. We also highlight three areas of ethical consideration that have not received sufficient attention across these frameworks (extended care for research participants, cultural salience, and stakeholder input). Further attention and analysis of these three areas would improve the breadth and scope of ethical considerations for neuroengineering research. (shrink)

Background: Concerns have been expressed regarding the adequacy of ethics review systems in developing countries. Limited data are available regarding the structural and functional status of Research Ethics Committees (RECs) in the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to survey the existing RECs in Egypt to better understand their functioning status, perceived resource needs, and challenges. Methods: We distributed a self-administered survey tool to Egyptian RECs to collect information on the following domains: general characteristics of the REC, membership (...) composition, ethics training, workload, process of ethics review, perceived challenges to effective functioning, and financial and material resources. We used basic descriptive statistics to evaluate the quantitative data. Results: We obtained responses from 67% (12/18) of the identified RECs. Most RECs (10/12) have standard operating procedures and many (7/12) have established policies to manage conflicts of interests. The average membership was 10.3 with a range from 7-19. The predominant member type was physicians (69.5% of all of the REC members) with little lay representation (13.7%). Most RECs met at least once/month and the average number of protocols reviewed per meeting was 3.8 with a range from 1-10. Almost three-quarters of the members from all of the 12 RECs indicated they received some formal training in ethics. Regarding resources, roughly half of the RECs have dedicated capital equipment (e.g., meeting room, computers, office furniture, etc); none of the RECs have a formal operating budget. Perceived challenges included the absence of national research ethics guidelines and national standards for RECs and lack of ongoing training of its members in research ethics. Conclusion: Our study documents several areas of strengths and areas for improvements in the operations of Egyptian RECs. Regarding strengths, many of the existing RECs meet frequently, have a majority of members with prior training in research ethics, and have written policies. Regarding areas for improvements, many RECs should strive for a more diverse membership and should receive more financial resources and administrative support personnel. We recommend that RECs include more individuals from the community and develop a continuing educational program for its members. Institutional officials should be aware of the resource capacity needs of their RECs. (shrink)

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up (...) and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory. (shrink)

We can best begin from Wilson's "simple little puzzle" about Caesar and Antony: "What would the world be like if Julius Caesar had all the properties of Mark Antony and Mark Antony had all the properties of Julius Caesar?" Wilson's own approach to an answer is indirect--he begins by telling us not what such a world would be like but what it would look like. "Clearly the world would look exactly the same under our supposition." But this assumes that the (...) question "What would such a world look like?" is a proper one; which it surely is not. For his answer to it is meaningless until he specifies to whom this supposed world would look as he says it would. It would look exactly the same to him or to me; but would it have looked the same to Caesar or to Antony? In fact Julius Caesar had the experiences of being called "Julius Caesar," being murdered on the Ides of March, and so on, and these are very different experiences from being called "Mark Antony," dallying on the Nile with Cleopatra, and so on; so I don't see how this alternative course of events could possibly have looked the same to Julius Caesar; or--using a similar line of argument--to Mark Antony. So I cannot agree that, as Wilson goes on to say, "our attempt to describe a distinct possible world has produced just the same old world all over again." I am not, indeed, convinced that even a world which looked to everyone just as the actual one does would necessarily be the same world ; but even putting this doubt aside, since the world mentioned wouldn't look to everyone as the actual world does, it wouldn't be the same even by Wilson's own standards. (shrink)

Background Although it is the moral duty of physicians to protect vulnerable patients, there are no data on how vulnerability is perceived in clinical practice. This study explores how physicians classify someone as “vulnerable”. Method Thirty-three physicians were initially questioned about resource allocation problems in their work. The results of these interviews were examined with qualitative study software to identify characteristics associated with vulnerability in patients. Data were conceptualized, classified and cross-linked to highlight the major determinants of vulnerability. The findings (...) revealed the principal factors that make patients vulnerable in clinical practice, according to our definition of vulnerability: the likelihood of having one’s interests unjustly considered. Results Vulnerability can arise as a result of a mismatch between the characteristics of patients and physicians, the healthcare system, the treatment, or the communication between physicians and patients. Vulnerability appears as a gap between a patient’s needs and the means intended to meet them. Vulnerability can further be the result of doing too little or too much for patients. This result suggests that structures provided by healthcare systems are not as differentiated as they should be to cover all situations. Our initial definition of vulnerability was illustrated and supported by our results, showing that it encompasses all factors involved, not solely personal characteristics, indicating the need for a more pragmatic approach for use in clinical practice. Conclusion Vulnerability is not due to a single factor but appears under certain circumstances when there is a discrepancy between a patient’s interests and the care provided, despite existing compensation systems. (shrink)

