Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a global social problem that includes using coercive control strategies, including financial abuse, to manage and entrap an intimate partner. Financial abuse restricts or removes another person’s access to financial resources and their participation in financial decisions, forcing their financial dependence, or alternatively exploits their money and economic resources for the abuser’s gain. Banks have some stake in the prevention of and response to IPV, given their unique role in household finances and growing recognition an (...) equitable society is one inclusive of consumers with vulnerabilities. Institutional practices may unwittingly enable abusive partners’ financial control as seemingly benign regulatory policy and tools of household money management exacerbate unequal power dynamics. To date, business ethicists have tended to take a broader view of banker professional responsibility, especially post-Global Financial Crisis. Little scholarship examines if, when and how a bank should respond to societal issues, such as IPV, traditionally outside their ‘remit’ of banking services. I extend existing understandings of ‘systemic harm’ to conceptualise the bank’s role in addressing economic harm in the context of IPV, viewing IPV and financial abuse through a consumer vulnerability lens to translate theory into practice. Two in-depth stories of financial abuse further illustrate the active role banks can and should take in combating financial abuse. (shrink)

In September 2013, images of bruised, bleeding and battered Hindu goddesses went viral on social media networks. Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and Durga (the goddess of strength and power) appear as victims of domestic abuse in the Abused Goddesses advertising campaign against domestic violence. In this article, I analyse the Abused Goddesses campaign and the conversations it generated. I argue that it reiterates both a form of Hindu nationalistic discourse as well as longstanding patriarchal, (...) orientalist and neocolonialist perspectives about sexual violence in India. I examine the discourse generated by the Abused Goddesses campaign on social and mainstream media in order to trace how these images were circulated, perceived and engaged with by Indian and international audiences. While the campaign went viral on social media, I argue that its virality offers insufficient conditions for substantial social change around gender violence, including consciousness raising. Through analysis of the campaign and the ways in which it has been commented on, I demonstrate how the representation of domestic violence through the calendar art imagery of abused goddesses ultimately reaffirms classist, casteist, racist, sexist and orientalist discourses about Indian women and the violence they face. (shrink)

Purpose Intellectual honesty and integrity are the cornerstones of conducting any form of research. Over the last few years, scholars have shown great concerns over questionable research practices (QRPs) in academia. This study aims to investigate the questionable research practices amongst faculty members of medical and dental colleges in Pakistan. Method A descriptive multi-institutional online survey was conducted from June-August 2022. Based on previous studies assessing research misconduct, 43 questionable research practices in four domains: Data collection & storage, Data analysis, (...) Study reporting and Collaboration & authorship were identified and investigated. Descriptive (Frequencies, Percentages, Mean, SD) and Inferential (chi square) statistics were calculated. Results A total of 654 faculty members responded. Every respondent reported committing at least one QRP in their career. The most common QRPs included deliberately failing to mention funding, publishing program evaluation data not meant for research purposes or approved by an ethical body, inappropriately storing identifiable information and non-disclosure of any conflicts. There was significant association of age, gender and academic rank with QRPs in ‘Data collection and storage’ and ‘Data Analysis’ domains. Conclusion Medical and dental faculty members participating in this study are involved in a range of questionable research practices (QRPs) in Pakistan. Their confession might have contributed to the faculty developing self-awareness and reinforcing academic integrity. There is a need for reviewing policies and practices to improve research culture. Future research should explore the factors resulting in such practices. (shrink)

