The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we (...) offer strategic recommendations for improving LD as a tool for teaching philosophy. Ultimately, our aim is to create a dialogue between LD and academic philosophy, with the hope that such dialogue will improve LD’s capacity to teach students how to do philosophy. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Two leaders in the field offer a compelling analysis of the current state of the art and reveal the steps we must take to achieve a truly robust artificial intelligence. Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones in (...) the field, but they argue that a computer beating a human in Jeopardy! does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The real world, in contrast, is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Taking inspiration from the human mind, Marcus and Davis explain what we need to advance AI to the next level, and suggest that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we focus on endowing machines with common sense and deep understanding, rather than simply focusing on statistical analysis and gatherine ever larger collections of data, we will be able to create an AI we can trust--in our homes, our cars, and our doctors' offices. Rebooting AI provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of how a new generation of AI can make our lives better. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 15 Candice Lyons Behind the Scenes: Elizabeth Keckley, Slave Narratives, and the Queer Complexities of Space In the fall of 1867—just two years after the conclusion of the American Civil War—former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, finding herself in dire financial straits, traveled incognito to New York. She hoped to sell select pieces from her famed wardrobe (...) in order to supplement her income, which was, at the time, rather meager. Accompanying the recently widowed socialite was her self-described “modiste” and “confidante ” Elizabeth Keckley, a formerly enslaved African American dressmaker who had been “intimately associated” with Lincoln for years.1 Despite the various measures undertaken to ensure the scheme’s success, including attempts to extort monied East Coast Republicans and strategic appeals to the press, it ultimately proved fruitless. Political nemeses seized on the opportunity to publicly mock Lincoln, who was seen as an “extravagant and improper” social climber, for her “pecuniary embarrassment,” treating the public auction of her clothing as a spectacle akin to the World Fair.2 Eventually, the former First Lady was forced to retreat to her home in Chicago, leaving Keckley behind to tend to her affairs. 1. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2015): Location no. 406, 54, 53. 2. Carolyn Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer: Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes and the Politics of Public Wrath,” African American Review 34 (2000): 20; Keckley, Behind the Scenes, Location no. 1321. 16 Candice Lyons This decision, however, left the ordinarily sought-after seamstress in dire straits of her own, given that the time she was compelled to dedicate to what would come to be known as “The Old Clothes Scandal ” necessitated closing down her then-thriving business in Washington, DC.3 This, coupled with the fact that indemnification for her services was not forthcoming from Mrs. Lincoln, was likely at least partially at the root of Keckley’s decision to publish her now-infamous memoir, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years A Slave and Four Years in the White House in 1868.4 Keckley explained that she penned her autobiographical text in a bid to “defend [her]self” and Lincoln against charges of impropriety following the New York incident. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the book’s release had the exact opposite effect: Keckley’s literary disclosures were met with scorn, regarded by large swaths of white Americans, including some of the same people who had been most vocal in their condemnation of Mary Todd Lincoln, as constituting a set of socially impermissible transgressions of class, race, and gender. Sales of the book were subsequently suppressed, Keckley’s relationship with Lincoln (who had been caught off guard by the text’s release) came to an abrupt end, and there was even a brief, parodic pamphlet produced, titled Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis, which cast the entire ordeal as a sort of (racist) cautionary tale.5 Given the clear disdain held for Lincoln by people across the political spectrum at the time, it can be difficult to make sense of the visceral reaction prompted by Keckley’s airing of the controversial figure’s dirty laundry (pun intended). Considering the ways Behind the Scenes implicitly challenged the fixity of hierarchical distinctions between Black and white, employee and employer, however, repudiation of the work might be understood as inevitable. Further, given the “intimate” and ambiguous nature of Lincoln and Keckley’s relationship, the book may also 3. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. 4. The text’s infamy is in part attributable to its anomalous structure, which rendered it distinct from many of the era’s other book-length slave narratives ; whereas monographs such as Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl centered on the author’s experience of and eventual escape from slavery, Keckley’s work deals only briefly with these matters, primarily concerning itself with the intimate affairs of the author’s (white) employer. 5. Sorisio, “Unmasking the Genteel Performer,” 19. Candice... (shrink)

