Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our moral (...) development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting on the often-favored approach in the analytic tradition that locates fictional characters, events, and narratives as sources of readers’ emotions, I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis by accounting for how literary devices trigger non-cognitive emotions. I argue that giving more expansive consideration to literary devices by which authors present content facilitates a better understanding of how fiction engages emotion. In doing so, I also explore the (...) somatic dimension of reading fiction. (shrink)

本文旨在初步探索「限肉令」作為應對傳染病大流行和由工廠化畜牧業帶來的其他威脅的預防措施的正當性。「限肉令」並非指全面禁肉，而是以法律限制市民的人均肉品消耗量在滿足基本營養需求的範圍內。本文採用的進路是 緩解一些可能阻礙對此提案進行更宏觀、理性的思考的潛在心理拘繫。此進路參考了傅柯「日常經驗」(everyday experience) 的分析，和佛家倫理學回應全球環境倫理問題的策略。我們先以香港社會為主要案例研究，檢視形成「肉是必需的」一想法和嗜肉情結的社會模式。接著我們引入葷食心理學研究，討論嗜肉情結如何成為正面考慮「限肉令」的障 礙。我們也嘗試回應一些反對此提案的理由，包括來自自由主義 (Liberalism)的批評。 -/- This article explores the preliminary justifiability of meat restriction order as a preventive measure to the risks of pandemic and other forms of harm posed by factory farming. A meat restriction order seeks to limit citizens’ meat consumption at the level of meeting individuals’ basic nutrient needs. This article aims to loosen some potential psychological hooks that prevent a more expansive, rational deliberation of the proposal. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s analysis of “everyday experience” and the (...) Buddhist responses to global environmental issues, we investigate the social patterns that account for the formation of people’s meat commitment, using Hong Kong society as a major case study. With reference to scientific studies of meat-eaters’ psychology, we discuss how the meat commitment becomes a barrier for society to positively consider the justifiability of the proposal. We will also address a number of objections to our proposal, including those from liberalism. (shrink)

The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technology. The single mother Marie’s adoption of the Arkangel system has invited overwhelmingly negative moral evaluation from philosophers. But what accounts for the moral failure of a loving and concerned parent? Is it all about her flawed character, or are there situational factors at work? In the article, I first foreground the slipperiness of technology implicated in Albert Borgmann’s notion of the “device paradigm” and Hans Jonas’s analysis (...) of modern technology. Then I analyze the character of the Arkangel system in the light of the two philosophers’ works and show how the technology turns Marie into a failing parent. In the end, I offer tentative answers to the two questions; the answers shall also shed light on the problem of under-parenting driven by digital technology. (shrink)

Humphreys and Forde argue that semantic memory is divided into separate substores for different kinds of information. However, the neuro-imaging results cited in support of this view are inconsistent and often methodologically and statistically unreliable. Our own data indicate no regional specialisation as a function of semantic category or domain and support instead a distributed unitary account.

This article advances an account of the nonhedonic values of horror fiction (including film). It is motivated by cases in which consuming horror fosters what theorists of education call "transformative learning" in adult students, which is a more shocking and disturbing experience than pleasurable. I first present two cases in which Polanski's Repulsion (1968) and Browning's Freaks (1932) disrupted and modified two students' experience of madness and abnormality respectively. Then I draw on Dewey's "aesthetic experience", Foucault's "experience book" and O'Leary's (...) approach to the value of fiction to give the transformative experience in question a philosophical underpinning. In the second half of the paper, I offer a close reading of Bloch's Psycho (1959), with the aim of demonstrating that it has the potential to transform the everyday experience of madness in readers. (shrink)

Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some defend human procreation by saying that procreative parenting adds meaning to parents’ life. This article examines one such defence, and argues that it does not suffice to rescue human procreation from the challenges to procreation.

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts’ features—the number of concepts they occur in and likelihood of co-occurrence —determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech-to-meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision (...) that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time-sensitive co-occurrence-driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general-to-specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation. (shrink)

Male-male competition is involved in inter- and intrasexual selection, with both endocrine and psychological factors presumably contributing to reproductive success in human males. We examined relationships among men’s naturally occurring testosterone, their self-perceived mate value, self-esteem, sociosexuality, and expected likelihood of approaching attractive women versus situations leading to child involvement. We then monitored changes in these measures in male rowers from Cambridge, UK, following a manipulated “win” or “loss” as a result of an indoor rowing contest. Baseline results revealed that (...) men with heightened testosterone and SPMV values typically had greater inclinations toward engaging in casual sexual relationships and a higher likelihood of approaching attractive women in a hypothetical social situation. As anticipated, both testosterone and SPMV increased following a manipulated “victory” and were associated with heightened sociosexuality, and increased expectations toward approaching attractive women versus individuals who would involve them in interacting with children after the race. SPMV and self-esteem appeared to mediate some of the effects of testosterone on post-race values. These findings are considered in the broader context of individual trade-offs between mating and parental effort and a model of the concurrent and dynamic androgenic and psychological influences contributing to male reproductive effort and success. (shrink)

