Biomedical research is increasingly globalized with ever more research conducted in low and middle-income countries. This trend raises a host of ethical concerns and critiques. While community engagement has been proposed as an ethically important practice for global biomedical research, there is no agreement about what these practices contribute to the ethics of research, or when they are needed.

Background Machine learning (ML) is utilized increasingly in health care, and can pose harms to patients, clinicians, health systems, and the public. In response, regulators have proposed an approach that would shift more responsibility to ML developers for mitigating potential harms. To be effective, this approach requires ML developers to recognize, accept, and act on responsibility for mitigating harms. However, little is known regarding the perspectives of developers themselves regarding their obligations to mitigate harms.Methods We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with (...) developers of ML predictive analytics applications for health care in the United States.Results Participants varied widely in their perspectives on personal responsibility and included examples of both moral engagement and disengagement, albeit in a variety of forms. While most (70%) of participants made a statement indicative of moral engagement, most of these statements reflected an awareness of moral issues, while only a subset of these included additional elements of engagement such as recognizing responsibility, alignment with personal values, addressing conflicts of interests, and opportunities for action. Further, we identified eight distinct categories of moral disengagement reflecting efforts to minimize potential harms or deflect personal responsibility for preventing or mitigating harms.Conclusions These findings suggest possible facilitators and barriers to the development of ethical ML that could act by encouraging moral engagement or discouraging moral disengagement. Regulatory approaches that depend on the ability of ML developers to recognize, accept, and act on responsibility for mitigating harms might have limited success without education and guidance for ML developers about the extent of their responsibilities and how to implement them. (shrink)

We examine the impact of activated versus non-activated ethical norms on the aggressiveness of accounting decisions, in the presence of self-interest favoring aggressiveness. Using a case in which the accounting rules are ambiguous, we ask professional accountants to make an accounting decision as though they were in their own organization; we measure the ethical norms of their organization at the end of the experiment. Based on the focus theory of normative conduct, we argue that the general ethical norms of the (...) participants’ organizations are activated when the decision structure is such that the participant receives a recommendation from a subordinate, whereas those norms are not activated when the participant is making the decision alone. We find that higher ethical norms decrease aggressiveness when the decision maker receives a recommendation, whereas higher ethical norms have no impact on aggressiveness when the decision maker makes the decision alone. Our results demonstrate that general ethical norms, known to impact decisions having clear ethical content, can also curb accounting aggressiveness when these norms are activated. Furthermore, firm practices such as decision structure can activate norms. These findings are of interest to practitioners and regulators who seek to temper aggressive accounting. (shrink)

The authors study the impact of institutional corporate social responsibility —defined as CSR targeted at a borrowing firm’s secondary stakeholders—on bank loans. Findings suggest that higher levels of institutional CSR are associated with lower levels of interest rates and loan spreads. In addition, institutional CSR also tempers the positive impact of loan maturity and firm leverage on interest rates and loan spread. These effects were strongest among firms that demonstrated sustained performance, rather than among firms that showed mixed performance in (...) terms of their secondary stakeholder-related activities. This study indicates institutional CSR is valued by stakeholders for its risk mitigating and transaction cost reducing effects independent of technical CSR, defined as CSR targeted at primary stakeholders. (shrink)

This article proposes a method for the semi-automatic extraction of resemblance metaphor terms from a manually annotated corpus of marine biology texts in English and Spanish. The corpus was first searched for target domain terms as well as for lexical markers indicative of metaphors. The combination of these search strategies for metaphor extraction resulted in a set of English-Spanish term pairs. After analysing and comparing these metaphor candidates, a quantitative analysis provided comparative statistical data regarding marine biology metaphor. Finally, the (...) metaphorical nature of marine biology terms was verified in three ways. The first verification strategy entailed an adapted version of the Metaphor Identification Procedure (CitationPragglejaz Group, 2007). The second involved the analysis of contextual data extracted from the corpus, and the third involved the analysis of visual images from an online marine biology database and from the Google search engine. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the law related to identity theft, to review corresponding rights, and responsibilities of stakeholders involved in identity theft and to formulate a system of best practices businesses could engage in to prevent or reduce identity theft threats. Utilizing two ethical frameworks based on deontological approaches, the authors conclude that there should be a well-defined management scheme to prevent identity theft, which is easy to comprehend and comply with for all stakeholders. Our proposed (...) management scheme incorporates both legal and ethical elements such that identity theft will be more difficult. Further, our proposal would also address business entities’ practices that are so careless that identity theft is made possible at all or made easier: ethical business practice can do much to reduce or eliminate identity theft. (shrink)