At some point in the future – perhaps within the next few decades – it will be possible for foetuses to develop completely outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, raises substantial issues for the abortion debate. One such issue is that it will become possible for a woman to have an abortion, in the sense of having the foetus removed from her body, but for the foetus to be kept alive. We argue that while there is a (...) right to an abortion, there are reasons to doubt that there is a right to the death of the foetus. Our strategy in this essay is to consider and reject three arguments in favour of this latter right. The first claims that women have a right not to be biological mothers, the second that women have a right to genetic privacy, and the third that a foetus is one's property. Furthermore, we argue that it follows from rejecting the third claim that genetic parents also lack a right to the destruction of cryopreserved embryos used for in vitro fertilization. The conclusion that a woman possesses no right to the death of the foetus builds upon the claims that other pro-choice advocates, such as Judith Jarvis Thomson, have made. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The ethics of high frequency trading are obscure, due in part to the complexity of the practice. This article contributes to the existing literature of ethics in financial markets by examining a recent trend in regulation in high frequency trading, the prohibition of deception. We argue that in the financial markets almost any regulation, other than the most basic, tends to create a moral hazard and increase information asymmetry. Since the market’s job is, at least in part, price discovery, we (...) argue that simplicity of regulation and restraint in regulation are virtues to a greater extent than in other areas of finance. This article proposes criteria for determining which high-frequency trading strategies should be regulated. (shrink)

Once largely ignored, the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has assumed a new prominence in contemporary theory across the humanities and social sciences. Philosophers and artists, literary critics and social theorists, anthropologists and computer scientists have all embraced Whitehead’s thought, extending it through inquiries into the nature of life, the problem of consciousness, and the ontology of objects, as well as into experiments in education and digital media. _The Lure of Whitehead_ offers readers not only a comprehensive introduction to (...) Whitehead’s philosophy but also a demonstration of how his work advances our emerging understanding of life in the posthuman epoch. Contributors: Jeffrey A. Bell, Southeastern Louisiana U; Nathan Brown, U of California, Davis; Peter Canning; Didier Debaise, Free U of Brussels; Roland Faber, Claremont Lincoln U; Michael Halewood, U of Essex; Graham Harman, American U in Cairo; Bruno Latour, Sciences Po Paris; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Steven Meyer, Washington U; Luciana Parisi, U of London; Keith Robinson, U of Arkansas at Little Rock; Isabelle Stengers, Free U of Brussels; James Williams, U of Dundee. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence represents a key technology being inbuilt into evermore products. Research investigating attitudes towards artificial intelligence surprisingly is still scarce, although it becomes apparent that artificial intelligence will shape societies around the globe. To better understand individual differences in attitudes towards artificial intelligence, the present study investigated in n = 351 participants associations between the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) and the Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence framework (ATAI). It could be observed that in particular higher levels of SADNESS were (...) associated with higher negative attitudes towards AI (fearing AI). The findings are discussed in this work from an evolutionary perspective because primary emotional systems—according to Affective Neuroscience Theory—represent tools for survival, which have been homologously conserved across mammalian species including homo sapiens. (shrink)

A growing body of literature critical of ethics review boards has drawn attention to the processes used to determine the ethical merit of research. Citing criticism on the bureaucratic nature of ethics review processes, this literature provides a useful provocation for (re)considering how the ethics review might be enacted. Much of this criticism focuses on how ethics review boards _deliberate,_ with particular attention given to the lack of transparency and opportunities for researcher recourse that characterise ethics review processes. Centered specifically (...) on the conduct of ethics review boards convened within university settings, this paper draws on these inherent criticisms to consider the ways that ethics review boards might enact more communicative and deliberative practices. Outlining a set of principles against which ethics review boards might establish strategies for engaging with researchers and research communities, this paper draws attention to how _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ for the ethics review might be enacted in the day-to-day practice of the university human ethics review board. This paper develops these themes via a conceptual lens derived from Habermas’ (The theory of communicative action. Volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society, 1984 ) articulation of ‘communicative action’ and Fraser’s (Social Text, 25(26), 56–80, 1990 ) consideration of ‘strong publics’ to cast consideration of the role that human ethics review boards might play in supporting university research cultures. _Deliberative communication_, _Engagement with researchers_ and the _Distribution of responsibility_ provide useful conceptual prompts for considering how ethics review boards might undertake their work. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence shows that brain oscillations track speech. This mechanism is thought to maximise processing efficiency by allocating resources to important speech information, effectively parsing speech into units of appropriate granularity for further decoding. However, some aspects of this mechanism remain unclear. First, while periodicity is an intrinsic property of this physiological mechanism, speech is only quasi-periodic, so it is not clear whether periodicity would present an advantage in processing. Second, it is still a matter of debate (...) which aspect of speech triggers or maintains cortical entrainment, from bottom-up cues such as fluctuations of the amplitude envelope of speech to higher level linguistic cues such as syntactic structure. We present data from a behavioural experiment assessing the effect of isochronous retiming of speech on speech perception in noise. Two types of anchor points were defined for retiming speech, namely syllable onsets and amplitude envelope peaks. For each anchor point type, retiming was implemented at two hierarchical levels, a slow time scale around 2.5 Hz and a fast time scale around 4 Hz. Results show that while any temporal distortion resulted in reduced speech intelligibility, isochronous speech anchored to P-centers (approximated by stressed syllable vowel onsets) was significantly more intelligible than a matched anisochronous retiming, suggesting a facilitative role of periodicity defined on linguistically motivated units in processing speech in noise. (shrink)

