Some researchers have recognized that privileged communities dominate the discourse on AI Ethics, and other voices need to be heard. As such, we identify the current ethics milieu as arising from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) contexts, and aim to expand the discussion to non-WEIRD global communities, who are also stakeholders in global sociotechnical systems. We argue that accounting for honor, along with its values and related concepts, would better approximate a global ethical perspective. This complex concept already underlies (...) some of the WEIRD discourse on AI ethics, but certain cultural forms of honor also bring overlooked issues and perspectives to light. We first describe honor according to recent empirical and philosophical scholarship. We then review “consensus” principles for AI ethics framed from an honor-based perspective, grounding comparisons and contrasts via example settings such as content moderation, job hiring, and genomics databases. A better appreciation of the marginalized concept of honor could, we hope, lead to more productive AI value alignment discussions, and to AI systems that better reflect the needs and values of users around the globe. (shrink)

It is evident, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has physicians confronting death and dying at unprecedented levels along with growing data suggesting that physicians who care for dying patients face complex emotional, psychological and behavioural effects, that there is a need for their better understanding and the implementation of supportive measures. Taking into account data positing that effects of caring for dying patients may impact a physician’s concept of personhood, or “what makes you, ‘you’”, we adopt Radha (...) Krishna’s Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) to scrutinise the experiences of physicians working in intensive care units (ICU) using a fictional scenario that was inspired by real events. The impact of death and dying, its catalysts, internal constituents, external factors, dyssynchrony, and buffers, specific to ICU physicians, were identified and explored. Such a framework allows for ramifications to be considered holistically and facilitates the curation of strategies for conflict resolution. This evaluation of the RToP acknowledges the experience and wide-ranging effects it has on ICU physicians. As such, our findings provide insight into their specific needs and highlight the importance of support on a personal and organisational level. Although further research needs to be conducted, the RToP could serve as the basis for a longitudinal assessment tool supported by the use of portfolios or mentorship due to their provision of personalised, appropriate, specific, timely, accessible and long-term support. (shrink)

In numerous peripheral sense organs, external stimuli are detected by primary sensory neurons compartmentalized within specialized structures composed of cuticular or epithelial tissue. Beyond reflecting developmental constraints, such compartmentalization also provides opportunities for grouped neurons to functionally interact. Here, the authors review and illustrate the prevalence of these structural units, describe characteristics of compartmentalized neurons, and consider possible interactions between these cells. This article discusses instances of neuronal crosstalk, examples of which are observed in the vertebrate tastebuds and multiple types (...) of arthropod chemosensory hairs. Particular attention is paid to insect olfaction, which presents especially well‐characterized mechanisms of functional, cross‐neuronal interactions. These examples highlight the potential impact of peripheral processing, which likely contributes more to signal integration than previously considered. In surveying a wide variety of structural units, it is hoped that this article will stimulate future research that determines whether grouped neurons in other sensory systems can also communicate to impact information processing. (shrink)

Screening for asymptomatic disease is a routine aspect of contemporary public health practice. However, it is also controversial, because it leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, with many arguing that programmes are “ineffective,” i.e., the “costs” outweigh the “benefits.” This paper explores a more fundamental objection to screening programmes: that, even if they are effective, they are ethically impermissible because they breach the principle of non-maleficence. In so doing, it suggests a new approach to the ethics of risk, justifying a concern (...) with how policies affect individuals’ absolute ex-ante prospects. Part 1 sets up the tension between screening and non-maleficence. Part 2 introduces and motivates a novel interpretation of the non-maleficence principle, “ex-ante Do No Harm,” which resolves this tension. Part 3 defends and clarifies this principle by discussing its relationship to the ex-ante Pareto principle. Part 4 discusses the worry that risk estimates are too “subjective.”. (shrink)

Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review is proposed to evaluate prevailing accounts of physicians facing dying patients in ICUs through the lens of Personhood. Such data would enhance understanding and guide the provision of better support for (...) ICU physicians. Methods An SSR adopts the Systematic Evidenced Based Approach to map prevailing accounts of caring for dying patients in ICUs. To enhance the transparency and reproducibility of this process, concurrent and independent use of tabulated summaries, thematic analysis and directed content analysis is adopted. Results Eight thousand three hundred fifty-eight abstracts were reviewed from four databases, 474 full-text articles were evaluated, 58 articles were included, and the Split Approach revealed six categories/themes centered around the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal Rings of Personhood, conflicts in providing end of life care and coping mechanisms employed. Conclusion This SSR suggests that caring for dying patients in ICU impacts how physicians view their personhood. To resolve conflicts within individual concepts of personhood, physicians use prioritization, reframing and rely on accessible, personalized support from colleagues to steer coping strategies. An adapted form of the Ring Theory of Personhood is proposed to direct timely personalized, appropriate and holistic support. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, but legal and social barriers may delay or even deter manufacturers from offering fully automated vehicles and thereby cost lives that otherwise could be saved. Moral philosophers use “thought experiments” to teach us about what ethics might say about the ethical behavior of AVs. If a manufacturer designing an AV decided to make what it believes is an ethical choice to save a large group of lives by steering (...) away from the large group towards a single individual, could the manufacturer be liable to that single individual? I believe the answer is yes. This article discusses famous “trolley problem” thought experiments in moral philosophy, which news articles have recently applied to AVs. After establishing a hypothetical case, applying product liability law to AV behavior may show a way, in some jurisdictions, that will permit a manufacturer to implement an ethical choice without triggering liability, but liability risk remains. I then turn to possible traditional defenses to see if they prevent liability for a manufacturer making what it believes is an ethical design choice—necessity, defense of self, and the sudden emergency doctrine. None of them provides an effective defense. Under current law, maximizing collision avoidance appears to minimize legal risk. I conclude that the only way to provide effective protection to a manufacturer seeking to implement ethical choices about AV behavior is through special legislation or regulation. (shrink)

Purpose Moral orientation can affect ethical decision-making. Very few studies have focused on whether medical education can change the moral orientation of the students. The purpose of the present study was to document the types of moral orientation exhibited by medical students, and to study if their moral orientation was changed after preclinical education. Methods From 2007 to 2009, the Mojac scale was used to measure the moral orientation of Taiwan medical students. The students included 271 first-year and 109 third-year (...) students. They were rated as a communitarian, dual, or libertarian group and followed for 2 years to monitor the changes in their Mojac scores. Results In both first and third-year students, the dual group after 2 years of preclinical medical education did not show any significant change. In the libertarian group, first and third-year students showed a statistically significant increase from a score of 99.4 and 101.3 to 103.0 and 105.7, respectively. In the communitarian group, first and third-year students showed a significant decline from 122.8 and 126.1 to 116.0 and 121.5, respectively. Conclusion During the preclinical medical education years, students with communitarian orientation and libertarian orientation had changed in their moral orientation to become closer to dual orientation. These findings provide valuable hints to medical educators regarding bioethics education and the selection criteria of medical students for admission. (shrink)

The idea that God creates out of Himself seems quite attractive. Many find great appeal in holding that a temporally finite universe must have a cause, but I think there’s also great appeal in holding that there’s pre-existent stuff out of which that universe is created—and what could that stuff be but part of God? Though attractive, the idea of creation ex deo hasn’t been taken seriously by theistic philosophers. Perhaps this is because it seems too vague—‘could anything enlightening be (...) said about what those parts are?’—or objectionable—‘wouldn’t creating out of those parts lessen or destroy God?’ Drawing from Stephen Kosslyn and Michael Tye’s work on the ontology of mental images, I respond to the above questions by developing a theory on which God creates the universe out of His mental imagery. (shrink)

