This contribution discusses the development of the Data Ethics Decision Aid (DEDA), a framework for reviewing government data projects that considers their social impact, the embedded values and the government’s responsibilities in times of data-driven public management. Drawing from distinct qualitative research approaches, the DEDA framework was developed in an iterative process (2016–2018) and has since then been applied by various Dutch municipalities, the Association of Dutch Municipalities, and the Ministry of General Affairs (NL). We present the DEDA framework as (...) an effective process to moderate case-deliberation and advance the development of responsible data practices. In addition, by thoroughly documenting the deliberation process, the DEDA framework establishes accountability. First, this paper sheds light on the necessity for data ethical case deliberation. Second, it describes the prototypes, the final design of the framework, and its evaluation. After a comparison with other frameworks, and a discussion of the findings, the paper concludes by arguing that the DEDA framework is a useful process for ethical evaluation of data projects for public management and an effective tool for creating awareness of ethical issues in data practices. (shrink)

The book (in German) on “Solar Energy – challenge for research, development and international co-operation” is the report of a study group of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. It reviews solar thermal, photovoltaic, and bio mimetic solar energy techniques; prospects of de-central techniques in developing countries; transport and storage of solar energy; and chances for cooperation with Arabic countries and countries of the South of the former Soviet Union. The prospect of large scale energy production in arid areas, and (...) the modern potentials of conducting electricity over long distances by high-voltage DC transmission (V, 2.1) are particularly relevant for the concluding section. Political chances as well as risks were considered for reliable long term cooperation with various Arab countries on these issues. The recommendations appear to be still appropriate 25 years after the book was published, particularly the political advice in favour of cooperation between Europe and suitable countries of the Maghreb. The global time scale of implementation (discussed in chapter I, 7.2) is of the same (high) magnitude as that of other major changes in the history of technology, such as the substitution of sailing ships by steamboats which took almost a century. (shrink)

Cognitive-linguistic theories commonly model speakers’ grammatical knowledge as a network of constructions related by a variety of associative links. The present study proposes that structural priming can provide psycholinguistic evidence of such links, and crucially, that the method can be extended to non-alternating constructions. In a comprehension priming experiment using the “maze” variant of self-paced reading, English caused-motion sentences were found to have an inhibitory effect by slowing down participants’ subsequent processing of resultatives, and vice versa, providing evidence that speakers (...) store distinct but related representations for the constructions. Priming effects of a similar magnitude emerged in both directions, suggesting that the constructions are bidirectionally related, while not supporting previous claims about a metaphorical asymmetry between the patterns. Moreover, priming was only marginally affected when prime and target contained the same rather than different verbs, demonstrating that cross-constructional priming in comprehension can be observed in the absence of a “lexical boost”. The results raise questions for follow-up research on the role of inhibition in the grammatical network and the extension of structural priming to other types of constructional links. (shrink)

Moral enhancement is an ostensibly laudable project. Who wouldn’t want people to become more moral? Still, the project’s approach is crucial. We can distinguish between two approaches for moral enhancement: direct and indirect. Direct moral enhancements aim at bringing about particular ideas, motives or behaviors. Indirect moral enhancements, by contrast, aim at making people more reliably produce the morally correct ideas, motives or behaviors without committing to the content of those ideas, motives and/or actions. I will argue, on Millian grounds, (...) that the value of disagreement puts serious pressure on proposals for relatively widespread direct moral enhancement. A more acceptable path would be to focus instead on indirect moral enhancements while staying neutral, for the most part, on a wide range of substantive moral claims. I will outline what such indirect moral enhancement might look like, and why we should expect it to lead to general moral improvement. (shrink)

The theoretical status of ‘niche construction’ in evolution is intensely debated. Here we substantiate the reasons for different interpretations. We consider two concepts of niche construction brought to bear on evolutionary theory; one that emphasizes how niche construction contributes to selection and another that emphasizes how it contributes to development and inheritance. We explain the rationale for claims that selective and developmental niche construction motivate conceptual change in evolutionary biology and the logic of those who reject these claims. Our analysis (...) shows how the contention arises from alternative assumptions regarding the causal independence of the processes that generate variation, differential fitness and inheritance. (shrink)

