This article illustrates some of the difficulties of defining discrimination and briefly sketches the benefits and desiderata of doing so. It then examines and defines generic direct discrimination as an agent treating two groups differently because of the property that defines one of the groups as a group, in a way that is worse for that group, clarifying each of these three conditions in turn. It considers two arguments for further conditions: that an act must target one (...) among a particular set of groups to constitute discrimination, and that an act must be in some sense morally wrong to constitute discrimination. It concludes that while these objections are forceful it may be the case that they illustrate that we employ multiple, partly overlapping concepts of discrimination, and that it may be more important to recognize this heterogeneity than it is to attempt to establish a dominant or unitary definition. (shrink)

Western liberal democracies tend to impose duties on public and private bodies that are often formulated as an obligation not to discriminate. For instance, the European Union prohibits direct and indirect discrimination on certain grounds in certain contexts. Under this model, indirect discrimination involves a measure that, although it does not directly (i.e. explicitly) discriminate on the basis of a proscribed ground, produces a disparate impact that correlates with such a proscribed ground. Indirect discrimination is generally (...) viewed, both conceptually and politically, as subordinate to direct discrimination. Professor John Gardner has argued that anti-discrimination law is justified on the basis of duties to respect other people's autonomy. On the base of this analysis, he argues that indirect discrimination is a secondary concept to the paradigm wrong of direct discrimination. I contend in this article that, if one adopts Gardner's autonomy-based analysis of anti-discrimination law, indirect discrimination is not a secondary concept to direct discrimination. Further, I argue that autonomy does not provide a convincing justification for the prohibition of either direct or indirect discrimination. I tentatively suggest, however, that the widespread impact of certain types of discrimination (alluded to by Gardner) may support an equality-based justification for the prohibition of both direct and indirect discrimination. (shrink)

The status of indirect discrimination is ambiguous in the current literature. This paper addresses two contemporary and related debates. First, for some, indirect discrimination is not truly a distinct kind of discrimination, but it is simply a legal construct designed to address distributive inequalities between groups. Second, even if one accepts that indirect discrimination is a distinct type of discrimination, the connection between the two kinds of discrimination, direct and indirect, is debated. For (...) some, they are distinct act-types, while for others, indirect discrimination should be conceived as a side effect of prior cases of direct discrimination. In this paper, I argue that indirect discrimination is a distinct act-type that can take place without being connected to prior instances of direct discrimination. (shrink)

It is usually accepted that whether or not indirect discrimination is a form of immoral discrimination, it appears to be structurally different from direct discrimination. First, it seems that either one involves the agent focusing on different things while making a decision. Second, it seems that the victim’s group membership is relevant to the outcomes of either sort of action in different ways. In virtue of these two facts, it is usually concluded that indirect discrimination (...) is structurally different from direct discrimination. I argue against the notion that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination have significantly different structures. I first argue that both kinds of discrimination involve similar decision-making processes. Second, I analyze how being in a social group affects personal identity, and from there argue that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination are about group membership similarly. In virtue of these two arguments, I conclude that direct and indirect discrimination are structurally similar. (shrink)

In the article “On Avoiding Deep Dementia,” Norman Cantor defends a position that I suspect many readers share. In my years writing and speaking on advance directives and dementia, I've found that most people support one of two positions. They are convinced either that advance choices should control the treatment dementia patients receive or that the welfare of a person with dementia should sometimes take priority over earlier choices. As Cantor points out, I support the second position.I agree with several (...) of Cantor's arguments. Where Cantor and I part ways is over the degree of control that advance directives should exert over the care of persons with moderate dementia. Although I don't welcome the prospect of living with dementia, I believe that people with the condition should be represented in the debate over treatment standards. It's not surprising that many, perhaps most, people unaffected by dementia think that their preferences should control the care they would receive as dementia patients. But people taking this position are neglecting the concerns and interests they may have as dementia patients. (shrink)

Indirect discrimination (or disparate impact) is one of the focal points of current antidiscrimination policies. However, few political/moral philosophers have paid substantial attention to indirect discrimination until recently. This contribution provides an overview of the two philosophical questions in this context: the definitional question (DQ) and the moral question (MQ). DQ concerns what distinguishes indirect discrimination from direct discrimination and inequality. Conceptually, either (1) indirect discrimination is not a genuine subtype of discrimination; (2) (...) it is a subtype of discrimination secondary to direct discrimination; or (3) it is a subtype of discrimination independent of direct discrimination. A more substantial distinction between direct and indirect discrimination can be drawn according to the discriminator’s intention, the disproportionateness of intergroup disadvantage, and so forth. MQ addresses what makes indirect discrimination morally wrong. Conceptually, either (1) indirect discrimination cannot be morally wrong qua discrimination in its own right; (2) it can be morally wrong qua discrimination in its own right, where the wrongness must be connected to past direct discrimination; or (3) it can be morally wrong qua discrimination regardless of past direct discrimination. Substantially, possible wrong-making factors of indirect discrimination include the discriminator’s objectionable intentions, the objectionable message that discriminatory practices may carry, and their harmful effects. This framework is a first step for future works that are necessary to yield a comprehensive insight into the relationship between discrimination and inequality and address contemporary forms of discrimination that tend to be indirect rather than direct. (shrink)

