ABSTRACTThe present research tested the notion that emotion expression and context perception are bidirectionally related. Specifically, in two studies focusing on moral violations and positive moral deviations respectively, we presented participants with short vignettes describing behaviours that were either moral, polite or unusual together with a picture of the emotional reaction of a person who supposedly had been a witness to the event. Participants rated both the emotional reactions observed and their own moral appraisal of the situation described. In both (...) studies, we found that situational context influenced how emotional reactions to this context were rated and in turn, the emotional expression shown in reaction to a situation influenced the appraisal of the situation. That is, neither the moral events nor the emotion expressions were judged in an absolute fashion. Rather, the perception of one also depended on the other. (shrink)

This paper presents a new approach to the demarcation of social emotions, based on their dependence on social appraisals that are designed to assess events bearing on social concerns. Previous theoretical attempts to characterize social emotions are compared, and their inconsistencies highlighted. Evidence for the present formulation is derived from theory and research into links between appraisals and emotions. Emotions identified as social using our criteria are also shown to bring more consistent consequences for social behavior than nonsocial emotions. We (...) conclude by considering ways of validating and refining our classification. (shrink)

Weiner’s attribution theory of motivation and emotion assumes emotions are determined by beliefs about causality. Individuals share a naïve understanding of this linkage between causal attribution and emotions and use it in order to draw inferences from and influence others’ emotions. Evidence for such uses is provided and recent research and theory that goes beyond the attribution–emotion linkage is discussed. Specifically, recent research considers the naïve use of a larger set of emotions and appraisals and their connections, and the role (...) of context in this process. However, still missing is a fuller understanding when this naïve knowledge is employed and how and when it is based on an explicit understanding of the emotion–appraisal linkage rather than more automatic processes. (shrink)

During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, the public has often expressed great appreciation toward medical personnel who were often shown in the media expressing strong emotions about the situation. To examine whether the perception of people on a physician is in fact influenced by whether the physician treats patients with COVID-19 and the emotions they expressed in response to the situation, 454 participants were recruited in May 2020. Participants saw facial expressions of anger, sadness, happiness, and neutrality which supposedly were (...) shown by physicians who were presented as working either in COVID-19 wards or in an internal medicine ward. Participants rated how competent, empathetic, caring, and likable each physician was, to what degree they would wish to be treated by each physician, and what salary each physician deserved. Physicians treating patients with COVID-19 were seen more positively and as deserving higher pay; they appeared more competent, caring, likable, and were more likely to be chosen as a caregiver compared to physicians not treating patients with COVID-19. The expressed emotions of physicians had a strong impact on how they were perceived, yet this effect was largely unrelated to whether they treated patients with COVID-19 or not such that happy physicians seemed more empathetic, caring, and likable than the physicians who showed negative emotions. Positive regard toward physicians treating patients with COVID-19 was associated with the fact that they were seen as saving lives and not due to the risk imposed by their work. (shrink)

Research on the relationship between context and facial expressions generally assumes a unidirectional effect of context on expressions. However, according to the model of the meaning of emotion expressions in context the effect should be bidirectional. The present research tested the effect of emotion expression on the interpretation of scenes. A total of 380 participants either rated facial expressions with regard to the likely appraisal of the eliciting situation by the emoter, appraised the scenes alone or appraised scenes shown together (...) with the expressions they supposedly elicited. The findings strongly supported the MEEC. When a scene was combined with an expression signalling a situation that is undesirable, or high in locus of control or sudden, the participants appraised the scene correspondingly. Thus, the meaning of scenes is malleable and affected by the way that people are seen to react to them. (shrink)

We proposed and tested the notion of a bidirectional influence of emotion expressions and context. In two studies, we found that the expressions shown by supporters and opponents...

Alan Turing’s 1950 imitation game has been widely understood as a means for testing if an entity is intelligent. Following a series of papers by Diane Proudfoot, I offer a socio-technological interpretation of Turing’s paper and present an alternative way of understanding both the imitation game and Turing’s concept of intelligence. Turing, I claim, saw intelligence as a social concept, meaning that possession of intelligence is a property determined by society’s attitude toward the entity. He realized that as long as (...) human society held a prejudiced attitude toward machinery—seeing machines a priori as mindless objects—machines could not be said to be intelligent, by definition. He also realized, though, that if humans’ a priori, chauvinistic attitude toward machinery changed, the existence of intelligent machines would become logically possible. Turing thought that such a change would eventually occur: He believed that when scientists overcome the technological challenge of constructing sophisticated machines that could imitate human verbal behavior—i.e., do well in the imitation game—humans’ prejudiced attitude toward machinery will have altered in such a way that machines could be said to be intelligent. The imitation game, for Turing, was not an intelligence test, but a technological aspiration whose realization would likely involve a change in society’s attitude toward machines. (shrink)

The late Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld possessed the enviable ability to relate to a wide range of people. The genuineness of his caring for others, his rock-solid convictions and fluent expression created a magnetic personality few could resist. His ch.