Both experimental and ethnographic studies show that reciprocal exchanges (in which actors unilaterally provide benefits to each other without formal agreements) produce stronger trust than negotiated exchanges secured by binding agreements. We develop the theoretical role of risk and uncertainty as causal mechanisms that potentially explain these results, and then test their effects in two laboratory experiments that vary risk and uncertainty within negotiated and reciprocal forms of exchange. We increase risk in negotiated exchanges by making agreements nonbinding and decrease (...) uncertainty in reciprocal exchanges by having actors communicate their intentions. Our findings support three main theoretical conclusions. (1) Increasing risk in negotiated exchange produces levels of trust comparable to those in reciprocal exchange only if the partner's trustworthiness is near-absolute. (2) Decreasing uncertainty in reciprocal exchange either increases or decreases trust, depending on network structure. (3) Even when reciprocal and negotiated exchanges produce comparable levels of trust, their trust differs in kind, with reciprocal exchange partners developing trust that is more resilient and affect-based. (shrink)

Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral self-regulation” (...) and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates. (shrink)

According to Hobbes, individuals care about their relative standing in a way that shapes their social interactions. To model this aspect of Hobbesian psychology, this paper supposes that agents have social preferences, that is, preferences about their comparative resource holdings. Introducing uncertainty regarding the social preferences of others unleashes a process of trust-unravelling, ultimately leading to Hobbes’s ‘state of war’. This Trust-unravelling Model incorporates important features of Hobbes’s argument that past models ignore.

The development of some COVID-19 vaccines by private companies like Moderna and Sanofi-GSK has been substantially funded by various governments. While the Sanofi CEO has previously suggested that countries that fund this development ought to be given some priority, this suggestion has not been taken seriously in the literature. Considerations of nationalism, sustainability, need, and equitability have been more extensively discussed with respect to whether and how much a country is entitled to advance purchase orders of the vaccine under conditions (...) of absolute scarcity. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether prior investment into developing a vaccine entitles a country to some priority with respect to these orders. Moreover, while not a majority view, some survey results show that a significant minority of the populace does endorse some view like this. This article argues that the minority have a point: recognizing funder countries some priority is justified by the weak Lockean claim (WLC). According to the WLC, the fact that someone has contributed to the development of something gives them some entitlement to the resultant product. This article will defend the WLC, and address objections to the argument, including those pertaining to questions of historical injustice and medical need. This argument does not imply an unconstrained entitlement. Rather, contribution to development is one morally relevant factor that must be tempered by and weighed against potentially more substantial claims to priority based on need, equity, and other considerations. (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement therapy requires oocytes of women whose mitochondrial DNA will be transmitted to resultant children. These techniques are scientifically, ethically and socially controversial; it is likely that some women who donate their oocytes for general in vitro fertilisation usage would nevertheless oppose their genetic material being used in MRT. The possibility of oocytes being used in MRT is therefore relevant to oocyte donation and should be included in the consent process when applicable. In present circumstances, specific consent should be (...) obtained. However, once MRT becomes more routine, such consent could be incorporated into the general consent process for oocyte donation. The reported lack of proper consent for MRT from the oocyte donor in the first baby born via the technique is an ethical failing and should be corrected in any future practice of MRT. (shrink)

Within recent scholarship, a long-standing tendency to view Foucault as pessimistic about the possibilities of activism is now being reversed. For many contemporary commentators who emphasize the themes of personal agency, transgression and radical freedom in their assessment of his thought, Foucault offers new possibilities for political practice and for the pursuit of self-determination. However, an examination of Foucault’s work, particularly in the transitional period preceding his so-called ‘ethical’ writings, indicates his appreciation of basic human needs and functions that complicates (...) the current understanding of Foucault as a philosopher of freedom. Particularly in his discussions of the ideas of ‘desubjectivation’ and ‘limit-experience’, Foucault’s work recognizes that prior conditions of psychological, economic and social ‘well-being’ are prerequisites for any subsequent performance of freedom. Examining this dimension of Foucault’s work reveals interesting points of convergence between his thought and the capabilities approach advocated by philosophers such as Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Like them, Foucault’s work recognizes that there are some minimal levels of human functioning below which talk of self-determination is misplaced. As such, political philosophy needs to be concerned with the grounds of personal and political obligation, no less than the limits and possibilities of freedom. (shrink)