Given the plethora of competing logical theories of validity available, it’s understandable that there has been a marked increase in interest in logical epistemology within the literature. If we are to choose between these logical theories, we require a good understanding of the suitable criteria we ought to judge according to. However, so far there’s been a lack of appreciation of how logical practice could support an epistemology of logic. This paper aims to correct that error, by arguing for a (...) practice-based approach to logical epistemology. By looking at the types of evidence logicians actually appeal to in attempting to support their theories, we can provide a more detailed and realistic picture of logical epistemology. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of a practice-based approach, we look to a particular case of logical argumentation—the dialetheist’s arguments based upon the self-referential paradoxes—and show that the evidence appealed to support a particular theory of logical epistemology, logical abductivism. (shrink)

Achieving food system sustainability is one of the more pressing challenges of this century. Over the last decades, experts from diverse disciplines and intellectual traditions have worked to document the critical threats to food system sustainability and to define an appropriate agenda for action. Nevertheless, these efforts have tended to focus selectively on only a few components of the food system or have tended to be framed in particular discourses. Depending on the point of departure, what aspects of the food (...) system are considered threatened, and what must be sustained, can differ greatly between perspectives. In this article, we draw from systems-thinking and social-ecological systems concepts to focus on the underlying process-related attributes that could support a more sustainable food system. We then examine the support for specific system attributes in six different knowledge domains addressing sustainable agriculture and food. From this review, we identify five system attributes—diversity, modularity, transparency, innovation and congruence—that are repeatedly featured in the different knowledge domains as critical aspects of food system sustainability. We argue that in the face of considerable complexity and high uncertainty, these attributes can serve as a guide to conceptualizing food system choices adaptively and iteratively. (shrink)

Along with potential benefits to healthcare delivery, machine learning healthcare applications raise a number of ethical concerns. Ethical evaluations of ML-HCAs will need to structure th...

Winner of the 2020 Essay Competition of the International Social Ontology Society. -/- Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive (...) human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mecha- nisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Identifying Consumption illustrates how an individual’s buying habits are shaped by the dynamics of the consumer marketplace—and thus how consumption and identity inform each other. Robert Dunn brings together the various theories of spending and develops a mode of analysis concentrating on the individual subjectivity of consumption. By doing so, he addresses how we spend and its relationship with status and lifestyle. Dunn provides a comprehensive guide to the study of modern consumer behavior before summarizing and critiquing the major (...) theories of consumption. At this juncture, he proposes a method of analysis that focuses on the significance of status and lifestyle in social relations that can help explain how the consumer marketplace is shaped. He concludes by raising issues about different ways of consuming and the relationship between consumption and identity. (shrink)

Recent highly publicized privacy breaches in health care and genomics research have led many to question whether current standards of data protection are adequate. Improvements in de-identification techniques, combined with pervasive data sharing, have increased the likelihood that external parties can track individuals across multiple databases. This paper focuses on the communication of identifiability risks in the process of obtaining consent for donation and research. Most ethical discussions of identifiability risks have focused on the severity of the risk and how (...) it might be mitigated, and what precisely is at stake in pervasive data sharing. However, there has been little discussion of whether and how to communicate the risk to potential donors. We review the ethical arguments behind favoring different types of risk communication in the consent process, and outline how identifiability concerns can be incorporated into either a detailed or simplified method of communicating risks during the consent process. (shrink)

