within-field task as testing proceeded. (In any case, the two-field task is presumably a more difficult one than the one-field task. ...

Technologies to rapidly alert people when they have been in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 are part of a strategy to bring the pandemic under control. Currently, at least 47 contact-tracing apps are available globally. They are already in use in Australia, South Korea and Singapore, for instance. And many other governments are testing or considering them. Here we set out 16 questions to assess whether — and to what extent — a contact-tracing app is ethically justifiable.

The Covid‐19 pandemic has highlighted many of the difficult ethical issues that health care professionals confront in caring for patients and families. The decisions such workers face on the front lines are fraught with uncertainty for all stakeholders. Our focus is on the implications for nurses, who are the largest global health care workforce but whose perspectives are not always fully considered. This essay discusses three overarching ethical issues that create a myriad of concerns and will likely affect nurses globally (...) in unique ways: the safety of nurses, patients, colleagues, and families; the allocation of scarce resources; and the changing nature of nurses’ relationships with patients and families. We urge policy‐makers to ensure that nurses’ voices and perspectives are integrated into both local and global decision‐making so as to minimize the structural injustices many nurses have faced to date. Finally, we urge nurses to seek sources of support throughout this pandemic. (shrink)

By mid-2019 there were more than 80 AI ethics guides available in the public domain. Despite this, 2020 saw numerous news stories break related to ethically questionable uses of AI. In part, this is because AI ethics theory remains highly abstract, and of limited practical applicability to those actually responsible for designing algorithms and AI systems. Our previous research sought to start closing this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the creation of a searchable typology (...) of tools and methods designed to translate between the five most common AI ethics principles and implementable design practices. Whilst a useful starting point, that research rested on the assumption that _all_ AI practitioners are aware of the ethical implications of AI, understand their importance, and are actively seeking to respond to them. In reality, it is unclear whether this is the case. It is this limitation that we seek to overcome here by conducting a mixed-methods qualitative analysis to answer the following four questions: what do AI practitioners understand about the need to translate ethical principles into practice? What motivates AI practitioners to embed ethical principles into design practices? What barriers do AI practitioners face when attempting to translate ethical principles into practice? And finally, what assistance do AI practitioners want and need when translating ethical principles into practice? (shrink)

ETHICS: A PLURALISTIC APPROACH TO MORAL THEORY, FIFTH EDITION provides a comprehensive yet clear introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. Additionally, the book presents a conceptual framework of ethical pluralism to help students understand the relationship among various theories. Lawrence Hinman, one of today's most respected and accomplished educators in ethics and philosophy education, presents a text that gives students plentiful opportunities to explore ethical theory and their own responses to them, (...) using fascinating features such as the Ethical Inventory sections that appear at the beginning and the end of the text. End-of-chapter discussion questions, and the use of current issues and movies help students retain what they've learned and truly comprehend the subject matter. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

This article highlights the limitations of the tendency to frame health- and wellbeing-related digital tools (mHealth technologies) as empowering devices, especially as they play an increasingly important role in the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. It argues that mHealth technologies should instead be framed as digital companions. This shift from empowerment to companionship is advocated by showing the conceptual, ethical, and methodological issues challenging the narrative of empowerment, and by arguing that such challenges, as well as the risk (...) of medical paternalism, can be overcome by focusing on the potential for mHealth tools to mediate the relationship between recipients of clinical advice and givers of clinical advice, in ways that allow for contextual flexibility in the balance between patiency and agency. The article concludes by stressing that reframing the narrative cannot be the only means for avoiding harm caused to the NHS as a healthcare system by the introduction of mHealth tools. Future discussion will be needed on the overarching role of responsible design. (shrink)

As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular machine learning (ML), has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the (...) theory of AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work , we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible (and thus vulnerable to ethics washing) or too strict (unresponsive to context). This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service’. (shrink)

The work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty touches on some of the most essential and vital concerns of the world today, yet his ideas are difficult and not widely understood. Lawrence Hass redresses this problem by offering an exceptionally clear, carefully argued, critical appreciation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Hass provides insight into the philosophical methods and major concepts that characterize Merleau-Ponty's thought. Questions concerning the nature of phenomenology, perceptual experience, embodiment, intersubjectivity, expression, and philosophy of language are fully and systematically (...) discussed with reference to main currents and discussions in contemporary philosophy. The result is a refreshingly jargon-free invitation into Merleau-Ponty's important and transformational way of understanding human experience. (shrink)