Relativism and contextualism are the most popular accounts of faultless disagreement, but Crispin Wright once argued for an account I call divergentism. According to divergentism, parties who possess all relevant information and use the same standards of assessment in the same context of utterance can disagree about the same proposition without either party being in epistemic fault, yet only one of them is right. This view is an alternative to relativism, indexical contextualism, and nonindexical contextualism, and has advantages over those (...) views. Wright eventually abandoned this view in favor of relativism for reasons related to a conciliationist view of disagreement between epistemic peers. I argue that he gave up on divergentism too soon. (shrink)

'A Nietzschean Bestiary' gathers essays treating the most vivid & lively animal images in Nietzsche's work, such as the howling beast of prey, Zarathustra's laughing lions, & the notorious blond beast.

This manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem. Tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities, but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance, organizational integrity, and society. Defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior. Sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily (...) incorporate taxation. A variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti-tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices. This manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles, in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation, can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that promoting patient values is a legitimate goal of medicine. Our view offers a justification for certain current practices, including birth control and living organ donation, that are widely accepted but do not fit neatly within the most common extant accounts of the goals of medicine. Moreover, we argue that recognising value promotion as a goal of medicine will expand the scope of medical practice by including some procedures that are sometimes rejected as being outside (...) the scope of acceptable medical practice, such as certain forms of physician-assisted death. We then rebut some common and possible objections to this view. Our aim is not to argue that other accounts are mistaken—except when they argue for a single goal that does not include patient values—but rather to show that value promotion should play a more central role in discussions about the goals of medicine. (shrink)

By a close examination of changes in analytical chemistry between the years 1920 and 1950, I document the case that natural science has undergone and continues to undergo a major revolution. The central feature of this transformation is the rise in importance of scientific instrumentation. Prior to 1920, analytical chemists determined the chemical constitution of some unknown by treating it with a series of known compounds and observing the kind of reactions it underwent. After 1950, analytical chemists determined the chemical (...) constitution of an unknown by using a variety of instruments which allow one to discriminate chemicals in terms of their physical properties. This transformation involved changes in the practice of analytical chemistry. It involved the development of a new family of scientific instrument-making companies, and a new level of capital expenditure necessary to do analytical chemistry. It involved the development of new means to disseminate information about scientific instruments. While I do not document the broader case, these changes have been widespread throughout the natural sciences. It is the rise in the importance of instrumentation which is the key conceptual change in what has been identified as the fourth big scientific revolution. (shrink)

Heidegger's writings are among the most formidable in the philosophy. The pivotal concepts of his thought are for many the source of both fascination and frustration. This title includes chapters that introduce and explain a key Heideggerian concept, or a cluster of closely related concepts.

