This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence (...) moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

Decades of research conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic (WEIRD) societies have led many scholars to conclude that the use of mental states in moral judgment is a human cognitive universal, perhaps an adaptive strategy for selecting optimal social partners from a large pool of candidates. However, recent work from a more diverse array of societies suggests there may be important variation in how much people rely on mental states, with people in some societies judging accidental harms just (...) as harshly as intentional ones. To explain this variation, we develop and test a novel cultural evolutionary theory proposing that the intensity of kin-based institutions will favor less attention to mental states when judging moral violations. First, to better illuminate the historical distribution of the use of intentions in moral judgment, we code and analyze anthropological observations from the Human Area Relations Files. This analysis shows that notions of strict liability—wherein the role for mental states is reduced—were common across diverse societies around the globe. Then, by expanding an existing vignette-based experimental dataset containing observations from 321 people in a diverse sample of 10 societies, we show that the intensity of a society's kin-based institutions can explain a substantial portion of the population-level variation in people's reliance on intentions in three different kinds of moral judgments. Together, these lines of evidence suggest that people's use of mental states has coevolved culturally to fit their local kin-based institutions. We suggest that although reliance on mental states has likely been a feature of moral judgment in human communities over historical and evolutionary time, the relational fluidity and weak kin ties of today's WEIRD societies position these populations' psychology at the extreme end of the global and historical spectrum. (shrink)

Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species, but there is substantial variation in the extent of cooperation across societies. Understanding the sources of this variability may provide insights about the forces that sustain cooperation. We examined the ontogeny of prosocial behavior by studying 326 children 3–14 y of age and 120 adults from six societies (age distributions varied across societies). These six societies span a wide range of extant human variation in culture, geography, and subsistence strategies, including foragers, herders, horticulturalists, and (...) urban dwellers across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. When delivering benefits to others was personally costly, rates of prosocial behavior dropped across all six societies as children approached middle childhood and then rates of prosociality diverged as children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies. When prosocial acts did not require personal sacrifice, prosocial responses increased steadily as children matured with little variation in behavior across societies. Our results are consistent with theories emphasizing the importance of acquired cultural norms in shaping costly forms of cooperation and creating cross-cultural diversity. (shrink)

Research to improve the health of pregnant and fetal patients presents ethical challenges to clinical investigators, institutional review boards, funding agencies, and data safety and monitoring boards. The Common Rule sets out requirements that such research must satisfy but no ethical framework to guide their application. We provide such an ethical framework, based on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient. We offer criteria for innovation and for Phase I and II and then for Phase III clinical trials (...) to improve the health of pregnant patients and of fetal patients and also criteria to responsibly manage the transition from investigation to clinical practice. Basing ethical criteria for research involving pregnant women on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient insulates the proposed ethical framework and therefore research on pregnant women from the divisive and politicized concepts and discourses of personhood, fetal rights, and unborn child. (shrink)

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policy makers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many others are addressed in this highly engaging guide. Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. This is the first critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishment, (...) including the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice, and the unified theory of punishment. There are also several case studies examined in detail including capital punishment, juvenile offending, and domestic abuse. -/- Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and groundbreaking. -/- Introduction; Retributivism; Deterrence; Rehabilitation; Restorative Justice; Rawls, Hart, and "mixed" theories; Expressivism; The Unified Theory; Capital Punishment; Juvenile Offending; Domestic Abuse; Sexual Crimes; Conclusion; Index. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Moral Character and Moral Theories Social interaction is the thread from which the fabric of moral character is woven.1 For it is social ...

