Ethical oaths for bankers, economists and managers are increasingly seen as successful instruments to ensure more responsible behaviour. In this article, we reflect on the nature of ethical oaths. Based on John Austin's speech act theory and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, we introduce a performative concept of ethical oaths that is characterised by (1) the existential self-performative of the one I want to be, which is (2) demanded by the public context. Because ethical oaths are (...) (3) structurally threatened by the possibility of infelicity or failure, we stress (4) the behavioural aspect of ethical oaths in economics and business. We conclude that a performative concept of ethical oaths can contribute to more ethical behaviour in economics and business, because the performative involves action and behaviour. At the same time, it becomes clear that a radical new perspective on the nature, function and limitation of oaths is needed. (shrink)

While the consequences of mathematically-based software, algorithms and strategies have become ever wider and better appreciated, ethical reflection on mathematics has remained primitive. We review the somewhat disconnected suggestions of commentators in recent decades with a view to piecing together a coherent approach to ethics in mathematics. Calls for a Hippocratic Oath for mathematicians are examined and it is concluded that while lessons can be learned from the medical profession, the relation of mathematicians to those affected by their (...) work is significantly different. There is something to be learned also from the codes of conduct of cognate but professionalised quantitative disciplines such as engineering and accountancy, as well as from legal principles bearing on professional work. We conclude with recommendations that professional societies in mathematics should sponsor an (international) code of ethics, institutional mission statements for mathematicians and syllabuses of ethics courses for incorporation into mathematics degrees. (shrink)

There are two areas of particular importance in Heathen ethics. One is the growth and maintenance of ethical personal power or 'might and main': the inner strength and drive that is necessary to develop and sustain a good character and reputation, and to achieve worthy deeds during our life. The second is the pursuit of relationships and community life that promote individual, group, and community well-being and effective functionality. Any thoughtful reading of Heathen history, old texts, tales, poems and (...) sagas will show how important these two factors were in ancient Heathen life. This was generally illustrated by showing the painful, cascading disruptions that were caused by failures of, and transgressions against, these ethical values and aspirations. Modern Heathens can benefit from a fuller understanding of ancient Heathen ethical views: both their strengths and their weaknesses, their pros and cons. Only by a thoughtful grasp of these concepts can we make the best use of the elder ways as Heathens living in today’s world. This book offers philosophical discussions of certain Heathen ethical concepts, as well as guidelines for using these concepts to live ethically strong and spiritually healthy lives as modern Heathens. Fulfilled OATHS build Heathen might and main, increasing our personal power. Unpaid SHILD (moral obligation) weakens our might and main; taking responsibility for shild heals personal power. FRITH is a fabric of interwoven might and main, created and shared by many: the roots of relationship and community. LUCK and WYRD can be expressed through flows of might and main, discovered along the complex, hidden paths that lead to Heathen wisdom. Understanding, increasing, maintaining, and sharing ethical might and main is a foundation of Heathen ethics. “In Oaths, Shild, Frith, Luck & Wyrd, Winifred Hodge Rose draws on her extensive scholarship and experience to explore what the lore has to tell us about how the Old Heathens viewed certain ethical questions, and to offer suggestions on how these perspectives can help us deal with the challenges that we face today.” Diana L. Paxson, author of Essential Asatru: A Modern Guide to Norse Paganism. “Oaths, Shild, Frith, Luck & Wyrd provides tools for individual and collective healing, and articulates important questions and challenges that we must consider as we adapt the knowledge and life ways of our ancestors to our contemporary context.” Sara Axtell, Ph.D. (shrink)

Research into the proper mission of business falls within the context of theoretical and applied ethics. And ethics is fast becoming a part of required business school curricula. However, while business ethics research occasionally appears in high‐profile venues, it does not yet enjoy a regular place within any top management journal. I offer a partial explanation of this paradox and suggestions for resolving it. I begin by discussing the standard conception of human nature given by neoclassical economics as disseminated in (...) business schools; showing it is a significant obstacle to an accurate conception of ethics and how this limits consideration of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. I then examine the scope of the top management journals, showing how their empirical and descriptive focus leaves little room for ethics, which is an essentially conceptual and prescriptive discipline. Finally, I suggest avenues for research into the ethical mission of business, generally—and sustainability and CSR, in particular—by appeal to the precepts of Harvard Business School’s Master’s in Business Administration ethics oath modeled on the medical and legal professions. (shrink)

