Gossip is often serious business, not idle chitchat. Gossip allows those oppressed to privately name their oppressors as a warning to others. Of course, gossip can be in error. The speaker may be lying or merely have lacked sufficient evidence. Bias can also make those who hear the gossip more or less likely to believe the gossip. By examining the social functions of gossip and considering the differences in power dynamics in which gossip can occur, we contend that gossip may (...) be not only permissible but virtuous, both as the only reasonable recourse available and as a means of resistance against oppression. (shrink)

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of tactics (...) proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

This article explores the link between CEOs’ language and hubristic leadership. It is based on the precepts that leaders’ linguistic utterances provide insights into their personality and behaviours; hubris is associated with unethical and potentially destructive leadership behaviours; if it is possible to identify linguistic markers of CEO hubris then these could serve as early warnings sign and help to mitigate the associated risks. Using computational linguistics, we analysed spoken utterances from a sample of hubristic CEOs and compared them with (...) non-hubristic CEOs. We found that hubristic CEOs’ linguistic utterances show systematic and consistent differences from the linguistic utterances of non-hubristic CEOs. Demonstrating how hubristic leadership manifests in CEO language contributes to wider research regarding the diagnosis and prevention of the unethical and potentially destructive effects of hubristic leadership. This research contributes to the wider study of hubris and unethical leadership by applying a novel method for identifying linguistic markers and offers a way of militating against the risk of unethical and destructive CEO behaviours induced or aggravated by hubristic leadership. (shrink)

BackgroundSuicide research aims to contribute to a better understanding of suicidal behaviour and its prevention. However, there are many ethical challenges in this research field, for example, regarding consent and potential risks to participants. While studies to-date have focused on the perspective of the researchers, this study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of members of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in dealing with suicide-related study applications.MethodsThis qualitative study entailed a thematic analysis using an inductive approach. We conducted semi-structured (...) interviews with a purposive sample (N = 15) of HREC Chairs or their delegates from Australian research-intensive universities. The interview guide included questions regarding the ethical concerns and challenges in suicide-related research raised by HREC members, how they dealt with those challenges and what advice they could give to researchers.ResultsThe analysis identified four main themes: (1) HREC members’ experiences of reviewing suicide-related study applications, (2) HREC members’ perceptions of suicide, suicide research, and study participants, (3) Complexity in HREC members’ decision-making processes, and (4) HREC members’ relationships with researchers.ConclusionsReliance on ethical guidelines and dialogue with researchers are crucial in the assessment of suicide-related study applications. Both researchers and HREC members may benefit from guidance and resources on how to conduct ethically sound suicide-related studies. Developing working relationships will be likely to help HRECs to facilitate high quality, ethical suicide-related research and researchers to conduct such research. (shrink)

The release of AlphaFold2 (AF2), a deep‐learning‐aided, open‐source protein structure prediction program, from DeepMind, opened a new era of molecular biology. The astonishing improvement in the accuracy of the structure predictions provides the opportunity to characterize protein systems from uncultured Asgard archaea, key organisms in evolutionary biology. Despite the accumulation in metagenomics‐derived Asgard archaea eukaryotic‐like protein sequences, limited structural and biochemical information have restricted the insight in their potential functions. In this review, we focus on profilin, an actin‐dynamics regulating protein, (...) which in eukaryotes, modulates actin polymerization through (1) direct actin interaction, (2) polyproline binding, and (3) phospholipid binding. We assess AF2‐predicted profilin structures in their potential abilities to participate in these activities. We demonstrate that AF2 is a powerful new tool for understanding the emergence of biological functional traits in evolution. (shrink)

The average age of women nursing students in Australia is rising. With this comes the likelihood that more now begin university with family responsibilities, and with their lives structured by the roles of mother and partner. Women with more traditionally gendered ideas of these roles, such as nurturing others and self‐sacrifice, are known to be attracted to nursing as a profession; once at university, however, these students can be vulnerable to gender role stress from the competing demands of study. A (...) qualitative research design, guided by Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy, explored the gendered behaviours and experiences of 22 women nursing students, all of whom had children and began university in a heterosexual intimate relationship. The findings reveal traditional ideas of gender were almost universal among participants, and these ideas had a significant influence on the nursing degree experience. Participants commonly prioritised family over the university and practiced maternal gatekeeping (prevention of male partner involvement in domestic work). These traditionally gendered behaviours, coupled with experiences of gender role stress, had a detrimental impact on participants' capacity to study and their personal wellbeing. The importance of these findings to the burgeoning nursing workforce shortage nursing is considered in terms of student retention and the supply of graduates into the profession. The implications to the nursing profession are also explored against the evidence that nursing students with traditional gender beliefs are less likely to develop as autonomous, critical thinking nurses compared to their gender‐egalitarian peers. The introduction of gender theory via critical pedagogy in the undergraduate nursing degree curriculum is recommended to enlighten and empower women nursing students and promote the competence, agility, and sustainability of the nursing profession. (shrink)