Despite its prominence in the abortion debate and in public policy, the discourse of 'unborn patient' has not been subjected to critical scrutiny. We provide a critical analysis in three steps. First, we distinguish between the descriptive and normative meanings of 'unborn child.' There is a long history of the descriptive use of 'unborn child.' Second, we argue that the concept of an unborn child has normative content but that this content does not do the work that opponents of abortion (...) want it to do, namely, to establish the independent moral status of fetuses and their rights, the right to life in particular. Third, we argue that the normative content of 'unborn child' should be dependent moral status, not independent moral status. We conclude that the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient should replace the discourse of “unborn child” when that phrase is used normatively. (shrink)

The punishment of criminals is a topic of long-standing philosophical interest since the ancient Greeks. This interest has focused on several considerations, including the justification of punishment, who should be permitted to punish, and how we might best set punishments for crimes. This entry focuses on the most important contributions in this field. The focus will be on specific theoretical approaches to punishment including both traditional theories of punishment (retributivism, deterrence, rehabilitation) and more contemporary alternatives (expressivism, restorative justice, hybrid theories, (...) unified theories) with an additional section on capital punishment, perhaps the particular form of punishment that has received the most sustained philosophical attention. These theories of punishment address two important questions: first, who should be permitted to punish and, secondly, who should be permitted to be punished. These questions then concern the justification of punishment and its distribution. While the majority today often identifies their theories as retributivist, there is a great diversity of theories defended. This entry will highlight the leading work for each view. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 9-12.

The international rule of law hinges on the existence of a shared lexicon accepted by states and other actors in the international system. With no independent judicial system capable of determining the meaning of words and concepts, states must develop shared interpretations of the law and the concepts and terms it relies on, and be willing to abide by those shared interpretations. When such shared interpretations exist, key aspects of the rule of law can be present even in the absence (...) of an international judicial system; state behavior can be reasonably predictable, nonarbitrary, and transparent; and accountability can also be possible, albeit mainly through nonjudicial mechanisms. (shrink)

I argue for the use of the adjunction operator (adding a single new element to an existing set) as a basis for building a finitary set theory. It allows a simplified axiomatization for the first-order theory of hereditarily finite sets based on an induction schema and a rigorous characterization of the primitive recursive set functions. The latter leads to a primitive recursive presentation of arithmetical operations on finite sets.

Any set x is uniquely specified by the graph of the membership relation on the set obtained by adjoining x to the transitive closure of x. Thus any operation on sets can be looked at as an operation on these graphs. We look at the operations of ordinal arithmetic of sets in this light. This turns out to be simplest for a modified ordinal arithmetic based on the Zermelo ordinals, instead of the usual von Neumann ordinals. In this arithmetic, addition (...) of sets corresponds to concatenating graphs, and multiplication corresponds to replacing each edge of a graph by a copy of another graph. Characterizations for the von Neumann case are also given. (shrink)

Rosamond Rhodes makes a persuasive case for the view that medical ethics does not derive from common morality.1 Rhodes identifies the challenge that immediately arises and its corollary: Whence the origin of medical ethics? And, should we understand medical ethics as autonomous? From the perspective of professional ethics in medicine, the first question can now be restated: Whence the origin of the ethical concept of medicine as a profession, the basis of the ethical obligations of physicians in patient care, research, (...) medical education, and in advocacy and healthcare policy? The history of Western philosophy offers us two pathways to address this question. The first is the quest for certainty,2 a quest fulfilled by using methods designed to discover concepts that are independent of human thought and judgement and thus intellectually and morally authoritative for everyone. Such concepts are timeless and therefore transcultural, transreligious and transnational. Examples include Plato’s Forms,3 PF Stawson’s ‘our conceptual structure’,4 Edmund Pellegrino’s ‘fact of illness’ and the ‘act of profession’ in response to the vulnerability that illness creates,5 and common morality.6 Thought experiments, using what Rhodes characterises as ‘the hypethetico-deductive method’,1 aim to discover timeless concepts. Discovering timeless concepts must address their ontological and epistemological status. Plato’s ontology of Forms,2 for example, is not clear, as …. (shrink)