for income tax evasion, but it cannot be defended for pursuing otherwise innocent people. The man responsible for bringing these four cases, Roanoke U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, has defended his actions (Rocktown Weekly, April 27-May 3, 2006, p. 11): “We have to properly track money going overseas so it’s not going to the wrong places.” But, this could be done without this law. Even though 12 agencies investigated these money transfers, led by the FBI, none charged that any went to (...) terrorist groups. “We know you are not the bad guys,” another prosecuting attorney has said. A group of agencies went looking for Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists around here after 9/11. Not finding any, they arrested four anti-Saddam Muslim Kurds, just like autoworkers went after a Chinese-American when they could not find any Japanese to beat up. This is an appalling travesty of justice. These men helped neighbors who needed to send money to families for medical care when there was no other way to do so, there being no banking system in Iraq. These men are all civic-minded, translating for schools, hospitals, and the courts since arriving here. They are being prosecuted for helping their neighbors in times of trouble. In their initial investigations, the FBI inquired whether these men knew Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. This makes as much sense as Abraham Lincoln ordering Union troops to investigate runaway slaves in the North to find out their knowledge of Jefferson Davis or John Singleton Mosby and then prosecuting them for sending money to their families in the South via an illegal method. Citizens of Harrisonburg should express their support for these four men and demand that these charges be dropped. The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Roanoke should get back to what they are supposed to be doing and stop degrading our American system with such outrageous prosecutions. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Christa Davis Acampora offers a profound rethinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s crucial notion of the agon. Analyzing an impressive array of primary and secondary sources and synthesizing decades of Nietzsche scholarship, she shows how the agon, or contest, organized core areas of Nietzsche’s philosophy, providing a new appreciation of the subtleties of his notorious views about power. By focusing so intensely on this particular guiding interest, she offers an exciting, original vantage from which to view this (...) iconic thinker: Contesting Nietzsche. Though existence—viewed through the lens of Nietzsche’s agon—is fraught with struggle, Acampora illuminates what Nietzsche recognized as the agon’s generative benefits. It imbues the human experience with significance, meaning, and value. Analyzing Nietzsche’s elaborations of agonism—his remarks on types of contests, qualities of contestants, and the conditions in which either may thrive or deteriorate—she demonstrates how much the agon shaped his philosophical projects and critical assessments of others. The agon led him from one set of concerns to the next, from aesthetics to metaphysics to ethics to psychology, via Homer, Socrates, Saint Paul, and Wagner. In showing how one obsession catalyzed so many diverse interests, Contesting Nietzsche sheds fundamentally new light on some of this philosopher’s most difficult and paradoxical ideas. (shrink)

Through a collection of contributions from an international team of empirical researchers and philosophers, _New Philosophies of Learning_ signals the need for a sharper critical awareness of the possibilities and problems that the recent spate of innovative learning techniques presents. Explores some of the many contemporary innovations in approaches to learning, including neuroscience and the focus on learners’ well-being and happiness Debates the controversial approaches to categorising learners such as dyslexia Raises doubts about the preoccupation with quasi-mathematical scrutiny and the (...) neglect of ethical reflection about education Discusses the possible grounds for concern, without exaggerating their similarities or offering sweeping judgements Includes contributions from empirical researchers and philosophers, including Usha Goswami, Howard Gardner, Julian Elliott, David Bakhurst, John White and Christopher Winch. (shrink)

Resolution of quarrels arising from conflicting sacred values, as in the Middle East, may require concessions that acknowledge the opposition's core concerns.

Berger and Miller offer a strong argument for how cultural competence in medical education reinforces the racial structures that it purports to address. As social scientists with expertise i...

While risk of harm is an important focus for whether clinical research on humans can and should proceed, there is uncertainty about what constitutes harm to a trial participant. In Phase I trials on healthy volunteers, the purpose of the research is to document and measure safety concerns associated with investigational drugs, and participants are financially compensated for their enrollment in these studies. In this article, we investigate how characterizations of harm are narrated by healthy volunteers in the context of (...) the adverse events they experience during clinical trials. Drawing upon qualitative research, we find that participants largely minimize, deny, or re-attribute the cause of these AEs. We illustrate how participants' interpretations of AEs may be shaped both by the clinical trial environment and their economic motivation to participate. While these narratives are emblematic of the larger ambiguity surrounding harm in the context of clinical trial participation, we argue that these interpretations also problematically maintain the narrative of the safety of clinical trials, the ethics of testing investigational drugs on healthy people, and the rigor of data collected in the specter of such ambiguity. (shrink)