BackgroundThe principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy are often neglected during patient care in developing countries. We assessed the degree to which doctors in Lahore adhere to these principles during outpatient consultations.Material & MethodThe study was conducted at medical out-patient departments (OPDs) of two tertiary care hospitals (one public and one private hospital) of Lahore, selected using multi-stage sampling. 93 patients were selected from each hospital. Doctors' adherence to the principles of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality was observed through (...) client flow analysis performed by trained personnel. Overall patient perception was also assessed regarding these practices and was compared with the assessment made by our data collectors.ResultsSome degree of informed consent was obtained from only 9.7% patients in the public hospital and 47.8% in the private hospital. 81.4% of patients in the public hospital and 88.4% in the private hospital were accorded at least some degree of privacy. Complete informational confidentiality was maintained only in 10.8% and 35.5% of cases in public & private hospitals respectively. Informed consent and confidentiality were better practiced in the private compared to the public hospital (two-sample t-test > 2, p value < 0.05). There was marked disparity between the patients' perspective of these ethical practices and the assessment of our trained data collectors.ConclusionObservance of medical ethics is inadequate in hospitals of Lahore. Doctors should be imparted formal training in medical ethics and national legislation on medical ethics is needed. Patients should be made aware of their rights to medical ethics. (shrink)

It is well known that there may be many causal explanations that are consistent with a given set of data. Recent work has been done to represent the common aspects of these explanations into one representation. In this paper, we address what is less well known: how do the relationships common to every causal explanation among the observed variables of some DAG process change in the presence of latent variables? Ancestral graphs provide a class of graphs that can encode conditional (...) independence relations that arise in DAG models with latent and selection variables. In this paper we present a set of orientation rules that construct the Markov equivalence class representative for ancestral graphs, given a member of the equivalence class. These rules are sound and complete. We also show that when the equivalence class includes a DAG, the equivalence class representative is the essential graph for the said DAG. (shrink)

This research focuses upon tracing the acculturative trends of the Hui Muslim community in Xi'an. It suggests that the existence of Muslims in China is a dialectical process between the adaptation to the Chinese culture and the retention of essentially Islamic religious traits. It is exclusively based upon ethnography and aims to investigate qualitatively the patterns of acculturation/retention of the Hui in the light of four socio-religious variables, i.e. identity, dietary habits, religious festivals and life passage rituals, social networking and (...) marital homogamy. This is a small scale qualitative research based on participant observation, interviews, and an analysis of historic, archival, and documentary material. The sample consists of Hui people of Xi'an both from within and outside the Muslim Quarter without any restriction of age and gender. The archival and qualitative data is derived from the iconography and fieldwork in Xi'an between November 2011 and December 2014. Applying Gans definitions of acculturation and assimilation, this paper concludes that the Hui are acculturated in the Han society but not assimilated, as they exhibit retention of ethnic religious traits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Chapter 4, verse 34 of the Qur'an permits husbands to physically discipline recalcitrant wives. Modern Muslims who find this husbandly privilege discomfiting often rely on Muhammad's prophetic practice to mitigate the meaning of this verse. In light of Muhammad's example of never hitting his own wives, as found in one prophetic report, they reinterpret the verse as restricting and/or voiding a husband's right to physically discipline his wife. This essay provides a critical and expository survey of prophetic reports related (...) to the husbandly privilege to physically discipline wives. The essay argues that the modernists are correct in positing that Muhammad's prophetic practice was to morally censure husbands who hit their wives. However, taken as a whole, it is impossible to ignore that Muhammad's example also unilaterally upheld physical discipline as a husband's marital right. (shrink)

Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize developing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women complicates the (...) prevalent narrative of modernity that presents women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam. (shrink)

One cannot deny the fact that we all have some understanding of moral issues. Each one of us can be said to have some sense of what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what ought to be done, and what ought not to be done. This moral understanding can be in the form of some vague idea, notion, or simply a gut feeling. No matter who the person is, from which culture or community the person (...) belongs to, everybody faces a moral quandary sometime or other in one’s life. All of this presupposes that there is some fundamental sense or understanding of what is right and what is wrong. We all seem to have some understanding about actions that are right and those that are wrong. Some actions, for instance, torturing babies just for fun, killing an innocent person, raping, etc. are exemplars of morally wrong actions. Assisting a person in need, giving to famine relief, etc. on the other hand are examples of morally right actions. The present essay is an attempt to delve into the question of the source of moral knowledge. Three sources, experience, reason, and intuition have been identified. Views of philosophers like G.E Moore, WD Ross, Immanuel Kant, JS Mill, Plato, Samuel Clarke, Aristotle Hume, and Anthony Ashley Cooper have been discussed to gain clarity about the issue. (shrink)

Review of Drew Dalton, Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009).