The paper presents a general critique of the use of conceptual frameworks in design, illustrated by the well known synchronous/asynchronous, co-located/non-co-located framework. It argues that while frameworks are a necessary and inevitable starting point for design, the business of tailoring and adapting them to specific situations need not be ad hoc.Triggering artefacts are a way of systematically challenging both designers' preunderstandings and the conservatism of work practice. Experiences from the Great Belt tunnel and bridge project are used to illustrate howtriggering (...) artefacts change themodality of designing for change. (shrink)

In the vast literature on architectural theory and practice, the ways in which architectural knowledge is actually taught, debated, and understood are too often ignored. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. The issues considered range from the form and content of architectural education to the architect's social and environmental obligations and the emergence of a new generation of architects. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer (...) a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Stanford Anderson, MIT; Carol Burns, Harvard U; Russell Ellis, UC Berkeley; Thomas Fisher, U of Minnesota; Linda Groat, U of Michigan; Kay Bea Jones, Ohio State U; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; A. G. Krishna Menon, TVB School of Habitat Studies, India; Garth Rockcastle, U of Minnesota; Michael Stanton, American U, Beirut; Sharon E. Sutton, U of Washington; David J. T. Vanderburgh, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and Donald Watson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (shrink)

Two components of lay observers’ calculus of moral judgment are proximal intent (the actor’s mind is focused on performing the action) and distal intent (the actor’s mind is focused on the broader goal). What causes observers to prioritize one form of intent over the other? The authors observed whether construal level (Studies 1-2) and beliefs about free will (Studies 3-4) would influence participants’ sensitivity to the actor’s proximal versus distal intent. In four studies, participants read scenarios in which the actor’s (...) proximal and distal intent were independently manipulated. In Study 1, when only distal intent was present in the actor’s mind, participants rated the psychologically distant actor more responsible than the psychologically near actor. In Study 2, when only distal intent was in the actor’s mind, participants with a chronic high level of action identification rated the actor more responsible than did those with a low level of action identification. In both studies, when only proximal intent was in the actor’s mind, construal level did not predict judgments of responsibility. In Study 3, when only proximal intent was present in the actor’s mind, the more participants believed in free will, the more they rated the actor responsible. When only distal intent was in the actor’s mind, free will belief did not influence ratings of responsibility. In Study 4, the same pattern emerged when free will / determinism beliefs were manipulated and the actor performed a positive (life-saving) act. The authors discuss how these results shed new light on the literatures on moral reasoning and psycho-legal theory. (shrink)

In proof-theoretic semantics, model-theoretic validity is replaced by proof-theoretic validity. Validity of formulae is defined inductively from a base giving the validity of atoms using inductive clauses derived from proof-theoretic rules. A key aim is to show completeness of the proof rules without any requirement for formal models. Establishing this for propositional intuitionistic logic raises some technical and conceptual issues. We relate Sandqvist’s (complete) base-extension semantics of intuitionistic propositional logic to categorical proof theory in presheaves, reconstructing categorically the soundness and (...) completeness arguments, thereby demonstrating the naturality of Sandqvist’s constructions. This naturality includes Sandqvist’s treatment of disjunction that is based on its second-order or elimination-rule presentation. These constructions embody not just validity, but certain forms of objects of justifications. This analysis is taken a step further by showing that from the perspective of validity, Sandqvist’s semantics can also be viewed as the natural disjunction in a category of sheaves. (shrink)

The claim that similarity plays a role in representation has been philosophically discredited. Psychologists, however, routinely analyse the success of mental representations for guiding behaviour in terms of a similarity between representation and the world. I provide a foundation for this practice by developing a philosophically responsible account of the relationship between similarity and representation in natural systems. I analyse similarity in terms of the existence of a suitable homomorphism between two structures. The key insight is that by restricting attention (...) to only those homomorphisms induced by causal processes, we can solve two philosophical problems with a single assumption. First, causal structure provides an adequate source for the bias required to ensure the similarity relation is non-trivial; second, it provides an adequate source for the directionality required to move from similarity to representation. I defend this account against objections by Goodman and van Fraassen and demonstrate that it is indeed the account of similarity’s role in representation assumed by psychological practice. (shrink)

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

Many critics of medicalization express concern that the process privileges individualised, biologically grounded interpretations of medicalized phenomena, inhibiting understanding and communication of aspects of those phenomena that are less relevant to their biomedical modelling. I suggest that this line of critique views medicalization as a hermeneutical injustice—a form of epistemic injustice that prevents people having the hermeneutical resources available to interpret and communicate significant areas of their experience. Interpreting the critiques in this fashion shows they frequently fail because they: neglect (...) the ways in which medicalization may not obscure, but rather illuminate, individuals’ experiences; and neglect the testimony of those experiencing first-hand medicalized problems, thus may be guilty of perpetrating testimonial injustice. However, I suggest that such arguments are valuable insofar as they highlight the unwarranted epistemic privilege frequently afforded to medical institutions and medicalized models of phenomena, and a consequent need for greater epistemic humility on the part of health workers and researchers. (shrink)

