The power of technology to transform religions, science, and political institutions has often been presented as nothing short of revolutionary. Does technology have a similarly transformative influence on societies’ morality? Scholars have not rigorously investigated the role of technology in moral revolutions, even though existing research on technomoral change suggests that this role may be considerable. In this paper, we explore what the role of technology in moral revolutions, understood as processes of radical group-level moral change, amounts to. We do (...) so by investigating four historical episodes of radical moral change in which technology plays a noteworthy role. Our case-studies illustrate the plurality of mechanisms involved in technomoral revolutions, but also suggest general patterns of technomoral change, such as technology’s capacity to stabilize and destabilize moral systems, and to make morally salient phenomena visible or invisible. We find several leads to expand and refine conceptual tools for analysing moral change, specifically by crystallizing the notions of ‘technomoral niche construction’ and ‘moral payoff mechanisms’. Coming to terms with the role of technology in radical moral change, we argue, enriches our understanding of moral revolutions, and alerts us to the depths of which technology can change our societies in wanted and unwanted ways. (shrink)

Assuming that there is moral progress, and assuming that the abolition of slavery is an example of it, how does moral progress occur? Is it mainly driven by specific individuals who have gained new moral insights, or by changes in the socio‐economic and epistemic conditions in which agents morally judge the norms and practices of their society, and act upon these judgements? In this paper, I argue that moral progress is a complex process in which changes at the level of (...) belief and changes at the level of institutions and social practices are deeply intertwined, and that changes in the socio‐economic and epistemic conditions of moral agency constitute the main motor of moral progress. I develop my view of moral progress by way of grappling with Michelle Moody‐Adams’ prominent philosophical account of it. My view is less intellectualistic and individualistic than hers, does not presuppose meta‐ethical moral realism, and blurs her distinction between moral progress in beliefs and moral progress in social practices. I point out the limits of humans to progress morally, which are partly grounded in our evolutionary history, and argue that moral progress is always of a ‘local’ nature. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is shaping strategy, activities, interactions, and relationships in business and specifically in marketing. The drawback of the substantial opportunities AI systems and applications provide in marketing are ethical controversies. Building on the literature on AI ethics, the authors systematically scrutinize the ethical challenges of deploying AI in marketing from a multi-stakeholder perspective. By revealing interdependencies and tensions between ethical principles, the authors shed light on the applicability of a purely principled, deontological approach to AI ethics in marketing. To (...) reconcile some of these tensions and account for the AI-for-social-good perspective, the authors make suggestions of how AI in marketing can be leveraged to promote societal and environmental well-being. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity is the gatekeeping element for a patient’s right to self-determination with regard to medical decisions. A DMC evaluation is not only conducted on descriptive grounds but is an inherently normative task including ethical reasoning. Therefore, it is dependent to a considerable extent on the values held by the clinicians involved in the DMC evaluation. Dealing with the question of how to reasonably support clinicians in arriving at a DMC judgment, a new tool is presented that fundamentally differs from (...) existing ones: the U-Doc. By putting greater emphasis on the judgmental process rather than on the measurement of mental abilities, the clinician as a decision-maker is brought into focus, rendering the tool more of an evaluation guide than a test instrument. In a qualitative study, the perceived benefits of and difficulties with the tool have been explored. The findings show on the one hand that the evaluation aid provides basic orientation, supports a holistic perspective on the patient, sensitizes for ethical considerations and personal biases, and helps to think through the decision, to argue, and to justify one’s judgment. On the other hand, the room for interpretation due to absent operationalisations, related ambiguities, and the confrontation with one’s own subjectivity may be experienced as unsettling. (shrink)