Several years ago, in a brilliant contribution to the Collection Archives Series, Michel de Certeau wove together a large number of seventeenth-century documents pertaining to the famous episode of demonic possession among the Ursuline nuns of Loudun.1 One of the principal ways in which de Certeau organized his disparate complex materials into a compelling narrative was by viewing the extraordinary events as a kind of theater. There are good grounds for doing so. After all, as clerical authorities came to acknowledge (...) the incidents of possession and treat them accordingly, they ceased to be isolated, private events occurring inside the convent walls and were transformed instead into public spectacles performed for a populace deeply divided between Catholics and Huguenots. Once or twice a day the nuns were taken from their needlework or tranquil meditations and led in small groups through the streets of the town to a church or chapel, where spectators had already gathered. At first these spectators were local townspeople, many of whom must have been acquainted with or even related to the nuns, but, as word of the possession spread, crowds of the curious arrived not only from the region but from all over France and from as far away as England and Scotland. The inns of the town were filled with these visitors who traveled to Loudun expecting to witness events there that were at once beyond nature and yet performed on schedule: repeatable, predictable, and—in their bizarre way—decorous.At the appointed times, beneath the expectant gaze of the crowd, the possessed women would ascend a scaffold, be loosely tied to low chairs, and begin to manifest their symptoms. From within each of the tormented bodies, a particular devil would arise and be constrained by the exorcist to identify himself. If a nun were possessed by more than one demon, the exorcist could dismiss one supernatural voice and demand that another come forth and occupy the tongue of the writhing woman. If the demon refused to cooperate in the interrogation, the presiding priest would solemnly remove the Holy Sacrament from the pyx and hold it up to the mouth of the possessed while the priests and spectators would assist by chanting the Salve Regina. This would provoke screams and violent contortions. Submitting to irresistible spiritual pressure, the devil would then be compelled to speak, confirming the Christian mysteries and the power of the Catholic church. “On stage,” writes de Certeau, “there are no longer human beings; in this sense, there is no longer anyone—only roles” . And these “roles” in turn are revealed to be the hidden truths that underlie the masks of ordinary life; more accurately, the ceremony has the power to convert ordinary life into mere masks, precisely so that these masks may be stripped away to reveal the inward drama of spiritual warfare. The demons appear at first to dominate that drama, forcing their wretched and unwilling hosts to manifest the power of darkness, but a spectacular ecclesiastical counterforce transforms the tragedy into a comedy in which the devil confesses that he has been vanquished by Jesus Christ. 1. See Michel de Certeau, La Possession de Loudun, Collection Archives Series, no. 37 ; all further references to this work, abbreviated PL, will be included in the text . On the relationship between exorcism and theater in this period, see also Henri Weber, “L’Exorcisme à la fin du seizième siècle, instrument de la Contre Réforme et spectacle baroque, » Nouvelle revue du seizième siècle 1 : 79-101. Stephen Greenblatt, the Class of 1932 Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is a founder and editor of Representations. His most recent book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, received the British Council Prize in the Humanities. He is presently completing a study of Shakespeare and the poetics of culture. “Marlow, Marx, and Anti-Semitism,” his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Winter 1978 issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feeding Tiger, Finding GodScience, Religion, and "the Better Story" in Life of PiGregory Stephens (bio)Yann Martel's Life of Pi is an allegorical castaway story about a sixteen-year-old Indian polytheist who survives 227 days on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Martel frames this postmodern variant on the Noah's ark tale as "a story that will make you believe in God" (viii). But these words are neither Martel's, nor those (...) of the semifictional "Martel-like" narrator one encounters in the "Author's Note" (Innes 25). Rather, they are voiced by Mr. Adirubasamy, an elderly Indian man whom the Canadian quasi-author meets at a coffee house in Pondicherry. The virtual author, like the real Martel, is the author of two failed books, and looking for a capital-S "Story."1 Yet after tracking down the primary narrator of the novel (Pi Patel) in Toronto, reading his diaries of his Pacific Ocean ordeal, and listening to taped interviews with Pi, the quasi-author agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that "this was, indeed, a story to make you believe in God" (x).That apparently "evangelical premise" could awaken resistance among readers who take this "explicit but deceptive statement" too literally (Ishmael). As one reviewer notes, "Martel's statement is likely to have the opposite effect on his reader, provoking a determined counter-reaction not to succumb to a didactic religious agenda."2 Although the novel has its didactic moments, most reviewers seem to have taken a measured view of the author's "religious agenda." In interviews, Martel notes that he comes from a secular background in Quebec. There are no indications that writing this book represented a Damascus conversion experience for him. Life of Pi is not a conversion narrative perse, but it is in part an ascent narrative (a journey toward enlightenment) that also contains elements of descent narratives.3 As a secular writer with sympathies for the religious imagination, Martel can pitch his revisioning of comparative religion to readers who have what Salman Rushdie once called a "God-shaped hole" in their heart.4 These "implied readers" (Iser) would have a hunger for some of the animating power of faith, if not a capacity for blind commitment to dogmatic faith itself.Reviewing Life of Pi for the Nation, Charlotte Innes describes it as "a religious book that makes sense to a nonreligious person" (25). In similar fashion, the Pequod argues that Martel's book "achieves something more quietly spectacular" than a literal conversion, or a restoring of one's faith in God: "it makes the reader want to believe in God. Martel gives the reader the democratic choice: the desire to believe rather than the belief itself" (Ishmael).Those responses of the secular left contrast sharply with the responses of my first-year students at the University of the West Indies, to whom I have twice taught Life of Pi. For students from a fundamentalist background, it is a challenge to buy into a narrative [End Page 41] that proclaims a God that transcends the imaginations of most believers in the three faiths in which the young Pi has been trained (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam). In analyzing the theme of finding God, I position the text at a midway point between two different kinds of reception: secular readers for whom the notion of religious belief is at best metaphorical, and religious readers who may resist the narrative's conceit that the true God exists outside the confines of institutional religion.Life of Pi is suffused by a pervasive liminality.5 The teenaged Pi is in motion between continents, between faiths, and between childhood and adulthood, which means that the novel is also a bildungsroman.6 I here focus above all on the text's and Pi's location in the contested space between believers and nonbelievers, and on the novel's attempted mediation between those seeming binary opposites. I ask two perhaps paradoxical questions: In what ways would this be seen by the nonreligious as a religious book with appeal? Put differently, to what degree and in what ways might this text actually give secular readers a desire to believe, even if it does... (shrink)