Physicians in Islamic countries might be requested to participate in the Islamic legal code of qiṣāṣ, in which the victim or family has the right to an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Qiṣāṣ is only used as a punishment in the case of murder or intentional physical injury. In situations such as throwing acid, the national legal system of some Islamic countries asks for assistance from physicians, because the punishment should be identical to the crime. The perpetrator could not be punished without a (...) physician’s participation, because there is no way to guarantee that the sentence would be carried out without inflicting more injury than the initial victim had suffered. By examining two cases of acid throwing, this paper discusses issues related to physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ from the perspective of medical ethics and Islamic Shari’a law. From the standpoint of medical ethics, physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ is not appropriate. First, qiṣāṣ is in sharp contrast to the Hippocratic Oath and other codes of medical ethics. Second, by physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ, medical practices are being used improperly to carry out government mandates. Third, physician participation in activities that cause intentional harm to people destroys the trust between patients and physicians and may adversely affect the patient–physician relationship more generally. From the standpoint of Shari’a, there is no consensus among Muslim scholars whether qiṣāṣ should be performed on every occasion. We argue that disallowing physician involvement in qiṣāṣ is necessary from the perspectives of both medical ethics and Shari’a law. (shrink)

POLICE ETHICS – Abstract Mark Lauchs -/- Police are an essential part of the justice system. They are the frontline actors in keeping the peace, social stability and cohesion. Thus good governance relies on honest policing. However, there will always be at least a small group of corrupt police officers, even though Australians are culturally averse to corruption (Khatri, Tsang, & Begley, 2006). There have been many cases where the allegations of police corruption have reached to the highest levels of (...) a state police force (Blanch, 1982) and, in the case of the Fitzgerald Inquiry (Fitzgerald, 1989), ended in a commissioner being convicted of corruption. -/- Any public official who places their own interests before those of the public have corrupted a system in which they are supposed to act as agents of the public, will undermine the good governance of a society (Lauchs, 2007). Police officers attract offers of corruption because of their ability to enforce or ignore the law. Police who are unethical or in financial stress are vulnerable to offers of illicit payments. Longstanding arrangements of corruption within a police branch can lead to a corruption network between police and criminals. Organised police corruption constitutes “social behaviour, conducted in groups within organisations, that is powerful enough to override the officer’s oath of office, personal conscience, departmental regulations and criminal laws.” (Punch, 2000) it is an even greater threat to the community because the damage done has more impact than the sum of the individual acts of corruption. This chapter will discuss the types of police corruption and focus on the organisation as the source of core police culture. -/- . (shrink)

The Hippocratic Oath is a code of ethics defining correct behaviour by physicians they are required to commit themselves to before being accepted into the profession. It was the first code of ethics for any profession. While originating in Ancient Greece, it subsequently evolved, but the current code still embodies many of the core injunctions of the original code. The most widely accepted current form is the 2006 The Declaration of Geneva by the World Medical Association to be taken (...) before being admitted as a member of the medical profession. The most important of its injunctions are: ‘The health of my patient will be my first consideration’ and ‘I will maintain the utmost respect for human life’. The first is a rewording of the injunction from Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school: ‘Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.’ This was later simplified to the most basic precept of the Hippocratic Oath: ‘First, do no harm.’ It is one of the principal precepts of bioethics that all students in healthcare that, given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good. The development of neurotechnology could be subsumed with little modification under the Geneva formulation of the Hippocratic Oath, extending this precept to a commitment not to damage people’s psychological health. (shrink)

When militaries mention loyalty as a value they mean loyalty to colleagues and the organisation. Loyalty to principle, the type of loyalty that has a wider scope, plays hardly a role in the ethics of most armed forces. Where military codes, oaths and values are about the organisation and colleagues, medical ethics is about providing patient care impartially. Being subject to two diverging professional ethics can leave military medical personnel torn between the wish to act loyally towards colleagues, and the (...) demands of a more outward looking ethic. This tension constitutes a test of integrity, not a moral dilemma. (shrink)