In “Internalism and Externalism,” Laurence BonJour suggests that the contemporary epistemological debate over internalism and externalism concerns the formulation of the justification or warrant condition in an account of knowledge. The internalist requires that for a belief to meet this condition, all of the necessary elements must be cognitively accessible to the believer, whereas the externalist claims that at least some such elements do not need to be accessible to the believer. BonJour gives an overview of this dispute. He (...) suggests that the opposition between the two views is less straightforward than has usually been thought. He proposes, in addition, that each of them has valuable roles to play in major epistemological issues, even though the internalist approach is more fundamental in an important way. (shrink)

For Kant right and ethics are two formally distinct departments of a single morality of reason and freedom. Unlike ethics, right involves an authorization to coerce, and this coercion serves as a pathological incentive. I argue that for Kant the distinctive character of right flows from the fact that juridical obligation has a different relational structure than ethical obligation. I argue that this relational structure explains the connection of right to coercion, and also explains how a categorical imperative can be (...) known a priori to issue in both a pathological and non-pathological incentive. Thus the justification of coercion and its special role as incentive are rooted in the relational character of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in categorical imperatives of reason. Since this pathological incentive has a moral basis in the structure of juridical obligations, and so ultimately in a representation of moral laws, I argue that Kant’s discussion of the juridical incentive of coercion is more continuous with his main discussion of moral incentives in the Critique of Practical Reason than it might at first appear. I illustrate the consequences of this reading by discussing the propensity to injustice, as Kant understands it, and the unique way in which the juridical incentive undermines it. (shrink)

This paper argues that Leif Wenar's theory of reparations is not purely forward-looking and that backward-looking considerations play an important role: if there had never been a past injustice, then reparations for the future cannot be acceptable. Past injustice compose the first part of a two-tiered theory of reparations. We must first discover a past injustice has taken place: reparations are for the repair of previous damage. However, for Wenar, not all past injustices warrant reparations. Once we have first passed (...) the initial test of demonstrating a past injustice has taken place, we then determine whether or not to finally accept reparations based upon forward-looking considerations. What is important to note is that this decision to award reparations is based upon forward-looking considerations, but only after first satisfying the test of a past injustice. Thus, backward-looking considerations make up an important first part of Wenar's two-tiered theory of reparations. It is not my argument that this theory is unsafe and I find Wenar's arguments both novel and highly compelling. However, the view that this theory is forward-looking -- and not backward-looking -- is not entirely accurate. My brief reply corrects this part of an important new theory of reparations in the hope of strengthening its persuasive power. (shrink)

Global justice is an exciting area of refreshing, innovative new ideas for a changing world facing significant challenges. Not only does work in this area often force us to rethink about ethics and political philosophy more generally, but its insights contain seeds of hope for addressing some of the greatest global problems facing humanity today. The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice has been selective in bringing together some of the most pressing topics and issues in global justice as understood by (...) the leading voices from both established and rising stars across twenty-five new chapters. This Handbook explores severe poverty, climate change, egalitarianism, global citizenship, human rights, immigration, territorial rights, and much more. (shrink)

John Rawls divides this theory into two parts that he calls ideal and nonideal theory. In this essay I argue that Rawls runs together two quite different conceptions of this dyad corresponding to the idea of strict compliance and realistic utopia respectively. These conceptions employ different criteria of classification, are motivated by different concerns, and have different practical upshots. I present a view that combines the two coherently on Rawls’ behalf while remaining true to his intentions. But I argue that (...) even this amended view is unsatisfactory. Although the realistic utopia conception is well motivated, strict compliance is problematic. The upshot is that we can embrace the division of the theory of justice into ideal and nonideal theory, while rejecting the strict compliance understanding of ideal theory. (shrink)

This new second edition of Punishment includes a revised and expanded defence of the groundbreaking unified theory of punishment that brings together elements of retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation into a new coherent framework. Thom Brooks expands the chapter length case studies from capital punishment, juvenile offending, domestic violence and sex crimes to include new chapters on social media offences and corporate liability addressing some of today's most pressing issues in criminal justice.

