Le statut éthico-juridique des robots dotés de sensibilité est encore incertain, mais exige d’être pensé sans tarder. Si les économies d’échelle et les avantages sanitaires conduisent à une convergence des industries du soin et du sexe, les « sexbots » sont susceptibles d’attirer une stigmatisation qui accroîtra leur risque de maltraitance. Cet article soutient qu’il est éthiquement problématique pour les humains de créer des êtres sensibles, fabriqués à des fins utilitaires pour opérer des tâches que nous préférerions ne pas avoir (...) à accomplir, comme prendre soin des personnes âgées et des infirmes, ou comme fournir des services sexuels. Il convient de mettre en place des régimes de protection juridique appropriés à ces nouveaux problèmes. (shrink)

We are unlikely to stop seeking pleasure, as this would prejudice our health and well-being. Yet many psychoactive substances providing pleasure are outlawed as illicit recreational drugs, despite the fact that only some of them are addictive to some people. Efforts to redress their prohibition, or to reform legislation so that penalties are proportionate to harm have largely failed. Yet, if choices over seeking pleasure are ethical insofar as they avoid harm to oneself or others, public health strategies should foster (...) ethical choice by moving beyond current risk management practices embodied in the harm reduction movement. The neuroscience of pleasure has much to offer neuroethics and public health strategies. Distinguishing between ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ fosters new understandings of addiction. These hold promise for directing the search for pharmacotherapies which prevent addiction and relapse or disrupt associated neuromechanisms. They could inform new research into creating lawful psychoactive substances which give us pleasure without provoking addiction. As the health and well being of human and other animals rests upon the experience of pleasure, this would be an ethical objective within public health strategy. Were ethical and neurobiological obstacles to ending addiction to be overcome, problems associated with excessive consumption, the lure of unlawful psychoactive substances and the paucity of lawful means to achieve pleasurable altered states would remain. Non-addictive designer drugs, which reliably provided lawful access to pleasures and altered states, would ameliorate these public health concerns insofar as they fostered citizens’ informed, ethical choices according to a neurobiological taxonomy of pleasures. (shrink)

Present regulations and prohibitions relating to psychoactive substances rest upon socio-historically contingent and hence arguably irrational foundations. New evidence bases located in post-genomic genetics and neuroscience hold the potential to disrupt them through demonstrating a lack of congruence between the regulations and prohibitions and the alleged and actual harms. How far might we use such knowledge to drive policy? What limits, if any, should be placed on our choices, and what attempts to influence these may be seen as acceptable? This (...) article seeks to address these questions in relation to criminal justice system and public health governance of psychoactive substance use. It will explore the implications of justifications employed in both areas to restrict free choice on the grounds of harm to the self and to others. The central argument made is that the current categorisation of psychoactive substances as lawful or unlawful is likely to become disrupted as the result of several separate discourses which converge over psychoactive substance use: enhancement, cognitive liberty and the degree to which subjective experiences of pleasure, well being and happiness might enable us to improve and maintain our health as individuals and that of society as a whole. In my view, the strategic deployment of concepts of addiction which has enabled the public health and criminal justice systems to be able to share governance over psychoactive substance use is likely to become destabilised by these discursive developments. In that policy in the United Kingdom and elsewhere now draws upon happiness research, while reformers advocate freedom of choice over means of enhancing our states of being, a new focus upon the rational evaluation of psychoactive substances governance seems plausible. (shrink)

This article will explore some previously unrecognised legal and ethical issues associated with informal care-giving and criminal justice in the context of end of life decision-making. It was prompted by a recent case in Leeds Crown Court, which raises important issues for the people who care for their loved ones at home and for the criminal justice system more generally. Government figures estimate that over 5.2 million Britons are responsible for the care of relatives or loved ones. In order to (...) evaluate some of the ways in which they might find themselves exposed to unexpected criminal liability we have characterised this group as untrained carers who assume responsibility. (shrink)