In this book, Lawrence Hatab provides an accessible and provocative exploration of one of the best-known and still most puzzling aspects of Nietzsche's thought: eternal recurrence, the claim that life endlessly repeats itself identically in every detail. Hatab argues that eternal recurrence can and should be read literally, in just the way Nietzsche described it in the texts. The book offers a readable treatment of most of the core topics in Nietzsche's philosophy, all discussed in the light of the (...) consummating effect of eternal recurrence. Although Nietzsche called eternal recurrence his most fundamental idea, most interpreters have found it problematic or needful of redescription in other terms. For this reason, Hatab's book is an important and challenging contribution to Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

It has been suggested that to overcome the challenges facing the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) of an ageing population and reduced available funding, the NHS should be transformed into a more informationally mature and heterogeneous organisation, reliant on data-based and algorithmically-driven interactions between human, artificial, and hybrid (semi-artificial) agents. This transformation process would offer significant benefit to patients, clinicians, and the overall system, but it would also rely on a fundamental transformation of the healthcare system in a way that (...) poses significant governance challenges. In this article, we argue that a fruitful way to overcome these challenges is by adopting a pro-ethical approach to design that analyses the system as a whole, keeps society-in-the-loop throughout the process, and distributes responsibility evenly across all nodes in the system. (shrink)

Background There is ongoing debate regarding how moral distress should be defined. Some scholars argue that the standard “narrow” definition overlooks morally relevant causes of distress, while others argue that broadening the definition of moral distress risks making measurement impractical. However, without measurement, the true extent of moral distress remains unknown. Research aims To explore the frequency and intensity of five sub-categorizations of moral distress, resources used, intention to leave, and turnover of nurses using a new survey instrument. Research design (...) A mixed methods embedded design included a longitudinal, descriptive investigator-developed electronic survey with open-ended questions sent twice a week for 6 weeks. Analysis included descriptive and comparative statistics and content analysis of narrative data. Participants Registered nurses from four hospitals within one large healthcare system in Midwest United States. Ethical considerations IRB approval was obtained. Results 246 participants completed the baseline survey, 80 participants provided data longitudinally for a minimum of 3 data points. At baseline, moral-conflict distress occurred with the highest frequency, followed by moral-constraint distress and moral-tension distress. By intensity, the most distressing sub-category was moral-tension distress, followed by “other” distress and moral-constraint distress. Longitudinally, when ranked by frequency, nurses experienced moral-conflict distress, moral-constraint distress, and moral-tension distress; by intensity, scores were highest for moral-tension distress, moral-uncertainty distress, and moral-constraint distress. Of available resources, participants spoke with colleagues and senior colleagues more frequently than using consultative services such as ethics consultation. Conclusions Nurses experienced distress related to a number of moral issues extending beyond the traditional understanding of moral distress (as occurring due to a constraint) suggesting that our understanding and measurement of moral distress should be broadened. Nurses frequently used peer support as their primary resource but it was only moderately helpful. Effective peer support for moral distress could be impactful. Future research on moral distress sub-categories is needed. (shrink)

Healthcare systems across the globe are struggling with increasing costs and worsening outcomes. This presents those responsible for overseeing healthcare with a challenge. Increasingly, policymakers, politicians, clinical entrepreneurs and computer and data scientists argue that a key part of the solution will be ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) – particularly Machine Learning (ML). This argument stems not from the belief that all healthcare needs will soon be taken care of by “robot doctors.” Instead, it is an argument that rests on the classic (...) counterfactual definition of AI as an umbrella term for a range of techniques that can be used to make machines complete tasks in a way that would be considered intelligent were they to be completed by a human. Automation of this nature could offer great opportunities for the improvement of healthcare services and ultimately patients’ health by significantly improving human clinical capabilities in diagnosis, drug discovery, epidemiology, personalised medicine, and operational efficiency. However, if these AI solutions are to be embedded in clinical practice, then at least three issues need to be considered: the technical possibilities and limitations; the ethical, regulatory and legal framework; and the governance framework. In this article, we report on the results of a systematic analysis designed to provide a clear overview of the second of these elements: the ethical, regulatory and legal framework. We find that ethical issues arise at six levels of abstraction (individual, interpersonal, group, institutional, sectoral, and societal) and can be categorised as epistemic, normative, or overarching. We conclude by stressing how important it is that the ethical challenges raised by implementing AI in healthcare settings are tackled proactively rather than reactively and map the key considerations for policymakers to each of the ethical concerns highlighted. (shrink)