In their recent book, Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?, Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi claim that to “act justly in health policy, we must have knowledge about the causal pathways through which socioeconomic (and other) inequalities work to produce differential health outcomes.” One of the central problems with this approach is its dependency on “knowledge about the causal pathways.” A widely held belief is that the randomized clinical trial (RCT) is, and ought to be the “gold standard” of evaluating the (...) causal efficacy of interventions. However, often the only data available are non-experimental, observational data. For such data, the necessary randomization is missing. Because the randomization is missing, it seems to follow that it is not possible to make epistemically warranted claims about the causal pathways. Although we are not sanguine about the difficulty in using observational data to make warranted causal claims, we are not as pessimistic as those who believe that the only warranted causal claims are claims based on data from (idealized) RCTs. We argue that careful, thoughtful study design, informed by expert knowledge, that incorporates propensity score matching methods in conjunction with instrumental variable analyses, provides the possibility of warranted causal claims using observational data. (shrink)

_Co-published with Kappa Delta Pi_ _The ABCs of Classroom Management_ equips teachers with a repertoire of expert strategies to develop classroom expectations and manage student behaviors. The second edition of this practical, alphabetical guide includes expansions on time-honored topics such as relationship building, communication, discipline, and behavior management, with the addition of new topics such as cyberbullying, violence prevention, social media, and substitute teachers. The newest quick reference to managing a classroom offers tried-and-true tips and specific examples of practical applications (...) in the classroom. Educators who purchase the second edition also can access ABC’s Online to find downloadable forms, samples and checklists, and links to related resources. This edition of _The ABC’s of Classroom Management_ gives future and new educators practical and informative tips and tools for managing their classrooms to apply right away so they can focus on student learning. Underlying the nuts-and-bolts entries of the book are the themes of teacher professionalism, leadership, and empowerment. Armed with a proactive attitude and the right tools that are applied purposefully and consistently, novice teachers develop their craft to become masterful educators. (shrink)

DOING CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY Edited by PAMELA SHURMER-SMITH, University of Portsmouth Doing Cultural Geography is an introduction to cultural geography that integrates theoretical discussion with applied examples: the emphasis throughout is on doing geography. Recognising that many undergraduates have difficulty with both theory and methods courses, the text explains the theory informing cultural geography and encourages students to engage directly with theory in practice. It emphasises what can be done with humanist, Marxist, poststructuralist, feminist, and postcolonial theory, showing that this (...) is the most effective way to engage with the theoretical literature. Twenty short chapters are organized in sections on theory, topic selection, methodology, interpretation, and presentation. The text is punctuated throughout with questions, suggestions for activities, and short sample extracts from the academic literature, chosen to exemplify the subject of the chapter and to stimulate further reading. Chapters conclude with glossaries and suggestions for further reading. Doing Cultural Geography will be used in project work - from seminar-based activities to the planning stages of undergraduate research projects. It will be essential reading for students in modules in cultural geography, foundation courses in human geography, as well as theory and methods modules. Features and Benefits:  most pedagogically informed teaching text on cultural geography available  integrates theory with practice. (shrink)

This paper explains conceptual modeling within the framework of Frame-Based Terminology (Faber, 2012; 2015; 2022), as applied to EcoLexicon (ecolexicon.ugr.es), a specialized knowledge base on the environment (León-Araúz, Reimerink &, Faber, 2019; Faber & León-Araúz, 2021). It describes how a frame-based terminological resource is currently being restructured and reengineered as an initial step towards its formalization and subsequent transformation into an ontology. It also explains how the information in EcoLexicon can be integrated in environmental ontologies such as ENVO (Buttigieg, Morrison, (...) Smith, Mungall & Lewis, 2013; Buttigieg, Pafilis, Lewis, Schildhauer, Walls & Mungall, 2016), particularly at the bottom tiers of the Ontology Learning Layer Cake (Cimiano, 2006; Cimiano, Maedche, Staab & Volker, 2009). The assumption is that frames, as a conceptual modeling tool, and information extracted from corpora can be used to represent the conceptual structure of a specialized domain. (shrink)

The aim of psychology is first of all to describe how we think, or the flow of our consciousness, and then to sum up the facts in terms of principles, generalizations, or “laws” which “govern” our thinking. These laws must enable us to foretell what a man will think and how he will act when we know his environment and the state of his thought at any given moment, provided that no unforeseeable exercise of free will intervenes. Psychology has also (...) to inquire whether interventions of “free will” ever do occur and, if they do, what is their nature and scope. (shrink)

The idea that payment for research participation can be coercive appears widespread among research ethics committee members, researchers, and regulatory bodies. Yet analysis of the concept of coercion by philosophers and bioethicists has mostly concluded that payment does not coerce, because coercion necessarily involves threats, not offers. In this article we aim to resolve this disagreement by distinguishing between two distinct but overlapping concepts of coercion. Consent-undermining coercion marks out certain actions as impermissible and certain agreements as unenforceable. By contrast, (...) coercion as subjection indicates a way in which someone’s interests can be partially set back in virtue of being subject to another’s foreign will. While offers of payment do not normally constitute consent-undermining coercion, they do sometimes constitute coercion as subjection. We offer an analysis of coercion as subjection and propose three possible practical responses to worries about the coerciveness of payment. (shrink)