It is generally unquestioned that human subjects research review boards should assess the ethical acceptability of protocols. It says so right on the tin, after all: they are explicitly called research ethics committees in the UK. But it is precisely those sorts of unchallenged assumptions that should, from time to time, be assessed and critiqued, in case they are in fact unfounded. John Stuart Mill's objection to suppressers of dissent is instructive here: “If the opinion is right, they are deprived (...) of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”.1 Andrew Moore and Andrew Donnelly's compelling article, “The job of ‘ethics committees’”, is just this sort of challenge to conventional wisdom, a rejection of the notion that review boards should be considering ethical matters at all.2 If true, we should be substantially reforming our research ethics policies. And if false, rebuttals would help strengthen and ground the otherwise unquestioned assumption of the role of ethics committees. As it happens, I will argue that their critiques fall into the second category. While mistaken, they present a valuable opportunity to clarify the role of ethics committees and their relationship to relevant codes. In particular, I will defend a hybrid account where codes have strict primacy, but leave significant room for review boards …. (shrink)

Protests that target firms’ socially irresponsible behavior are increasingly organized via digital media. This study uses two methods to investigate the effects that online protests and mitigating firm responses have on shareholders’ and consumers’ evaluation. The first method is a financial analysis that includes an event study which measures the effect of online protests on the target firm’s share price, as well as an investigation of the boundary effects of protest characteristics. The second method is an online experiment that assesses (...) the effect of an online protest campaign on consumers’ perception and purchase intention, as well as any mitigating effects that a firm’s response may have. Contrary to recent studies suggesting that participation in online protests is only token support without any substantive effects, our results show that online protests do hurt. Firms can expect to suffer financial, reputational, and sales damage when an online protest campaign mobilizes consumers successfully. We also show that online protests are more likely to take firms by surprise than offline protests. Firms can exacerbate or reduce the damage by their response. We find that although firms may repair the damage to consumers’ purchase intentions, the negative effects on a brand’s image are harder to rectify. The results have valuable implications for protest organizers and managers faced with the task of responding. (shrink)

This paper argues that one problem that besets black-box AI is that it lacks algorithmic justifiability. We argue that the norm of shared decision making in medical care presupposes that treatment decisions ought to be justifiable to the patient. Medical decisions are justifiable to the patient only if they are compatible with the patient’s values and preferences and the patient is able to see that this is so. Patient-directed justifiability is threatened by black-box AIs because the lack of rationale provided (...) for the decision makes it difficult for patients to ascertain whether there is adequate fit between the decision and the patient’s values. This paper argues that achieving algorithmic transparency does not help patients bridge the gap between their medical decisions and values. We introduce a hypothetical model we call Justifiable AI to illustrate this argument. Justifiable AI aims at modelling normative and evaluative considerations in an explicit way so as to provide a stepping stone for patient and physician to jointly decide on a course of treatment. If our argument succeeds, we should prefer these justifiable models over alternatives if the former are available and aim to develop said models if not. (shrink)