The Black Mirror episode “Arkangel” tells a disturbing story of over-parenting driven by technology. The single mother Marie’s adoption of the Arkangel system has invited overwhelmingly negative moral evaluation from philosophers. But what accounts for the moral failure of a loving and concerned parent? Is it all about her flawed character, or are there situational factors at work? In the article, I first foreground the slipperiness of technology implicated in Albert Borgmann’s notion of the “device paradigm” and Hans Jonas’s analysis (...) of modern technology. Then I analyze the character of the Arkangel system in the light of the two philosophers’ works and show how the technology turns Marie into a failing parent. In the end, I offer tentative answers to the two questions; the answers shall also shed light on the problem of under-parenting driven by digital technology. (shrink)

Responding to serious environmental problems, requires urgent and fundamental shifts in our day-to-day lifestyles. This paper employs a qualitative, cross-cultural approach to explore people’s subjective self-reflections on their experiences of pro-environmental behavioral spillover in three countries; Brazil, China, and Denmark. Behavioral spillover is an appealing yet elusive phenomenon, but offers a potential way of encouraging wider, voluntary lifestyle shifts beyond the scope of single behavior change interventions. Behavioral spillover theory proposes that engaging in one pro-environmental action can catalyze the performance (...) of others. To date, evidence for the phenomenon has been mixed, and the causal processes governing relationships between behaviors appear complex, inconsistent and only partly understood. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by investigating accounts of behavioral spillover in three diverse cultural settings using qualitative semi-structured interviews. The analysis shows that while around half of participants overall who were questioned recalled spillover effects, the other half had not consciously experienced spillover. There were few significant differences across cultures, though some forms of spillover effects were reported more in some cultures than others. More environmentally-engaged participants across all three countries were significantly more likely to experience spillover than those who were less engaged. Accounts of within-domain spillovers were most commonly reported, mainly comprising waste, resource conservation and consumption-related actions. Accounts of between-domain spillover were very rare. Recollection of contextual and interpersonal spillover effects also emerged from the interviews. Our findings suggest that more conscious behavioral spillover pathways may be limited to those with pre-existing environmental values. Behavioral spillover may comprise multiple pathways incorporating conscious and unconscious processes. We conclude that targeting behavioral catalysts that generate more socially diffuse spillover effects could offer more potential than conventional spillover involving a single individual. (shrink)

Sexual objectification, in the broadest terms, involves treating people as things. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what, more precisely, this involves. According to the conjoint view of Catherine Mackinnon and Sally Haslanger, sexual objectification is necessarily morally objectionable. According to Martha Nussbaum, it is not: there can be benign instances of it, in the course of a healthy sexual relationship, for instance. This is taken to be a serious disagreement, both by Nussbaum and by recent commentators such as Lina (...) Papadaki. However it isn't a serious disagreement, for the two theories have different aims and methodology, and are not rivals. They both could be apt, simultaneously. (shrink)

Replication protein A (RPA) is the main eukaryotic single‐stranded DNA (ssDNA) binding protein, having essential roles in all DNA metabolic reactions involving ssDNA. RPA binds ssDNA with high affinity, thereby preventing the formation of secondary structures and protecting ssDNA from the action of nucleases, and directly interacts with other DNA processing proteins. Here, we discuss recent results supporting the idea that one function of RPA is to prevent annealing between short repeats that can lead to chromosome rearrangements by microhomology‐mediated end (...) joining or the formation of hairpin structures that are substrates for structure‐selective nucleases. We suggest that replication fork catastrophe caused by depletion of RPA could result from cleavage of secondary structures by nucleases, and that failure to cleave hairpin structures formed at DNA ends could lead to gene amplification. These studies highlight the important role RPA plays in maintaining genome integrity. (shrink)

The claim that the functions of art liable to change over time appears to suggest that any attempt to define art in terms of a limited set of functions will fail. Robert Stecker has offered a functionalist definition which seeks to accommodate this criticism by making the functions which are relevant to an artwork's status those which are 'standard or correctly recognized' for some art form. I argue that Stecker does not offer a clear enough distinction between the 'standard or (...) correctly recognized' and the accidental functions of an art form; that his account of the 'standard or correctly recognized' functions of an art form does not exhaust important artistic functions; and that his proposed definition is neither necessary nor sufficient for an object to count as an artwork. For these reasons I suggest that Stecker's functionalist account of art should be rejected. (shrink)

