Aging at work is a dynamic process. As individuals age, their motives, abilities and values change as suggested by life-span development theories (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Their growth and extrinsic motives weaken while intrinsic motives increase (Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), which may result in workers investing their resources in different areas accordingly. However, there is significant individual variability in aging trajectories (Hedge, Borman, & Lammlein, 2005). In addition, the changing nature of work, (...) the evolving job demands, as well as the available opportunities at work may no longer be suitable for older workers, increasing the likelihood of person-job misfit. The potential misfit may, in turn, impact how older workers perceive themselves on the job, which leads to conflicting work identities. With the traditional job redesign approach being a top-down process, it is often difficult for organizations to take individual needs and skills into consideration and tailor jobs for every employee (Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2010). Therefore, job crafting, being an individualized process initiated by employees themselves, can be a particularly valuable mechanism for older workers to realign and enhance their demands-abilities and needs-supplies fit. Through job crafting, employees can exert personal agency and make changes to the task, social and cognitive aspects of their jobs with the goal of improving their work experience (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Building on the Life Span Theory of Control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995), we posit that job crafting, particularly cognitive crafting, will be of increasing value as employees age. Through reframing how they think of their job and choosing to emphasize job features that are personally meaningful, older workers can optimize their resources to proactively redesign their jobs and maintain congruent, positive work identities. (shrink)

As a preliminary step to beginning to assess the usefulness of clinical vignettes to measure ethical sensitivity in undergraduate medical students, five clinical vignettes with seven to nine ethical issues each were created. The ethical issues in the vignettes were discussed and outlined by an expert panel. One randomly selected vignette was presented to first, second and third year students at the University of Toronto as part of another examination. The students were asked to list the issues presented by the (...) patient problem. Responses from 281 students were obtained. These students identified an average of 2.72 ethical issues per vignette. Each response was classified under the domains of autonomy, beneficence and justice. Comparisons were made between classes and between vignettes. There was considerable variation between classes and the responses to different vignettes seem to indicate that different vignettes measure the various domains in different ways. It does appear that the use of vignettes is one way to measure aspects of ethical sensitivity in medical students but more study is required to clarify exactly what is being measured. (shrink)

There are increasing concerns that research regulatory requirements exceed those required to manage risks, particularly for low- and negligible-risk research projects. In particular, inconsistent documentation requirements across research sites can delay the conduct of multi-site projects. For a one-year, negligible-risk project examining biobank operations conducted at three separate Australian institutions, we found that the researcher time required to meet regulatory requirements was eight times greater than that required for the approved research activity. In total, 76 business days were required to (...) obtain the necessary approvals, and site-specific processes required twice as long as primary Human Research Ethics Committee and Research Governance Office processes. We describe the impact of this administrative load on the conduct of a one-year, externally-... (shrink)

To explain social learning without invoking the cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process, priming, in which input increases the activation of stored internal representations. Imitation itself has generally been seen as a This has diverted much research towards the all-or-none question of whether an animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive results. In the great (...) apes, however, voluntary, learned behaviour is organized hierarchically. This means that imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single out two clearly distinct ones: the a rather detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and the a broader description of subroutine structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural Program level imitation is a high-level, constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning of complex skills and thus not evident in the simple manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory. As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of orangutans undergoing to the wild. Representing and manipulating relations between objects seems to be one basic building block in their hierarchical programs. There is evidence that great apes suffer from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some chimpanzee behaviour previously described as and suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social role, even in humans. (shrink)

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production (...) of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

Different authors offer subtly different characterizations of naïve realism. We disentangle the main ones and argue that illusions provide the best proving ground for naïve realism and its main rival, representationalism. According to naïve realism, illusions never involve per- ceptual error. We assess two leading attempts to explain apparent perceptual error away, from William Fish and Bill Brewer, and conclude that they fail. Another lead- ing attempt is assessed in a companion paper, which also sketches an alternative representational account.