On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice presents a view of morality that is inspired by the later Wittgenstein. Hermann explores the ethical implications of Wittgenstein's remarks on doubt, justification, rule-following, certainty and training, offering an alternative to interpretations of Wittgenstein's work that view it as being intrinsically ethical. The book scrutinises cases in which doubt and justification do not make sense, and contrasts certain justificatory demands made by philosophers with the role of moral justification in concrete situations. It offers an (...) account of moral certainty, which is linked to a view of moral competence. Contrary to the views propounded by philosophers who emphasise the importance of moral principles, it is argued that moral agency is first and foremost a matter of having certain capacities. The book takes an anti-intellectualist stance and remains close to concrete practices. The practice-based view of morality it endorses has implications for moral education, intercultural moral dialogue and the prospects for moral agreement, change and progress. (shrink)

ver since the traditional criteria for medical decision-making capacity (understanding, appreciation, reasoning, evidencing a choice) were formulated, they have been criticized for not taking sufficient account of emotions or values that seem, according to the critics and in line with clinical experiences, essential to decision-making capacity. The aim of this paper is to provide a nuanced and structured overview of the arguments provided in the literature emphasizing the importance of these factors and arguing for their inclusion in competence evaluations. Moreover, (...) a broader reflection on the findings of the literature is provided. Specific difficulties of formulating and measuring emotional and valuational factors are discussed inviting reflection on the possibility of handling relevant factors in a more flexible, case-specific, and context-specific way rather than adhering to a rigid set of operationalized criteria. (shrink)

In today’s highly dynamic societies, moral norms and values are subject to change. Moral change is partly driven by technological developments. For instance, the introduction of robots in elderly care practices requires caregivers to share moral responsibility with a robot (see van Wynsberghe 2013 ). Since we do not know what elements of morality will change and how they will change (see van der Burg 2003 ), moral education should aim at fostering what has been called “moral resilience” (Swierstra 2013 (...) ). We seek to fill two gaps in the existing literature: (i) research on moral education has not paid enough attention to the development of moral resilience; (ii) the very limited literature on moral resilience does not conceptualise moral resilience in relation to new technological developments. We argue that philosophical accounts of moral education need to do justice to the importance of moral resilience, and that a specific form of moral resilience should be conceptualised as “technomoral resilience” to underline the added value of cultivating moral resilience in relation to technomoral change. We illustrate the role of technomoral resilience in practice by looking at the context of elderly care. To make the first step towards an account of how technomoral resilience can be fostered in moral education, we propose that moral education shall focus on a triangle of capacities: (1) moral imagination, (2) a capacity for critical reflection, and (3) a capacity for maintaining one’s moral agency in the face of disturbances. (shrink)

Evolutionary accounts of the origin of human morality may be speculative to some extent, but they contain some very plausible claims, such as the claim that ethics evolved as a response to the demands of group living. Regarding the phenomenon of moral progress, it has been argued both that it is ruled out by an evolutionary approach, and that it can be explained by it. It has even been claimed that an evolutionary account has the potential to advance progress in (...) the moral domain. This paper explores the complex relationship between evolutionary explanations of morality and the possibility of moral progress. It seeks to answer the question as to what these explanations are able to tell us about the possibility of moral progress and the ways in which such progress can be achieved. It is argued that evolutionary explanations can inform moral education and other forms of moral enhancement, and that increased evolutionary knowledge figures among the changes in the circumstances of morality that can lead to moral progress. Evolutionary explanations can show us certain limits to the possibility for humans of progressing morally as well as certain enabling conditions. It is argued that both aspects – enhancement and changes in the circumstances – are equally important for the achievement of moral progress. This is illustrated by means of two examples of areas in which moral progress seems possible: our relationship towards the distant poor and our relationship towards non-human animals. (shrink)

Au cours de l'année 1934, une jeune philosophie et mathématicienne allemande, Grete Hermann, se rend à Leipzig pour participer au séminaire organisé par l'un des plus célèbres pionniers de la physique quantique, W. Heisenberg. C.F. von Wizsäcker y est présent, entre autres éminents scientifiques. Fervente adepte de la philosophie kantienne réinterprétée par J.F. Fries et L. Nelson, G. Hermann arrive avec un objectif précis : démontrer la compatibilité entre physique quantique et philosophie kantienne. En particulier, concilier la catégorie de causalité, (...) forme a priori de la pensée selon Kant, avec les prédictions statistiques de la nouvelle physique. Après une année de débats avec ses interlocuteurs, G. Hermann publie le présent opuscule, traduit ici pour la première fois. Elle y développe une interprétation tout à fait originale de la mécanique quantique, et réfute, trente ans avant J. Bell, la démonstration de J. von Neumann contre les variables cachées. -- 4ème de couverture. (shrink)

