BackgroundThe biopharmaceutical industry operates at the intersection of life sciences, clinical research, clinical care, public health, and business, which presents distinct operational and ethical challenges. This setting merits focused bioethics consideration to complement legal compliance and business ethics efforts. However, bioethics as applied to a biopharmaceutical industry setting often is construed either too broadly or too narrowly with little examination of its proper scope.Main textAny institution with a scientific or healthcare mission should engage bioethics norms to navigate ethical issues that (...) arise from the conduct of biomedical research, delivery of clinical care, or implementation of public health programs. It is reasonable to assume that while bioethics norms must remain constant, their application will vary depending on the characteristics of a given setting. Context “specification” substantively refines ethics norms for a particular discipline or setting and is an expected, needed and progressive ethical activity. In order for this activity to be meaningful, the scope for bioethics application and the relevant contextual factors of the setting need to be delineated and appreciated. This paper defines biopharmaceutical bioethics as: the application of bioethics norms (concepts, principles, and rules) to the research, development, supply, commercialization, and clinical use of biopharmaceutical healthcare products. It provides commentary on this definition, and presents five contextual factors that need to be considered when applying bioethics norms to a biopharmaceutical industry setting: (1) dual missions; (2) timely and pragmatic guidance; (3) resource stewardship; (4) multiple stakeholders; and (5) operational complexity.ConclusionUnderstanding the scope of the biopharmaceutical enterprise and contextual factors of a biopharmaceutical industry setting is foundational for the application of bioethics norms. Establishing a common language and approach for biopharmaceutical bioethics will facilitate breadth and depth of discussion and subsequent implementation to benefit patients, the healthcare system and society. (shrink)

The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. (...) class='Hi'>Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness. (shrink)

: Chronic illness is a major cause of disability, especially in women. Therefore, any adequate feminist understanding of disability must encompass chronic illnesses. I argue that there are important differences between healthy disabled and unhealthy disabled people that are likely to affect such issues as treatment of impairment in disability and feminist politics, accommodation of disability in activism and employment, identification of persons as disabled, disability pride, and prevention and "cure" of disabilities.

Computers are already approving financial transactions, controlling electrical supplies, and driving trains. Soon, service robots will be taking care of the elderly in their homes, and military robots will have their own targeting and firing protocols. Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach argue that as robots take on more and more responsibility, they must be programmed with moral decision-making abilities, for our own safety. Taking a fast paced tour through the latest thinking about philosophical ethics and artificial intelligence, the authors (...) argue that even if full moral agency for machines is a long way off, it is already necessary to start building a kind of functional morality, in which artificial moral agents have some basic ethical sensitivity. But the standard ethical theories don't seem adequate, and more socially engaged and engaging robots will be needed. As the authors show, the quest to build machines that are capable of telling right from wrong has begun. -/- Moral Machines is the first book to examine the challenge of building artificial moral agents, probing deeply into the nature of human decision making and ethics. (shrink)

Building artificial moral agents (AMAs) underscores the fragmentary character of presently available models of human ethical behavior. It is a distinctly different enterprise from either the attempt by moral philosophers to illuminate the “ought” of ethics or the research by cognitive scientists directed at revealing the mechanisms that influence moral psychology, and yet it draws on both. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have tended to stress the importance of particular cognitive mechanisms, e.g., reasoning, moral sentiments, heuristics, intuitions, or a moral grammar, (...) in the making of moral decisions. However, assembling a system from the bottom-up which is capable of accommodating moral considerations draws attention to the importance of a much wider array of mechanisms in honing moral intelligence. Moral machines need not emulate human cognitive faculties in order to function satisfactorily in responding to morally significant situations. But working through methods for building AMAs will have a profound effect in deepening an appreciation for the many mechanisms that contribute to a moral acumen, and the manner in which these mechanisms work together. Building AMAs highlights the need for a comprehensive model of how humans arrive at satisfactory moral judgments. (shrink)

The intent of the exploration is not an attempt to uncover Oakeshott's intellectual influences, but rather to show the importance and coherence of Oakeshott's various themes by showing how they modify, amplify, and contrast with similar and related themes in the thought of seven better known thinkers - Montaigne, St. Augustine, Hegel, Hobbes, Benjamin Constant, Rousseau, and Hume."--BOOK JACKET.

Oakeshott and His Contemporaries is an exploration of the ideas of one of the most important twentieth-century English political philosophers vis-a-vis related ...