Regardless of leaders’ efforts to do the right thing and meet performance expectations, they make mistakes, with possible ramifications for followers’ and leaders’ well-being. Some leaders will apologize following transgressions, which may have positive implications for their followers’ and their own well-being, contingent upon the nature and severity of the transgressions. We examine these relationships in two separate studies. In Study 1, leader apologies had a positive relationship with followers’ psychological well-being and emotional health, and these relationships were moderated by (...) the severity of the transgression. In Study 2, leader apologies had a positive relationship with their own psychological well-being, positive emotional health and authentic pride. In addition, the nature of transgressions moderated the relationship between leader apologies and leaders’ positive emotions and authentic pride, while the severity of transgressions moderated the relationship between leader apologies and their positive emotions, psychological health, and authentic pride. Implications and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Medical school curricula, although traditionally and historically dominated by science, have generally accepted, appreciated, and welcomed the inclusion of literature over the past several decades. Recent concerns about medical professional formation have led to discussions about the specific role and contribution of literature and stories. In this article, we demonstrate how professionalism and the study of literature can be brought into relationship through critical and interrogative interactions based in the literary skill of close reading. Literature in medicine can question the (...) meaning of “professionalism” itself, thereby resisting standardization in favor of diversity method and of outcome. Literature can also actively engage learners with questions about the human condition, providing a larger context within which to consider professional identity formation. Our fundamental contention is that, within a medical education framework, literature is highly suited to assist learners in questioning conventional thinking and assumptions about various dimensions of professionalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Humanist History of Mathematics?Regiomontanus's Padua Oration in ContextJames Steven ByrneIn the spring of 1464, the German astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician Johannes Müller (1436–76), known as Regiomontanus (a Latinization of the name of his hometown, Königsberg in Franconia), offered a course of lectures on the Arabic astronomer al-Farghani at the University of Padua. The only one of these to survive is his inaugural oration on the history and utility (...) of the mathematical arts.1 Regiomontanus tells his audience that the purpose of the oration is torelate first the origin of our arts, and among which nations they first began to be cultivated, in what way they were at last translated from various foreign tongues into Latin, which of our ancestors were famed in these disciplines, and to whom in our lifetimes recognition should be granted.2To this end, he offers a history of the quadrivial arts (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) and other important mathematical disciplines from [End Page 41] antiquity to his own time, praises their utility, and exhorts his audience to revive the languishing study of mathematics at Padua. Astrology, a discipline with which Regiomontanus himself was closely associated, is singled out for particular praise.Traditionally, Regiomontanus's Padua oration has been seen through the lens of its rather obvious humanism. In particular, the Padua oration has come to be understood as the rhetorical embodiment of the fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century revival of ancient (Greek) mathematics. Just as this revival is inextricable from the rise of humanism, so Regiomontanus has come to be seen as an exemplar of humanist mathematics.3 It is the aim of this paper to examine the Padua oration in the context both of contemporary humanist rhetoric and of Regiomontanus's own intellectual background in order to argue that, while the oration is stylistically consistent with humanist norms, the vision of mathematics presented in it is also deeply grounded in the university mathematical curriculum and in Regiomontanus's own reading of mathematical texts.Regiomontanus was educated primarily at the University of Vienna (he was also briefly at the University of Leipzig), where he enrolled in 1450, completed his baccalaureate in 1452 and became a master in 1457.4 He remained at Vienna until 1461, when the death of his friend and teacher Georg Peurbach prompted him to travel to Italy with his patron, Cardinal Bessarion.5 In Regiomontanus's day Vienna was probably the most important of the German universities, rivaled only by Prague, whose prestige had declined after it was stripped of its theology faculty in the aftermath of the Hussite Wars.6 The curriculum at the University of Vienna was modeled [End Page 42] after that of Paris, and Parisian scholars played a major role both in its founding in 1365 and in its re-establishment (this time with a theology faculty) in 1384.7Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, the Viennese mathematical curriculum of Regiomontanus's day included all of the traditional authorities taught at Paris in the fourteenth century. For arithmetic and algebra, various "algorisms" (prose or poetry instructions for carrying out arithmetical operations that often also included a small amount of number theory) were the basic texts, supplemented in the fourteenth century by the Quadripartitum numerorum of Jean de Murs. Jordanus de Nemorare's De numeris datis and al-Khwarizmi's Algebra were common sources for those engaged in more advanced studies (i.e., they were not normally the subject of ordinary lectures, but were readily available to interested students, and would perhaps have been the subject of occasional extraordinary lectures). Euclid's Elements, supplemented by the commentaries of Pappus and Campanus, was the central text for geometry, and a number of medieval texts on practical and speculative geometry were in circulation as well. For astronomy, the Sphere of Sacrobosco and the Theorica planetarum were the most commonly used teaching texts, sometimes supplemented by al-Farghani's Elements of Astronomy (the subject of Regiomontanus's Padua lectures). Advanced students could read numerous more specific treatises by Arabic and Latin authors. For optics, the Perspectiva communis of John Peckham was the most common basic text, with texts... (shrink)