Juxtaposing the continental philosophy of inclusion/exclusion and the cognitive and affective neuroscience of dehumanization, infrahumanization, and rehumanization may inform animal activists’ strategies. Both fields focus upon how we decide who counts and who doesn’t. Decisions over who’s human and who isn’t are not simply about species membership but involve biopolitical value judgments over who we wish to include or exclude. Posthumanists seek to disrupt the biopolitics of inclusion/exclusion, partly to heal ethical and political relations between human and nonhuman animals. Calarco (...) calls this jamming Agamben’s anthropological machine. Bestia Sacer are those designated as included or excluded, moving among zones of humans, nonhuman animals, and things. Cognitive and affective neuroscience describes how mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion function in dehumanization, infrahumanization, and rehumanization. Humans assign varying degrees of humanity to others according to in-group/out-group status in judgments open to manipulation. Investigating how these mechanisms operate in human perceptions of nonhuman animals may inform activist strategies, transforming ethical and political relations between humans and nonhuman animals and end the exclusion of Bestia Sacer. (shrink)

Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analyze the challenges IRBs are facing in the contexts of both industry and academia, and offer concrete recommendations for how these committees might be adapted in order (...) to provide an effective mechanism of oversight for health‐related AI research. (shrink)

This paper forms part of the feminist critique of the regulatory consequences of biomedicine’s systematic exclusion of the role of women’s bodies in the development of reprogenetic technologies. I suggest that strategic use of notions of the sacred to decontextualise and delimit disagreement fosters this marginalisation. Here conceptions of the sacred and sacralisation afford a means by which pragmatic consensus over regulation may be achieved, through the deployment of a bricolage of dense images associated with cultural loyalties to solidify support (...) or exclude contradictory elements. Hence an explicit renegotiation of the symbolic order structuring salient debates is necessary to disrupt and enrich the entrenched and exclusionary dominant discourse over reprogenetic regulation. I draw upon previous analyses of strategic rhetoric associated with the regulation of infertility treatment and embryo research in the United Kingdom, the cultural anthropology of biomedicine and feminist ethnographies of reprogenetics to illustrate these claims. (shrink)

This analysis scrutinises the rhetorical strategies used by judges in wrongful life and wrongful birth actions as evidence for the assertion that the judicial reading of public policy in such cases has undergone a significant shift which is likely to accelerate as genetic knowledge grows and health care resources shrink. The implications of the predicted move towards increased genetic testing of prospective parents are traversed in relation to feminist analyses of the impact of genetics on reproductive technology. These are viewed (...) as forming a nexus with the current social constructions of disability and the contemporary cultural preoccupation with risk, in a context of the increasing commercial importance of genetic information. It is argued that women cannot make free and informed choices about genetic testing and pregnancy unless legal and social mechanisms which protect those choices are in place. (shrink)

Successful technologies’ ubiquity changes uses, users and ethicolegal responsibilities and duties of care. We focus on dementia to review critically ethicolegal implications of increasing use of social networking sites (SNS) by those with compromised decision-making capacity, assessing concerned parties’ responsibilities. Although SNS contracts assume ongoing decision-making capacity, many users’ may be compromised or declining. Resulting ethicolegal issues include capacity to give informed consent to contracts, protection of online privacy including sharing and controlling data, data leaks between different digital platforms, and (...) management of digital identities and footprints. SNS uses in healthcare raise additional issues. Online materials acting as archives of ‘the self’ bolster present and future identities for users with compromised capacity. E-health involves actual and potential intersection of data gathered for the purpose of delivering health technological support with data used for social networking purposes. Ethicolegal guidance is limited on the implications of SNS usage in contexts where users have impaired/reduced capacity to understand and/or consent to sharing personal data about their health, medication or location. Vulnerable adults and family/carers face uncertainty in regard to consent, data protection, online identity and legal liabilities. Ethicolegal responsibilities and duties of care of technology providers, healthcare professionals, regulatory bodies and policymakers need clarification. (shrink)

Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief in free (...) will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

Many thinkers believe that the next transformational change in human organisation will be the onset of human-level artificial intelligence, and that the most likely method of achieving this will come through brain emulations or "ems": the ability to scan human brains and program their connections into ever faster computers. Taking this as his starting point, Hanson describes what a world dominated by these ems will be like.