Philosophers concerned with procreative ethics have long been puzzled by Parfit’s Non-Identity Problem (NIP). Various solutions have been proposed, but I argue that we have not solved the problem on its own narrow person-affecting terms, i.e., in terms of the identified individuals affected by procreative decisions and acts, especially future children. Thus, the core problem remains unsolved. This is a nagging concern for all who hold the common intuition that actions that harm no one are permissible. I argue against Harmon’s (...) and Woodward’s direct, narrow person-affecting solutions, and in favor of a new solution to the NIP. My solution, or, rather, dissolution, is based on the argument that merely possible people, i.e., hypothetical people who could possibly, but will not actually, exist, are morally irrelevant. I show that the NIP only arises when we concern ourselves with merely possible people. Once we are careful to restrict our concerns to only those that do or will exist, the NIP is dissolved. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that human memories are stored not between neurons as synaptic weights, but within individual neurons themselves. This opens the possibility to replace the dominant paradigm of brain function – neural networks – with a new one. In this article, I explore how “identified neurons” could explain how memories are stored, and how human traits are implemented in the brain.

patient care at the rural academic medical center. The purpose of this study was to (1) identify and describe the ethical issues perceived by registered nurses employed at a rural academic medical center and (2) analyze the variables influencing the registered nurses' ethical decision making and the process used by these registered nurses when resolving ethical issues. The 17 registered nurses who completed the survey identified a total of 21 ethical issues that they had experienced during the last year. The (...) ethical issues that nurses recalled were significantly more likely to be relationship issues, whereas issues documented within the ethics consultation service were significantly more likely to involve limiting treatment. Communication was a major variable influencing nurse's ethical decision making. Nurses felt the ethical issue resolved satisfactorily when the patient's needs were met, communication occurred with the patient and/or family, the entire healthcare team was involved and in agreement, and there was sufficient time available to make a decision. The nurses did not feel that the ethical situation was resolved satisfactorily when not handled from the patient's perspective; the patient suffered; there was a lack of teamwork, agreement, and/or support; and the process took too long. The nurses' recommendations for resources needed to assist with the resolution of ethical issues included accessible ethics mechanisms, education, improved interprofessional relationships and collaboration, and unbiased support for patient and family decision making. Implications for nurse managers are discussed and future research questions are identified.... (shrink)

Because obituaries are succinct and explicitly intended to summarize their subjects’ lives, they may be expected to include only the features that the author finds most salient but also to signal to others in the community the socially-recognized aspects of the deceased’s character. We begin by reviewing studies 1 and 2, in which obituaries were carefully read and labeled. We then report study 3, which further develops these results with a semi-automated, large-scale semantic analysis of several thousand obituaries. Geography, gender, (...) and elite status all turn out to be associated with the virtues and values associated with the deceased. (shrink)

Ian Hacking uses the looping effect to describe how classificatory practices in the human sciences interact with the classified people. While arguably this interaction renders the affected human kinds unstable and hence different from natural kinds, realists argue that also some prototypical natural kinds are interactive and human kinds in general are stable enough to support explanations and predictions. I defend a more fine-grained realist interpretation of interactive human kinds by arguing for an explanatory domain account of the looping effect. (...) First, I argue that knowledge of the feedback mechanisms that mediate the looping effect can supplement, and help to identify, the applicability domain over which a kind and its property variations are stably explainable. Second, by applying this account to cross-cultural case studies of psychiatric disorders, I distinguish between congruent feedback mechanisms that explain matches between classifications and kinds, and incongruent feedback mechanisms that explain mismatches. For example, congruent mechanisms maintain Western auditory experiences in schizophrenia, whereas exporting diagnostic labels inflicts incongruence by influencing local experiences. Knowledge of the mechanisms can strengthen explanatory domains, and thereby facilitate classificatory adjustments and possible interventions on psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue on argumentative patterns in discourse, more in particular on argumentative patterns with pragmatic argumentation as a main argument that are prototypical of argumentative discourse in certain communicative activity types in the political, the legal, the medical, and the academic domain. It situates the studies of argumentative patterns reported in these papers in the pragma-dialectical research program. In order to be able to do so, it is first explained in which consecutive (...) stages the pragma-dialectical theorizing has developed, what the study of argumentative patterns involves, and why the identification of argumentative patterns represents a vital stage in the development of pragma-dialectics. The description of the theoretical innovations that are introduced and the exposition of their relationship with the standard and extended pragma-dialectical theory create a conceptual and terminological framework for understanding the background and the rationale of the current research projects. (shrink)