Imitation research has been hindered by (1) overly molecular analyses of behaviour that ignore hierarchical structure, and (2) attempts to disqualify observational evidence. Program-level imitation is one of a range of cognitive skills for scheduling efficient novel behaviour, in particular, enabling an individual to purloin the organization of another's behaviour for its own. To do so, the individual must perceive the underlying hierarchical schedule of the fluid action it observes and must understand the local functions of subroutines within the overall (...) goal-directed process. Action-level imitation, copying strings of actions linearly without any such understanding, is less valuable for acquiring complex behaviour and may often have other, social functions. At present, we lack a mechanistic understanding of the abilities underlying program-level imitation that make it possible for the underlying structure of complex actions to be dissected visually and recreated in behaviour. (shrink)

The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomously generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different (...) research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comments on “Moral Complicity in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research”W. Malcolm Byrnes, Ph.D. and Edward J. FurtonIn his article titled “Moral Complicity in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Research,” Mark T. Brown (2009) unfortunately mischaracterizes my ethical analysis of the use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells for replacement therapies, or treatments (Byrnes 2008). In my paper, which Brown cites, I argue that, just as it is ethically acceptable for (...) parents to allow their children and themselves to be immunized using vaccines produced by cell lines derived from human fetuses aborted in the past, it is also acceptable for persons in the future to benefit from treatments that use iPS cells validated using human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines [End Page 202] derived in the past. The assumption I make is that iPS cells would have to be shown to be functionally equivalent to human ES cells—i.e., validated—before they could be used for cell replacement treatments. (If it turns out that this assumption is incorrect, and primate or even mouse ES cells can be used for the validation, then all residual ethical problems will disappear and there will be no ethical problems whatsoever associated with iPS cells.) I wrote:... [I]n both cases, the origin of the treatment is in a one-time event: either the one-time use of aborted fetuses to obtain cell lines (e.g., MRC-5 and WI- 38) to grow weakened virus strains for vaccine production, or the one-time destruction of human embryos to validate iPS cells, which then effectively replace embryonic stem cells. In the latter case, if no additional embryonic stem cell lines are derived, then derivation of the existing lines could be considered a “one-time” event in the past, albeit an event that extended over a several-year period(Byrnes 2008, p. 287, emphasis added).Note the phrase “if no additional embryonic stem cell lines are derived.” The derivation of ES cell lines inherently involves destruction of embryos; indeed, that is why many people, including me, are opposed to human ES cell research. In my article, I am arguing that, if no additional ES cell lines are derived, then no additional human embryos will be destroyed, and the destruction of human embryos will lie in the past. In this case, embryo destruction could be considered a past event, just as the abortion of a human fetus from which vaccine-producing cell lines were derived is a past, albeit tragic, event.In the process of building his argument that proponents of iPS cell research are morally complicit in embryo destruction, Brown (2009, p. 15) casts me as being in favor of the “derivation of new embryonic stem [cell lines].” This is the exact opposite of my position. In fact, I am opposed to further destruction of human embryos. I believe that the hundreds of ES cell lines already in existence are more than sufficient to validate iPS cells and so no additional lines need to be derived. This means that no additional human embryos will need to be destroyed.Apparently based on the misperception that I support future destruction of human embryos, Brown concludes that “Byrnes’s endorsement of ongoing iPSC validation studies would seem to implicate him and those who follow his lead in formal and material complicity in what they perceive as moral evil” (p. 16). He writes that “explicit formal complicity would attach because he [Byrnes] knowingly and intentionally recommends that embryos be killed in order to facilitate a transition to a future in which no more embryos need be destroyed” (p. 16). Additionally, my “followers” and I would be guilty of “proximate material complicity” as well as “remote material complicity” (p. 16). Unfortunately, this broad condemnation is based on a misconception of my actual position.An additional problem involves Brown’s use of a quotation he attributes to me: [End Page 203]Once embryonic stem cells are used to successfully validate iPS cells, they will no longer be needed and their association with iPS cells will lie in the past. Is there not an element of sadness and resignation in accepting something (iPS cells) associated with an unjust act (destruction of an... (shrink)