Drawn from the authors' experiences in the UK, Australia and mainland Europe and with contributions from across the globe, this clear and accessible book includes a wide range of examples. The authors show the reader how to: identify ethical issues which may arise with any research project, gain informed consent, provide information in the right way to participants, and present and disseminate findings in line with ethical guidelines.

The Russell class does not exist because the conditions purporting to specify that class are contradictory, and hence fail to specify any class. Equally, the conditions purporting to specify the Liar statement are contradictory and hence, although the Liar sentence is grammatically in order, it fails to yield a statement. Thus the common source of these and related paradoxes is contradictory (or tautologous) specifying conditions-for such conditions fail to specify. This is the diagnosis. The cure consists of seeking and destroying (...) the deep-seated preconceptions that make almost irresistible our belief in the existence of items which provably do not exist. (shrink)

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. This anthology of original essays suggests new, groundbreaking applications of Rawls's work in multiple disciplines and contexts. Thom Brooks, Martha (...) Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, Paul Weithman, Jeremy Waldron, and Frank Michelman explore political liberalism's relevance to the challenges of multiculturalism, the relationship between the state and religion, the struggle for political legitimacy, and the capabilities approach. Extending Rawls's progressive thought to the fields of law, economics, and public reason, this book helps advance the project of a free society that thrives despite disagreements over religious and moral views. (shrink)

This volume is a comprehensive survey of contemporary thought on a wide range of issues and provides students with the basic background to current debates in metaphysics.

This work traces the development of Heidegger's explanation of philosophy as a methodological atheism, relating it to his reading of Aristotle, Aquinas and Nietzsche. A predominant issue throughout this study is Heidegger's pursuit of an answer to the question: How did God get into philosophy?

Conservation can occur anywhere regardless of scale, political jurisdiction, or landownership. We present a framework to help managers at protected areas practice conservation at the scale of relationships. We focus on relationships between stakeholders and protected areas and between managers and other stakeholders. We provide a synthesis of key natural resources literature and present a case example to support our premise and recommendations. The purpose is 4-fold: 1) discuss challenges and threats to conservation and protected areas; 2) outline a relationship-scale (...) approach to address conservation threats; 3) describe the tools and techniques that can be used to implement this approach; and 4) present a case example from rural Alaska, USA, to illustrate relationship-scale conservation. Our case example illustrates how aspects of this approach to conservation were applied to address a wildlife population decline. Tools needed to implement relationship-scale conservation include 1) collecting and documenting narratives of place; 2) measuring and monitoring trust and commitment; and 3) identifying and mitigating threats. We recommend that planners and managers, working with their research partners, redefine and refocus their goals and objectives to include these practices. Doing so will enable them to gain substantial applied knowledge about their stakeholders and foster and maintain place relationships as desired outcomes of conservation. The ultimate outcome is a better prognosis for long-term global survival of protected areas and biodiversity. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. (shrink)

La présente contribution propose une étude de la périphérie gauche au sein d’un corpus oral multigenres, représentant douze activités de communication orale, annoté syntaxiquement et prosodiquement. La segmentation discursive du corpus en unités de base du discours (BDU) résulte d’une coïncidence entre unités syntaxiques et prosodiques, correspondant à des encodages linguistiques distincts mais complémentaires. Partant du postulat selon lequel ces unités discursives remplissent une fonction cognitive dans la planification et l’interprétation du discours, nous nous intéressons à l’étude de leur périphérie (...) gauche. Ce lieu, qui constitue le point d’ancrage du message, joue en effet un rôle important dans la négociation de la structure discursive. Dans l’objectif d’étudier les stratégies discursives à l’œuvre dans les différents genres du corpus, nous faisons l’inventaire des types formels observés et étudions finalement les fonctions discursives que ces éléments périphériques peuvent revêtir. (shrink)