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

//718// Das physikalische Ergebnis der Quantenmechanik, von dem die Erschütterung altgewohnter naturphilosophischer Auffassungen, insbesondere der Kausalvorstellungen ausgeht, besagt, daß der Vorausberechnung künftiger Naturvorgänge eine scharfe, unüberwindbare Schranke gezogen ist. Die Idee des LAPLACEschen Dämons, der den augenblicklichen Zustand der Natur vollständig kennt, sämtliche Naturgesetze überschaut und auf Grund dieser Kenntnis den zukünftigen Gang der Ereignisse vorhersagen kann, verliert damit jede Anwendung auf die Natur. Und doch war diese Idee nur der Ausdruck der Überzeugung, daß jedes Naturgeschehen in allen seinen Zügen (...) durch vorangehende Ereignisse verursacht worden ist und daher für einen der Naturgesetze Kundigen aus diesen Ursachen vorausberechenbar sein müsse. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Bestimmung der Einwilligungsfähigkeit von Patienten beinhaltet weitreichende ethische und rechtliche Implikationen. Ausreichende Klärung des Begriffs ist daher unerlässlich. Solche Bemühungen gelten vorwiegend der Definition von Kriterien hinsichtlich relevanter mentaler Fähigkeiten. Grundlegendere Aspekte werden kaum explizit besprochen, so die Frage, ob Einwilligungsfähigkeit eher eine inhärente Fähigkeit oder ein ethisches Urteil bezeichnet. Zentral bei dieser Unterscheidung ist der Stellenwert ethischer Überlegungen die Zulässigkeit fürsorglicher Bevormundung betreffend. Geht man von einer inhärenten Fähigkeit aus, schließen solche Überlegungen an die Beurteilung von Einwilligungsfähigkeit an. (...) Im Fall eines Urteils sind diese konstitutiv für das Verständnis und die Bestimmung von Einwilligungsfähigkeit. Obwohl Einwilligungsfähigkeit idealerweise als inhärente Fähigkeit gedacht wird, weist die tatsächliche Herangehensweise eher in die Richtung, sie als ethisches Urteil zu verstehen. Diese verschiedenen Tendenzen sind für konzeptuelle Kontroversen hinsichtlich des Stellenwerts risiko-relativer Beurteilungen verantwortlich. Des Weiteren muss sich die Bestimmung von Einwilligungsfähigkeit – konzipiert man sie als ethisches Urteil – nicht rigide an einer bestimmten Definition des Begriffs der Autonomiefähigkeit orientieren und vermag so mit dessen definitorischen Unklarheiten besser umzugehen. (shrink)

A patient’s decision-making capacity or competence is among the prerequisites for valid consent to medical treatment, and is regarded as the gatekeeping element in ensuring respect for patients’ self-determination. The issue is especially relevant in the case of vulnerable persons, such as patients who are cognitively or mentally impaired, and where medical decisions carry far-reaching consequences. As a grounding principle, DMC is a priori assumed, and challenged only when substantial doubts arise owing to observed or assumed deficiencies of the capacities (...) commonly considered relevant for competent decision making ; in this sense, the onus is on... (shrink)

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and (...) Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

The following article by Grete Hermann arguably occupies an important place in the history of the philosophical interpretation of of quantum mechanics. The purpose of Hermann's writing on natural philosophy is to examine the revision of the law of causality which quantum mechanics seems to require at a fundamental level of theoretical description in physics. It is Hermann's declared intention to show that quantum mechanics does not disprove the concept of causality, "yet has clarified [it] and has removed from it (...) other principles which are not necessarily connected to it." She attempts to show that this most "obvious" counter-example to the aprioricity of causality, quantum theory, is in fact not a counter-example at all. (shrink)

In comparing different risk elicitation methods under the assumptions of expected utility theory, previous studies have found significant differences in the elicited risk attitudes. This paper extends this line of research to consider cumulative prospect theory by comparing risk attitudes and probability weightings determined using two elicitation methods: the method by Tanaka et al. :557–571, 2010; TCN method) and the method by Wakker and Deneffe :1131–1150, 1996; WD method). We demonstrate that the two methods reveal significantly different mean values for (...) the measured risk attitudes. Participants are classified on average as moderately risk-averse using the TCN method, whereas the same individuals are classified as nearly risk-neutral using the WD method. Moreover, we find that on average, participants overweight low probabilities and underweight high probabilities to a greater extent with the WD method than with the TCN method. Therefore, the different elicitation methods, that both consider probability weighting, can lead to different measured values of risk attitude and probability weighting. (shrink)