abstract Numerous measures have been proposed to change the collection procedure in order to increase the supply of organ donations. One such proposal is to give the candidate donors the right to direct their organs to groups of recipients characterised by specific features like sex, age, disease and geographic location. Four possible justifications for directed donation of organs are considered: the utilitarian benefit, the egalitarian principle of justice, the maximin principle of justice and the autonomy principle. It is concluded (...) that none of these principles justifies the acceptance of designated donations. When potentially life‐saving resources are distributed, only a pure egalitarian distribution is in agreement with the principle of justice.s. (shrink)

In this chapter, I outline what philosophers working on the ethics of immigration have had to say with regard to invidious discrimination. In doing so, I look at both instances of direct discrimination, by which I mean discrimination that is explicitly stated in official immigration policy, and indirect discrimination, by which I mean cases where the implementation or enforcement of facially “neutral” policies nonetheless generate invidious forms of discrimination. The end goal of this chapter (...) is not necessarily to take a side, but to outline the terrain and provide the reader with an adequate entryway into these philosophical discussions over discrimination and immigration. (shrink)

The current approaches to equality law in South Africa and Canada place these jurisdictions at the forefront of serious and comprehensive judicial at tempts to give effect to substantive equality. These attempts to overcome formalism are processes, judicially acknowledged as such, and as yet far from complete. At the conceptual center of the development of substantive equality is the legal realization of human dignity: not an abstract, individualistic notion, but a concept about the relation between the individual and state, and (...) individual and group, which is circumscribed by concern, respect and consideration.But substantive equality is not possible only through the case law. The current issues surrounding intersectional discrimination and the contextual appreciation of a claimant’s circumstances are urgent reminders that the methods and remedies afforded by the structure of litigation of equality rights claims simply cannot accommodate many instances which call for relief. The fact that these inadequacies of court enforced claims are beginning to be laid bare by some of the problems being faced by the Courts in equality claims is perhaps not a failing of equality law and the concept of dignity, but its strength. The methodology of human rights litigation in countries like Canada and South Africa supports a dialogue between court and legislature. As substantive equality develops in these jurisdictions, the limits of judicial development will be challenged. That is ultimately to be welcomed, if the legislatures are responsive to the definition of human dignity and substantive equality in development judicially, and respond with efforts to support and promote these developments. (shrink)

The conceptualization and moral analysis of discrimination constitutes a burgeoning theoretical field, with a number of open problems and a rapidly developing literature. A central problem is how to define discrimination, both in its most basic direct sense and in the most prominent variations. A plausible definition of the basic sense of the word understands discrimination as disadvantageous differential treatment of two groups that is in some respect caused by the properties that distinguish the groups, but (...) open questions remain on whether discrimination should be restricted to concern only particular groups, as well as on whether it is best conceived as a descriptive or a moralized concept. Furthermore, since this understanding limits direct discrimination to cases of differential treatment, it requires that we be able to draw a clear distinction between equal and differential treatment, a task that is less simple than it may appear, but that is helpful in clarifying indirect discrimination and statistical discrimination. The second major problem in theorizing discrimination is explaining what makes discrimination morally wrong. On this issue, there are four dominant contemporary answers: the valuational and expressive disrespect accounts, which hold that discrimination is wrong when and if the discriminator misestimates or expresses a misestimate of the moral status of the discriminatee; the unfairness account, which holds that discrimination is wrong when and if the discriminator unfairly increases inequality of opportunity; and the harm account, which holds that discrimination is wrong when and if the discriminator harms the discriminatee. Each of these accounts, however, faces important challenges in simultaneously providing a persuasive theoretical account and matching our intuitions about cases of impermissible discrimination. (shrink)

Recent social‐psychological research suggests that a considerable amount of, for example, racial and gendered discrimination may be connected to implicit biases: mental processes beyond our direct control or endorsement, that influence our behaviour toward members of socially salient groups. In this article I seek to improve our understanding of the phenomenon of implicit bias, including its moral status, by examining it through the lens of a theory of discrimination. In doing so, I also suggest ways to improve (...) this theory of discrimination, by creating conceptual space for implicit bias discrimination. I explore two ways of distinguishing direct and indirect discrimination and spell out the resulting four different forms of discrimination. The resulting taxonomy provides some room for implicit bias discrimination. I also deal with four challenges to my proposal for capturing implicit bias within discrimination theory: the metaphysical challenge, the moral insignificance challenge, the causal connection challenge, and the challenge from irreducibly collective bias. (shrink)