In this paper, I discuss rape myths and mythologies, their negative effects on rape and sexual assault complainants, and how they prejudicially construct women qua women. The backdrop for the analysis is the Belfast Rugby Rape Trial, which took place in 2018. Four men, two of whom were well-known rugby players, were acquitted of rape and sexual assault in a nine-week criminal trial that dominated local, national and international attention. The acquittal resulted in ‘I Believe Her’ rallies and protests across (...) Northern Ireland. Of concern were the deeply sexist and misogynistic text exchanges among the acquitted about the complainant and women more generally. One month after the trial, the Criminal Justice Board of Northern Ireland commissioned an independent review of the arrangements to deliver justice in cases of serious sexual offences. The Gillen Review proposed 16 key recommendations, among them measures to dispel rape myths and the role that Relationship and Sex Education in schools could play in combatting these myths. I will explore these issues using Miranda Fricker's construction of epistemic injustice. I argue that there is little appreciation of the profound impact that routine testimonial injustice—where the credibility of a speaker is deflated or undermined on account of her social identity—can have on the wellbeing of speakers and how it ramifies with other forms of injustice. To illustrate, I draw on neurological explanations to show why attributions of sexual consent are unjustly sustained in cases of rape and sexual assault. (shrink)

While some trust theorists have adverted to the vulnerabilities involved in trust, especially vulnerability to betrayal, the literature on trust has not engaged with recent work on the ethics of vulnerability. This paper initiates a dialogue between these literatures, and in doing so begins to explore the complex interrelations between vulnerability and trust. More specifically, it aims to show how trust can both mitigate and compound vulnerability. Through a discussion of two examples drawn from literary sources, the paper also investigates (...) the effects of pathogenic vulnerability on the psychic economies of trust and distrust. (shrink)

Technological change is often seen as something that follows its own logic -- something we may welcome, or about which we may protest, but which we are unable to alter fundamentally. This reader challenges that assumption and its distinguished contributors demonstrate that technology is affected at a fundamental level by the social context in which it develops. General arguments are introduced about the relation of technology to society and different types of technology are examined: the technology of production: domestic and (...) reproductive technology; and military technology. The book draws on authors from Karl Marx to Cynthia Cockburn to show that production technology is shaped by social relations in the workplace. It moves on to the technologies of the household and biological reproduction, which are topics that male-dominated social science has tended to ignore or trivialise -- though these are actually of crucial significance where powerful shaping factors are at work, normally unnoticed. The final section asks what shapes the most frightening technology of all -- the technology of weaponry, especially nuclear weapons. The editors argue that social scientists have devoted disproportionate attention to the effects of technology on society, and tended to ignore the more fundamental question of what shapes technology in the first place. They have drawn both on established work in the history and sociology of technology and on newer feminist perspectives to show just how important and fruitful it is to try to answer that deeper question. The first edition of this reader, published in 1985, had a considerable influence on thinking about the relationship between technology andsociety. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to take into account new research and the emergence of new theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

On initial analysis, Indian Buddhist philosophers seem to have an inconsistent set of commitments with regard to the nature of action. First, they are committed to the reality of karman (Skt: action), which concerns the moral quality of actions and the short- and long-term effects of those actions on the agent. Second, they are committed to an understanding of karma as deeply connected with intention or volition (cetanā). Third, they are committed to the idea that, through Buddhist practice, one may (...) become liberated from the afflictions of craving, aversion, and ignorance and achieve nirvāṇa. Yet, fourth, while Buddhist philosophers are committed to the reality of action and its results, they are also committed to the unreality of any substantial self or agent of actions. How can one affirm the reality of volition, action, efficacious practice, and liberation, while denying the existence of agents, practitioners, or liberated beings? Reconciling the doctrine of no-self (anātman) with an account of agency and karma was a central task of great Buddhist philosophers such as Vasubandhu (fl. 4th to 5th century CE). This chapter will discuss Buddhist philosophy of action in the context of their views of the self, general ontology, ethics, and soteriology. (shrink)