Aiming at the interference of the delay term in continuous dynamics to the impulsive systems, we study the potential effects of time delay on the stability of a class of impulsive neural networks in this paper. Two cases of delay are considered. For the case of small delay, a sufficient condition for the stability of delayed INNs is obtained by virtue of the average impulsive interval method. The derived results illustrate that within limits, the convergence rate of the system becomes (...) larger with the increase of time delay. For another case, a strict comparison principle is proposed to prove that the impulsive system still maintains the original stability for any large but bounded delay under certain conditions. In particular, as an extension, the stability of delayed INNs for hybrid impulses containing both stabilizing and destabilizing impulses is also discussed. Finally, three examples are simulated to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results. (shrink)

[Stephen Yablo] The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within make-believe games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological commitments, we have to ferret out all traces (...) of nonliterality in our assertions; if there is no sensible project of doing that, there is no sensible project of Quinean ontology. /// [Andre Gallois] I discuss Steve Yablo's defence of Carnap's distinction between internal and external questions. In the first section I set out what I take that distinction, as Carnap draws it, to be, and spell out a central motivation Carnap has for invoking it. In the second section I endorse, and augment, Yablo's response to Quine's arguments against Carnap. In the third section I say why Carnap's application of the distinction between internal and external questions runs into trouble. In the fourth section I spell out what I take to be Yablo's version of Carnap. In the last I say why that version is especially vulnerable to the objection raised in the second. (shrink)