The gaze cueing effect is characterized by faster attentional orienting to a gazed-at than a non-gazed-at target. This effect is often enhanced when the gazing face bears an emotional expression, though this finding is modulated by a number of factors. Here, we tested whether the type of task performed might be one such modulating factor. Target localization and target discrimination tasks are the two most commonly used gaze cueing tasks, and they arguably differ in cognitive resources, which could impact (...) how emotional expression and gaze cues are integrated to orient attention. In a within-subjects design, participants performed both target localization and discrimination gaze cueing tasks with neutral, happy, and fearful faces. The gaze cueing effect for neutral faces was greatly reduced in the discrimination task relative to the localization task, and the emotional enhancement of the gaze cueing effect was only present in the localization task and only when this task was performed first. These results suggest that cognitive resources are needed for gaze cueing and for the integration of emotional expressions and gaze cues. We propose that a shift toward local processing may be the mechanism by which the discrimination task interferes with the emotional modulation of gaze cueing. The results support the idea that gaze cueing can be greatly modulated by top-down influences and cognitive resources and thus taps into endogenous attention. Results are discussed within the context of the recently proposed EyeTune model of social attention. (shrink)

Fundamentally, intentions do not matter to the permissibility of actions, according to Thomas Scanlon (among others). Yet, discriminatory intentions seem essential to certain kinds of direct discrimination in hiring and firing, and appear to be something by virtue of which, in part at least, these kinds of discrimination are morally impermissible. Scanlon's account of the wrongness of discrimination attempts to accommodate this appearance through the notion of the expressive meaning of discriminatory acts and a certain view (...) about how permissibility relates to the meaning of actions. This paper explores the scope, strengths and weaknesses of this account. Specifically, it challenges the view that discrimination reflecting hierarchical value judgments necessarily involves a wrong that renders such discrimination more objectionable than other forms. (shrink)

Across Europe, countries are reducing CO2 emissions and energy demand by lowering the temperature in public office buildings. These measures affect men and women unequally because the latter prefer and, indeed, perform better under higher temperatures than the standard temperature. Lowering the temperature thus further increases an already existing inequality. We show that the philosophical literature on discrimination provides an interesting theoretical approach to understanding such measures. On prominent understandings of what discrimination is, the policy would be considered (...) direct discrimination against women if it could be shown to reflect a broader inattentiveness to the needs of women in society. Alternatively, and more straightforwardly, the policies can be considered indirect discrimination because of their disparate effects on men and women. The final part of the paper shows that the policies are also wrong for the reasons it is often argued that discrimination is wrong—to wit, that it harms or disrespects those who are discriminated against. The final section suggests a range of measures to offset the discriminatory aspects of the policy. (shrink)

The English language now dominates scientific communications. Yet, many scientists have English as their second language. Their English proficiency may therefore often be more limited than that of a ‘native speaker’, and their scientific contributions (e.g. manuscripts) in English may frequently contain linguistic features that disrupt the fluency of a reader’s, or listener’s information processing even when the contributions are understandable. Scientific gatekeepers (e.g. journal reviewers) sometimes cite these features to justify negative decisions on manuscripts. Such justifications may rest on (...) the prima facie plausible assumption that linguistic characteristics that hinder fast and easy understandability of scientific contributions are epistemically undesirable in science. I shall raise some doubts about this assumption by drawing on empirical research on processing fluency and its biasing effects. I also argue that directing scientists with English as a foreign language toward approaching ‘native-level’ English can have the negative consequence of reducing their potential to make scientific belief formation more reliable. These points suggest that one seemingly compelling justification for linguistically discriminating against scientific contributions in ‘non-native’ English is questionable and that the common insistence by scientific gatekeepers on ‘native-like’ English may be epistemically harmful to science. (shrink)

Recent philosophical accounts of discrimination face challenges in accommodating robust intuitions about the particular way in which it is wrongful—most prominently, the intuition that discriminatory actions intrinsically violate equality irrespective of their contingent consequences. The paper suggests that we understand the normative structure of discrimination in a way that is different from the one implicitly assumed by these accounts. It argues that core discriminatory wrongs—such as segregation in Apartheid South Africa—divide into two types, corresponding to violations of relational (...) and distributive equality; and that a pluralistic view of the internal structure of each type should be adopted. This normative structure serves to appropriately vindicate the mentioned intuitions; it also contributes to clarifying the normative underpinnings of legal concepts associated with discrimination (including the distinctions between direct and indirect, or ‘disparate treatment/impact’ discrimination, and intentional vs. unintentional discrimination), and developing a more productive public discourse around allegations of discrimination. (shrink)