Bioethicists who seek to defend commercial transactions that intuitively seem exploitative, such as organ sales and commercial surrogacy, typically pair a liberal analysis of exploitation with a libertarian analysis of autonomy. In this paper, I argue that the liberal analysis of exploitation, which focuses primarily on two party transactions between individuals, occludes the structural dimensions of exploitation. This occlusion then paves the way for the transaction to be understood in terms of libertarian autonomy. I propose that a vulnerability analysis paired (...) with a multidimensional and relational theory of autonomy highlights the structural dimensions of exploitation and exposes the myth-making that underlies claims that these forms of exploitation are autonomy-enhancing. (shrink)

The first principle of chemical composition is that elements are actually present in their compounds. It is a golden thread running through the history of compositional thinking in chemistry since before the chemical revolution. Opposed to this principle, which I call Actually Present Elements (APE), is the idea that elements are merely potentially present in their compounds: although not actually present, it is possible to recover them. In this paper I follow that golden thread, and then discuss the status of (...) APE itself: is it true? What arguments were there for it, and when? I argue that APE is a metaphysical principle, albeit at a lower level of generality and abstraction than the term ‘metaphysical’ usually suggests. I critically examine a range of different views on how metaphysical principles might be involved in research programmes in empirical science, and conclude by endorsing Elie Zahar’s view that metaphysical principles such as APE are to be found at the very heart of science. Moreover, they can be recipients of empirical support just like other parts of scientific theory. (shrink)

In this article I argue that structure in chemistry is a creature of abstraction: attending selectively to structural similarities, we neglect differences. There are different ways to abstract, so abstraction is interest dependent. So is structure. First, there are two different and mutually irreducible notions of structure in chemistry: bond structure and geometrical structure. Second, structure is relative to scale : the same substance has different structures at different scales, and relationships of structural sameness and difference vary across the scales. (...) However, these facts have no tendency to undermine structure’s claim to reality, or its metaphysical seriousness. (shrink)

The history of science and the philosophy of science have a long and tangled relationship. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on science can be guided, shaped, and challenged by historical scholarship—a process begun by Thomas Kuhn and continued by successive generations of ‘post-positivist’ historians and philosophers of science. On the other hand, the activity of writing the history of science raises methodological questions concerning, for instance, progress in science, realism and antirealism, and the semantics of scientific theories, questions which (...) are the subject of continued debate in philosophy. Clearly the history and the philosophy of science will continue to challenge each other's research agendas and guiding assumptions. (shrink)

Typical philosophical discussions of physician-assisted death have focused on whether the practice can be permissible. We address a different question: assuming that pad can be morally permissible, how far does that permission extend? We will argue that granting requests for pad may be permissible even when the pad recipient can no longer speak for themselves. In particular, we argue against the ‘competency requirement’ that constrains pad-eligibility to presently-competent patients in most countries that have legalized pad. We think pad on terminally (...) ill, incapacitated patients can be morally permissible in cases where advance directives or suitable surrogate decision-makers are available, and should be legally permissible in such cases as well. We argue that this view should be accepted on pain of inconsistency: by allowing surrogate decision-makers to request withdrawal of life-sustaining care on behalf of patients and by allowing patients to request pad, we rule out any plausible justification for imposing a competency requirement on pad. (shrink)