The physician-researcher conflict of interest, a long-standing and widely recognized ethical challenge of clinical research, has thus far eluded satisfactory solution. The conflict is fairly straightforward. Medical research and medical therapy are distinct pursuits; the former is aimed at producing generalizable knowledge for the benefit of future patients, whereas the latter is aimed at addressing the individualized medical needs of a particular patient. When the physician-researcher combines these pursuits, he or she serves two masters and cannot — no matter how (...) well-intentioned — avoid the risk of compromising the duties owed in one of the professional roles assumed. Because of the necessary rigidity of a research protocol, the more demanding of the two masters is frequently the research.The problem of the physician-researcher conflict has been evident since the first attempts to regulate human research in the United States. Otto E. Guttentag, a physician at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, addressed the conflict in a 1953Sciencemagazine article. (shrink)

We explore the extent to which Boards use executive compensation to incite firms to act in accordance with social and environmental objectives (e.g., Johnson, R. and D. Greening: 1999, Academy of Management Journal 42(5), 564-578; Kane, E. J.: 2002, Journal of Banking and Finance 26, 1919-1933.). We examine the association between executive compensation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for 77 Canadian firms using three key components of executives' compensation structure: salary, bonus, and stock options. Similar to prior research (McGuire, J., (...) S. Dow and K. Argheyd: 2003, Journal of Business Ethics 45(4), 341-359), we measure three different aspects of CSR, which include Total CSR as well as CSR Strengths and CSR Weaknesses. CSR Strengths and CSR Weaknesses capture the positive and negative aspects of CSR, respectively. We find significant positive relationships between: (1) Salary and CSR Weaknesses, (2) Bonus and CSR Strengths, (3) Stock Options and Total CSR; and (4) Stock Options and CSR Strengths. Our findings suggest the importance of the structure of executive compensation in encouraging socially responsible actions, particularly for larger Canadian firms. This in turn suggests that executive compensation can be an effective tool in aligning executives' welfare with that of the "common good", which results in more socially responsible firms (Bebchuk, L., J. Fried and D. Walker: 2002, The University of Chicago Law Review 69, 751-846; Zalewski, D.: 2003, Journal of Economic Issues 37(2), 503-509). In addition, our findings suggest the importance of institutional context in influencing the association between executive compensation and CSR. Further implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

En este artículo se intenta una fundamentación de los derechos humanos desde la perspectivade Bernard Lonergan. La universalidad de éstos está cimentada en la naturalezahumana, que es dinámica, operante e histórica. La intencionalidad humana busca laobjetividad, desplegando su poder en cuatro niveles: la experiencia, la comprensión, eljuicio y la acción. De este dinamismo se desprenden cuatro preceptos: sé atento, séinteligente, sé razonable y sé responsable. El descubrimiento del valor de estos imperativosfundamenta y salvaguarda los derechos humanos. Su desconocimiento engendra ladistorsión (...) del ser humano. Para corregir las desviaciones debe haber conversiones intelectuales,morales y religiosas, las cuales suponen la fe, ya que ésta permite reconocer conmás claridad los valores. (shrink)

This paper assesses the role of shadow education (SE), i.e., organised learning activities outside formal schooling, in the lives of secondary school students of different social backgrounds and in different school settings, in a high-stakes context. It draws on multilevel analysis of longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland data, alongside narratives from in-depth case study research in 10 schools. Framed within a social reproduction approach, we show how access to SE as an educational resource is socially stratified, accessible to those with (...) greater levels of family resources, and those attending schools with higher socio-economic student intakes. SE is viewed as an investment, particularly among students with average and above average levels of prior attainment, while high attaining students are less likely to use SE. Perhaps reflecting the normalisation of SE in the Irish context, students do not directly link engagement in such tuition to their socio-emotional wellbeing. (shrink)