Not only the direct physical experiences of deployment can severely harm soldiers’ mental health. Witnessing violations of their moral principles by the enemy, or by their fellow soldiers and superiors, can also have a devastating impact. It can cause soldiers’ moral disorientation, increasing feelings of shame, guilt, or hate, and the need for general answers on questions of right and wrong. Various attempts have been made to keep soldiers mentally sane. One is to provide convincing causes for their deployment, which (...) risks an “end justifies the means” way of thinking. The good cause can provide a moral justification for horrible atrocities. Another method, introduced in the USA, Canada, and Australia, aims to strengthen military personnel’s resistance by promoting and maintaining a happy, optimistic state of mind through the use of positive psychology. Alongside making soldiers “morally fit” for all kinds of situations, the focus could also be on moral recovery and forgiveness. Such a care-based military ethics approach, aimed at mutual understanding and interdependence, could help soldiers handle the emotional impact of moral conflicts. This demands that military units reflect on their organizational culture and rethink oaths and codes of conduct that focus mainly on efficiency and readiness, as well as the soldierly self-image with its seemingly still deeply rooted warrior ethos. Today, resilience and positive psychology in the military is apparently mainly geared to assuring its soldiers’ readiness. An appropriate set of virtues and understanding of virtue ethics that are less centered on self-perfection and autonomy could point to a different form of character-building and lead to a better understanding of others. (shrink)

The euthanasia literature typically discusses the difference between “active” and “passive” means of ending a patient’s life. Physician-assisted suicide differs from both active and passive forms of euthanasia insofar as the physician does not administer the means of suicide to the patient. Instead, she merely prescribes and dispenses them to the patient and lets the patient “do the rest” – if and when the patient chooses. One supposed advantage of this process is that it maximizes the patient’s autonomy with respect (...) to both her decision to die and the dying process itself. Still, despite this supposed advantage, Oregon is the only state to have legalized physician-assisted suicide. After summarizing the most important Supreme Court opinions on euthanasia (namely, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep’t of Health; Vacco v. Quill; Washington v. Glucksberg; and Gonzales v. Oregon), this paper argues that while there are no strong ethical reasons against legalizing physician-assisted suicide, there are some very strong policy reasons for keeping it criminal in the other forty-nine states. (shrink)

Following the Introduction, the second section of this essay lays out Tom Cavanaugh’s helpful and convincing account of the enduring significance of the Hippocratic Oath in terms of how it responds to the problem of iatrogenic harm. The third section discusses something underemphasized in Cavanaugh’s account, namely, the key role of the virtue of piety within the Oath and the profession it establishes, and argues that this virtue should be regarded as integral to an authentic Hippocratic ethic. The (...) fourth and final section briefly examines the connection between medicine and philosophy, focusing on how both should be seen as wisdom-seeking ways of life, and shows the relevance of this for regarding the virtue of piety as the key virtue of medical practice. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this (...) inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (shrink)

The author reviews the planned withdrawal of healthcare from the primary public hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital, of Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, at least half of the patients had no public or private health insurance and their care was financially supported by State and County funding as well as supplementation from Emory University. New administration in the elected positions of the State and County and at the University reached agreement to decrease care. The (...) University President stated that the Hippocratic Oath was no longer valid for salaried physicians who must follow the direction of their business manager. The author, a tenured Professor, was forcibly transferred to the Veterans Hospital, which also was withholding standard medical care, including life-saving medications. Organizing multiple concerned organizations including members of the King Center, the Carter Center, the Open Door Community Center, Gay Rights, etc., (Grady Coalition) multiple public protests were successful in raising the necessary funds to continue adequate care at Grady and begin an investigation of the Veterans Affairs Hospital. (shrink)

If medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative authority (...) to enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority. (shrink)