The article explores the construction of boundaries, alterity and otherness in modern science-fiction films. Boundaries, understood as real state borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as the construction of the other beyond an imagined border and delimited space, have a significant meaning in the dystopian settings of SF. Even though SF topics are not bound to the contemporary environment, be it of a historical, technical or ethical nature, they do relate to the present-day world and transcend our well-known problems. Therefore, (...) SF offers a pronounced discourse about current social challenges under extreme conditions such as future technological leaps, encounters with the alien other or the end of the world. At the same time the genre enables us to play through future challenges that might really happen. Films like Equilibrium, Code 46, Children of Men and District 9 show that in freely constructed cinematic settings we are not only unable to escape from our border conflicts, but quite the contrary, we take them everywhere with us, even to an alternative present or into the future, where new precarious situations of otherness are constructed. (shrink)

Original, or 'old', institutional economics (OIE) – also known as 'institutionalism' – played a key role in its early stages; it could be said that it was once the 'mainstream economics' of the time. This period ran approximately from the first important contributions of Thorstein Veblen in 1898 to the implementation of the New Deal in the early 1930s, where many institutionalists played a significant role. However, notwithstanding its promising scientific and institutional affirmation, institutional economics underwent a period of marked (...) decline that spanned from the mid-1930s to the late 1980s, when a new season for institutional economics was set in motion. In order to cast some light on this complex issue – without any claim of completeness – we have organised the work as follows: in the first section we consider the main interpretations of this phenomenon. In the subsequent sections we analyse a number of 'endogenous' aspects which might have played a significant role in the period of decline: (i) the relations of institutional economics with Keynes's macroeconomic theory; (ii) the links between theoretical and empirical analysis and the supposed lack of a clear theory; (iii) the interdisciplinary orientation. (shrink)

Science-fiction (SF) has become a reference point in the discourse on the ethics and risks surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, AI in SF—science-fictional AI—is considered part of a larger corpus of ‘AI narratives’ that are analysed as shaping the fears and hopes of the technology. SF, however, is not a foresight or technology assessment, but tells dramas for a human audience. To make the drama work, AI is often portrayed as human-like or autonomous, regardless of the actual technological limitations. Taking (...) science-fictional AI too literally, and even applying it to science communication, paints a distorted image of the technology's current potential and distracts from the real-world implications and risks of AI. These risks are not about humanoid robots or conscious machines, but about the scoring, nudging, discrimination, exploitation, and surveillance of humans by AI technologies through governments and corporations. AI in SF, on the other hand, is a trope as part of a genre-specific mega-text that is better understood as a dramatic means and metaphor to reflect on the human condition and socio-political issues beyond technology. (shrink)

Studie se zabývá tím, jak se v českých zemích obráželo bouřlivé období vývoje biologického myšlení od přelomu 19. a 20. století do první světové války, kdy vedle sebe existovaly velmi různé názory na evoluci. Mnohovrstevnatost teoretickou přitom doplňuje i kulturní a vědecká mnohovrstevnatost českých zemí, kde se jednak mísí vlivy německé a české biologie na svých autonomních institucích, a jednak lze spatřovat rozdíly i mezi lokálními centry Prahou a Brnem se svými badatelskými tradicemi a nezávislými vazbami na další centra ve (...) Vídni a evropských univerzitách. Centrem zájmu jsou teoreticky uvažující biologové, kteří buď sami dlouhodobě profilovali české biologické myšlení, anebo na něj měli díky zdejšímu působení přímý vliv. V letech ca 1900–1915 došlo k prvnímu otevřenému a diskutovanému vrcholu v české recepci evolucionismu a před jednoznačnými pozicemi a „velkými teoriemi“ má navrch spíše prostředkování diferencované zahraniční diskuse, podněty vlastní experimentální práce a opatrné očekávání od nového studia variability a dědičnosti. (shrink)