The Cameron government has recently negotiated a deal with the EU which permits the UK to restrict access to in-work benefits for recent EU migrants in the first four years of residence. Withdrawing access to in-work benefits will lead to significant inequalities in pay between British workers and their EU equivalents working at the same job, in the same general situation. The proposal has been widely decried as discriminatory. Is it? I do not, in this article, ask the legal question: (...) Does it violate anti-discrimination norms implicit in the treaties? Rather, I will ask the moral question underlying the legal one: Would, say, Polish citizens denied in-work benefits that British citizens receive be victims of wrongful discrimination? This question deserves consideration not simply because it will help us to evaluate some of the central concerns at stake in the Brexit debates but also because it will allow us to explore the role of norms against discrimination according to nationality within the EU, to address the nature of the European commitment to freedom of movement, and, in the reverse direction, to better understand our own moral commitment to anti-discrimination norms. (shrink)

We present a reference model for finding evidence of discrimination in datasets of historical decision records in socially sensitive tasks, including access to credit, mortgage, insurance, labor market and other benefits. We formalize the process of direct and indirect discrimination discovery in a rule-based framework, by modelling protected-by-law groups, such as minorities or disadvantaged segments, and contexts where discrimination occurs. Classification rules, extracted from the historical records, allow for unveiling contexts of unlawful discrimination, where the (...) degree of burden over protected-by-law groups is evaluated by formalizing existing norms and regulations in terms of quantitative measures. The measures are defined as functions of the contingency table of a classification rule, and their statistical significance is assessed, relying on a large body of statistical inference methods for proportions. Key legal concepts and reasonings are then used to drive the analysis on the set of classification rules, with the aim of discovering patterns of discrimination, either direct or indirect. Analyses of affirmative action, favoritism and argumentation against discrimination allegations are also modelled in the proposed framework. Finally, we present an implementation, called LP2DD, of the overall reference model that integrates induction, through data mining classification rule extraction, and deduction, through a computational logic implementation of the analytical tools. The LP2DD system is put at work on the analysis of a dataset of credit decision records. (shrink)

It is often thought that traditional recidivism prediction tools used in criminal sentencing, though biased in many ways, can straightforwardly avoid one particularly pernicious type of bias: direct racial discrimination. They can avoid this by excluding race from the list of variables employed to predict recidivism. A similar approach could be taken to the design of newer, machine learning-based (ML) tools for predicting recidivism: information about race could be withheld from the ML tool during its training phase, ensuring (...) that the resulting predictive model does not use race as an explicit predictor. However, if race is correlated with measured recidivism in the training data, the ML tool may ‘learn’ a perfect proxy for race. If such a proxy is found, the exclusion of race would do nothing to weaken the correlation between risk (mis)classifications and race. Is this a problem? We argue that, on some explanations of the wrongness of discrimination, it is. On these explanations, the use of an ML tool that perfectly proxies race would (likely) be more wrong than the use of a traditional tool that imperfectly proxies race. Indeed, on some views, use of a perfect proxy for race is plausibly as wrong as explicit racial profiling. We end by drawing out four implications of our arguments. (shrink)

Appearance discrimination may restrict the opportunities of minority groups, including national, religious, and racial minorities. Employers sometimes impose appearance codes on their workforce that disproportionately affect these groups, potentially limiting their access to jobs. It is tempting to think that the solution here is simple. In practice, it might be said, the appearance features that are excluded by these codes often mask the real basis of the discrimination. Seen in their true light, these codes generally involve direct (...) discrimination on the basis of race, religion or nationality. Even when they do not, if they have a worse effect on a disadvantaged group, then they are cases of indirect discrimination. But things are not that simple, for an appearance feature can be a genuine reaction qualification, i.e., it can be a genuine qualification in virtue of the responses of those who come into contact with an employee, such as customers or clients. This chapter addresses the issue of when it is morally permissible for an employer to adopt an appearance code that disadvantages a minority group by pandering to the preferences of their customers or clients in cases where these preferences express their aesthetic tastes or are rooted in reasonable conceptions of the good to which they adhere. Consideration is given to whether the importance of integration might provide a reason to regard appearance codes as morally impermissible when it is harder or more costly for a minority group, such as a national, religious, or racial minority, to conform to them. (shrink)

African American adolescents have become more active users of digital media, which may increasingly expose them to direct online discrimination based on their racial and gender identities. Despite well-documented impacts of offline discrimination, our understanding of if and how direct online discrimination affects African American adolescents similarly remains limited. Guided by intersectional and ecological frameworks, we examined the association between direct online discrimination and internalized computing stereotypes in African American adolescents. Further, we explored (...) the moderating effects of systemic and individual factors – vicarious online discrimination, parental technological attitudes, and racial identity centrality – on this association by adolescent gender. Utilizing data from 1041 African American parent-adolescent dyads, we found a positive association between adolescents’ direct online discrimination and internalized computing stereotypes. Surprisingly, greater vicarious online discrimination mitigated this association for both male and female adolescents. Further, parental technological attitudes and racial identity centrality mitigated this association only for female but not male adolescents. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the impact of media on adolescents’ online experiences from intersectional and systemic perspectives. We discuss the implications for prospective research and educational programs focused on African American adolescents’ digital media use and online experiences. (shrink)