Religion and culture are interwoven and this can be seen among the Oron people in their use of the shrine as a socio-cultural and ethical institution. The shrine is an embodiment and the symbol of the very traditional religion of the people. As such, the shrine serves as a medium through which the norms, values, ethics, taboos, and morals are taught and enforced. There is also a great relationship between religion and justice as the shrine (Afi/Obio) as an (...) class='Hi'>ethical institution serves as a tribunal of justice by the deities, divinities, and ancestors under the guidance and administration of the priest in tackling and resolving criminal activities, disputes as well as restoring social order and justice in Oron traditional society. The Oron Afi/Obio (Shrine) method of administering justice is beyond the Empirical application of the modern judiciary system that relies on physical facts and shreds of evidence, while the shrine, also, uses spiritual methods that involve Oath taking, incantation and necromancy. Globalization rather than modifying the lapses and loopholes of this system in the parlance of morality, ethics, and health has led to its abolition and break down. This work adopts the qualitative method. This work as primary research uses the conflict theory, phenomenological and Historical method. It identifies globalization as a threat to the traditional justice system and recommends that the shrine is a multi-faceted institution whose function can be adopted and applied to the Nigerian legal system where there is no or little evidence and oath swearing for politicians in our contemporary society. (shrink)

This article explores the ambivalent relationship of neo-Aristotelian naturalism to ethical supervenience. One of the main proponents of this approach, Michael Thompson, holds a position that leads to a rejection of local ethical supervenience. It is argued that this rejection implicitly undermines a premise held by other prominent neo-Aristotelian naturalists, such as Philippa Foot or Rosalind Hursthouse, who implemented Thompson’s species-relative logic of ethical evaluations into their theories. This premise—that there is a systematic connection between the virtuous (...) life and the benefit of the individual—could be re-established if neo-Aristotelian naturalism abandoned the species-essentialist understanding of life-forms and instead accepted local ethical supervenience as an ethical frame of reference. Although this article derives its problem from the main works of the aforementioned authors, its interest lies not mainly in exegesis, but in the systematic discussion of the logical status and the functionality of the concept of life-form in neo-Aristotelian naturalism. This discussion will be enriched by the inclusion of the logical distinctions and insights from modern philosophical biology. (shrink)

The growing proportion of elderly people in society, together with recent advances in robotics, makes the use of robots in elder care increasingly likely. We outline developments in the areas of robot applications for assisting the elderly and their carers, for monitoring their health and safety, and for providing them with companionship. Despite the possible benefits, we raise and discuss six main ethical concerns associated with: (1) the potential reduction in the amount of human contact; (2) an increase in (...) the feelings of objectification and loss of control; (3) a loss of privacy; (4) a loss of personal liberty; (5) deception and infantilisation; (6) the circumstances in which elderly people should be allowed to control robots. We conclude by balancing the care benefits against the ethical costs. If introduced with foresight and careful guidelines, robots and robotic technology could improve the lives of the elderly, reducing their dependence, and creating more opportunities for social interaction. (shrink)

With the rise and public accessibility of AI-enabled decision-support systems, individuals outsource increasingly more of their decisions, even those that carry ethical dimensions. Considering this trend, scholars have highlighted that uncritical deference to these systems would be problematic and consequently called for investigations of the impact of pertinent technology on humans’ ethical decision-making. To this end, this article conducts a systematic review of existing scholarship and derives an integrated framework that demonstrates how intelligent decision-support systems (IDSSs) shape humans’ (...) ethical decision-making. In particular, we identify resulting consequences on an individual level (i.e., deliberation enhancement, motivation enhancement, autonomy enhancement and action enhancement) and on a societal level (i.e., moral deskilling, restricted moral progress and moral responsibility gaps). We carve out two distinct methods/operation types (i.e., processoriented and outcome-oriented navigation) that decision-support systems can deploy and postulate that these determine to what extent the previously stated consequences materialize. Overall, this study holds important theoretical and practical implications by establishing clarity in the conceptions, underlying mechanisms and (directions of) influences that can be expected when using particular IDSSs for ethical decisions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framework demonstrates clearly that there is (...) a moral “lock-in”, and why the killing of day-old chicks is indeed an issue. Furthermore, it is shown that both alternative directions address some important objections with regard to the killing of day-old chicks, but that they also raise new dilemmas. It also becomes clear that the framework enables and secures anticipation, reflection, deliberation with and responsiveness to stakeholders, the four dimensions of responsible innovation, in a structured way. (shrink)