Die Reihe formaler Sprachen, die im Verständnis von M.J. Cresswell "sinnvoll" als Modelle für natüriiche Sprachen anzusehen sind und die dabei auch semantische Vagheiten zu erfassen gestatten, nämlich die dreiwertige Logik (U. Blau), die Superbewertung (B.C. van Fraassen, K. Fine, M. Pinkal, J. Ballweg) und die unscharfe Logik (L.A. Zadeh), legt nahe, daß bei der Sprachanalyse Zadehs "Prinzip der Inkompatibilität" gilt: Hohe Präzision ist inkompatibel mit hoher Komplexität. Je komplexer man das Vagheitsproblem angeht, desto verschwommener wird der benutzbare Geltungswert. Zudem (...) wird die Sprachanalyse auf Empirie verwiesen: Die Superbewertung erfordert eine Beschreibung von Kontexten, die unscharfe Logik eine sprachempirische Untersuchung aller Geltungswerte. (shrink)

Die Reihe formaler Sprachen, die im Verständnis von M.J. Cresswell "sinnvoll" als Modelle für natüriiche Sprachen anzusehen sind und die dabei auch semantische Vagheiten zu erfassen gestatten, nämlich die dreiwertige Logik (U. Blau), die Superbewertung (B.C. van Fraassen, K. Fine, M. Pinkal, J. Ballweg) und die unscharfe Logik (L.A. Zadeh), legt nahe, daß bei der Sprachanalyse Zadehs "Prinzip der Inkompatibilität" gilt: Hohe Präzision ist inkompatibel mit hoher Komplexität. Je komplexer man das Vagheitsproblem angeht, desto verschwommener wird der benutzbare Geltungswert. Zudem (...) wird die Sprachanalyse auf Empirie verwiesen: Die Superbewertung erfordert eine Beschreibung von Kontexten, die unscharfe Logik eine sprachempirische Untersuchung aller Geltungswerte. (shrink)

Shech (2022) offers a critical assessment of my defense of anti-realism, developed in Resisting Scientific Realism. Induction and inductive inferences play a central role in Shech’s critical analysis of my defense of realism. I argue that Shech’s criticisms that relate to induction and inductive inference are problematic, and do not constitute a threat to my defense of anti-realism. Contrary to what Shech claims, the anti-realist does not need to explain why inductive inferences are successful. That is not part of contemporary (...) realism/anti-realism debate. Further, such a demand fails to recognise that some anti-realists do not put much stock in induction. (shrink)

Abstract:Shareholders’ relationship to the firm is a central theme in corporate governance, yet the investors’ perspective has been virtually ignored in governance research. This paper attempts to explain the previously unexplored role of trust in the investor decision-making process. The proposed model suggests that trust acts as the antecedent of the risk variable in existing investor decision-making models. Stock ownership involves both financial and ethical risk, which by definition requires some level of implicit trust in management and the market.

Our study analyses the nature, quality and extent of human resource disclosures of UK Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 firms by relying on a novel disclosure index measuring the depth and breadth of disclosures. Contextually, we focus on the 5-year period following the then Labour government’s attempts to encourage firms to formally report on their human resource management practices and to foster deeper employer–employee engagement. First, we evaluate the degree to which companies report comprehensively on a number of HRD (...) items that we classify as “procedural” or “sustainable.” Second, we hypothesise that a company’s employee relation ideology is positively associated with HRD. Our results indicate that: whilst there has been an increase in the breadth of HRD in terms of procedural and sustainable items being disclosed, the evolution towards a more comprehensive and in-depth form of HRD remains rather limited; and there is a positive association between a company’s employee relation ideology and the level of HRD. Theoretically, we conceive of HRD both as a reflection of an organisation’s orientation towards a key stakeholder and a legitimacy seeking exercise at a time of changing societal conditions. We contribute to the scant literature on the extent and determinants of HRD since prior research tends to subsume employee-related disclosures within the broader concept of social, ethical or intellectual capital disclosures. We also propose a disclosure checklist to underpin future HRD research. (shrink)

Ethical climates remain one of the most popular ways to assess the ethical orientations of companies. There has been a plethora of studies examining the relationship between ethical climates and critical outcomes, which was triggered by Victor and Cullen's seminal work published 35 years ago. After such a long period of strong research activity in this topic area, it is time to take stock of the accumulated empirical evidence. This meta-analytic review incorporates the considerations of alternative conceptualizations of ethical (...) climates and integrates an international comparative perspective on the consequences of ethical climates. Given the state of the field, it is imperative to assess the tenability of the various relationships of ethical climate types across national contexts. As such, we first provide an update on how ethical climates are related to key organizational outcomes and assess how country-level factors affect the consequences of ethical climates. We present our findings along theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, discuss the implications of our findings for extant research and provide suggestions for future research for each of the three avenues. (shrink)