COVID-19 has stolen millions of lives and devastated livelihoods around the world and led to the exacerbation of existing inequities within and between countries. This part of a tragic pattern in catastrophes, where the most vulnerable populations are typically the ones to bear the greatest burdens. Jecker and Au1 offer a keen observation of how one particular COVID-19 response—Zero COVID—appears particularly problematic from a health equity perspective. Under Zero COVID, countries enact stringent lockdowns and movement restrictions in order to keep (...) cases as low as possible. Yet such restrictive policies hurt disadvantaged populations the most, by severely curtailing their ability to earn a living and forcing them to remain in cramped living spaces for potentially extended periods of time. However, the link between Zero COVID and health inequity is more complex than it might at first appear. This is because Zero COVID is itself compatible with meaningful efforts to mitigate inequities, including those caused by Zero COVID policies themselves. Conversely, certain inequities seemingly characterised by Zero COVID may persist even when Zero COVID is abandoned, indicating their ultimate root and …. (shrink)

This volume contains thirteen original essays on weakness of will by scholars of contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy. It covers the major periods of Western philosophy.

The development of some COVID-19 vaccines by private companies like Moderna and Sanofi-GSK has been substantially funded by various governments. While the Sanofi CEO has previously suggested that countries that fund this development ought to be given some priority, this suggestion has not been taken seriously in the literature. Considerations of nationalism, sustainability, need, and equitability have been more extensively discussed with respect to whether and how much a country is entitled to advance purchase orders of the vaccine under conditions (...) of absolute scarcity. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether prior investment into developing a vaccine entitles a country to some priority with respect to these orders. Moreover, while not a majority view, some survey results show that a significant minority of the populace does endorse some view like this. This article argues that the minority have a point: recognizing funder countries some priority is justified by the weak Lockean claim (WLC). According to the WLC, the fact that someone has contributed to the development of something gives them some entitlement to the resultant product. This article will defend the WLC, and address objections to the argument, including those pertaining to questions of historical injustice and medical need. This argument does not imply an unconstrained entitlement. Rather, contribution to development is one morally relevant factor that must be tempered by and weighed against potentially more substantial claims to priority based on need, equity, and other considerations. (shrink)

In recent decades, scholars have shown a distinct new willingness to concede the important place of religion in the life and thought of the philosopher Franz Brentano. However, these studies are still dominated by the presumption that Brentano's life and thought are best understood according to a model of secularisation as a progressive waning of religion. This essay asks whether such a presumption is the best way of understanding the complex interconnections between various elements of his philosophical and religious ideas. (...) It posits that a better appreciation of his position entails a confrontation with Brentano's historical imagination, and especially the structuring role of his approach to the history of philosophy as one manifesting regular cycles of decline and regeneration. Brentano's theory of the four phases of philosophy, though not the final word on how he viewed history, was nevertheless an exercise in thinking about the ways history accommodates various forms of progress and repetition. It was therefore a salutary means for thinking about the evolution of religion in ways that challenge any simple understanding of secularisation. (shrink)

The most controversial aspect of the interpretation of Scotus’s modal theory concerns the question of whether things are possible because God knows them to be possible, or whether they are possible independently from God. I argue that Scotus thought that the possibles are possibles because of God’s knowledge of them. I adduce a number of relevant texts that previous 20th century discussions of this interpretational problem have not taken into account. In addition, I discuss the modal theory of Francis of (...) Meyronnes (14th century) as well as the reception of Scotus’s modal theory by two Scotists of the 17th century, i.e., John Punch and Bartholomew Mastrius. (shrink)

Andrew Dickson White played a pivotal role in constructing the image of a necessary, and even violent, confrontation between religion and science that persists to this day. Though scholars have long acknowledged that his position is more complex, given that White claimed to be saving religion from theology, there has been no attempt to explore what this means in light of his overwhelming attack on existing religions. This essay draws attention to how White's role as a historian was decisive in (...) allowing him to posit a future for religion purified of dogma by science. It argues, furthermore, that this effort is better understood as religious innovation, rather than a plea for strictly secular science. In so doing it hopes to lay the foundation for a more fruitful historical treatment of White, and a range of other figures whose devotion to science has otherwise been difficult to grasp. (shrink)

In the thought of Duns Scotus, the distinction of active potencies into will and nature takes on a fundamental systematic significance. It distinguishes free and self-determining causality from natural and necessary causality. The purpose of this article is to show to what extent this distinction underlies large parts of Duns Scotus’ moral psychology, ethics, metaphysics and Trinitarian theology.