How is it that sounds from the mouth or marks on a page—which by themselves are nothing like things or events in the world—can be world-disclosive in an automatic manner? In this fascinating and important book, Lawrence J. Hatab presents a new vocabulary for Heidegger’s early phenomenology of being-in-the-world and applies it to the question of language. He takes language to be a mode of dwelling, in which there is an immediate, direct disclosure of meanings, and sketches an extensive (...) picture of proto-phenomenology, how it revises the posture of philosophy, and how this posture applies to the nature of language. Representational theories are not rejected but subordinated to a presentational account of immediate disclosure in concrete embodied life. The book critically addresses standard theories of language, such that typical questions in the philosophy of language are revised in a manner that avoids binary separations of language and world, speech and cognition, theory and practise, realism and idealism, internalism and externalism. (shrink)

This article enlarges classical syllogistic logic with assertions having to do with comparisons between the sizes of sets. So it concerns a logical system whose sentences are of the following forms: Allxareyand Somexarey, There are at least as manyxasy, and There are morexthany. Herexandyrange over subsets (not elements) of a giveninfiniteset. Moreover,xandymay appear complemented (i.e., as$\bar{x}$and$\bar{y}$), with the natural meaning. We formulate a logic for our language that is based on the classical syllogistic. The main result is a soundness/completeness theorem. (...) There are efficient algorithms for proof search and model construction. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany social scientific studies have shown the positive effects of self-awareness and reflexivity in shaping individuals’ career paths. However, using life- and work-history interviews conducted with salespersons in Toronto, Canada, I find that high levels of self-awareness – as demonstrated by active deliberation over one’s career – has both positive and negative results in terms of career outcomes. Respondents whose careers initially progressed as they expected tended to benefit from reflexively managing their careers. However, the benefits of reflexivity were mixed (...) for respondents whose careers did not begin as planned. This group of respondents sometimes benefited from thinking about alternatives; but also, sometimes, cast themselves outside of careers that they deemed to be ‘normal’. Observing the way that some respondents formed new career plans based on unmet expectations, and began to pursue those emergent plans, I argue that scholarly uses of reflexivity should incorporate its function as a potential career trajectory anchor. (shrink)

The spate of popular books attacking religion can be seen as a manifestation of the recoil against the idea of multiculturalism. Religious identities are also cultural identities, and no meaningful form of multiculturalism is possible that leaves religion outside the sphere of public recognition. This paper argues that ‘aggressive atheism’ undermines its appeal to reason by refusing to see anything of value in religion. It also risks exacerbating cultural differences at a time when reconciliation is needed. The critique focuses on (...) the contribution of Richard Dawkins and examines a number of tensions within the aggressive atheism of his best-selling book The God Delusion. The second part of the paper introduces an alternative, a framework of reconciliatory dialogues, between atheism and religion and within religious communities, operating not just at a formal or institutional level but also in cultural expressions and in the practices of everyday life. (shrink)

My One Fallacy theory says there is only one fallacy: equivocation, or playing on an ambiguity. In this paper I explain how this theory arose from rnetaphilosophical concerns. And I contrast this theory with purely logical, dialectical, and psychological notions of fallacy.

Well-designed pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) are critical for improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes (Haff and Choudhry 2018), and the article written by Garland et al. (2023) advance...

Digital Health Tools (DHTs), also known as patient self-surveilling strategies, have increasingly been promoted by health-care policy makers as technologies that have the capacity to transform patients’ lives. At the heart of the debate is the notion of empowerment. In this paper, we argue that what is required is not so much empowerment but rather a shift to enabling DHTs as digital companions. This will enable policy makers and health-care system designers to provide a more balanced view—one that capitalises on (...) the benefits of DHTs, while minimising the risks of potential harms. -/- . (shrink)

The idea of a role in nursing that includes expertise in ethics has been around for more than 30 years. Whether or not one subscribes to the idea that nursing ethics is separate and distinct from bioethics, nursing practice has much to contribute to the ethical practice of healthcare, and with the strong grounding in ethics and aspiration for social justice considerations in nursing, there is no wonder that the specific role of the nurse ethicist has emerged. Nurse ethicists, expert (...) in nursing practice and the application of ethical theories and concepts, are well positioned to guide nurses through complex ethical challenges. However, there is limited discussion within the field regarding the specific job responsibilities that the nurse ethicist ought to have. The recent appearance of job postings with the title “nurse ethicist” suggest that some healthcare institutions have identified the value of a nurse in the practice of ethics and are actively recruiting. Discomfort about the possibility of others defining the role of the nurse ethicist inspired this paper (and special issue). If the nurse ethicist is to be seen as an integral part of addressing ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts that arise in healthcare, then nurse ethicists ought to be at the forefront of defining this role. In this paper, we draw upon our own experiences as nurse ethicists in large academic healthcare systems to describe the essential elements that ought to be addressed in a job description for a nurse ethicist practicing in a clinical setting linked to academic programs. Drawing upon our experience and the literature, we describe how we perceive the nurse ethicist adds value to healthcare organizations and teams of professional ethicists. (shrink)