One of the fundamental enigmas of our existence, and for that matter, God's existence, is the act of creation. Has the cosmos been created ex nihilo or was it an intelligent design by God? Does God, having created the world, let it evolve and develop on its own, subject to the rules of evolution and chance; or does God intervene in every step of evolution in a deus ex machina manner? What is the role of man in creation? Is it (...) as central as existentialism and quantum mechanics assure us: that without human consciousness interacting with energy-matter, there would not be any objects and life forms? Is man the crown of creation permanently, or once evolution forms a more effective connecting agent between spirit and energy-matter, will man be relegated to the world of fossils? The book concludes with a thorough examination of human norms, values and morals. As such, this book constitutes a comprehensive treatise on the genesis of the world, the birth of God, and the role of man. (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism's notion of “nudging” refers to steering individual decision making so as to make choosers better off without breaching their free choice. If successful, this may offer an ideal synthesis between the duty to respect patient autonomy and that of beneficence, which at times favors paternalistic influence. A growing body of literature attempts to assess the merits of nudging in health care. However, this literature deals almost exclusively with health policy, while the question of the potential benefit of nudging (...) for the practice of informed consent has escaped systematic analysis. This article focuses on this question. While it concedes that nudging could amount to improper exploitation of cognitive weaknesses, it defends the practice of nudging in a wide range of other conditions. The conclusion is that, when ethically legitimate, nudging offers an important new paradigm for informed consent, with a special potential to overcome the classical dilemma between paternalistic beneficence and respect for autonomy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces the category of ‘non-deceptive manipulation that causes false beliefs’, analyzes how it narrows the traditional scope of ‘deception’, and draws moral implications.

“de-extinction” refers to the process of resurrecting extinct species by genetic methods. This science-fiction-sounding idea is in fact already in early processes of scientific implementation. Although this recent “revival of the dead” raises deep ethical questions, the ethics of de-extinction has barely received philosophical treatment. Rather than seeking a verdict for or against de-extinction, this paper attempts an overview and some novel analyses of the main ethical considerations. Five dimensions of the ethics of de-extinction are explored: (a) the possible contribution (...) of de-extinction to promoting ecological values, (b) the deontological argument that we owe de-extinction to species we rendered extinct, (c) the question of “playing God” through de-extinction, (d) the utilitarian perspective, and (e) the role of aesthetic considerations in the ethics of de-extinction. A general feature arising from the paper’s discussion is that, due to de-extinction’s special character, it repeatedly tests the limits of our ethical notions. (shrink)

In this book, Shlomo Biderman examines the views, outlooks, and attitudes of two distinct cultures: the West and classical India.

The nocebo effect, the mirror-phenomenon to the placebo effect, is when the expectation of a negative outcome precipitates the corresponding symptom or leads to its exacerbation. One of the basic ethical duties in health care is to obtain informed consent from patients before treatment; however, the disclosure of information regarding potential complications or side effects that this involves may precipitate a nocebo effect. While dilemmas between the principles of respect for patient autonomy and of nonmaleficence are recognized in medical ethics, (...) there has not yet been an ethical discussion focused on the potential dilemma raised by the nocebo effect of informed consent. This dilemma is especially pernicious, since it involves a direct causality of harm by the caregiver that is unparalleled by other potential harmful effects of information disclosure. This paper articulates the dilemma of the NEIC and offers a seminal ethical analysis. (shrink)

Ever since the discovery of Marx's Early Writings, most of the literature concerned with Marx's intellectual development has centred around the so-called gap between the 'young' Marx, who was considered to be a humanist thinker, and the 'older' Marx, who was held to be a determinist with little concern for anything outside his narrow theory of historical materialism. Dr Avineri claims that such a gap between the 'young' and 'older' Marx did not exist. He supports his claim by a detailed (...) study of the whole corpus of Marx's writing on social and political thought. (shrink)

Moral reflection and deliberation on both deception and manipulation is hindered by lack of agreement on the precise meanings of these concepts. Specifically, there is disagreement on how to understand their relation vis-à-vis each other. Curiously, according to one prominent view, all deceptions are instances of manipulations, while according to another, all manipulations are instances of deceptions. This paper makes that implicit disagreement explicit, and argues that both views are untenable. It concludes that deception and manipulation partially overlap, and takes (...) further steps in delineating the border between these concepts. The paper ends with the conclusion that moral judgments regarding either manipulation or deception cannot be transferred wholesale from the one concept to the other just by virtue of the relations between the concepts. (shrink)

section 1. Medical ethics -- section 2. Technology -- section 3. Social and business issues -- section 4. Ritual -- section 5. Women -- section 6. Israel -- section 7. Kashrut -- section 8. Jewish identity and marriage -- section 9. Shabbat and holiday.