The idea of moral certainties is venerable, highly contentious, and nevertheless alive. What I call “hinge ethics” (in analogy to hinge epistemology) combines three currents – meta-ethical concerns about the scope and limits of moral knowledge and objectivity, the idea of limits of doubt as articulated in On Certainty, and sympathies for Wittgensteinian ideas about ethics. This essay critically assesses hinge ethics, focusing on Nigel Pleasants’ work. My main objection is not that Wittgensteinian ideas about certainty cannot be transferred from (...) the domain of physical phenomena to the moral domain. Nor shall I nail my colours to the mast of moral relativism. Instead my main tack will be as follows: Several of the views hinge ethicists detect in or derive from On Certainty are intriguing and ingenious, yet either unwarranted and/or not echt Wittgensteinian. Purported moral certainties like the wrongness of killing are neither ineffable, nor non-propositional, nor quasi-transcendental preconditions of moral thought and action. In so far as morality has scaffolding foundations, it is not certainties but capacities. At least some of these capacities are cognitive, a matter of social cognition. (shrink)

Bowers et al. express skepticism about deep neural networks (DNNs) as models of human vision due to DNNs' failures to account for results from psychological research. We argue that to fairly assess DNNs, we must first train them on more human-like tasks which we hypothesize will induce more human-like behaviors and representations.

Usually one reads that after the foundation of scientific journals the journal article took the place of scientific correspondence. It is shown here that periodicals did not replace the letter, but only supplemented it. Norms were developed for the journal article such that (in short) only the „context of justification”︁, not the „context of discovery”︁, could be discussed. Any scholar who wanted to participate in the „discussion out of which science arises”︁ had to resort to the letter; the reading of (...) journals did not suffice. — This circumstance is illustrated in particular by the example of quantum theory and by Wolfgang Pauli. (shrink)

Moral certainty refers to those aspects of morality- moral acting, feeling, and thinking-that are beyond doubt, explanation, and justification. The essays in this book explore the concept of moral certainty and its application and usefulness in contemporary moral debates. The notion of moral certainty, which is inspired by the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is emerging as a key reference point in contemporary moral philosophy. An investigation of the implications of moral certainty is called for, given that so many discussions in (...) moral philosophy concern the possibility of justifying our moral beliefs. The concept of moral certainty also feeds directly into the emerging field of hinge epistemolo,gy. The chapters in this volume tackle the following issues: meta-questions around whether and how we can make sense of the concept of moral certainty; the role of moral certainty in contemporary debates on gender, racism, bias and historically unjust practices; ways in which radical change in society engendered by new technologies might affect moral certainties; the role of the notion of moral certainty in the debates on free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical Perspectives on Moral Certainty will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on ethics and moral philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of technology, and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Sound can be listened to in various ways and with different intentions. Multiple factors influence how and what we perceive when listening to sound. Sonification, the acoustic representation of data, is in essence just sound. It functions as sonification only if we make sure to listen attentively in order to access the abstract information it contains. This is difficult to accomplish since sound always calls the listener’s attention to concrete—whether natural or musical—points of references. Important aspects determining how we listen (...) to sonification are discussed in this paper: elicited sounds, repeated sounds, conceptual sounds, technologically mediated sounds, melodic sounds, familiar sounds, multimodal sounds and vocal sounds. We discuss how these aspects help the listener engage with the sound, but also how they can become points of reference in and of themselves. The various sonic qualities employed in sonification can potentially open but also risk closing doors to the accessibility and perceptibility of the sonified data. (shrink)

Recent court decisions imposing liability on physicians who fail to inform patients that they carry the human immunodeficiency virus before performing invasive procedures create an urgent need for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reopen the issuance of guidelines and to address authoritatively the question of the appropriate limits within which HIV-infected health care providers can treat patients.Public fear of HIV-infected physicians were kindled by reports, beginning in 1990, that Dr. David Acer, an HIV-infected dentist, had infected a (...) number of his patients. However, great skepticism has arisen as to whether Dr. Acer’s patients were infected as a result of procedures conducted in accordance with universal precautions against transmission. Moreover, look back studies have failed to identify even one patient, among the thousands who have undergone procedures administered by HIV-infected physicians, who contracted the virus directly from his/her physician. (shrink)