This chapter proposed a novel design methodology called Value-Sensitive Design and its potential application to the field of artificial intelligence research and design. It discusses the imperatives in adopting a design philosophy that embeds values into the design of artificial agents at the early stages of AI development. Because of the high risk stakes in the unmitigated design of artificial agents, this chapter proposes that even though VSD may turn out to be a less-than-optimal design methodology, it currently provides a (...) framework that has the potential to embed stakeholder values and incorporate current design methods. The reader should begin to take away the importance of a proactive design approach to intelligent agents. (shrink)

Worsening energy crises and the growing effects of climate change have spurred, among other things, concerted efforts to tackle global problems through what the United Nations calls Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are in turn argued to be best achieved via the adoption of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as the vehicle for guiding our efforts. However, though these things are often presented as the solution to global issues, they are increasingly being used as a means to centralize power (...) and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. This article aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG mask this reality, taking as a solution one of the foundational causes of global wealth and power disparity. (shrink)

Voluntarist accounts of secession are those that attempt to ground a moral right to secede in autonomy. This paper argues that no such account is likely to succeed. After describing the serious problems that plague the most straightforward Voluntarist approach, I examine two recent accounts that employ novel approaches designed to avoid those difficulties. I argue that both accounts fail, shedding considerable doubt on the possibility of a plausible autonomy-based account of the moral right to secede. I go on to (...) discuss what this pessimistic conclusion implies for the theory and practice of secession. (shrink)

The rapid development of quantum technologies, such as quantum computing, quantum internet, and quantum sensing, has led to a growing awareness of the ethical issues surrounding these technologies. This literature review aims to analyze the existing research on these ethical issues using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) literature review approach. The literature search was conducted using the following databases: Scopus ArXiv, and IEEE Xplore, and the search terms used were “quantum computing,” “quantum internet,” “quantum sensing,” (...) “quantum technology,” AND “ethics.” Inclusion criteria were: (1) articles that addressed ethical issues related to quantum technologies and (2) articles that were written in English. A total of 14 articles were included in the review. The majority of the articles (64 percent) were published in the last 5 years. The majority of the articles (78 percent) focused on the potential impact of quantum technologies on privacy and security, with a particular emphasis on the potential for quantum computers to break encryption and the subsequent impact on privacy and security. Approximately 50 percent of the articles focused on the accessibility and responsibility dimensions of quantum technologies. This scoping review has demonstrated that there is a growing awareness of the ethical issues surrounding quantum technologies and an increasing number of researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders working to address them. Future research should continue to explore these ethical issues in more depth and develop recommendations for addressing them. (shrink)

This article explores the potential of Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy of subjectivity as objectivity as a grounding for value sensitive design (VSD) and the design turn in applied ethics. The rapid pace of scientific and technological advancement has created a gap between technical abilities and our moral assessments of those abilities, calling for a reflection on the philosophical tools we have for applying ethics. In particular, applied ethics often presents interconnected problems that require a more general framework for ethical reflection. Lonergan’s (...) philosophy, which emphasizes the importance of self-understanding and self-transcendence in achieving objectivity, can provide a valuable perspective on VSD and the design turn in applied ethics. The article examines how Lonergan’s philosophy can be applied to VSD and the design turn, and how scientific knowledge can be integrated into an ethics of science without reducing it to an external reflection. By adopting Lonergan’s perspective, we can address the ethical challenges arising from scientific and technological advancements while promoting a more holistic approach to applied ethics. (shrink)

This chapter presents a critical assessment of Rawls's rejection of perfectionist politics. It advances both a negative and a constructive thesis. The negative thesis targets Rawls's account of political legitimacy. The constructive thesis contends that there are resources within Rawls's own theory of justice for vindicating state perfectionism. A key part of the constructive thesis appeals to what Rawls terms as the Aristotelian Principle (AP). A legitimate society is a society that satisfies a general test, one that is articulated by (...) Rawls's liberal principle of legitimacy. Rawls noted that the exclusion of perfectionist considerations from justice might prove on reflection to be unacceptable. Rawls's endorsement of the AP provides a footing for a form of state perfectionism that can strengthen the overall case for Rawlsian justice by enabling it to respond to the criticism that it is insufficiently responsive to the claims of human excellence. (shrink)

The political philosophy of liberalism was first formulated during the Enlightenment in response to the growth of the modern nation-state and its authority and power over the individuals living within its boundaries. Liberalism is now the dominant ideology in the Western world, but it covers a broad swathe of different (and sometimes rival) ideas and traditions and its essential features can be hard to define.