This chapter defends the property dualism argument. The term “semantic premise” mentioned is used to refers to an assumption identified by Brian Loar that antiphysicalist arguments, such as the property dualism argument, tacitly assume that a statement of property identity that links conceptually independent concepts is true only if at least one concept picks out the property it refers to by connoting a contingent property of that property. It is argued that, the property that does the work in explaining the (...) possibility of a posteriori identities need not be a first-order property of the referent in question. On his view, the property dualism argument requires only a weaker semantic premise, which allows that the property in question be a higher order property. A refined version of the property dualism argument is formulated, which uses the weaker premise, and defends the argument against various objections. (shrink)

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in postmodern (...) perspectives. Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)

Names, descriptions, and demonstratives raise well-known logical, ontological, and epistemological problems. Perhaps less well known, amongst philosophers at least, are the ways in which some of these problems not only recur with pronouns but also cross-cut further problems exposed by the study in generative linguistics of morpho-syntactic constraints on interpretation. These problems will be my primary concern here, but I want to address them within a general picture of interpretation that is required if wires are not to be crossed. That (...) picture will be sketched in sections 3 and 4; subsequent sections will focus on pronouns and binding, drawing heavily on what has preceded. (shrink)

Mental causes are threatened from two directions: from below, since they would appear to be screened off by lower-order, e.g., neural states; and from within, since they would also appear to be screened off by intrinsic, e.g., syntactical states. A principle needed to parry the first threat -causes should be proportional to their effects- appears to leave us open to the second; for why should unneeded extrinsic detail be any less offensive to proportionality than excess microstructure? I say that the (...) second threat relies on a perversion of proportionality that would lay waste to all causal relations. (shrink)

This paper considers the connection between automaticity, control and agency. Indeed, recent philosophical and psychological works play up the incompatibility of automaticity and agency. Specifically, there is a threat of automaticity, for automaticity eliminates agency. Such conclusions stem from a tension between two thoughts: that automaticity pervades agency and yet automaticity rules out control. I provide an analysis of the notions of automaticity and control that maintains a simple connection: automaticity entails the absence of control. An appropriate analysis, however, shows (...) that actions are forms of control and pervasively automatic even if automaticity implies the absence of control. Consequences are drawn for the theory of mental agency and the psychological concepts of automaticity and control. (shrink)

This article provides a detailed overview of the neuroscience of consciousness.

Despite holding that all concepts are strictly speaking innate, Leibniz attempts to accommodate the common belief that at least some concepts are adventitious by appealing to his theory of ideal action. The essential idea is that an innate concept can be considered adventitious, in a sense, just in case its ideal cause is to be found outside the mind of the one who possesses the concept. I explore this attempt at accommodation and argue that it fails. [See external link for (...) English draft.]. (shrink)

Global Media Ethics is the first comprehensive cross-cultural exploration of the conceptual and practical issues facing media ethics in a global world. A team of leading journalism experts investigate the impact of major global trends on responsible journalism. The first full-length, truly global textbook on media ethics; Explores how current global changes in media promote and inhibit responsible journalism; Includes relevant and timely ethical discussions based on major trends in journalism and global media; Questions existing frameworks in media ethics in (...) light of the impact of global media; Contributors are leading experts in global journalism and communication. (shrink)

Evil exists and we need to understand it without fear. Schutze distinguishes two completely opposite categories of evil that produce imbalance in the human soul, and illustrates their development in mythology, literature, and scientific thought.

I examine the (mediated) correspondence between Spinoza and Robert Boyle concerning the latter’s account of fluidity and his experiments on reconstitution of niter in the light of the epistemology and doctrine of method contained in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. I argue that both the Treatise and the correspondence reveal that for Spinoza, the proper method of science is not experimental, and that he accepted a powerful under-determination thesis. I argue that, in contrast to modern versions, Spinoza’s (...) form of naturalism was a highly rationalist and anti-empirical one. I conclude with a brief account of the value of experience and experimentation for Spinoza’s scientific method. (shrink)

In this book, Xin Conan-Wu presents a radically revisionist analysis on Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) Neo-Confucian philosophy of education. She argues that landscape and poems in twelfth-century academies bespeak his natural pedagogy and reveal unsuspected contributions to Chinese cultural sensibility by this emblematic figure of a stultifying orthodoxy.