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

South Asian English fiction, in recent decades, has significantly manifested its deepest concern for history and its relevance in the contemporary global scenario. The last couple of years have noticed the publication of many English novels by Indian and Pakistani authors that in fact belong to the very genre of postmodern historiographic metafiction. In fact, postmodern fiction writers usually deviate from the traditional representation of past events. The current study examines the way history writing is reconfigured in the selected postmodern (...) novel. In these novels, the writers retell the traditional history through innovative narrative techniques and multiplicity of the views that de-centralize the conventional history. The present research attempts to explore Amitav Gosh’s The Glass Palace and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows as historiographic metafiction, that is a sub-genre of postmodern fiction. The study focuses on the selected texts to explore how these novels transform the traditional history through the incorporation of magic realism, intertextuality and self-reflexivity. This research is qualitative and descriptive, while the textual analysis has been used as a research method. The theoretical concept of Linda Hutcheon is incorporated in this current study that ends with findings and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM SCHOLARS WHO SEEK TO RECONCILE GENDER egalitarian values with the premodern patriarchal Islamic tradition face a dilemma. Because the two values—gender egalitarianism and patriarchy—are fundamentally at odds with each other, scholars must choose one to privilege over the other. If the premodern Islamic tradition is privileged, then the ideal of gender egalitarianism is compromised. However, favoring gender egalitarian values at the expense of the premodern Islamic tradition leads to the loss of authority within the believing community. This essay (...) explores the options available to Muslim scholars as they negotiate the egalitarian—authoritative dilemma in the context of the Qur'anic exegesis of the husbandly privilege to discipline wives in Qur'an 4:34. (shrink)

Protecting women and children is one of the core values of the Islamic legal tradition. In Muslim countries religious, constitutional, and legal frameworks obligate the state to take special measures to provide protection to women and children within families and in society. However, despite such provisions, post-divorce maintenance rights are not granted to women in Pakistan and Iran. Family law enacted in Pakistan and Iran still differs in form and substance from what has been mentioned in the primary sources of (...) Islamic law and from the previous articulations of early Islamic law scholars. Moreover, patriarchal notions of male authority are still sustained through law and judicial interpretations when it comes to the question of giving post-divorce maintenance to women. As a result in the absence of a welfare system divorced women are left in a vulnerable situation. Although in Iran, some financial compensation under the concept of Ujrat ul Misl is given to divorced women, but it remains unclear whether the right to Mata’at-ul-Talaq has been recognised under the family law. In Pakistan the law does not include any provision for giving women Ujrat ul Misl and Mata’at- ul -Talaq. Moreover in the absence of a welfare system, divorced Muslim women in both countries are left in a vulnerable situation. This article engages with plural normative sources and contemporary notions of human rights to make the case for family law reform and for awarding post-divorce maintenance rights to Muslim women in Pakistan and Iran. (shrink)

Stock markets accurately reflect countries’ economic health, and stock returns are tightly related to economic indices. One popular area of financial research is the factors that influence stock returns. Several investigations have frequently cited macroeconomic factors, among numerous elements. Therefore, this study focuses on the empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock market returns. When a stock market becomes increasingly volatile, it becomes susceptible to economic uncertainty news, and information on social media platforms. Thus, we incorporated a (...) new dimension of economic uncertainty news sentiment for stock return predictions. We employed the daily data ofgold index, crude oil price, interest rate, exchange rate, and stock returns for a set of countries from January 2010 to December 2020. Subsequently, to compute coefficients, we conducted a regression analysis using one of the more sophisticated approaches: single-layer neural networks and ordinary least square regression. In addition, we only computed EUNS for the period of the fiscal budget announcement for the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the gold index, interest rate, and exchange rate are highly significant and negative macroeconomic factors for all analyzed countries. These findings also indicate that EUNS is important and detrimental for projecting stock returns. (shrink)