The Poetic Character of Human Activity: Collected Essays on the Thought of Michael Oakshott is a collection of nine essays by two Oakeshott scholars, most of which explore the meaning of Oakeshott’s pregnant phrase, “the poetic character of human activity” by comparing and contrasting this central idea with similar and opposing ones, in particular those of the Chinese thinkers, Zhuangzi and Confucius, but also of Western thinkers such as Plato, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. Common themes addressed include the poetic (...) or non-instrumental aspects of philosophizing, teaching and learning, morality and governance. (shrink)

The development of autonomous, robotic weaponry is progressing rapidly. Many observers agree that banning the initiation of lethal activity by autonomous weapons is a worthy goal. Some disagree with this goal, on the grounds that robots may equal and exceed the ethical conduct of human soldiers on the battlefield. Those who seek arms-control agreements limiting the use of military robots face practical difficulties. One such difficulty concerns defining the notion of an autonomous action by a robot. Another challenge concerns how (...) to verify and monitor the capabilities of rapidly changing technologies. In this article we describe concepts from our previous work about autonomy and ethics for robots and apply them to military robots and robot arms control. We conclude with a proposal for a first step toward limiting the deployment of autonomous weapons capable of initiating lethal force. (shrink)

The challenge of designing computer systems and robots with the ability to make moral judgments is stepping out of science fiction and moving into the laboratory. Engineers and scholars, anticipating practical necessities, are writing articles, participating in conference workshops, and initiating a few experiments directed at substantiating rudimentary moral reasoning in hardware and software. The subject has been designated by several names, including machine ethics, machine morality, artificial morality, or computational morality. Most references to the challenge elucidate one facet or (...) another of what is a very rich topic. This paper will offer a brief overview of the many dimensions of this new field of inquiry. (shrink)

Nähere Informationen zu diesem Buch erhalten Sie direkt vom Verlag / For further information about this title please contact Mohr Siebeck.

Quando nos detemos à querela recente sobre o enhancement, especialmente àquela que tem colocado em lados opostos bioconservadores e transhumanistas, não pode passar despercebido que pressuposições e mesmo concepções muito ingênuas sobre o homem se encontram no fundo do debate. No estudo que apresentaremos, buscaremos mostrar duas teses: antes de tudo, tentaremos evidenciar que tal querela formada em torno do enhancement é uma reformulação da querela que outrora envolveu a arte alquímica nos tempos medievais e renascentistas – arte cujo impulso (...) deu grande influxo ao ideal prático-transformador da ciência. Em segundo lugar, mostraremos que a atual controvérsia em torno do transhumanismo padece, em termos ontológicos, de problemas semelhantes àqueles que atormentavam o debate sobre aquela antiga arte. Por fim, deixaremos, entretanto, indicado que o esclarecimento das questões ontológicas envolvidas em tal controvérsia não eliminam necessariamente outras questões de ordem ética e política, as quais precisam certamente de um estudo complementar. (shrink)

For many innovations, oversight fits nicely within existing governance mechanisms; nevertheless, others pose unique public health, environmental, and ethical challenges. Synthetic artemisinin, for example, has many precursors in laboratory‐developed drugs that emulate natural forms of the same drug. The policy challenges posed by synthetic artemisinin do not differ significantly in kind from other laboratory‐formulated drugs. Synthetic biofuels and gene drives, however, fit less clearly into existing governance structures. How many of the new categories of products require new forms of regulatory (...) oversight, or at least extensive forms of testing, remains unclear.Any effort to improve the governance of synthetic biology should start with a rich understanding of the different possible science‐policy interfaces that could help to inform governance. CBA falls into a subset of the overall range of possibilities, and which interface is appropriate may turn out to depend on context, on the demands of the decision at hand. In what follows, we lay out a typology of interfaces. After that, we turn to the question of how to draw upon the range of possible interfaces and effectively address the factual and moral complexities of emerging technologies. We propose a governance model built around structures that we call “governance coordinating committees.” GCCs are intended to be mechanisms for accommodating the complexities of innovations that have far‐ranging societal impacts. The production of biofuels, for example, could contaminate water supplies and have a destructive environmental impact if not managed correctly. The introduction of a gene drive could have economic and environmental impacts that are not restricted to one nation. Forging appropriate means for determining and evaluating those societal impacts, to the best of a corporation's, industry's, or government's ability, is central to responsible research and innovation. Public policy must be shaped in a manner that accommodates as many concerns as possible and minimizes risks. (shrink)

In The Ticklish Subject, Žižek argues that the Hegelian concrete universal is not the organic comprehensive totality that it is often assumed to be. Rather, he argues that Hegel's concrete universality is defined in its very concretion by an irreducible rupture, gap, or trauma that not only neither closes it off from otherness nor assimilates otherness within the same, but forever opens it to otherness, constituting it as such exposure. However, by understanding the function of negativity in Hegel's argument in (...) a foundational way, Žižek posits as final what is merely a transitional stage. As a result, he not only misconstrues concrete universality and substitutes for it a particularized universal which, as such, remains abstract, but in doing so he passes by the implications in his own account that could lead to a positive conception of concrete universality above and beyond the strictly negative and empty formality he takes it to be. By avoiding Žižek's foundationalist way of framing the category of universality we can thereby articulate a logic of implications in it that leads us out of the still abstract shape, to which Žižek limits it, to its truly concrete form. Furthermore, the latter contains political implications that are lost in Žižek's version. (shrink)