This conversation took place in December 2002 but was published much later. It focuses on ethics.

International Perspectives on Pragmatism combines, in a very appealing manner, a pragmatist approach of democracy with practical politics and history of ideas. The result is a meditation on contemporary society, while in the background there is a continuous debate on the concept of democracy, as defining mark of Western culture. Both its critics and its supporters talk about a decay of democracy, which would not justify an idealist perspective anymore. Arguments for this transpire from both the practical politics section of (...) the volume, as well as from the second part that focuses more on the theoretical side of the discussion on democracy. On a more practical direction, there are contributors maintaining the idea that democracy is corrupt (and examples from today’s world are offered), while the theoretical perspective brings up the Rortian view, manifested through the well-known debate between the foundationalist and the anti-foundationalist perspectives. (shrink)

We reviewed 272 phase I oncology trial consent forms and then created an improved informed consent template in both English and Spanish by redesigning and rewording the consent form to be specific to phase I trials, to avoid repetition, and to use simplified language, identifiable sections framed by first-person questions, and tables to present information. The resulting consent form template is shorter than average and considerably easier to read . The template also meets the recommended eighth-grade maximum reading level for (...) consent forms. Use of this template should help improve the informed consent process. (shrink)

There is a disturbing kind of situation that presents agents with only two possibilities of moral action—one especially praiseworthy, the other condemnable. I describe such scenarios and argue that moral action in them exhibits a unique set of parameters: performing the commendable action is especially praiseworthy; not performing is not blameworthy; not performing is wrong. This set of parameters is distinct from those which characterize either moral obligation or supererogation. It is accordingly claimed that it defines a distinct, yet unrecognized, (...) deontic category, to which the name ‘Forced Supererogation’ is appropriate. The moral parameters of Forced Supererogation and the relations between them are discussed, especially the divergence of wrongness and blame. I argue that this new category allows a more accurate classification of moral actions than that imposed by the strained dichotomy of obligation versus supererogation. (shrink)

Anyone who is not a deontological absolutist regarding truthfulness will readily agree with Christopher Meyers’s thesis that there are cases in which...

The nonidentity problem is a deep puzzle challenging the moral intuition that what is bad must be bad for someone. The first part of the paper constructs a new theory of harming, whereas the second part builds on the conclusions of the first to offer a new solution to the NIP. The first part discusses the neglected question of when a burden inflicted in the context of overall benefitting can be discretized as a separate entity—only when it can, is it (...) possible to identify the burden as harm, and only then is it possible to harm in bringing into overall good existence. The second part explains how, in those cases where creating is indeed harming, we can use the logic of concept expansion to construct a concept of wronging that applies to creation cases. (shrink)

Recent research, especially with functional brain imaging, demonstrated cases where the administration of a placebo produces objective effects in tissues that are indistinguishable from those of the real therapeutic agents. This phenomenon has been shown in treatments of pain, depression, Parkinsonism, and more. The main ethical complaint against placebo treatment is that it is a kind of deception, where supposedly we substitute what works just psychologically for a real drug that actually works on the tissue level. We claim that the (...) scientific findings bring to a new level the seeming deconstruction of the distinction between “placebo” and “real” drugs, and that instances of placebo treatment which fulfill this criterion should be recognized as a unique category—we call it “comparable placebo treatment” (CPT). The paper uses an analysis of the notion of deception to argue that CPT does not amount to deception; that it can preserve patient autonomy; and that it is therefore morally legitimate. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Argentine-based Yiddish philosophical journal Davke functioned as a mediator between general European philosophy and Jewish philosophy. Its editor Shlomo Suskovich wished to introduce readers of Yiddish to the western tradition of philosophy and, at the same time, to show how Jewish thought contributed to abstract thinking. Through topical issues dedicated to central ideas or to giants among Jewish philosophers, particular knowledge could be successfully transmitted to the reading public. Sigmund Freud was honored with such a topical issue. In (...) it the editor wished to show this Jew's contribution to basic philosophical contemplation rather than limit the discussion to his contributions in the field of psychology. In the central article of the issue on Freud, the editor emphasizes that all the articles in the issue, including those which deal with psychoanalysis, focus on Freud's importance to the world of ideas rather than just the world of medicine. (shrink)