To be effective ethical business leaders, students need experience identifying ethical dilemmas. Textbooks provide models and guidelines to categorize ethical challenges, yet students need practice applying these tools in the real world. The exercise described in this study is designed to do just that by helping students learn to identify ethical challenges in marketing. Using the marketing mix as a framework, this scavenger hunt-like exercise provides significant learning experiences by emphasizing teamwork, out of classroom learning, and meeting students where (...) they are with technology. The exercise may be used at either an undergraduate or graduate level in business ethics classes. Learning themes tapped in this exercise can be realized in the on-site classroom or the virtual classroom. Further variations on these themes conclude the article. (shrink)

Among their uses, mass media codes of ethics declare the values of groups of media practitioners. This paper uses Schwartz's social psychology typology to identify and compare 216 values stated or implied in 15 codes of ethics for associations of journalists, bloggers, advertising/marketing practitioners, and public relations practitioners. Despite differences in their communication goals, codes generally share many of the same general values types yet often use similar words to describe different values and loyalties.

Background: Past research has highlighted the role of trauma in social adjustment problems, but little is known about the underlying process. This is a barrier to developing effective interventions for social adjustment of traumatized individuals. The present study addressed this research gap through a cognitive model.Methods: A total of 604 young adults from different backgrounds were assessed through self-report questionnaires. The data were analyzed through path analysis and multivariate analysis of variance. Two path analyses were conducted separately for migrant and (...) Australian groups.Results: Analyses indicated that cognitive avoidance and social problem solving can significantly mediate the relation between trauma and social adjustment. According to the model, reacting to trauma by cognitive avoidance can disturb the cognitive capacities that are required for social problem solving. Consequently, a lack of effective social problem solving significantly hinders social adjustment. There were no significant differences among the Australian, non-refugee immigrant and refugee participants on the dependent variables. Moreover, the hypothesized links between the variables was confirmed similarly for both migrant and Australian groups.Conclusion: The findings have important implications for interventions targeting the social adjustment of young individuals. We assert that overlooking the processes identified in this study, can hinder the improvement of social adjustment in young adults with a history of trauma. Recommendations for future research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

According to the environment-induced approach to decoherence, the split of the Universe into the degrees of freedom which are of direct interest to the observer and the remaining degrees of freedom is absolutely essential for decoherence. However, the EID approach offers no general criterion for deciding where to place the “cut” between system and environment: the environment may be “external” or “internal”. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that decoherence is a relative phenomenon, better understood from a (...) closed-system perspective according to which the split of a closed quantum system into an open subsystem and its environment is just a way of selecting a particular space of relevant observables of the whole closed system. In order to support this claim, we shall consider the results obtained in a natural generalization of the simple spin-bath model usually studied in the literature. Our main thesis will lead us to two corollaries. First, the problem of identifying the system that decoheres is actually a pseudo-problem, which vanishes as soon as one acknowledges the relative nature of decoherence. Second, the usually supposed link between decoherence and energy dissipation is misguided. As previously pointed out, energy dissipation and decoherence are different phenomena, and we shall argue for this difference on the basis of the relative nature of decoherence. (shrink)

This paper examines the possibility of finding evidence that phenomenal consciousness is independent of access. The suggestion reviewed is that we should look for isomorphisms between phenomenal and neural activation spaces. It is argued that the fact that phenomenal spaces are mapped via verbal report is no problem for this methodology. The fact that activation and phenomenal space are mapped via different means does not mean that they cannot be identified. The paper finishes by examining how data addressing this theoretical (...) question could be obtained. (shrink)

This study aimed to define the psychological markers for future development of depression symptoms following the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. Based on previous studies, we focused on loneliness, intolerance of uncertainty and emotion estimation biases as potential predictors of elevated depression levels. During the general lockdown in April 2020, 551 participants reported their psychological health by means of various online questionnaires and an implicit task. Out of these participants, 129 took part in a second phase in June 2020. (...) Subjective loneliness during the lockdown rather than objective isolation was the strongest predictor of symptoms of depression 5 weeks later. Younger age and health related worry also predicted higher non-clinical levels of depression and emotional distress. The results support the diathesis-stress model, which posits that a combination of preexisting vulnerabilities along with stressors such as negative life events are among the factors affecting the development of psychopathology. Moreover, our results correspond with those of previous studies conducted worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken together, these findings call for focusing on psychological factors, especially among younger people, to identify individuals at risk for future development of depression and to promote new strategies for prevention. (shrink)