A partir da análise dos pressupostos teórico-sociais que ligam o relato inicial de Habermas acerca da esfera pública ao enquadramento westfaliano do espaço público, Nancy Fraser propõe a necessidade de uma reestruturação da esfera pública a partir de um enquadramento transnacional, diante da existência de arenas discursivas que transbordam os limites do Estado Nação, com forte influência na realidade social. Neste contexto, Fraser enfatiza que o conceito de esfera pública foi desenvolvido não apenas para compreender os fluxos de comunicação, mas (...) também para contribuir com uma teoria política normativa da democracia. Nessa teoria, uma esfera pública é concebida como um espaço para a geração comunicativa da opinião pública. Na medida em que o processo é inclusivo e justo, a publicidade deve desacreditar pontos de vista que não podem resistir ao escrutínio crítico, com o propósito de garantir a legitimidade daqueles que participam do processo. Assim, importa quem participa e em que condições. Nestes termos, duas ideias são centrais para a análise da esfera pública: legitimidade normativa e a eficácia política da opinião pública. A ausência desses elementos torna o conceito vazio de crítica e ação política, de acordo com Fraser. Portanto, a autora busca repensar a teoria da esfera pública habermasiana, que é implicitamente guiada por um imaginário político westfaliano, uma visão que não mais corresponde à realidade globalizada contemporânea. (shrink)

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees (...) that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

I hope to show that, although belief is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, "believing at will" is impossible; one cannot believe in the way one ordinarily acts. Further, the same is true of intention: although intention is subject to two quite robust forms of agency, the features of belief that render believing less than voluntary are present for intention, as well. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that you can no more intend at will than believe at will.

A good number of people currently thinking and writing about reasons identify a reason as a consideration that counts in favor of an action or attitude.1 I will argue that using this as our fundamental account of what a reason is generates a fairly deep and recalcitrant ambiguity; this account fails to distinguish between two quite different sets of considerations that count in favor of certain attitudes, only one of which are the “proper” or “appropriate” kind of reason for them. (...) This ambiguity has been the topic of recent discussion, under the head “the wrong kind of reasons problem.”2 I will suggest that confusion about “the wrong kind of reason” will be dispelled by changing our account of what a reason is. While I agree both that reasons are considerations and that certain.. (shrink)

Although theoretically rigorous, the book is comprehensible to the beginning qualitative researcher.

ABSTRACTExperiences that contradict one's core concepts elicit intense emotions. Such schema incongruence can elicit awe, wherein experiences that are too vast...

Establishing and maintaining reference is a crucial part of discourse. In spoken languages, differential linguistic devices mark referents occurring in different referential contexts, that is, introduction, maintenance, and re-introduction contexts. Speakers using gestures as well as users of sign languages have also been shown to mark referents differentially depending on the referential context. This article investigates the modality-specific contribution of the visual modality in marking referential context by providing a direct comparison between sign language and co-speech gesture with speech in (...) elicited narratives. Across all forms of expression, we find that referents in subject position are referred to with more marking material in re-introduction contexts compared to maintenance contexts. Furthermore, we find that spatial modification is used as a modality-specific strategy in both DGS and German co-speech gesture, and that the configuration of referent locations in sign space and gesture space corresponds in an iconic and consistent way to the locations of referents in the narrated event. However, we find that spatial modification is used in different ways for marking re-introduction and maintenance contexts in DGS and German co-speech gesture. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique contribution of the visual modality to reference tracking in discourse when it is used in a unimodal system with full linguistic structure versus in a bimodal system that is a composite of speech and gesture. (shrink)

Newcomb's problem supposedly involves your choosing one or else two boxes in circumstances in which a predictor has made a prediction of how many boxes you will choose. We argue that the circumstances which allegedly define Newcomb's problem generate a previously unnoticed regress which shows that Newcomb's problem is insoluble because it is ill-formed. Those who favor, as we do, a ``no-box'' reply to Newcomb's problem typically claim either that the problem's solution is underdetermined or else that it is overdetermined. (...) We are no-boxers of the first kind, but the underdetermination we identify is more radical than any previously identified: it blocks the very set-up of the problem and not just potential solutions to the problem once it has been set up. The defect is subtle, but it cripples every genuine version of the problem, regardless of variations in such things as the predictor's degree of reliability, the basis on which the prediction is made, or the amount of money in each box. The regress shows that, surprisingly enough, no one can understand Newcomb's problem, and so no one can possibly solve it. (shrink)