Proceeding from a phenomenological perspective, the present study investigated the experiences of seven homeless women who had lived through childhood trauma and subsequent substance abuse, with specific focus on the recovery process experienced by each. Applying the analytical protocol of Giorgi to the written accounts obtained from the participants, 15 constituent themes of the recovery process were identified. In order to illuminate the participants’ experiences with minimal influence of any possible researcher bias, the researcher refrained from labelling, judging or diagnosing (...) the women’s life circumstances. Consequently, no treatment paradigm was applied to help explain, predict or judge the behaviour of the participants during the course of this research. (shrink)

This article probes the link between anti-colonial nationalist thought and a theory of jihad in early twentieth-century India. An emotive affinity to the ummah was never a barrier to Muslims identifying with patriotic sentiments in their own homelands. It was in the context of the aggressive expansion of European power and the ensuing erosion of Muslim sovereignty that the classical doctrine of jihad was refashioned to legitimize modern anti-colonial struggles. The focus of this essay is on the thought and politics (...) of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. A major theoretician of Islamic law and ethics, Azad was the most prominent Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence India. He is best remembered in retrospectively constructed statist narratives as a , who served as education minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence cabinet. Yet during the decade of the First World War he was perhaps the most celebrated theorist of a trans-national jihad. (shrink)

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

This article reflects on the challenges of developing academic research that is undertaken to create social change. I describe the ways that my research has been generated and guided by activism. Even though the descriptor of my research interests is generally gender‐based violence and mental health, my research is situated within an ongoing political discourse that fundamentally opposes and normatively challenges ideologies such as those implemented at a governmental level during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that continue to have power (...) over Afghan women’s lives. I critique the emergence of two research projects that work with women survivors of violence and develop trauma therapeutic interventions using traditional storytelling. My positionality as a woman of Muslim origin and an academic in the U.K. resulted in inescapable juxtapositions and the necessary blurring of the boundaries between personal and professional viewpoints as well as highlighting the potency of traumatic stories in contexts of conflict, oppression, silencing and marginalization. I go on to explain why I have a moral obligation as an ethicist working in global health, with resources and expertise, to systematically develop my research questions and objectives in accordance with the end‐goal of tackling and deconstructing harmful ideologies and practices towards women and girls in societies marred by the violent complexities of national and international conflicts. (shrink)

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

One cannot deny that, even when not explicit, ethical themes run throughout Deleuze's works. Indeed, the method of dramatization directly relates to the production of ethical forms of being. As a method of investigation – critique, if one will – dramatization offers a consistent but dynamic method for interpreting and creating concepts. At the heart of such a method is the attempt to seek the anti-anthropological, anti-hegemonic and anti-representational forces described by Friedrich Nietzsche. It is at the level of this (...) pre-individual multiplicity of forces that an axiology can be grounded. At this level, the singularity of a given object, domain or field of knowledge reveals itself. Most importantly, however, the method of dramatization resists the unethical relationship to being enacted throughout history by means of the logic of representation. (shrink)