_The Global Justice Reader_ is a first-of-its kind collection that brings together key foundational and contemporary writings on this important topic in moral and political philosophy. Brings together key foundational and contemporary writings on this important topic in moral and political philosophy Offers a brief introduction followed by important readings on subjects ranging from sovereignty, human rights, and nationalism to global poverty, terrorism, and international environmental justice Presents the writings of key figures in the field, including Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, (...) John Rawls, Thomas Pogge, Peter Singer, and many others. (shrink)

Introduction: there is no justice in Heidegger or for Marx -- Interpretations of Heidegger and Marx -- The history of Marx and Heidegger -- The history and negation of metaphysics -- Logic and dialectic -- Metaphysics of the human state -- The situation of Germany -- The ideology of Germany -- Nazism, liberalism, humanism -- The Jewish question -- Speaking of the essence of man -- Production-previously this was called God -- The end of humanism -- Between men and gods (...) -- Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the structure and substance of the Core Content Framework (CCF), a controversial document which stipulates content that providers of teacher education in England must incorporate in their programmes. We identify both a concept of instrumental trainability and a lack of coherence in the CCF which suggests it is unsuitable as a guide to a curriculum for teacher education. Drawing on Bernstein’s work and its application by other sociologists of educational knowledge, we identify how the CCF embeds (...) a ‘generic mode’ in teacher education that has roots outside of disciplinary structures of knowledge production and therefore foregrounds a type of official pedagogy that sees teaching as a technical performance and leaves gaps in the knowledge and understanding a new teacher requires to make sound educational judgements. Employing Muller’s distinction between conceptual and contextual coherence, we argue that the CCF is based upon an imaginary notion of instructional practice that does not fully grasp the context of teachers’ work. We illustrate the argument via an analysis of the language, structure, and three of the eight sections in the CCF. (shrink)

Severe poverty is a major global problem about risk and inequality. What, if any, is the relationship between equality, fairness and responsibility in an unequal world? I argue for four conclusions. The first is the moral urgency of severe poverty. We have too many global neighbours that exist in a state of emergency and whose suffering is intolerable. The second is that severe poverty is a problem concerning global injustice that is relevant, but not restricted, to questions about responsibility. If (...) none were responsible, this does not eliminate all compelling claims to provide assistance. The third is that severe poverty represents an inequality too far; it is a condition of extremity with denial of basic needs. The fourth is that there is a need for an approach that captures all relevant cases – and the capabilities approach and the connection theory of remedial responsibilities are highlighted as having special promise. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 63-65.

Over the past thirty-five years, there has been an explosive increase in scientists' ability to explain the structure and functioning of the human brain. While psychology has advanced our understanding of human behavior, various other sciences, such as anatomy, physiology, and biology, have determined the critical importance of synapses and, through the use of advanced technology, made it possible actually to see brain cells at work within the skull's walls. Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, (...) taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our understanding in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Moral concerns about the authority, power, and trustworthiness of physicians have become important topics in clinical ethics during the past three decades. These concerns have come to greater prominence with the increasing involvement of large-scale private institutions in the organization and delivery of medical services, especially managed care organizations, and with the increasing involvement of government in the payment for and organization and delivery of medical services. When physicians act as the agents of large institutions or governments, the power of (...) physicians over their patients increases. The purposes of this article are (1) to reflect briefly on the historical origins of the moral problem of physicians' power in medicine, and (2) to introduce the articles in the 1999 annual number of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy on topics in clinical ethics. (shrink)

In this commentary on Carse and Rushton’s call for reorientation of moral distress, we state agreement with the authors that the discourse of moral distress should refocus on the moral components of integrity. We then explain how our philosophical taxonomy of moral distress, mentioned by the authors, appeals to moral integrity. In this process, we clarify our taxonomy’s appeal to Aristotle’s concept of akrasia. We conclude by offering support of Carse and Rushton’s challenge to organizations to strengthen moral integrity by (...) fostering resilience. (shrink)