A morally acceptable course of AI development should avoid two dangers: creating unaligned AI systems that pose a threat to humanity and mistreating AI systems that merit moral consideration in their own right. This paper argues these two dangers interact and that if we create AI systems that merit moral consideration, simultaneously avoiding both of these dangers would be extremely challenging. While our argument is straightforward and supported by a wide range of pretheoretical moral judgments, it has far-reaching moral implications (...) for AI development. Although the most obvious way to avoid the tension between alignment and ethical treatment would be to avoid creating AI systems that merit moral consideration, this option may be unrealistic and is perhaps fleeting. So, we conclude by offering some suggestions for other ways of mitigating mistreatment risks associated with alignment. (shrink)

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may play in (...) different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)

Researchers and practitioners are increasingly using machine‐generated synthetic data as a tool for advancing health science and practice, by expanding access to health data while—potentially—mitigating privacy and related ethical concerns around data sharing. While using synthetic data in this way holds promise, we argue that it also raises significant ethical, legal, and policy concerns, including persistent privacy and security problems, accuracy and reliability issues, worries about fairness and bias, and new regulatory challenges. The virtue of synthetic data is (...) often understood to be its detachment from the data subjects whose measurement data is used to generate it. However, we argue that addressing the ethical issues synthetic data raises might require bringing data subjects back into the picture, finding ways that researchers and data subjects can be more meaningfully engaged in the construction and evaluation of datasets and in the creation of institutional safeguards that promote responsible use. (shrink)

Can robots have significant moral status? This is an emerging topic of debate among roboticists and ethicists. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it presents a theory – ‘ethical behaviourism’ – which holds that robots can have significant moral status if they are roughly performatively equivalent to other entities that have significant moral status. This theory is then defended from seven objections. Second, taking this theoretical position onboard, it is argued that the performative threshold that robots (...) need to cross in order to be afforded significant moral status may not be that high and that they may soon cross it (if they haven’t done so already). Finally, the implications of this for our procreative duties to robots are considered, and it is argued that we may need to take seriously a duty of ‘procreative beneficence’ towards robots. (shrink)

Wars and crises worldwide force millions of people to flee and seek refuge, often outside their countries of origin. What moral responsibilities do states have towards refugees? In this Ethical Annotation, Dr Jos Philips and his co-authors zoom in on the responsibilities of EU countries. They consider arguments in favour of and against admitting refugees and argue that EU countries must do at least at much as they can do at little cost, and perhaps even more.

It is common to think of medical and ethical modes of thought as different in kind. In such terms, some clinical situations are made more complicated by an additional ethical component. Against this picture, we propose that medical and ethical modes of thought are not different in kind, but merely different aspects of what it means to be human. We further propose that clinicians are uniquely positioned to synthesise these two aspects without prior knowledge of philosophical ethics.

Great Britain subjugated colonists using various power strategies, including dehumanization, misinformation, fear, and other divisive strategies. The Founders described these oppressive strategies as “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” Throughout the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers imbued the people with hope in a government for the people: one unlike that of the monarchy, which sought to protect itself at the expense of colonists. As a result, the Founders created a government more likely to lead (...) with fairness, demonstrate respect for human dignity, unite Americans as one people, empower citizens through hope, and lead the nation toward security. This socio-ethical framework was an abductive discovery nested within a grounded theory study where it had been concluded that the first principles of democracy were woven within the American founding documents. Using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory, the first principles of democracy—knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security—were used to answer an emerging research question: Are there two democratic frameworks in the founding documents, and how do they differ? The first principles of democracy promote a culture of ethics, resilience, and freedom. Their empowering disposition makes them suitable as a normative framework for a democratic government for the people. (shrink)

In my previous paper I argued that if in vitro fertilization (IVF) is legal and practiced there is no moral ground to object to legalization of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). My opponent raises an objection that my paper “fails to address the ethical argumentation of one key opponent of IVF – the Catholic Church”. In this reply I show that her/his thesis that embryos created during IVF are in ‘ethical limbo’ and “fall outside the moral universe of Christian (...) ethics” does not undermine my argumentation and masks the serious problem Catholics have with the moral status of early embryos. (shrink)