AI, in the form of artificial carers, provides a possible solution to the problem of a growing elderly population Yet, concerns remain that artificial carers ( such as care-or chat-bots) could not emphathize with patients to the extent that humans can. Utilising the concept of empathy perception,we propose a Turing-type test that could check whether artificial carers could do many of the menial tasks human carers currently undertake, and in the process, free up more time for doctors to offer empathy. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Through his innovative study of language, noted Heidegger scholar Lawrence Hatab offers a proto-phenomenological account of the lived world, the “first” world of factical life, where pre-reflective, immediate disclosiveness precedes and makes possible representational models of language. Common distinctions between mind and world, fact and value, cognition and affect miss the meaning-laden dimension of embodied, practical existence, where language and life are a matter of “dwelling in speech.” In this second volume, Hatab supplements and fortifies his initial analysis by (...) offering a detailed treatment of child development and language acquisition, which exhibit a proto-phenomenological world in the making. He then takes up an in-depth study of the differences between oral and written language (particularly in the ancient Greek world) and how the history of alphabetic literacy shows why Western philosophy came to emphasize objective, representational models of cognition and language, which conceal and pass over the presentational domain of dwelling in speech. Such a study offers significant new angles on the nature of philosophy and language. (shrink)

ABSTRACT McGowan’s notion of norm ‘enactment’ is the linchpin of her practical project, designed to provide an objective standard that circumvents the need to assess actual subjective uptake of discriminatory norms proposed by racist utterances in public spaces. However, the essential role of uptake to potential norm-imposing utterances—and responses like dismissing, countermanding, and ignoring—cannot be waved away. Contributions to conversations, and even more so to other social interactions, do not exert the normative compulsion upon participants that McGowan’s theory needs. People’s (...) words, even their ugly words, are not invariably norm ‘enactments’ that ‘constitute harm’—sometimes they are just words. (shrink)

If racism is a matter of possessing racist beliefs, then it would seem that its cure involves purging one’s mind of all racist beliefs. But the truth is more complicated, and does not permit such a straightforward strategy. Racist beliefs are resistant to subjective repudiation, and even those that are so repudiated are resistant to lasting expulsion from one’s belief system. Moreover, those that remain available for use in cognition can shape thought and behavior even in the event that one (...) has recognized their falsehood. Yet if one is intent upon combating the racism within one’s mind, one is not without effective cognitive countermeasures that can render one’s racist beliefs ineffectual. (shrink)

An interpretation of the yoga practice of prāṇāyāma (breath control) that is influenced by the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty is offered. The approach to yoga is less concerned with comparing his thought to the classical yoga texts than with elucidating the actual experience of breath control through the constructs provided by Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the lived body. The discussion of yoga can answer certain pedagogical goals but can never finally be severed from doing yoga. Academic discourse centered entirely on the (...) theoretical concepts of yoga philosophies must to some extent remain incomplete. Patañjali's "Yoga Sūtra" is itself a manual of practice. For this reason, the commentary of the scholar-practitioner T. K. V. Desikachar has been chosen as the basis for this study, rather than a more exclusively theoretical commentary. In so doing, yoga will be approached as an experience or phenomenon, not just in the context of a series of academic debates. (shrink)

Background: Nurses face ethical issues and experience moral distress in their everyday work. A nursing ethics champion program was developed at a hospital in the United States. Methods: As part of a quality improvement project, pre- and post-training surveys were developed to assess whether the program was feasible and sustainable, enhanced nurse confidence in recognizing and addressing ethical issues and moral distress, and increased nurse knowledge of institutional resources for addressing the same. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. Results: Thirteen (...) nurses from both the critical care and medical/surgical settings participated in the program. The program proved feasible. Attrition after the educational sessions raised concerns about sustainability. Survey results suggest an association between participating in the program’s educational sessions and increased nurse confidence in recognizing and addressing ethical issues and moral distress, as well as identifying institutional resources that can assist nurses with the same. Discussion: Opportunities for future nursing ethics champion programs include increasing the interactivity and duration of educational sessions, making programs multidisciplinary, and creating materials for nurses to more easily share with colleagues. It would be valuable for future research to measure the impact of nursing ethics champion programs on nursing turnover. Implications: A nursing ethics champion program has the potential to help nurses feel better equipped to navigate ethical issues and moral distress in their everyday work. (shrink)