Abstract The article criticizes the trend of reformulating the traditional just-war criterion of Proper Authority, which was designed to de-legitimize force by non-state actors, into a requirement that decisions to resort to force be multilateral. The article illustrates several shortcomings of the judgment processes of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the World Court, and states? populations, and argues among other things that reformulating Proper Authority would render other criteria meaningless, especially Just Cause. Finally, the article rebuts the strongest (...) objection to a system in which states judge their own causes for war: the problem of invincible ignorance. (shrink)

The United States Food and Drug Administration's recent approval of the commercial use of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) will be discussed within the context of the existing USA regulatory framework. The purpose will be to illustrate the current lack of regulation and oversight of the DBS market, which has resulted in the violation of basic ethical norms. The discussion will focus on: 1) the lack of available evidence on procedural safety and efficacy, (...) 2) the numerous conflicts of interest held by research investigators, and 3) the ambiguity of both aforementioned categories due to an inherent lack of transparency in the research. It is argued that in order to address these issues, ethical analyses of DBS for psychiatric disorders must include the role of the industry forces that have become the primary impetus for this research. As such, DBS for OCD serves as an important case example in studies of neurotechnology and innovative surgery. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

According to Peter Galison , science has a highly fractionated structure with multiple sub-sub-disciplines, each with its own agenda. Cooperative trading between groups is necessary for most scientific work to move forward, and it is this trading that preserves the stability of science. We argue that it is not trading per se, but trading in a gift economy that guarantees stability. We support our claims with an examination of contemporary work on magnetic resonance imaging instrumentation. Specifically, we consider: How a (...) feature improvement, intended to reduce scan time, led to substantial medical mis-diagnosis; How a technical error, when corrected, created a consumer crisis in which radiologists preferred technically flawed instruments; How new magnetic resonance theory radically altered the physical interpretation of MRI images; How the MRI instrument at first was financially supported by, and--ironically--ultimately invalidated, the accepted understanding of the nature, source and management of chronic back pain. Ultimately there are three reasons stability requires gifting. First, without a general sense of shared purpose traders will not be committed to mutual engagement; profit does not provide an adequate shared purpose for the MRI community. Second, stability requires trust, and profits are not an adequate foundation for trust. Finally, knowledge is a gift that will not keep on giving if treated simply as a source of profit. (shrink)

This comprehensive volume marks a new standard in scholarship in the still emerging field of the philosophy of chemistry. With selections drawn from a wide range of scholarly disciplines, philosophers, chemists, and historians of science here converge to ask some of the most fundamental questions about the relationship between philosophy and chemistry. What can chemistry teach us about longstanding disputes in the philosophy of science over such issues as reductionism, autonomy, and supervenience? And what new issues may chemistry bring to (...) the forefront now that it has joined physics and biology as a serious topic for philosophical reflection? This newest addition to the prestigious Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series marks the true arrival of philosophy of chemistry within the corpus of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this paper we elucidate a particular type of instrument. Striking-phenomenon instruments assume their striking profile against the shifting backdrop of theoretical uncertainties. While technologically stable, the phenomena produced by these instruments are linguistically fuzzy, subject to a variety of conceptual representations. But in virtue of their technological stability alone, they can provide a foundation for further technological as well as conceptual development. Sometimes, as in the case of the pulse glass, the phenomenon is taken to confirm conflicting theoretical views; (...) sometimes, as in the case of the Lichtenberg-figures, it holds out the false promise of crucial theoretical importance; sometimes, as in the case of the airpump in the 18th century, it emphatically short-circuits theory and human ingenuity, giving a voice to nature herself; and sometimes, finally, as in the case of the quincunx, the phenomenon stands in for theoretical accounts. We propose and develop the salient features of these instruments demonstrating their importance to our understanding of science. (shrink)

Heidegger's writings are among the most formidable in recent philosophy. The pivotal concepts of his thought are for many the source of both fascination and frustration. Yet any student of philosophy needs to become acquainted with Heidegger's thought. "Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts" is designed to facilitate this. Each chapter introduces and explains a key Heideggerian concept, or a cluster of closely related concepts. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Heidegger's thought in its early, middle, and later phases.

In this astonishingly rich volume, experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship on what is arguably Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. A lengthy introduction, annotated (...) bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

This article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides (...) a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture). (shrink)

This article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason (...) to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form or content. (shrink)