The set of minimal indices of a Gödel numbering $\varphi$ is defined as ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi} = \{e: (\forall i < e)[\varphi_i \neq \varphi_e]\}$ . It has been known since 1972 that ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi} \equiv_{\mathrm{T}} \emptyset^{\prime \prime }$ , but beyond this ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ has remained mostly uninvestigated. This paper collects the scarce results on ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ from the literature and adds some new observations including that ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ is autoreducible, but neither regressive nor (1,2)-computable. We also study several variants of (...) ${\rm MIN}_{\varphi}$ that have been defined in the literature like size-minimal indices, shortest descriptions, and minimal indices of decision tables. Some challenging open problems are left for the adventurous reader. (shrink)

The distinction of active potencies into will and nature is one of the most characteristic traits of Duns Scotus’s thought. Scotus distinguishes free and self-determining causality from natural and necessary causality. In this article I show how this distinction underlies large parts of his moral psychology, ethics, metaphysics, and Trinitarian theology.

Some medieval authors defend free choice by arguing that, even though human choices are indeed caused by the practical judgment about what is best to do here and now, one is nevertheless able to freely influence that practical judgment’s formation. This paper examines Peter Auriol’s account of free choice, which is a quite elaborate version of this approach and which brings its theoretical problems into focus. I will argue in favor of Auriol’s basic theory, but I will also propose an (...) emendation to his theory in order to respond to some problems he leaves unresolved. (shrink)

In this conceptual article, we look at the impact of culture on ethical decision making from a Douglasian Cultural Theory (CT) perspective. We aim to show how CT can be used to explain the diversity and dynamicity of ethical beliefs and behaviours found in every social system, be it a corporation, a nation or even an individual. We introduce CT in the context of ethical decision making and then use it to discuss examples of business ethics in the Indian business (...) context. We argue that the use of CT allows for a theoretically more sophisticated treatment of culture in ethical decision making and thus the avoidance of some common problems with existing cross-cultural studies of business ethics. In our discussion, we raise questions about the compatibility between management systems and processes created in one context and ethical behaviours in another. (shrink)

This paper concerns the issue as to whether novelty plays a significant role in Husserl’s analysis of time. To address this matter, I show that horizontal and transverse intentionality constitute absolute consciousness as a process of self-differentiation, which enables the ego to anticipate its own renewal and yet to escape coinciding with this synthesising activity. I then further analyse time-constituting consciousness as a process of self-differentiation through a study of Husserl’s account of retention and protention. Addressing Husserl’s presumed neglect of (...) protention, I demonstrate that Husserl reveals that retention and protention modify and motivate one another, and find that this provides a role for novelty within Husserl’s account of the continuity of time. I maintain that this novelty assumes two forms: one that is absolute or necessary, and another that is relative or accidental. (shrink)

This article gives a basic account of Aquinas’s theory of “synderesis” and conscience. Aquinas understands synderesis as an infallible moral awareness and conscience as the fallible judgment that applies a general moral conviction to a concrete case. The article also compares Aquinas’s and his contemporaries’ theories of whether erring conscience is morally binding, that is, whether to act in accord with erring conscience or against erring conscience is sinful.

According to Henry of Ghent, akrasia (incontinence or weakness of will) does not presuppose, but rather produces a cognitive defect. By tracing akratic actions and other evil actions to a corruption in the will rather than to a cognitive defect, Henry wants to safeguard their freedom. Though the will is able to reject what the intellect judges as best here and now, strength and freedom of the will increase to the degree that one adheres more firmly to the good. What (...) strengthens the will are the moral virtues, which are essentially virtues of the will. (shrink)

Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered and Experimental Interventions (MEURI) is an ethical framework developed by the WHO for using unproven interventions in public health emergencies outside the context of medical research. It is mainly intended for use when medical research would be impracticable, but there is still a need to systematically gather data about unproven interventions. As such, it is designed as something of a middle ground between clinical and research ethical frameworks.However, I argue that MEURI does not truly lie (...) at the intersection of clinical care and research. Due to its intent, structure and oversight requirements, it takes on most of the crucial features of research, to the point that it is best understood as a form of research. As a result, cases where MEURI could practicably be applied should instead make use of existing research frameworks. For those circumstances where research is truly impracticable, a more straightforward oversight system than MEURI is needed. While existing practices of compassionate use have some applicability, proposals to make use of clinical ethics committees to oversee unproven interventions may help achieve the right balance in acting in a patient’s best interests when the relevant evidence base is weak. (shrink)

In their recent article, Koplin, Gyngell and Savulescu (2019) assess the viability of the precautionary principle as a decision-making tool to determine whether and under what circumstances germline gene editing should proceed. While their survey of different forms of the precautionary principle is illuminating, the most novel contribution is a new account of the precautionary principle, what they dub the Sufficientarian Precautionary Principle (SPP). SPP is meant to avoid several problems with existing accounts, while comporting with at least some of (...) the intuitive force behind the general idea of the precautionary principle. However, as it is only one subsection of a larger paper, SPP is not fully worked out. In this brief response, I will flesh out some problems with SPP as a decision-making tool – particularly that there is a lack of adequate normative justification for adopting it. While this does not constitute a decisive refutation of the approach, SPP needs considerable refinement and clarification before it can be considered viable for use in decision-making. (shrink)

Affect theory is a subfield that encourages us to think about how we interact with each other and the world along registers that are not reducible to language. This has suggested to some scholars that affect theory can also be used to better understand the experience of animals. This article explores a merger between affect theory, animal studies and the lifeworld tradition of phenomenology. The upshot of this is a way of seeing how animals, like humans, have rich religious worlds (...) that are shaped by pre-linguistic textures of affect. This perspective indicates that animals can be thrown into a state of trauma by being deprived of these lifeworlds. In light of this, the article considers the ethical implications of the modern factory farm system, particularly the practice of mass confinement. (shrink)

It has been widely argued that Michel Henry dismisses the importance of the subject's worldly and intentional mode of existence in his account of the well-being of life. However, through a careful analysis of Henry's theory of life and his study of culture and barbarism, I will demonstrate that the prevailing position on this point is both correct and incorrect: (i) correct in that absolute life does not require a moral transformation of the world; and (ii) incorrect inasmuch as Henry's (...) philosophy does not, for all that, deny that, from the perspective of human beings, the subject's existence in the world does indeed matter to the well-being of their life. In my view, Henry's work harbours the implication that, from the perspective of the subject's existence in the world, the creation of a moral world through the development of the correspondence between one's inner life and the natural world is humanity's most pressing task, to the point that his entire phenomenology is oriented toward the achievement of this end. I will highlight two of the ways in which the subject's existence is vital to life's well-being: (i) as an expression of life; and (ii) as more or less befitting of life's current needs. As part of this study, I argue that some of Henry's conclusions regarding theoretical knowledge and its part in the aforementioned correspondence between life and the natural world do not entirely agree with his own analyses and therefore need to be reformed. (shrink)

While it is unproblematic that someone evil causes further evil, it is difficult to explain how a good person can cause his or her first evil act. Augustine, denying that something good can be the cause of evil, concludes that the first moral evil has only a ‘deficient cause’, not an efficient cause, which is to say that it has no explanation. By contrast, Aquinas and Scotus hold that the first moral evil has a cause, that the cause is something (...) good, and that it is an efficient cause: the will. For Aquinas, the will can cause its first evil act only if it is momentarily non-culpably deficient, in that it does not make the intellect actually consider the moral rule relevant to the choice. For Scotus, no such occurrent deficiency is presupposed in the will causing its first evil act; the will’s freedom suffices. Yet there is surprising agreement: at bottom, Aquinas and Scotus both trace the first moral evil to the will’s ability for alternatives and no further. Thus their view converges with Augustine’s claim that evil ultimately has no efficient cause. (shrink)