Today, there is a growing interest in the ethics of the human and social sciences, and in the discussions surrounding these topics, notions such as responsibility toward the past are often invoked. But those engaged in these discussions seldom acknowledge that there are at least two distinct logics of responsibility underlying many debates. These logics permeate a Western scholarly tradition but are seldom explicitly discussed. The two logics follow the Latin and Hebrew concepts of responsibility: spondeo and acharayut. The purpose (...) of this article is to make an ethical argument: to explain, based on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and others, what kind of ethical-existential logic of responsibility acharayut is and how it differs from and challenges other concepts of responsibility in moral philosophy and the human sciences. I am especially concerned with what this logic implies with regard to reading and writing about the past. Responsibility is not necessarily congruent with performing a scientific (historical) task or defending the (political, juridical) interests of a group of people. Instead, a “guiltless responsibility” to people of other generations points to something that I refer to as a transgenerational responsibility. I contrast this transgenerational responsibility to inherited guilt and related ideas of generational interconnectedness, which follow the logic of spondeo. Inherited guilt suggests that a responsible relation the past is to either identify with or blame a group of people in the past. Contrary to inherited guilt, a commitment to acharayut means constantly probing one’s responsibility to people of the past (for their posterity) and people of the future (as their predecessors) precisely because people of the present are not people of the past or people of the future. (shrink)

In his early works, Derek Parfit famously defended revisionary reductionism about personhood. According to this view, facts about personal identity consist in the holding of more particular psychological facts, which can be described wholly impersonally. He also argued that, in some cases, the truth of this view makes questions about diachronic personal identity empty questions to which no meaningful answers can be given. Yet, in his later works, Parfit defends several ethical theories such as contractualism and rule-consequentialism, which seem (...) to rely on exactly the kind of determinate notion of personal identity to which he objected earlier. Parfit, furthermore, never explored reductionism’s consequences for such theories in his later works. In order to solve this interpretative puzzle, this chapter tries to argue that, even if they are seemingly conflicting, Parfit’s views on personal identity and rule-consequentialism, Scanlonian contractualism, and Kantian contractualism do form a coherent and unified whole. (shrink)

Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at (...) the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management. (shrink)

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of (...) human beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker. (shrink)

Recent developments in neuroscience have inspired proposals to perform deep brain stimulation on psychopathic detainees. We contend that these proposals cannot meet important ethical requirements that hold for both medical research and therapy. After providing a rough overview of key aspects of psychopathy and the prospects of tackling this condition via deep brain stimulation, we proceed to an ethical assessment of such measures, referring closely to the distinctive features of psychopathic personality, particularly the absence of subjective suffering and (...) a lack of moral motivation. Scrutiny of these factors reveals that two essential bioethical criteria, individual medical benefit and voluntary informed consent, cannot be met in performing neurosurgical experiments or treatments on psychopathic inmates. (shrink)

A patient is diagnosed with the persistent vegetative state (PVS) when they show no evidence of the awareness of the self or the environment for an extended period of time. The chance of recovery of any mental function or the ability to interact in a meaningful way is low. Though rare, the condition, considering its nature as a state outwith the realm of the conscious, coupled with the trauma experienced by the patient's kin as well as health care staff confronted (...) with painful decisions regarding the patient's care, has attracted a considerable amount of discussion within the bioethics community. At present, there is a wealth of literature that discusses the relevant neurology, that elucidates the plethora of ethical challenges in understanding and dealing with the condition, and that analyses the real-world cases which have prominently featured in the mainstream media as a result of emotionally charged, divergent views concerning the provision of care to the patient. However, there is scarcely anything in the published scholarly literature that proposes concrete and practically actionable solutions to the now widely recognized moral conundrums. The present article describes a step in that direction. I start from the very foundations, laying out a sentientist approach which serves as the basis for the consequent moral decision-making, and then proceed to systematically identify and deconstruct the different cases of discord, using the aforementioned foundations as the basis for their resolution. A major intellectual contribution concerns the fluidity of the duty of care which I argue is demanded by the sentientist focus. The said duty is shown initially to have for its object the patient, which depending on the circumstances, can change to the patient's kin, or the health care staff themselves. In conclusion, the proposed framework represents the first comprehensive proposal regarding the decision-making processes involved in the deliberation on the provision of life sustaining treatment to a patient in a PVS. (shrink)