Among his later works, Peter Lamborn Wilson—known to many as Hakim Bey—began performing ritual art pieces in Upstate New York, which he referred to as acts of “Endarkenment.” This paper explores Endarkenment from the beginning of its organic growth in the fertile soil of The Temporary Autonomous Zone, to its blossoming as fully‐realized ritual art, nourished by Bey's intention of returning enchantment back to the land. Through parallels in the works of antiquity, Surrealism, Georges Bataille, Giordano Bruno, Djuna Barnes, and (...) others, an adumbration of the body of Endarkenment comes into view at the very moment of its disappearance into Nature, giving an idea of what Endarkenment could be as a fully realized form of internal transformation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When a Conflict Collapses on a Child: An (Aborted) Medical Evacuation of a Hazara Toddler During the Kabul Airport Blast and the Taliban TakeoverAyesha AhmadI work in the capacity of an academic researching conflict in Afghanistan. My commitment is rooted in the firm terrain of friendships that merged into sisterhood of the Afghan terrain spaning decades of war but which is also the home of poetics and legacies that (...) refuse to be clouded by the traumas of the land.As a medical ethicist situated in global health, I perceive the inadequate focus on recognising the mental health needs born from living in war as a moral injustice and a form of silencing the suffering. This injustice should be held by the geopolitical hands that play the chords of conflict.However, such research is all too often concluded before it can develop as too dangerous, or too risky, or even as unethical because potential participants are perceived (often, unjustifiably so) to be too vulnerable.Another peril of research is the boundary drawn between a particular experience of the research objective and the life experience of the research participant. Connecting as a researcher and in a personal capacity, I fell into a chasm unseen in the context from where I work in London, United Kingdom.I remember the evening before Kabul city fell to the forced control of the Taliban. My friends reminisced during a nightfall reflection on the battles where the city walls had barricaded its inhabitants from centuries of invaders trying to access the valley of a city surrounded by mountains. Kabul city is a haven for war. Its geographic location makes it desirable to conquer, but part of its desirability is because of how the mountains envelop where the languages, ethnicities, religions, and stories of the Silk Road have settled and rested. Once conquered, the city protects you. And Kabulis felt safe. And to that end, on that fateful night, we ended our conversation in the confidence of hope; that Kabul city would not fall, and with the heart of the country still intact, Afghanistan would be saved.The dawn arrived and so did the approach of the Taliban to the city gates. There were frantic and rapid whispers that transformed into screams. And then the moment came, the Taliban were within the city walls.The juxtaposition between the regular London traffic heaving and breathing, and the frantic, panicked sounds of horns and vehicles fleeing in Kabul that I heard through WhatsApp audios in the background to friends narrating their journey home, was as stark as the peace and war they both echoed. [End Page 167]Soon the stories started speaking, pleading, paining, pressuring—stories seeking survival. In the dawn, instead of the sun breaking the sky, I broke the morning to a friend during a telephone conversation who had just awoken and had not yet received the news. I told my friend that the Taliban were in Kabul city. The reaction was grief, just like the grief I had heard in their voice a few months prior when their beloved father had passed away and entered the grave before they had breathed the new dawn. In the dusk, instead of the moon shining upon the city, women, families, and children were sheltering from the darkness of the grave closing amid their breathing bodies.Then, the blast came. In the energy of the quest for safety, people, walking like pilgrims, surrounded Kabul airport, queuing like worshippers. Prayers died. Hell rose. The waiting crowd was fired upon. The air did not offer breath; instead, a final moment of the sound of war that had blighted lives.In the crowd was a family who I dedicate this article to. I write the story of the father, the mother, the daughter, and the son of that day. The family was Hazara, a disputed and discriminated ethnic minority in Afghanistan, of a legacy traced to the invasion of Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire. Theirs is a story of travellers and a soil of stories; a particularly profound story because the parents had specialised in geology and were experts of the stones of their long heritage. Yet, still, they... (shrink)

Whilst there have been serious attempts to locate the practice of male circumcision for religious motives in the context of the (respective) religion's narrative and community, the debate, when referring to a clinical context, is often more nuanced. This article will contribute further to the debate by contextualising the Islamic practice of male circumcision within the clinical setting typical of a contemporary hospital. It specifically develops an additional complication; namely, the child has a pre-existing blood disorder. As an approach to (...) contributing to the circumcision debate further, the ethics of a conscientious objection for secular motives towards a religiously-motivated clinical intervention will be explored. Overall, the discussion will provide relevance for such debates within the value-systems of a multi-cultural society. This article replicates several approaches to deconstructing a request for conscientious refusal of non-therapeutic circumcision by a Clinical Ethics Committee (CEC), bringing to light certain contradictions that occur in normatively categorizing motives for performing the circumcision. (shrink)