Tant qu'il y aura des cages est la traduction de Rattling the Cage de Steven Wise, contribution majeure au droit animalier. L'auteur, qui enseigne notamment à la Harvard Law School, est connu pour plaider comme avocat en faveur des droits fondamentaux des grands singes devant la Cour suprême aux États-Unis. Dans un style clair, accessible et...

Technologies cannot simply be understood as neutral tools or instruments; they embody the values of their creators and may unconsciously reinforce systematic patterns of inequality, discrimination, and oppression. -/- Technology Ethics shows how responsible innovation can be achieved. Demonstrating how design and philosophy converge, the book delves into the intricate narratives that shape our understanding of technology – from instrumentalist views to social constructivism. Yet, at its core, it champions interactionalism as the most promising and responsible narrative. Through compelling examples (...) and actionable tools, this book unravels the nuances of these philosophical positions tailored to foster responsible innovation and thoughtful design. As our everyday lives further intertwine with technology, understanding and implementing these design principles becomes not just beneficial, but essential. -/- This concise and accessible introduction is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of technology, engineering ethics, science and technology studies, human-machine communication, as well as policymakers. (shrink)

How do people understand questions about cause and prevent? Some theories propose that people affirm that A causes B if A's occurrence makes a difference to B's occurrence in one way or another. Other theories propose that A causes B if some quantity or symbol gets passed in some way from A to B. The aim of our studies is to compare these theories' ability to explain judgements of causation and prevention. We describe six experiments that compare judgements for causal (...) paths that involve a mechanism, i.e. a continuous process of transmission or exchange from cause to effect, against paths that involve no mechanism yet a change in the cause nevertheless brings about a change in the effect. Our results show that people prefer to attribute cause when a mechanism links cause to effect. In contrast, prevention is sensitive both to the presence of an interruption to a causal mechanism and to a change in the outcome in the absence of a mechanism. In this sense, ‘prevent’ means something different than ‘cause not'. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of causation. (shrink)

The study of the social implications of human enhancement is an interdisciplinary work that draws from the fields of political science, sociology, philosophy, and bioethics, among others. It is also a complex and rapidly evolving subject that raises important questions about the potential benefits and risks of these technologies, as well as how society should govern and regulate their development and use. -/- An in-depth exploration of current and future human enhancement technologies,this book delves into the specifics of current and (...) emerging human enhancement technologies, such as cognitive enhancers, brain-computer interfaces, and genetic engineering, discussing the state of the art, the limitations and also the technological developments that one can expect in the future and how they can be regulated and used responsibly. -/- A comprehensive examination of the political and ethical implications of human enhancement An interdisciplinary work, bringing together leading scholars in the field An in-depth exploration of current and future human enhancement technologies. (shrink)

Enforcing Morality is written for scholars and graduate students working in the fields of philosophy, law and political theory. It provides both a critical overview of debates on the enforcement of morality and a defense of a distinctive position on the topic.

Las frutas y hortalizas han sido siempre noticia debido principalmente a sus propiedades beneficiosas para la salud. Sin embargo, cada vez más ocupan titulares debido a su implicación en toxiinfecciones alimentarias. Por este motivo, desde 2008, las frutas y hortalizas frescas son consideradas por muchos organismos internacionales como un alimento de riesgo. Uno de los principales problemas microbiológicos de las hortalizas de hojas son las bacte­rias entéricas que pueden adherirse rápidamente al tejido durante el cultivo, coexistir con las bacterias epífitas (...) y persistir por largos periodos de tiempo. La prevalencia de microorganismos patógenos en las frutas y hortalizas es baja y la cuantificación de las bac­terias patógenas o de microorganismos indicadores generalmente muestra niveles muy bajos, lo que no justificaría el elevado número de alertas microbiológicas asociadas a este tipo de productos. Sin embargo, existen dudas sobre si los recuentos obtenidos utilizan­do las técnicas convencionales son capaces de reflejar realmente todos los microorganismos presentes en el producto vegetal, así como en el agua de riego y en el suelo. Varios estudios han demos­trado que cuando las bacterias son sometidas a distintos factores de estrés entran en un estado temporal de baja actividad metabóli­ca en el cual las células pueden persistir durante largos periodos de tiempo sin división celular, llamado estado de latencia o viable pero no cultivable. La relevancia que el estado fisiológico de las bacterias puede tener en el desarrollo de toxiinfecciones alimenta­rias causadas por las frutas y hortalizas es un tema de gran interés que está atrayendo más y más la atención de los investigadores. (shrink)