In Can We Live Together? Alain Touraine combines a consummate analysis of crucial social tensions in contemporary societies with a strong normative appeal for a new emancipatory 'Subject' capable of overcoming the twin threats of atomisation or authoritarianism. He calls for a move from 'politics to ethics' and then from ethics back to politics to enable the new Subject to make a reality out of the goals of democracy and solidarity. However, he has little to say about the nature of (...) such an ethics. This article argues that this lacuna could usefully be filled by adopting a form of radical humanism found in the work of Erich Fromm. It defies convention in the social sciences by operating from an explicit view of the 'is' and the 'ought' of common human nature, specifying reason, love and productive work as the qualities to be realised if we are to move closer to human solidarity. Although there remain significant philosophical and political differences between the two positions, particularly on the role to be played by 'the nation', their juxtaposition opens new lines of inquiry in the field of cosmopolitan ethics. (shrink)

During his years as a member of the Frankfurt School, Erich Fromm developed a strong interest in the idea that there were distinctive male and female character orientations. Drawing on the positive evaluation of matriarchy made in the nineteenth century by the Swiss anthropologist J. J. Bachofen, Fromm argued that a “matricentric” psychic structure was more conducive to socialism than the patricentric structure which had predominated in capitalism. His interest in maternalism and his opposition to patriarchy played an important part (...) in his rejection of Freud's theory of drives and in the development of a humanistic ethics in which love plays a central part. The idea of a gendered humanism is central to Fromm's social thought, although there is a danger that the over‐emphasis of sex‐based character differences unintentionally re‐opens the danger of the kind of sexual stereotyping which he resolutely opposed. (shrink)

Departing from the sociological dual process model that divides thoughts into automatic and unconscious, or deliberate and conscious occurrences, this book draws on empirical cases to demonstrate the existence of 'automatic deliberation'. Through research into the ways in which people address difficult subjects, such as death and dying, paedophilia, and career decision-making, the author sheds light on a mode of thinking which is both habitual and effortful, displaying a combination of habituated understandings and conscious deliberation. Advancing a blended view of (...) cognition by which individuals draw on schemas and frames to think through complex topics, this volume will appeal to sociologists and psychologists with interests in cognition and the ways in which we make decisions. (shrink)

This paper provides a foundation for the polarity marking technique introduced by David Dowty [3] in connection with monotonicity reasoning in natural language and in linguistic analyses of negative polarity items based on categorial grammar. Dowty's work is an alternative to the better-known algorithmic approach first proposed by Johan van Benthem [11], and elaborated by Víctor Sánchez Valencia [10]. Dowty's system internalized the monotonicity/polarity markings by generating strings using a categorial grammar whose categories already contain the markings that the earlier (...) system would obtain by separate steps working on an already-derived string. Despite the linguistic advantages of the internalized system, no soundness proof has yet been given for it. This paper offers an account. The leading mathematical idea is to interpret categorial types as preorders (in order to talk about monotonicity in the first place), and then to add a primitive operation to the type hierarchy of taking the opposite of a preorder (in order to capture monotone decreasing functions). At the same time, the use of internalized categories also raises issues. Although these will not be addressed in full, the paper points out possible approaches to them. (shrink)

The difference between Poe's and [Paul] Valéry's theory of notes—between a theory that emphasizes the nonsensical unpredictability of notes and a theory that discovers in notes the essential logic not only of all reading but of the mind itself—cannot be resolved. To some extent, perhaps, it derives from a conflict between two genres: marginalia, and the marginal gloss. Marginalia—traces left in a book—are wayward in their very nature; they spring up spontaneously around a text unaware of their presence. Nor could (...) they have been considered publishable until the Romantic period had encouraged a taste for fragments and impulses, the suggestive part rather than the ordered whole. Significantly the term was introduced by Coleridge, that great master of the fragment; and Poe himself was the first author ever to publish his marginalia. The charm of such notes depends on their being on the edge: the borders of intelligibility or consciousness . The reader catches an author off his guard, intercepting a thought that may scarcely have risen to formulation. At their best, marginalia can haunt us like a few passing words overheard in the street; all the more precious because the context remains unknown. Lawrence Lipking, professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University, is the author of The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England and coeditor of Modern Literary Criticism 1900-1970. Some of the material in this article is drawn from a book currently in progress, The Poet-Critics, a study of the relations between poetry and criticism in the work of authors who have excelled in both. "Arguing with Shelly" appeared in the Winter 1979 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the (...) Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt. (shrink)