On 24 July 2022, the landmark decision Roe v. Wade (1973), that secured a right to abortion for decades, was overruled by the US Supreme Court. The Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation severely restricts access to legal abortion care in the USA, since it will give the states the power to ban abortion. It has been claimed that overruling Roe will have disproportionate impacts on women of color and that restricting access to abortion contributes to or (...) amounts to structural racism. In this paper, we consider whether restricting abortion access as a consequence of overruling Roe could be understood as discrimination against women of color (and women in general). We argue that banning abortion is indirectly discriminatory against women of color and directly (but neither indirectly, nor structurally) discriminatory against women in general. (shrink)

Discrimination represents an important moral problem in the field of business ethics, and is often directed against minority groups. While most of the extant literature studies discrimination against employees, this paper studies discrimination against minority customers, addressing whether customers speaking English with an accent are discriminated against when contacting companies with a complaint. We draw upon the two literature streams of business ethics and service recovery to address discrimination in the service recovery process, as the recovery (...) process after a service failure constitutes a critical incident for customers, in which discrimination would be a particularly important moral problem. The findings confirm that customers speaking with an accent are discriminated against, as employees may evaluate customers as both less credible and less competent depending on their accent. We further show that this discrimination extends to negative outcomes: service employees offer customers speaking with an accent lower compensation, and are less likely to go the extra mile for them. Having identified the existence of a discriminatory practice in the service recovery process, we further uncover both an underlying reason and a potential solution. Our results show that employees’ level of cultural intelligence helps alleviate discrimination. We conclude that companies could benefit from including cultural intelligence in the recruitment and training of their employees. (shrink)

Over the past decade, scholars, institutions, and activists have voiced strong concerns about the potential of automated decision systems to indirectly discriminate against vulnerable groups. This article analyses the ethics of algorithmic indirect discrimination, and argues that we can explain what is morally bad about such discrimination by reference to the fact that it causes harm. The article first sketches certain elements of the technical and conceptual background, including definitions of direct and indirect algorithmic differential treatment. It (...) next introduces three prominent accounts of fairness as potential explanations if the badness of algorithmic indirect discrimination, but argues that all three are vulnerable to powerful levelling-down-style objections. Instead, the article demonstrates how proper attention to the way differences in decision-scenarios affect the distribution of harms can help us account for intuitions in prominent cases. Finally, the article considers a potential objection based on the fact that certain forms of algorithmic indirect discrimination appear to distribute rather than cause harm, and notes that we can explain how such distributions cause harm by attending to differences in individual and group vulnerability. (shrink)

Discrimination in decision making is prohibited on many attributes, but often present in historical decisions. Use of such discriminatory historical decision making as training data can perpetuate discrimination, even if the protected attributes are not directly present in the data. This work focuses on discovering discrimination in instances and preventing discrimination in classification. First, we propose a discrimination discovery method based on modeling the probability distribution of a class using Bayesian networks. This measures the effect (...) of a protected attribute in a subset of the dataset using the estimated probability distribution. Second, we propose a classification method that corrects for the discovered discrimination without using protected attributes in the decision process. We evaluate the discrimination discovery and discrimination prevention approaches on two different datasets. The empirical results show that a substantial amount of discrimination identified in instances is prevented in future decisions. (shrink)

Interactive and autonomous agents might be common in everyday life in the future; we expect that such agents will have the ability to communicate with people naturally. For natural communication, the agents should speculate about the intentions of the people they interact with. To enable agents to speculate about intentions like deception, we focused on unconscious expressions when people tell a lie. However, there is no system that can meet the necessary conditions for measuring nonverbal information in natural communication. Therefore, (...) we made a real-time system for measuring gaze direction and facial features. We conducted experiments for discriminating lies by using the system in a situation similar to actual communication. As a result, we found that we could discriminate lies by using diverse nonverbal information in the same way people did. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Glen Pettigrove’s ‘What Virtue Adds to Value’ maintains that sometimes virtue is fundamental in the order of value, and that we should reject the general thesis that the value of our responses depends on their proportionality to the value of the objects toward which they are directed. He argues that this view is needed to account for the moral phenomena surrounding love, forgiveness and ambition. I object that his view is unable to explain the forms of discrimination that (...) distinguish the good kinds of love, forgiveness and ambition from the bad ones; and that explaining this requires a version of the proportionality thesis he opposes. (shrink)

Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) provide the majority of direct care to nursing home residents in the United States and, therefore, are keys to ensuring optimal health outcomes for this frail older adult population. These diverse direct care workers, however, are often not recognized for their important contributions to older adult care and are subjected to poor working conditions. It is probable that social‐based discrimination lies at the core of poor treatment toward CNAs. This review uses perspectives from (...) critical social theory to explore the phenomenon of social‐based discrimination toward CNAs that may originate from social order, power, and culture. Understanding manifestations of social‐based discrimination in nursing homes is critical to creating solutions for severe disparity problems among perceived lower‐class workers and subsequently improving resident care delivery. (shrink)

The 3rd Pan-African Ethics Human Rights and Medical Law (3rd EHRML) conference was held in Johannesburg on July 7, 2013, as part of the Africa Health Congress. The conference brought together bioethicists, researchers and scholars from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria working in the field of bioethics as well as students and healthcare workers interested in learning about ethical issues confronting the African continent. The conference which ran with a theme of "Bioethical and legal perspectives in biomedical research and (...) medical practice in Africa with a focus on: Informed consent, HIV-AIDS & Tuberculosis, leadership & organizational ethics, patients and healthcare workers rights," was designed to expand the dialogue on African bioethics beyond the traditional focus on research ethics and the ethical dilemmas surrounding the conduct of biomedical research in developing countries. This introductory article highlights some of areas of focus at the conference including issues of leadership, organizational ethics and patients and healthcare workers rights in Africa. We analyze the importance of free speech, public debate of issues, argumentation and the need to introduce the teaching and learning of ethics to students in Africa in accordance with UNESCO guidelines. This article also focuses on other challenges confronting Africa today from an ethical standpoint, including the issues of poor leadership and organizational ethics which are main contributors to the problems prevalent in African countries, such as poverty, poor education and healthcare delivery systems, terrorism, social inequities, infrastructural deficits and other forms of 'structural violence' confronting vulnerable African communities. We believe that each of the eight articles included in this supplement, which have been rigorously peer-reviewed are a good example of current research on bioethics in Africa, and explore some new directions towards broadening the African bioethics agenda as we move forward to a new dawn for Africa in the 21st century. (shrink)

Disability might be relevant to decisions about life support in intensive care in several ways. It might affect the chance of treatment being successful, or a patient’s life expectancy with treatment. It may affect whether treatment is in a patient’s best interests. However, even if treatment would be of overall benefit it may be unaffordable and consequently unable to be provided. In this paper we will draw on the example of neonatal intensive care, and ask whether or when it is (...) justified to ration life-saving treatment on the basis of disability. We argue that predicted disability is relevant both indirectly and directly to rationing decisions. (shrink)

This article is about the rights of the Roma in North Macedonia and the level of discrimination that Roma are facing while employed in the public sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. The aims and objectives of the article are theoretical and practical understanding of the situation of Roma and the violation of their rights through direct and indirect discrimination at work. The data was collected during the period from May-July 2019 via 52 collected questionaries from (...) a total of 70 public servants who were asked to be a part of the research. The article shows new data we have collected from employed Roma as public servants in different institutions in the state. The surveyed public servants were 52 in total, from which 34 are employees with secondary education, 17 are with university education and only 1 has a masters degree. The questionnaire is composed out of 17 questions about the forms of discrimination, feeling or witnesing discrimination at their workplace, who caused the discrimination, witnessing the spread of prejudices and stereotypes about the Roma, rejection of colleagues to share an office with Roma, and who caused the discrimination. One of the results shows that 55% of the surveyed Roma did not have a single training from their employer in the last 12 months and that 69% of those surveyed stated that they felt discrimination in the last 12 months on everyday basis. (shrink)

This paper briefly reviews the papers in this special section of HCA and makes the point—a point which should be obvious—that statistics are useful only as guidelines but tell one nothing about the individual patient in front of you. Chronological age merely shows what is true of most but decidedly not of all patients in a particular age group. To ration on the basis of age alone is unfair to the individual denied treatment and damaging to the community because it (...) disturbs the solidarity which comes about because most members of the community feel that the community has obligations beyond those of not directly harming them; indeed, what produces solidarity is the feeling that members of a community will do their best to come to each others help. Rationing on the basis of age alone denies people of equal treatment under the law and—when it comes to the elderly—is a type of age discrimination. It is pointed out that what matters is a patient’s disease and not his/her age. A permanently vegetative person 8 years of age is a much sadder occurrence than it would be at age 90—but the critical fact is that both are permanently vegetative. Age cuts both ways—it is irrational to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, untold amounts of time, energy and devotion to the 520 gm infant with a gr IV diffuse haemorrhage whose chance of leading a sentient life is close to zero and to hesitate before using a diagnostic MRI on a patient who is 90 but fully alert and enjoying life. It is concluded that age as an independent variable in the allocation of resources is ethically highly problematic. (shrink)