In this paper I consider fairness of blaming a wrongdoer. In particular, I consider the claim that blaming a wrongdoer can be unfair because blame has a certain characteristic force, a force which is not fairly imposed upon the wrongdoer unless certain conditions are met--unless, e.g., the wrongdoer could have done otherwise, or unless she is someone capable of having done right, or unless she is able to control her behavior by the light of moral reasons. While agreeing that blame (...) has a characteristic force, I am skeptical of this charge of unfairness. My skepticism concerns itself less with the particular conditions of fairness proposed than with the idea that blame can be rendered unfair by its characteristic force. If to blame a person were simply to perform certain intentional actions, then, as we will see, blame could be rendered unfair by its force. But to blame a person is not just to act in certain ways. It is, at least in large part, to make certain judgments or adopt certain attitudes. However, it is unclear how these attitudes or judgments carry "force"? and also unclear whether they can be rendered unfair by their force. Examining these issues, I will suggest that much of the force of blame is found in a set of judgments--most centrally, the judgment that one person failed to show proper regard for others. But, I will argue, once it is granted that such judgments are true, their characteristic force cannot render them unfair. (shrink)

I first pose a challenge which, it seems to me, any philosophical account of forgiveness must meet: the account must be articulate and it must allow for forgiveness that is uncompromising. I then examine an account of forgiveness which appears to meet this challenge. Upon closer examination we discover that this account actually fails to meet the challenge—but it fails in very instructive ways. The account takes two missteps which seem to be taken by almost everyone discussing forgiveness. At the (...) end, I sketch an alternative account of forgiveness, one that I think meets the challenge and avoids the missteps. (shrink)

A common line of thought claims that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, while less sophisticated creatures are not, because we are, and they are not, self-aware. Our self-awareness is thought to provide us with a kind of control over ourselves that they lack: we can reflect upon ourselves, upon our thoughts and actions, and so ensure that they are as we would have them to be. Thus, our capacity for reflection provides us with the control over ourselves (...) that grounds our responsibility. I argue that this thought is subtly, but badly, confused. It uses, as its model for the control that grounds our responsibility, the kind of control we exercise over ordinary objects and over our own voluntary actions: we represent to ourselves what to do or how to change things, and then we bring about that which we represent. But we cannot use this model to explain our responsibility for ourselves and our actions: if there is a question about why or how we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, it cannot be answered by appeal to a sophisticated, self-directed action. There must be some more fundamental account of how or why we are responsible. I replace the usual account with a novel but natural view: responsible mental activity can be modeled, not as an ordinary action, but as the settling of a question. This shift will require abandoning the tempting but troublesome thought that responsible activity involves discretion and awareness—which, I argue, we must abandon in any case. (shrink)

I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest (...) that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response. (shrink)

According to ‘Excluders’, descriptive uncertainty – but not normative uncertainty – matters to what we ought to do. Recently, several authors have argued that those wishing to treat normative uncertainty differently from descriptive uncertainty face a dependence problem because one's descriptive uncertainty can depend on one's normative uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the phenomenon of dependence poses a decisive problem for Excluders. I argue that existing arguments fail to show this, and that, while stronger ones (...) can be found, Excluders can escape them. (shrink)

Adults who are incapacitated and alone, having no surrogates, may be known as “unbefriended.” Decision-making for these particularly vulnerable patients is a common and vexing concern for healthcare providers and hospital ethics committees. When all other avenues for resolving the need for surrogate decision-making fail, patients who are incapacitated and alone may be referred for “public guardianship” or guardianship of last resort. While an appropriate mechanism in theory, these programs are often under-staffed and under-funded, laying the consequences of inadequacies on (...) the healthcare system and the patient him or herself. We describe a qualitative study of professionals spanning clinical, court, and agency settings about the mechanisms for resolving surrogate consent for these patients and problems therein within the state of Massachusetts. Interviews found that all participants encountered adults who are incapacitated and without surrogates. Four approaches for addressing surrogate needs were: work to restore capacity; find previously unknown surrogates; work with agencies to obtain surrogates; and access the guardianship system. The use of guardianship was associated with procedural challenges and ethical concerns including delays in care, short term gains for long term costs, inabilities to meet a patient’s values and preferences, conflicts of interest, and ethical discomfort among interviewees. Findings are discussed in the context of resources to restore capacity, identify previously unknown surrogates, and establish improved surrogate mechanisms for this vulnerable population. (shrink)

This article is an ethnographic analysis of the mutuality that is possible in relationships between caregivers and women with intellectual disabilities who live together in L'Arche homes. Creating mutuality through which both parties grow and exercise agency requires that caregivers learn to negotiate delicate power relations connected to the physics of care and to reframe dominant stereotypes of disability. This helps them to support the women with intellectual disabilities to name and achieve their desires.

This article is made available under Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND, which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited.

Pamela Moore; Experience and the Growth of Understanding: how does knowledge start?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages.

Pamela Moore; Perspectives on Punishment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 76–102, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.