The authors have undertaken a study to explore the views in non-Western cultures about ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects. This study consists of including active euthanasia alongside withdrawal and withholding of treatment as potential methods used.Apart from radicalising the support for active euthanasia in certain instances of neonatal diagnoses, is another interesting point that views of children and death are shaped by religion and culture and are especially highly charged with culturally specific symbolism/s. Furthermore, this is augmented (...) in the context of non-Western cultures—further polarising the positivist ethics of Western scientific medicine from the cultures that affect only those who are members of ‘other’ societies.From this starting point, the authors shift the focus from clinical explanations of the causation and prognosis of the genetic defects and enter a dialogue with cultural narratives. Consequently, their argument is, broadly, a reassessment of medical practice as a contextualisation of a particular culture/s rather than indifferent or independent from cultural forces or influences.This is a radical claim. …. (shrink)

Due to a much more closely connected world, there is an accelerated interchange of cultures in the clinical setting. Alongside a pluralism of cultural beliefs for health and illness is a greater effort to value and respect freedoms for thoughts and belief pertaining to differing identities from legal, moral, societal and activist initiatives. When treating culture as part of the clinical consultation, there is a need for conceptual frameworks, communication skills, guidelines and policies to be implemented in a context where (...) there are certain dominant narratives such as scientific medicine and biomedical frameworks of the human body and mind that typically bracket out culture. The encounter of the clinic with culture is an ethical endeavour that requires expertise training and education; thus, the role of inter-culturality and cultural competence is significant for setting precedents in the translation from theory to practice. In this chapter, I discuss challenges for global bioethics in responding to culture in the clinic. (shrink)

Cryonics is a technique for freezing dead bodies at very low temperatures in the hope they will be revived at some time in the future when medical technology becomes available. At present, there are no known revival methods; however, the role of innovation in medical practice leads certain individuals to hypothesize that death will be reversible in the future. While cryonics might resonate with certain questionable contemporary Western cultural themes of death denial and neoliberalism its uptake remains minuscule. Several reasons (...) may be pertinent. First cryonics does not fit with existing western cultural views of death and medicine. Second, poor marketing, prohibitive cost, and the lack of involvement with the funerary industry may be significant factors impacting poor intake. Third, the cryonics discourse around ideas of ‘death’ constructs a barrier that prevents ‘outsiders’ from relating to the task of cryonicists. Fourth, the general public may have a poor understanding of this technology. Finally, there may be religious objections and cultural reductions due to the lack of ritual and thus no possibility of memorializing the dead, which impacts the human appeal of cryonics. (shrink)

This is an exploratory paper of the ethical implications for genomic research and mental illness with specific reference to Singapore. Singapore has a unique context due to its social and political systems, and although it is a relatively small country, its population is religiously and culturally diverse. The issues that we identify here, therefore, will offer new perspectives and will also shed light on the existing literature on psychiatric genomics in society. We contextualise issues such as risk and stigma in (...) the identification and diagnosis of psychosis in the way they relate to Singaporean society, and use a current study as a case example. Genomic research has the potential to change significantly he practice of clinical medicine if, as expected, fast and inexpensive sequencing becomes a reality. It will likely also change how society thinks and acts in respect to multi-factorial diseases, conditions, traits, and syndromes that have a genetic component. Genomic research already raises a number of ethical concerns relating to the privacy of individuals, including the disclosure of research results and incidental findings, surreptitious tests, third party access to data, and the re-emergence of genetic determinism. These issues are potentially exacerbated when genomics - the study of whole genomes to understand complex illness and behavioural traits - is applied to psychiatric research, because of the stigma that is often attached to mental illness. In this paper, we discuss some of the issues that have arisen in the context of a study in Singapore that is currently investigating the genomics and biomarkers of psychosis. We argue that although a genomic study rarely creates data that is directly useful to the participant, it can have incidental benefits to the individual who is identified during the study as being at high risk of developing psychosis and its related states. Understanding these potential benefits requires us to examine the implications that this type of research may have on public understandings of genomic data and risk. (shrink)