Evolutionary science (ES) and contextual behavioral science (CBS) have developed largely independently during the last half century. However, the earlier histories of these two bodies of knowledge are thoroughly entwined. ES provides a unifying theoretical framework for the biological sciences, and is increasingly being applied to human-related sciences. Meanwhile, CBS is concerned with influencing human behavior in a practical sense. This groundbreaking volume seeks to integrate ES and CBS to promote real, positive change in peoples' lives. Evolution and Contextual Behavioral (...) Science offers a unique glimpse into the histories of ES and CBS, shows how they are intrinsically linked, and outlines why their integration--or, reunification--is essential. By examining these two schools of thought side by side, you'll gain an understanding of why functional and contextual approaches in CBS need to be combined with ES for both fields to advance more rapidly. Finally, rather than the sequential relationship that is typically imagined between ES and CBS, you'll discover how an integrated relationship between these two sciences will result in a better framework for understanding predicting, and influencing human behavior--back cover. (shrink)

How do minds emerge from developing brains? According to the representational features of cortex are built from the dynamic interaction between neural growth mechanisms and environmentally derived neural activity. Contrary to popular selectionist models that emphasize regressive mechanisms, the neurobiological evidence suggests that this growth is a progressive increase in the representational properties of cortex. The interaction between the environment and neural growth results in a flexible type of learning: minimizes the need for prespecification in accordance with recent neurobiological evidence (...) that the developing cerebral cortex is largely free of domain-specific structure. Instead, the representational properties of cortex are built by the nature of the problem domain confronting it. This uniquely powerful and general learning strategy undermines the central assumption of classical learnability theory, that the learning properties of a system can be deduced from a fixed computational architecture. Neural constructivism suggests that the evolutionary emergence of neocortex in mammals is a progression toward more flexible representational structures, in contrast to the popular view of cortical evolution as an increase in innate, specialized circuits. Human cortical postnatal development is also more extensive and protracted than generally supposed, suggesting that cortex has evolved so as to maximize the capacity of environmental structure to shape its structure and function through constructive learning. (shrink)

We investigate the question of whether one can characterize complexity classes in terms of efficient reducibility to the set of Kolmogorov-random strings . This question arises because and , and no larger complexity classes are known to be reducible to in this way. We show that this question cannot be posed without explicitly dealing with issues raised by the choice of universal machine in the definition of Kolmogorov complexity. What follows is a list of some of our main results.• Although (...) Kummer showed that, for every universal machine U there is a time bound t such that the halting problem is disjunctive truth-table reducible to in time t, there is no such time bound t that suffices for every universal machine U. We also show that, for some machines U, the disjunctive reduction can be computed in as little as doubly-exponential time.• Although for every universal machine U, there are very complex sets that are -reducible to , it is nonetheless true that . • Any decidable set that is polynomial-time monotone-truth-table reducible to is in .• Any decidable set that is polynomial-time truth-table reducible to via a reduction that asks at most f queries on inputs of size n lies in. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo es un estudio de casos preliminar y cualitativo, que considera los intercambios dialógicos argumentativos, ante una tarea de dilema moral, de seis parejas de niños y niñas. El análisis de la información se fundamenta en dos enfoques, Visión General Analítica de la Pragmadialéctica, y el Argumentum Model of Topics de la Escuela de Lugano. El análisis de resultados indicó que todos los grupos son capaces de tomar una postura y defender su posición con al menos un argumento. (...) Sin embargo, a medida que los escolares crecen, van construyendo estructuras de argumentación mucho más elaboradas y aumentan la diversidad de loci utilizados. Se concluye que la VGA y el AMT han resultado ser herramientas útiles para describir el desarrollo argumentativo de los escolares a medida que ellos se hacen mayores. -/- Abstract (EN): This paper presents a preliminary and qualitative case study, which considers the argumentative dialogical exchanges, given in a moral dilemma task, of six pairs of boys and girls. The analysis of the information is based on two approaches, Analytical Overview of the Pragmadialectics, and the Argumentum Model of Topics of Lugano School. The results indicated that all groups are able to defend their position with at least one argument. However, as schoolchildren grow up, they build much more elaborate argumentation structures and increase the diversity of loci used. It is concluded that the AO and the AMT have proved to be useful tools to describe the argumentative development of schoolchildren as they get older. (shrink)