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and progress, the (...) truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and (...) privacy review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

Many caregivers feel that they need to lie or withhold the truth from people living with dementia, but worry that, in doing so, they are violating a duty to tell the truth. In this article, I argue that withholding the truth from and, in limited circumstances, lying to people living with dementia is not only morally permissible, but morally required by a more general requirement that we treat each other as persons worthy of respect. I do so through an analysis (...) of the groundings of the duty to tell the truth, and a critical reflection on its cognitively ableist construction. (shrink)

In his 1972 paper “A Short Refutation Ethical Egoism,” Richmond Campbell purports to refute ethical egoism via a simple reductio. Although his argument has received critical attention, it has not been satisfactorily answered. In this paper I answer it, for reasons that go well beyond my immediate topic. Campbell’s argument calls for an answer partly because, as I show, if it succeeds against ethical egoism, then variations of it refute many other normative ethical theories, such as (...) act utilitarianism. (shrink)

There are calls from various sectors, including the popular press, industry, and academia, to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies in general, and large language models (LLMs) (such as ChatGPT and Gemini) in particular, into various spheres of the South African higher education sector. Nonetheless, the implementation of such technologies is not without ethical risks, notably those related to bias, unfairness, privacy violations, misinformation, lack of transparency, and threats to autonomy. This paper gives an overview of the more pertinent (...) class='Hi'>ethical concerns that may result from the deployment of various current AI technologies in the South African higher education context. It provides a broad overview of the relevant AI ethics literature and distills a few general AI-ethics principles that can serve as guidelines for the ethical development, adoption, and use of AI systems. Suggestions are made as to how these might be applied to mitigate the ethical concerns in the South African higher education context. Overall, it is argued that AI technologies should only be adopted if they offer demonstrable benefits to stakeholders affected by them and that care should be taken to ensure that any potential harms are adequately addressed. (shrink)

This paper argues for ethical veganism: the thesis that it is typically wrong to consume animal products. The paper first sets out an intuitive case for this thesis that begins with the intuitive claim that it is wrong to set fire to a cat. I then raise a methodological challenge: this is an intuitive argument for a revisionary conclusion. Even if we grant that we cannot both believe that it is permissible to drink milk, and that it is wrong (...) to set fire to cats, this leaves open the question of which of these judgments we should abandon. I consider and reject three strategies for addressing this question: more methodologically naïve moral theorizing, appeal to systematic normative theory, and attacking non-moral presuppositions. I argue that philosophically satisfying the resolution of the conflict requires debunking our grounds for belief in one of the conflicting claims. Finally, I argue that ethical veganism is supported by consideration of the most salient debunking arguments available. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity (1993) was an influential early contribution to what has become a broader movement to rehabilitate shame as a moral emotion. But there is a tension in Williams’ discussion that presents an under-appreciated difficulty for efforts to rehabilitate shame. The tension arises between what Williams takes shame in its essence to be and what shame can do—the role that shame can be expected to play in ethical life. Williams can—and we argue, should—be read as avoiding (...) the difficulties stemming from this tension, but this requires a reevaluation of several of his central claims about shame’s role in ethical thought and experience. For instance, his broad claims that the “structures of shame” can “give a conception of one’s ethical identity” (93), and that shame “mediates … between ethical demands and the rest of life” (102), cannot be taken at face value. What emerges is a view that is in a sense less ambitious, but also more in tune with the spirit of Williams’ larger project. There may also, we suggest, be a more general lesson: We should be suspicious of the temptation to seek some special affinity between shame and ethical life, lest we distort our understanding of both. (shrink)