On 18 November 2014, the United Nations launched an urgent new campaign to end AIDS as a global health threat by 2030. With its proposed strategy, the UN follows leading scientists who had declared the failure of former prevention strategies and now were promoting a ‘Seek and Treat for Optimal Prevention’ (STOP) approach as the most cost‐effective response to the pandemic to meet the goal of ‘an AIDS‐free generation’. STOP combines antiretroviral therapy and routine HIV screening to find persons unaware (...) that they are HIV‐positive, because research has shown that people consistently change their behaviour (i.e. increase condom use, have fewer partners) after an HIV diagnosis. AIDS activists have broadly criticized this strategy on different levels. In this article, we go beyond these criticisms and try to analyse the political rationalities behind this ‘new’ strategy. We believe that it is necessary to put the rationale underpinning the STOP programme into the context of broader societal transformations that can best be captured as the development of advanced liberal societies and the new emphasis on self‐controlling or self‐responsibility rather than on disciplining behaviour. (shrink)

Real engines of the artificial intelligence revolution, machine learning models, and algorithms are embedded nowadays in many services and products around us. As a society, we argue it is now necessary to transition into a phronetic paradigm focused on the ethical dilemmas stemming from the conception and application of AIs to define actionable recommendations as well as normative solutions. However, both academic research and society-driven initiatives are still quite far from clearly defining a solid program of study and intervention. In (...) this contribution, we will focus on selected ethical investigations around AI by proposing an incremental model of trust that can be applied to both human-human and human-AI interactions. Starting with a quick overview of the existing accounts of trust, with special attention to Taddeo’s concept of “e-trust,” we will discuss all the components of the proposed model and the reasons to trust in human-AI interactions in an example of relevance for business organizations. We end this contribution with an analysis of the epistemic and pragmatic reasons of trust in human-AI interactions and with a discussion of kinds of normativity in trustworthiness of AIs. (shrink)

Using data collected at two phases, this study examines why and how ethical leadership behavior influences employees’ evaluations of organization-focused justice, i.e., procedural justice and distributive justice. By proposing ethical leaders as moral agents of the organization, we build up the linkage between ethical leadership behavior and the above two types of organization-focused justice. We further suggest trust in organization as a key mediating mechanism in the linkage. Our findings indicate that ethical leadership behavior engenders employees’ trust in their employing (...) organization, which in turn promotes their justice perceptions toward the organization. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

We report the results of two experiments that show that participants rely on both emotion and reason in moral judgments. Experiment 1 showed that when participants were primed to communicate feelings, they provided emotive justifications not only for personal dilemmas, e.g., pushing a man from a bridge that will result in his death but save the lives of five others, but also for impersonal dilemmas, e.g., hitting a switch on a runaway train that will result in the death of one (...) man but save the lives of five others; when they were primed to communicate thoughts, they provided non-emotive justifications for both personal and impersonal dilemmas. Experiment 2 showed that participants read about a protagonist's emotions more quickly when the protagonist was faced with a personal dilemma than an impersonal one, but they read about the protagonist's decision to act or not act equally quickly for personal and impersonal dilemmas. (shrink)

Semifactual thinking about what might have been the same, e.g., ''even if Philip had not chosen the chocolate ice-cream sundae, he would have developed an allergic reaction'' has been neglected compared to counterfactual thinking about what might have been different, e.g., ''if only Philip had not chosen the chocolate ice-cream sundae, he would not have developed an allergic reaction''. We report the first systematic comparison of the two sorts of thinking in two experiments. The first experiment showed that counterfactual ''if (...) only'' thoughts about an antecedent event lead people to judge the event to be more causally related to the outcome, whereas semifactual ''even if'' thoughts lead people to judge the antecedent event to be less causally related to the outcome. In addition, the experiment showed that generating counterfactual ''if only'' thoughts increases emotional reactions such as regret, whereas generating semifactual ''even if'' thoughts decreases such reactions. The second experiment, along with a replication experiment, showed that when people complete ''if only'' and ''even if'' sentence stems, they focus on different alternative antecedents to the outcome: ''if only'' thoughts focus on alternatives that would undo the outcome whereas ''even if'' thoughts focus on alternatives that would not undo it, from among a set of available alternative antecedents in which either all, some, or none would undo the outcome. The implications of the results for theories of thinking about what might have been are discussed. (shrink)