Weinberg's 1972 work, in his description, had two purposes. The first was practical to bring together and assess the wealth of data provided over the previous decade while realizing that newer data would come in even as the book was being printed. He hoped the comprehensive picture would prepare the reader and himself to that new data as it emerged. The second was to produce a textbook about general relativity in which geometric ideas were not given a starring role for (...) (in his words) too great an emphasis on geometry can only obscure the deep connections between gravitation and the rest of physics. (shrink)

Durante la edad escolar, los sujetos van logrando una madurez sintáctica, evidenciada en el incremento de lacomplejidad estructural de los textos que producen. Diversas teorías han dado cuenta de dicha complejidad(Hunt, 1970; Katzenberger, 2004; Nir & Berman, 2010), sosteniendo que la misma está vinculada con eltipo de relaciones interclausulares dentro del texto. Asimismo, corroboran que dicha complejidad no sólo seincrementa con el nivel educativo, sino también está guiada por la modalidad discursiva. A partir de estapropuesta, el proyecto FONDECYT 1100600, se (...) planteó el objetivo de describir el desarrollo de la sintaxisoral, considerando otra perspectiva de la complejidad: la diversidad interclausular. Para ello, se aplicarondos tareas de elicitación (narración y explicación), a 250 estudiantes de kinder, 3º y 6º básico, Iº y IVº mediode Valparaíso y Santiago. Luego de ser transcritos y analizados, se reconocieron en los textos las relacionesinterclausulares y se estableció un índice de diversidad clausular, en el entendido de que a medida que seusaban más formas para relacionar las cláusulas, mayor sería la complejidad sintáctica de los mismos. Losresultados muestran un incremento de la diversidad clausular a medida que aumenta el nivel educativo, sinembargo, su significatividad se da sólo entre algunos niveles. Además, entre ambos tipos de textos no semanifiestan grandes diferencias, salvo en Kínder y en IVº Medio. Estos hallazgos permiten vislumbrar que lamadurez sintáctica implica tener mayor cantidad de estructuras gramaticales y utilizarlas estratégicamentepara construir un determinado texto. (shrink)

La dirección de Nemesio Antúnez entre 1962 y 1964, y las administraciones que le siguieron en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), son un caso ejemplar de las dinámicas político-culturales desarrolladas durante la Guerra Fría. Este artículo analiza esta gestión museal desde la historia intelectual y la historia cultural, trabajando las redes de pensamiento que rodearon a Antúnez y la disquisición entre su programación y la influencia norteamericana en ese momento, atendiendo a cómo el MAC se involucró en la guerra (...) fría cultural. De esta manera se busca aportar al conocimiento de las tramas institucionales que se dieron entre la intelectualidad periférica y los centros metropolitanos durante uno de los periodos claves del siglo XX, presentando ciertos programas expositivos que respondieron al impulso de los EE. UU. de inserción ideológica. (shrink)

La jurisdicción constitucional nació el 24 de febrero de 1803 en una desangelada sala en la planta baja del Capitolio cedida por el Congreso de los Estados Unidos al Tribunal Supremo cuando su presidente, el Chief Justice John Marshall hizo pública la sentencia en el caso Marbury v. Madison. En ella se establecía la revisión judicial de las leyes (y también de los actos del Gobierno, pero éste es otro tema) sacándosela de la manga de la toga como de una (...) chistera extraen un conejo los prestidigitadores, pues la Constitución del nuevo país, promulgada en 1787 y todavía vigente, no preveía expresamente tal competencia. (shrink)

Narratives have traditionally been defined as stories about real or fictional events. Several studies have reported that children with Specific Language Impairment have problems in their narrative abilities, both at a comprehensive and productive level. However, most of these studies have been carried out in preschoolers or in children in the first years of schooling and it is unknown if these difficulties remain in subsequent years. The purpose of this research was to describe the narrative performance of a group of (...) 10-year-old children with SLI and typical development and compare it with the one they exhibited at age 5.18 students with a history of SLI and 23 with typical development participated in this research. Each participant carried out a retelling task of the text “The sheep and the alien”. Each text was transcribed and analyzed through the application of the narrative complexity index of Petersen, Gillam and Gillam, adapted by Crespo et al.. The results revealed that time has an effect on narrative complexity for most of the criteria studied in both groups. Secondly, that the differences observed between the DT and SLI groups at 5 years are not maintained at 10 years and that there is a moderating effect of the fixed factor on the within-subject factor in the Temporal Markers criterion of the ICN-A. The results are discussed in light of the proposals on the evolution of the SLI. (shrink)