What are the objects of science? Are they just the things in our scientific experiments that are located in space and time? Or does science also require that there be additional things that are not located in space and time? Using clear examples, these are just some of the questions that Scott Berman explores as he shows why alternative theories such as Nominalism, Contemporary Aristotelianism, Constructivism, and Classical Aristotelianism, fall short. He demonstrates why the objects of scientific knowledge need (...) to be not located in space or time if they are to do the explanatory work scientists need them to do. The result is a contemporary version of Platonism that provides us with the best way to explain what the objects of scientific understanding are, and how those non-spatiotemporal things relate to the spatiotemporal things of scientific experiments, as well as everything around us, including even ourselves. (shrink)

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress (...) of reasons looms. In this new study, Aikin presents a full case for infinitism as a response to the problem of the regress of reasons. Infinitism is the view that one must have a non-terminating chain of reasons in order to be justified. The most defensible form of infinitism, he argues, is that of a mixed theory – that is, epistemic infinitism must be consistent with and integrate other solutions to the regress problem. (shrink)

Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi discussed corporate responsibility and business ethics over several decades of the twentieth century. His views are still influential in modern India. In this paper, we highlight Gandhi’s cross-level CR framework, which operates at institutional, organizational, and individual levels. We also outline how the Tata Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates, has historically applied and continues to utilize Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship. We then compare Gandhi’s framework to modern notions of stakeholder and stewardship management. We conclude that (...) trusteeship has strong potential to help firms and their stakeholders achieve shared value by considering the interactions between individual, organizational, and institutional factors, and paying attention to a range of multi-level stakeholder obligations. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that there should be a principle requiring that artificial intelligence be ‘explicable’. Microsoft, Google, the World Economic Forum, the draft AI ethics guidelines for the EU commission, etc. all include a principle for AI that falls under the umbrella of ‘explicability’. Roughly, the principle states that “for AI to promote and not constrain human autonomy, our ‘decision about who should decide’ must be informed by knowledge of how AI would act instead of us” :689–707, 2018). There (...) is a strong intuition that if an algorithm decides, for example, whether to give someone a loan, then that algorithm should be explicable. I argue here, however, that such a principle is misdirected. The property of requiring explicability should attach to a particular action or decision rather than the entity making that decision. It is the context and the potential harm resulting from decisions that drive the moral need for explicability—not the process by which decisions are reached. Related to this is the fact that AI is used for many low-risk purposes for which it would be unnecessary to require that it be explicable. A principle requiring explicability would prevent us from reaping the benefits of AI used in these situations. Finally, the explanations given by explicable AI are only fruitful if we already know which considerations are acceptable for the decision at hand. If we already have these considerations, then there is no need to use contemporary AI algorithms because standard automation would be available. In other words, a principle of explicability for AI makes the use of AI redundant. (shrink)

This book analyses the straw man fallacy and its deployment in philosophical reasoning. While commonly invoked in both academic dialogue and public discourse, it has not until now received the attention it deserves as a rhetorical device. Scott Aikin and John Casey propose that straw manning essentially consists in expressing distorted representations of one's critical interlocutor. To this end, the straw man comprises three dialectical forms, and not only the one that is usually suggested: the straw man, the weak (...) man and the hollow man. Moreover, they demonstrate that straw manning is unique among fallacies as it has no particular logical form in itself, because it is an instance of inappropriate meta-argument, or argument about arguments. They discuss the importance of the onlooking audience to the successful deployment of the straw man, reasoning that the existence of an audience complicates the dialectical boundaries of argument. Providing a lively, provocative and thorough analysis of the straw man fallacy, this book will appeal to postgraduates and researchers alike, working in a range of fields including fallacies, rhetoric, argumentation theory and informal logic. (shrink)

Although informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and conceptually distinct functions. The first four functions pertain (...) principally to individual participants: (1) providing transparency; (2) allowing control and authorization; (3) promoting concordance with participants' values; and (4) protecting and promoting welfare interests. Three other functions are systemic or policy focused: (5) promoting trust; (6) satisfying regulatory requirements; and (7) promoting integrity in research. Reframing consent around these functions can guide approaches to consent that are context sensitive and that maximize achievable goals. (shrink)

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (shrink)