The proposal of the new criteria for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease based on biomarker data is making possible a diagnosis of AD at the mild cognitive impairment or predementia/prodromal– stage. Given the present lack of effective treatments for AD, the opportunity for the individuals to personally take relevant decisions and plan for their future before and if cognitive deterioration occurs is one the main advantages of an early diagnosis. Advance directives are largely seen as an effective tool for planning (...) medical care in the event the subject becomes incompetent. Nevertheless, their value has been questioned with regard to people with dementia by scholars who refer to the arguments of personal identity and of patient’s changing interests before and after the onset of dementia. In this paper, I discuss the value of advance directives in Alzheimer’s disease and other kind of dementia. Despite critics, I argue that advance directives are especially advisable in dementia and provide reasons in favor of their promotion at an early stage of the disease as a valuable tool to respect patients’ values and preferences on medical treatment, including participation in research and end of life decisions. I mainly support advance directives that include both decisions regarding health care and the appointment of an attorney in fact. I conclude that patients with AD at a prodromal or early stage should be offered the opportunity to execute an advance directive, and that not to honor a demented individual’s directive would be an unacceptable form of discrimination towards those patients. (shrink)

To rationalize the selection of a research methodology, one must understand its philosophical origins and unique characteristics. This process can be challenging in the landscape of evolving qualitative methodologies. Grounded theory is a research methodology with a distinct history that has resulted in numerous approaches. Although the approaches have key similarities, they also have differing philosophical assumptions that influence the ways in which their methods are understood and implemented. The purpose of this discussion paper is to compare and contrast three (...) widely used grounded theory approaches with key distinguishing characteristics, enabling a more thoughtful selection of approach. This work contributes to the existing literature through contrasting classic Glaserian grounded theory, Straussian grounded theory, and constructivist grounded theory in a systematic manner with prominent distinguishing characteristics developed from a review of the literature. These characteristics included historical development, philosophical perspective, role of the researcher, data analysis procedures, perspective of the grounded theory, and strengths/critique. Based on this analysis, three considerations are proposed to direct the methodological choice for a study: purpose, philosophy, and pragmatics. Understanding the similarities and differences in the grounded theory approaches can facilitate methodological transparency and determine the best fit for one's study and worldview as a researcher. (shrink)

While it has many connections to other topics in normative and applied ethics, discrimination is a central subject in philosophy in its own right. It plays a significant role in relation to many real-life complaints about unjust treatment or unjust inequalities, and it raises a number of questions in political and moral philosophy, and in legal theory. Some of these questions include: what distinguishes the concept of discrimination from the concept of differential treatment? What distinguishes direct from (...) indirect discrimination? Is discrimination always morally wrong? What makes discrimination wrong? How should we eliminate the effects of discrimination? By covering a wide range of topics, and by doing so in a way that does not assume prior acquaintance, this handbook enables the reader to get to grips with the omnipresent issue. The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into six main parts: • conceptual issues • the wrongness of discrimination • groups of ‘discriminatees’ • sites of discrimination • causes and means • history of discrimination Essential reading for students and researchers in applied ethics and political philosophy the handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as law, sociology and politics. (shrink)

Algorithmic discrimination has rapidly become a topic of intense public and academic interest. This article explores three issues raised by algorithmic discrimination: 1) the distinction between direct and indirect discrimination, 2) the notion of disadvantageous treatment, and 3) the moral badness of discriminatory automated decision-making. It argues that some conventional distinctions between direct and indirect discrimination appear not to apply to algorithmic discrimination, that algorithmic discrimination may often be discrimination between groups, (...) as opposed to against groups, and that it is not necessarily the case that morally bad algorithmic discrimination gives us reason to not use automated decision-making. For each of the three issues, the article explores implications for algorithmic discrimination, suggests some alternative answers, and clarifies how we may want to think of discrimination more broadly in light of lessons drawn from the context of algorithmic discrimination. (shrink)

The question 'What is the criterion of identity for directions?' might be construed as asking either 'When do lines have the same direction?' or 'When are directions identical?'. Frege's answer 'When they are parallel' fits the former question, not the latter, for it specifies a relation other than identity between lines, not directions. Jonathan Lowe thinks the latter question more fundamental, and claims that Frege's criterion can be reformulated to answer it: 'When some line with one is parallel to some (...) line with the other'. At p. 147 of Identity and Discrimination I make three points against this view: Lowe's construal does not permit a principled rejection of an intuitively unacceptable answer to the original question, On pain of circularity, Lowe's answer uses conceptual resources beyond those of Frege's, and thus is not a mere reformulation, Lowe's question seems to make the hopeless demand for something more basic than 'x = y Lowe's reply 'One-level versus two-level identity criteria' does not address or . I shall follow him in discussing only. (shrink)