La dirección de Nemesio Antúnez entre 1962 y 1964, y las administraciones que le siguieron en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), son un caso ejemplar de las dinámicas político-culturales desarrolladas durante la Guerra Fría. Este artículo analiza esta gestión museal desde la historia intelectual y la historia cultural, trabajando las redes de pensamiento que rodearon a Antúnez y la disquisición entre su programación y la influencia norteamericana en ese momento, atendiendo a cómo el MAC se involucró en la guerra (...) fría cultural. De esta manera se busca aportar al conocimiento de las tramas institucionales que se dieron entre la intelectualidad periférica y los centros metropolitanos durante uno de los periodos claves del siglo XX, presentando ciertos programas expositivos que respondieron al impulso de los EE. UU. de inserción ideológica. (shrink)

The legal regime regulating cross-border investment gives key rights to foreign investors and places significant duties on states hosting that investment. It also raises distinctive moral questions due to its potential to constrain a state’s ability to manage its economy and protect its people. Yet international investment law remains virtually untouched as a subject of philosophical inquiry. The questions of international political morality surrounding investment rules can be mapped through the lens of two critiques of the law – that it (...) systemically takes advantage of the global South and that it constrains the policy choices of states hosting investment. Each critique contains certain moral and empirical assumptions that deserve further attention. The distributive justice implications of international investment rules are also relevant to scholars of global distributive justice. The aim of the analysis is to develop an interdisciplinary agenda – among law, philosophy, and social science – for inquiry into the justice of investment law and reform of its unjust elements. (shrink)

While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions—that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal (...) of possibilities—Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Seven, "The Moral Artist."]. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Robotization is an increasingly pervasive feature of our lives. Robots with high degrees of autonomy may cause harm, yet in sufciently complex systems neither the robots nor the human developers may be candidates for moral blame. John Danaher has recently argued that this may lead to a retribution gap, where the human desire for retribution faces a lack of appropriate subjects for retributive blame. The potential social and moral implications of a retribution gap are considerable. I argue that the retributive (...) intuitions that feed into retribution gaps are best understood as deontological intuitions. I apply a debunking argument for deontological intuitions in order to show that retributive intuitions cannot be used to justify retributive punishment in cases of robot harm without clear candidates for blame. The fundamental moral question thus becomes what we ought to do with these retributive intuitions, given that they do not justify retribution. I draw a parallel from recent work on implicit biases to make a case for taking moral responsibility for retributive intuitions. In the same way that we can exert some form of control over our unwanted implicit biases, we can and should do so for unjustifed retributive intuitions in cases of robot harm. (shrink)

A partir de los conceptos de carácter, virtud y amistad propuestos por la ética de la ficción de Wayne Booth, realizamos un análisis comparativo entre los efectos éticos provocados por el territorio y la música en las novelas Península, Península de Hernán Lara Zavala y en El llamado de los tunk’ules de Marisol Ceh Moo. Sugerimos que, a pesar de estar ante dos novelas que comparten el mismo contexto geo-histórico, los efectos éticos causados por el territorio y la música, bajo (...) la idea de Yucatán, guardan diferencias que ameritan llevar a cabo una co- ducción para dilucidar el tipo de compañía literaria que nos ofrecen. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Following societal and policy pressures for responsible innovation, innovators are more and more expected to consider the broader socio-ethical context of their work, and more importantly, to integrate such considerations into their daily practices. This may require the involvement of ‘outsiders’ in innovation trajectories, including e.g. societal and governmental actors. However, methods on how to functionally organize such integration in light of responsible innovation have only recently started to emerge. We present an approach to do just that, in which we (...) first develop value profiles of the involved actors, and second, design a workshop setting that allows innovators to develop design requirements in collaboration with representatives of parties that are not usually involved in such innovation design practices. Using a case study in automated vehicle development, we positively demonstrate the possibility and utility of our approach. We stress that in this study we wish to demonstrate the functionality of our developed method, and did not search for scientifically valid outcomes regarding this technical field. (shrink)

As an emerging discipline, neuroeconomics faces considerable methodological and practical challenges. In this paper, I suggest that these challenges can be understood by exploring the similarities and dissimilarities between the emergence of neuroeconomics and the emergence of cognitive and computational neuroscience two decades ago. From these parallels, I suggest the major challenge facing theory formation in the neural and behavioural sciences is that of being under-constrained by data, making a detailed understanding of physical implementation necessary for theory construction in neuroeconomics. (...) Rather than following a top-down strategy, neuroeconomists should be pragmatic in the use of available data from animal models, information regarding neural pathways and projections, computational models of neural function, functional imaging and behavioural data. By providing convergent evidence across multiple levels of organization, neuroeconomics will have its most promising prospects of success. (shrink)