In this essay I consider whether the political perspective of third wave science studies – ‘elective modernism’ – offers a suitable framework for understanding the policy-making contributions that (bio)ethical experts might make. The question arises as a consequence of the fact that I have taken inspiration from the third wave in order to develop an account of (bio)ethical expertise. I offer a précis of this work and a brief summary of elective modernism before considering their relation. The view (...) I set out suggests that elective modernism is a political philosophy and that although its use in relation to the use of scientific expertise in political and policy-making process has implications for the role of (bio)ethical expertise it does not, in the final analysis, provide an account that is appropriate for this latter form of specialist expertise. Nevertheless, it is an informative perspective, and one that can help us make sense of the political uses of (bio)ethical expertise. (shrink)

Today’s organizations are operating in a highly competitive and changing environment ‎that ‎pushes them to adapt their organizational structures to such ‎environments continuously. ‎However, the ethical behavior of employees is considered a bridge to the organization’s success ‎, driven by positive beliefs. This study's purpose of examining the psychological and ethical ‎beliefs' that influence employees' behavior at the workplace through a literature review. This ‎paper uses two terms: "ethical beliefs” and “psychological beliefs.” They both ‎are different but (...) can significantly influence the behavior of employees. Positive psychological and ‎strong ethical beliefs drive ethical behaviors at the workplace, such as honesty, accountability, ‎fairness, responsibility, trust, and integrity, which lead to better performance, a productive team, and ‎positivity in the workplace. It helps to develop a professional relationship with employees, ‎effective communication, accountability, and professionalism at work. While negative ‎psychological and weak ethical beliefs drive unethical behavior, including taking credit for other ‎hard work, abuse, verbal harassment, violence, lack of ambitions and professionalism, theft, ‎corrupt practices, etc. Finally, the arguments demonstrate that some ethical beliefs are perceived ‎to be more objective and appropriate than psychological beliefs. The ethical beliefs of workers ‎considered more formal than psychological beliefs. ‎. (shrink)

Abstract: As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become increasingly integrated into various sectors, ethical considerations surrounding their development and deployment have become paramount. This paper explores the multifaceted ethical landscape of AI, focusing on key challenges such as bias, transparency, privacy, and accountability. It examines how these issues manifest in AI systems and their impact on society. The paper also evaluates current approaches and solutions aimed at mitigating these ethical concerns, including regulatory frameworks, ethical guidelines, and best (...) practices for AI design. By providing a comprehensive analysis of these challenges and solutions, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on responsible AI development and implementation, advocating for a balance between technological innovation and ethical integrity. (shrink)

The Queen's College, Oxford, UK In his article `Facts and Principles', G.A. Cohen attempts to refute constructivist approaches to justification by showing that, contrary to what their proponents claim, fundamental normative principles are fact- in sensitive. We argue that Cohen's `fact-insensitivity thesis' does not provide a successful refutation of constructivism because it pertains to an area of meta-ethics which differs from the one tackled by constructivists. While Cohen's thesis concerns the logical structure of normative principles, constructivists ask how normative principles (...) should be justified . In particular, their claim that justified fundamental normative principles are fact-sensitive follows from a commitment to agnosticism about the existence of objective moral facts. We therefore conclude that, in order to refute constructivism, Cohen would have to address questions of justification, and take a stand on those long-standing meta-ethical debates about the ontological status of moral notions (for example, realism versus anti-realism) with respect to which he himself wants to remain agnostic. Key Words: John Rawls • normative justification • realism versus anti-realism • methodological versus substantive principles. (shrink)

Carne Coltivata: Etica dell’agricoltura cellulare by Luca Lo Sapio criti-cally explores the ethical, environmental, and cultural ramifications of cellular agricul-ture, mainly cultivated meat. Through a philosophical lens, Lo Sapio evaluates the po-tential of this technology to address ethical concerns tied to traditional meat production, such as animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and health implications. However, the book also critiques the potential cultural and ecological consequences of detaching meat production from traditional agricultural practices. Lo Sapio’s discourse navigates the complex interplay (...) between technological progress and the intrinsic value of natural life processes, urging a balanced consideration of cultivated meat’s implications on glob-al food cultures, food sovereignty, and the sanctity of life. (shrink)