Experiences of discrimination such as everyday racism can negatively affect the mental and physical health of children and adolescents with an immigrant background and impair their integration process in the host societies. Although experiences of racism are part of the everyday life of many minors affected by the process of “Othering”, an overview of empirical findings is missing for this age group worldwide. A systematic review was conducted to identify and analyze international research on the impact of discrimination (...) on the developmental outcomes and integration of immigrant children and adolescents. Three scientific databases were systematically searched up to June 11, 2021. A total of k = 4,769 identified publications were reviewed based on inclusion and exclusion criteria in terms of the PICOS format by independent reviewers. Thirty-four primary studies published between 1998 and 2021 met all inclusion criteria. The samples examined were mainly migrant youth, with only k = 2 studies assessing refugee youth and k = 1 study assessing both migrant and refugee youth. The majority of included studies assessed perceived discrimination, with only k = 1 study directly assessing experiences of racism. The association between discrimination or racism and developmental outcomes was assessed by the included studies within the three main topics of mental and physical health-related outcomes, school-related outcomes, and other developmental outcomes. Data collection procedures were implemented, and findings on minors’ developmental outcomes and integration process who experience discrimination and racism were summarized and discussed. The current review suggests experienced discrimination as a negative predictor of children and adolescents’ health-related outcomes, while no clear results could be found for the association between discrimination and school-related outcomes. A need for more empirical research focusing on the path and indirect link between discrimination and children and adolescents’ school-related outcomes as well as resulting school recommendations and the chosen career path was derived.Systematic Review Registration[https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=260291], identifier [CRD42021260291]. (shrink)

Discrimination law is a possible application of the methods of causal modelling. With it, it brings the possibility of direct statistical evidence on counterfactual questions, something that traditional techniques like multiple regression lack. The kinds of evidence that causal modelling can provide, in large part due to its attention to counterfactuals, is very close to the key question that we ask of jurors in discrimination cases. With this new kind of evidence comes new opportunities. We can better (...) proportion punitive damages to the severity of the discrimination that manifests in a hiring process. We can avoid making certain kinds of assumptions regarding the relationship between protected classes and hiring qualifications that other statistical methods demand from statisticians. We can also distribute restitution to individual claimants in a way that is proportionate to how their application was treated in the hiring process. Here we explore where and how causal modelling can be useful in discrimination law and policy. What elements of law provide friction with this mode of gathering statistical evidence, what new possibilities does it reveal, and how does this integrate with prior judgments regarding statistical evidence? (shrink)

Informational conceptions of logic are barely novel. We find them in the work of John Corcoran, in several papers on substructural and constructive logics by Heinrich Wansing, and in the interpretation of the Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logics in terms of Barwises and Perrys theory of situations. Allo & Mares [2] present an informational account of logical consequence that is based on the content-nonexpantion platitude, but that also relies on a double inversion of the standard direction of explanation (in- formation (...) doesnt depend on a prior notion of meaning, but is used to naturalize meaning, and informational content is not defined relative to a pre-existing logical space, but that space is constructed relative to the level of abstraction at which information is assessed). In this paper I focus directly on one of the main ideas introduced in that paper, namely the contrast between logical discrimination and deductive strength, and use this contrast to (1) illustrate a number of open problems for an informational conception of logical consequence, (2) review its connection with the dynamic turn in logic, and (3) situate it relative to the research agenda of the philosophy of information. (shrink)

Discrimination between disabled and non-disabled people is still an issue of fairness and justice. In this COVID-19 pandemic time, this issue highlighted in a significant way. In hospital, the disabled persons to face today issues while triage like whether they have the right to get the ventilator first when there is limited ventilation support or their vulnerability could be the cause for being neglect or they do not have to have a quality of life. There are lots of ethical (...) dilemmas that we face today and these are not solvable overnight by the existing framework or policies. The existing paternalism, utilitarianism, or even ableism can not ensure making people living with disabilities (PLWD) rights equal. It is very clear that the professional expertise, policy or framework have so many loop holes that we are still struggling to take steps to effective and ethical decision making. This paper focuses the emergency of ethics based research, policy directions, and frameworks to eliminate those discriminations. (shrink)

Discrimination is typically understood to be a comparative phenomenon: S is discriminated against on the basis of trait T if she would not have been treated in the same way if she did not possess T. But the comparative test for discrimination may hide from view some important cases: associational discrimination and stereotype policing. These cases show more clearly what is true of discrimination in general: that it involves a vicarious wrong, that is, an action which (...) wrongs someone other than the primary object of disregard. This suggests why philosophers disagree whether discrimination is wrong because it causes harm or because it expresses disrespect. Paradigmatic cases of discrimination involve both harm and disrespect, but direct the harm and the disrespect towards different targets by treating the harmed individual as a mere representative of the targeted group. Discrimination is dehumanizing, and morally distinctive, precisely because of this fact. (shrink)