Purpose Cybersecurity in healthcare has become an urgent matter in recent years due to various malicious attacks on hospitals and other parts of the healthcare infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of how core values of the health systems, such as the principles of biomedical ethics, are in a supportive or conflicting relation to cybersecurity. Design/methodology/approach This paper claims that it is possible to map the desiderata relevant to cybersecurity onto the four principles of medical (...) ethics, i.e. beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice, and explore value conflicts in that way. Findings With respect to the question of how these principles should be balanced, there are reasons to think that the priority of autonomy relative to beneficence and non-maleficence in contemporary medical ethics could be extended to value conflicts in health-related cybersecurity. Research limitations/implications However, the tension between autonomy and justice, which relates to the desideratum of usability of information and communication technology systems, cannot be ignored even if one assumes that respect for autonomy should take priority over other moral concerns. Originality/value In terms of value conflicts, most discussions in healthcare deal with the conflict of balancing efficiency and privacy given the sensible nature of health information. In this paper, the authors provide a broader and more detailed outline. (shrink)

This paper discusses the concept of “human disenhancement”, i.e. the worsening of human individual abilities and expectations through technology. The goal is provoking ethical reflection on technological innovation outside the biomedical realm, in particular the substitution of human work with computer-driven automation. According to some widely accepted economic theories, automatization and computerization are responsible for the disappearance of many middle-class jobs. I argue that, if that is the case, a technological innovation can be a cause of “human disenhancement”, globally, and (...) all things considered, even when the local and immediate effect of that technology is to increase the demand of more sophisticated human skills than the ones they substitute. The conclusion is that current innovations in the ICT sector are objectionable from a moral point of view, because they disenhance more people than they enhance. (shrink)

The theory of mental models and its computer implementations have led to crucial experiments showing that no standard logic—the sentential calculus and all logics that include it—can underlie human reasoning. The theory replaces the logical concept of validity (the conclusion is true in all cases in which the premises are true) with necessity (conclusions describe no more than possibilities to which the premises refer). Many inferences are both necessary and valid. But experiments show that individuals make necessary inferences that are (...) invalid, e.g., Few people ate steak or sole; therefore, few people ate steak. Other crucial experiments show that individuals reject inferences that are not necessary but valid, e.g., He had the anesthetic or felt pain, but not both; therefore, he had the anesthetic or felt pain, or both. Nothing in logic can justify the rejection of a valid inference: a denial of its conclusion is inconsistent with its premises, and inconsistencies yield valid inferences of any conclusions whatsoever including the one denied. So inconsistencies are catastrophic in logic. In contrast, the model theory treats all inferences as defeasible (nonmonotonic), and inconsistencies have the null model, which yields only the null model in conjunction with any other premises. So inconsistences are local. Which allows truth values in natural languages to be much richer than those that occur in the semantics of standard logics; and individuals verify assertions on the basis of both facts and possibilities that did not occur. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is, only if we take it that experiences have (...) conceptual content. (1994, 162) Brewer agrees. Their view is sometimes called conceptualism; nonconceptualism is the rival position, that experiences have nonconceptual content. One initial obstacle is understanding what the issue is. What is conceptual content, and how is it different from nonconceptual content? Section 1 of this paper explains two versions of each of the rival positions: state (non)conceptualism and content (non)conceptualism; the latter pair is the locus of the relevant dispute. Two prominent arguments for content nonconceptualism—the richness argument and the continuity argument—both fail (section 2). McDowell’s and Brewer’s epistemological defenses of content conceptualism are also faulty (section 3). Section 4 gives a more simple-minded case for conceptualism; finally, some reasons are given for rejecting the claim—on one natural interpretation—that experiences justify beliefs. (shrink)

The hydrogen economy has received increasing attention recently. Common reasons cited for investigating hydrogen energy options are improved energy security, reduced environmental impacts, and its contribution to a transition to sustainable energy sources. In anticipation of these benefits, national and local initiatives have been launched in the United States, creating pilot “roadmaps” and technology partnerships to explore hydrogen economy platforms. Although hydrogen can provide several positive improvements over a carbon- or uranium-based energy system, several problems are also likely. As well, (...) competitive technologies (e.g., hybrid vehicles) may offer comparatively greater economic and/or environmental advantages. Before policies to advance a hydrogen energy economy proceed, it is vital that all aspects of hydrogen be compared with other available alternatives. Important questions to ask in this regard are whether a hydrogen economy can fulfill key energy needs and whether there are appropriate roles for hydrogen to play in a sustainable energy future. (shrink)

A complimentary assessment of Blum's award-winning book about racism and its affects. Well written as it is, it needs to be supplemented with a definition of racial injustice, and also to analyze racism not only on the level of individual morality but from a human rights perspective that discredits political and economic motives for racism (e.g., by drawing on Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism).