D‐amino acids are being recognized as functionally important molecules in mammals. We recently identified endogenous D‐cysteine in mammalian brain. D‐cysteine is present in neonatal brain in substantial amounts (mM) and decreases with postnatal development. D‐cysteine binds to MARCKS and a host of proteins implicated in cell division and neurodevelopmental disorders. D‐cysteine decreases phosphorylation of MARCKS in neural progenitor cells (NPCs) affecting its translocation. D‐cysteine controls NPC proliferation by inhibiting AKT signaling. Exogenous D‐cysteine inhibits AKT phosphorylation at Thr 308 and Ser (...) 473 in NPCs. D‐cysteine treatment of NPCs led to 50% reduction in phosphorylation of Foxo1 at Ser 256 and Foxo3a at Ser 253. We hypothesize that in the developing brain endogenous D‐cysteine is as a physiologic regulator of NPC proliferation by inhibiting AKT signaling mediated by Foxo1 and Foxo3a. Endogenous D‐cysteine may regulate mammalian neurodevelopment with roles in schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease (AD). (shrink)

Giving money to others feels good. It is now standard to use the label ‘warm glow feelings’ to refer to the pleasure people take from giving. But what exactly are warm glow feelings? And why do people experience them? To answer these questions, we ran two studies: a recall task in which participants were asked to remember a donation they made, and a donation task in which participants were given the opportunity to make a donation before reporting their affective states. (...) Correlational and experimental results converge towards the conclusion that, if the nature of the warm glow is straightforward, its source is multifaceted. Regarding the nature of the ‘warm glow’, the pleasure people took in giving was mainly predicted by one particular type of positive emotion and was indeed described by participants as ‘warm’. Regarding the underlying psychological mechanisms, warm glow feelings were elicited by positive appraisals regarding the donor’s moral character, positive appraisals regarding the actual impact of the donor’s donation on the welfare of others and a feeling of communion with others. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings. (shrink)

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed, the dependent, and the consummate. This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is (...) transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. In contrast, the anti-internalist interpretation begins, not from the constructed nature of experiential objects, but from the perfected nature of mind-world non-duality. This interpretation treats the distinctions between inside and outside, subject and object, mind and world as distinctions drawn within experience rather than between experience and something else. And experience here refers to the continuous dynamic interplay of factors constituting our sentient embodied existence. Having examined each interpretation, the paper will suggest some reasons to favor the non-dualist view. (shrink)

This article addresses the relationship between art, politics and resistance by focusing on the following question: on what basis can artistic practices and practices of resistance become mutually sustainable as forms of resistance to ‘integrated world capitalism’? The question arises from understanding Deleuze and Guattari’s account of schizoanalysis as ‘an incomplete project’ (Buchanan) and from within current debates about the relationship between art, politics and resistance. We argue that current understandings of the art-politics relationship tend towards two dominant motifs: the (...) contributory and the constitutive. Although both of these approaches provide considerable insight into the increasing areas of overlap between art and politics they nonetheless run the risk of instituting a hierarchical relationship between art and politics. We propose instead that the common space of contemporary art and politics is defined precisely where artistic practices and practices of resistance meet. This is demonstrated through a schizoanalytic reading of Johnny’s famously rebellious question in The Wild One (1953): ‘Whaddaya got?’. We present a reading of this question as a call for immanent and singular (rather than transcendent and universal) forms of resistance. We argue that resistance understood as an immanent and singular intervention in the world is best expressed as a form of artistic practice, and only when expressed as a form of artistic practice will practices of resistance have the theoretical resources to sustain themselves. The article concludes with the claim that schizoanalytical method is the artistic practice of creating sustainable forms of resistance within integrated world capitalism. (shrink)

Philosophers have often debated the truth of microstructural essentialism about chemical substances: whether or not the structure of a chemical substance at the molecular scale is what makes it the substance it is. Oddly they have tended to pursue this debate without identifying what a structure is, and with some confusion and about what a chemical substance is. In this paper I draw on chemistry to rectify those omissions, providing a pluralist account of structure, clarifying what (according to chemistry) a (...) chemical substance is and defending microstructural essentialism, as I understand that position. I then give an account of the existence of composite substances and objects in chemistry, an issue that goes back to Aristotle. (shrink)