Although emerging evidence has implicated structural/functional abnormalities of patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder, definitive neuroimaging markers remain obscured due to inconsistent or incompatible findings, especially for structural imaging. Furthermore, brain differences defined by statistical analysis are difficult to implement individual prediction. The present study has employed the machine learning techniques under the unified framework in neuroimaging to identify the neuroimaging markers of patients with ASD and distinguish them from typically developing controls. To enhance the interpretability of the machine learning model, (...) the study has processed three levels of assessments including model-level assessment, feature-level assessment, and biology-level assessment. According to these three levels assessment, the study has identified neuroimaging markers of ASD including the opercular part of bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, the orbital part of right inferior frontal gyrus, right rolandic operculum, right olfactory cortex, right gyrus rectus, right insula, left inferior parietal gyrus, bilateral supramarginal gyrus, bilateral angular gyrus, bilateral superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and left inferior temporal gyrus. In addition, negative correlations between the communication skill score in the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and regional gray matter volume in the gyrus rectus, left middle temporal gyrus, and inferior temporal gyrus have been detected. A significant negative correlation has been found between the communication skill score in ADOS_G and the orbital part of the left inferior frontal gyrus. A negative correlation between verbal skill score and right angular gyrus and a significant negative correlation between non-verbal communication skill and right angular gyrus have been found. These findings in the study have suggested the GM alteration of ASD and correlated with the clinical severity of ASD disease symptoms. The interpretable machine learning framework gives sight to the pathophysiological mechanism of ASD but can also be extended to other diseases. (shrink)

Although there is no in-principle impediment to an EvoDevo of behavior, such an endeavor is not as straightforward as one might think; many of the key terms and concepts used in EvoDevo are tailored to suit its traditional focus on morphology, and are consequently difficult to apply to behavior. In this light, the application of the EvoDevo conceptual toolkit to the behavioral domain requires the establishment of a set of tractable concepts that are readily applicable to behavioral characters. Here, I (...) begin the type of theoretical work that needs to be undertaken in order to achieve this, focusing in particular on the key concept of “novelty.” Building on existing criteria used for the identification of behavioral homology from behavioral ecology, I develop a set of operational criteria for identifying novelty in the behavioral domain. These criteria provide a conceptual foundation for the study of novelty in behavioral traits. (shrink)

Moral disagreements often revolve around the issue of harm to others. Identifying harms, however, is a contested enterprise. This paper provides a conceptual toolbox for identifying harms, and so possible wrongdoing, by drawing several distinctions. First, I distinguish between four modes of human vulnerability, forming four ways in which one can be in a harmed state. Second, I argue for the intrinsic disvalue of harm and so distinguish the presence of harm from the fact that it is instrumental (...) to or constitutive of a valued act, practice or way of life. Finally, I distinguish between harm and wrongdoing, arguing that while harm is a normative concept requiring justification, not all harmed states are automatically unjustified. The advantage of this view is that it refocuses the moral debate on the normative issues involved while establishing a common basis to which both sides can agree: the presence of harm to others. (shrink)

Policy analyses begin with a systematic overview of the policy problem they address. This includes a comprehensive discussion of the nature and context of the problem, and the institutional and behavioral factors responsible for its emergence. Problem statements must also explain why the status quo is bad or undesirable, why it is something that governments, rather than private actors, should address, and establish that the relevant government institutions have the legitimacy to intervene. In this chapter, I provide an overview of (...) the principal types of policy problems that it is morally appropriate for governments to address. Each type denotes a class of states of affairs that (1) are bad, undesirable, or unjust, (2) the government is particularly well-suited to address, and (3) arise from spheres of action over which the relevant government institutions have the right to intervene. I begin with a discussion of collective action problems, that is, states of affairs in which action by rational and self-interested private actors is collectively self-defeating. I then argue for two additional types of policy problems. First, since the goal of government action is the construction of a just legal order, not merely an efficient one, states of affairs which are unjust constitute an additional type of policy problem. Relatedly, second, whereas analyses of collective action problems typically presuppose the existence of effective government institutions which can address them, such institutions may be deficient and/or unjust. A third type of policy problem is therefore deficient government institutions. -/- . (shrink)

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to (...) regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people’s decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place. (shrink)