The author supported Barack Obama for president, and he agrees with Obama on most issues. However, he opposes the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. Besides involving the destruction of human life, hESC research can (1) result in the exploitation of women, and (2) cause human reproduction to become a means to an end, i.e., human embryos will become commodities to be bought and sold. Recent scientific developments show the growing potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (...) and the diminishing promise of their embryonic counterparts. When President Obama lifted restrictions on hESC research on March 9, 2009, he missed an opportunity to show moral leadership on a politically controversial issue. (shrink)

G.E. Moore said that rightness was obviously a matter of maximising plain goodness. Peter Geach and Judith Thomson disagree. They have both argued that ‘good’ is not a predicative adjective, but only ever an attributive adjective: just like ‘big.’ And just as there is no such thing as plain bigness but only ever big for or as a so-and-so, there is also no such thing as plain goodness. They conclude that Moore’s goodness is thus a nonsense. However attention has been (...) drawn to a weakness in their arguments. Mahrad Almotahari and Adam Hosein have sought to plug that weakness. If their plug holds, then there is no goodness. Doing most of their work is the following premise: adjective φ is predicative only if it can be used predicatively in ‘x is a φ K’ otherwise it is attributive. In this paper I argue that this premise is false, that their plug does not hold and that if one is to reject plain goodness it will have to be for other reasons. (shrink)

Rethinking the Body and Its Boundaries Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11673-011-9353-8 Authors Leigh E. Rich, Department of Health Sciences (Public Health), Armstrong Atlantic State University, 11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419, USA Michael A. Ashby, Palliative Care and Persistent Pain Services, Royal Hobart, Hospital, Southern Tasmania Area Health Service, and School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania, 1st Floor, Peacock Building, Repatriation Centre, 90 Davey Street, Hobart, TAS 7000 Australia Pierre-Olivier Méthot, ESRC (...) Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis), University of Exeter, Byrne House, St German’s Road, Exeter, EX4 4PJ UK Journal Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Online ISSN 1872-4353 Print ISSN 1176-7529 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 1. (shrink)

Energy efficiency and energy security are emerging concerns in climate change policy. But. there is little acknowledgment of energy justice issues. Marginalised and vulnerable communities may be disproportionately exposed to both climate change impacts (e.g. heat, flooding) and costs associated with energy transitions related to climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g. particulate exposure from biofuel combustion). Climate change is producing energy-related impacts such as increased cooling costs. In some cases it threatens energy security. Higher electricity costs associated with ‘climate proofing’ (...) energy network infrastructure may exacerbate ‘fuel poverty’ - itself a form of injustice. In this paper we critically review the literature about multiple interrelations between energy policy, justice and climate change. We identify key issues, illuminate knowledge gaps, and synthesise findings to develop a conceptual model. We chart a research agenda and highlight policy implications. (shrink)

A drone industry has emerged in the US, initially funded almost exclusively for military applications. There are now also other uses both governmental and commercial. Many military drones are still being made, however, especially for surveillance and targeted killings. Regarding the latter, this essay calls into question their legality and morality. It recognizes that the issues are complex and controversial, but less so as to the killing of non-combatant civilians. The government using drones for targeted killings maintains secrecy and appeals (...) to non-traditional justifications. Most scholars who assess these killer drone practices support citizen immunity, either by favoring a modified just war theory that prioritizes civilians’ right to life or by challenging official deviations from applicable laws. They accordingly declare such killing immoral if not a war crime. The manufacturers of these killer drones are not themselves the killers, but they are abetters, i.e., sine qua non facilitators. So, I argue that any company concerned about its corporate social responsibility should cease manufacturing them. (shrink)

I consider cases where you increase the risk that, e.g., someone will die, without increasing the risk that you will kill them: in particular, cases in which that increasing of risk is accompanied by a decreasing of risk of the same degree such that the risk imposition has been offset. I defend the moral legitimacy of such offsetting, including carbon-offsetting.