Felicitas Kraemer draws on the experiences of patients undergoing deep-brain stimulation to propose two distinct and potentially conflicting principles of respect: for an individual's autonomy , and for their authenticity. I argue instead that, according to commonly-invoked justifications of respect for autonomy, authenticity is itself in part constitutive of an analysis of autonomy worthy of respect; Kraemer's argument thus highlights the shortcomings of practical applications of respect for autonomy that emphasise competence while neglecting other important dimensions of autonomy such as (...) authenticity, since it shows that competence alone cannot be interpreted as a reliable indicator of an individual's capacity for exercising autonomy. I draw from relational accounts to suggest how respect for a more expansive conception of autonomy might be interpreted for individuals undergoing DBS and in general. (shrink)

This paper argues that the modern curriculum of academic subject disciplines embodies a rationalist conception of pure, universal knowledge that does little to cultivate, humanise or form the self. A liberal education in the classical humanist tradition, by contrast, develops a personal culture or paideia, an understanding of the self as a social, political and cultural being, and the practical wisdom needed to make judgements in practical, political and human affairs. The paper concludes by asking whether the old liberal curriculum, (...) traditionally centred on the humanities and the disciplines of grammar and rhetoric, can be recovered in the modern age. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 187-205, January 2021.

Care ethics as initiated by Gilligan, Held, Tronto and others has from its onset been critical towards ethical concepts established in modernity, like ‘autonomy’, alternatively proposing to think from within relationships and to pay attention to power. In this article the question is raised whether renewal in this same critical vein is necessary and possible as late modern circumstances require rethinking the care ethical inquiry. Two late modern realities that invite to rethink care ethics are complexity and precariousness. Late modern (...) organizations, like the general hospital, codetermined by various systems are characterized by complexity and the need for complexity reduction, both permeating care practices. By means of a heuristic use of the concept of precariousness, taken as the installment of uncertainty, it is shown that relations and power in late modern care organizations have changed, precluding the use of a straightforward domination idea of power. In the final section a proposition is made how to rethink the care ethical inquiry in order to take late modern circumstances into account: inquiry should always be related to the concerns of people and practitioners from within care practices. (shrink)

Traditionally the central trope in Christian theological anthropology, “the image of God” tends to function more as a noun than a verb. While that has grounded significant interplay between specific Christian formulations and the concepts of nontheological disciplines and cultural constructs, it facilitates the withdrawal of the image and of theological anthropology more broadly from the context of active relation with God. Rather than a static rendering of the image a more interactionist, dynamic, and relational view of “imaging God” is (...) commended as a key anthropological term. Engaging with Psalm 8 suggests that, biblically, asking the anthropological question “What is humanity?” is tied to the answer to the theological question: who is God? This locates theological anthropology securely within the interactive context of being related to by God and suggests that theological anthropology might be a matter of performance rather than definition: actively imaging God. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Hugh McLachlan argues from a deontological perspective that the most ethical means of distributing scarce supplies of an effective vaccine in the context of an influenza pandemic would be via an equal lottery. I argue that, even if one accepts McLachlan's ethical theory, it does not follow that one should accept the vaccine lottery. McLachlan's argument relies upon two suppressed premises which, I maintain, one need not accept; and it misconstrues vaccination programmes as clinical interventions targeted (...) solely at protecting the health of vaccinated individuals, rather than as public health interventions targeted at protecting the health of the population as a whole. (shrink)

How can mathematical models which represent the causal structure of the world incompletely or incorrectly have any scientific value? I argue that this apparent puzzle is an artifact of a realist emphasis on representation in the philosophy of modeling. I offer an alternative, pragmatic methodology of modeling, inspired by classic papers by modelers themselves. The crux of the view is that models developed for purposes other than explanation may be justified without reference to their representational properties.

The new wave of ‘foundation models’—general-purpose generative AI models, for production of text (e.g., ChatGPT) or images (e.g., MidJourney)—represent a dramatic advance in the state of the art for AI. But their use also introduces a range of new risks, which has prompted an ongoing conversation about possible regulatory mechanisms. Here we propose a specific principle that should be incorporated into legislation: that any organization developing a foundation model intended for public use must demonstrate a reliable detection mechanism for the (...) content it generates, as a condition of its public release. The detection mechanism should be made publicly available in a tool that allows users to query, for an arbitrary item of content, whether the item was generated (wholly or partly) by the model. In this paper, we argue that this requirement is technically feasible and would play an important role in reducing certain risks from new AI models in many domains. We also outline a number of options for the tool’s design, and summarize a number of points where further input from policymakers and researchers would be required. (shrink)

Most work addressing clinical workers' professional responsibilities concerns the norms of conduct within established professional–patient relationships, but such responsibilities may extend beyond the clinical context. We explore health workers' professional responsibilities in such “informal” encounters through the example of a doctor witnessing the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of a serious long-term condition in a television documentary, arguing that neither internalist approaches to professional responsibility nor externalist ones provide sufficiently clear guidance in such situations. We propose that a mix of both approaches, (...) emphasizing the noncomplacency and practical wisdom of virtue ethics, but grounding the normative authority of virtue in an external source, is able to engage with the health worker's responsibilities in such situations to the individual, the health care system, and the population at large. (shrink)

Some say that public policy can be made without the benefit of theory--that it emerges, instead, through trial-and-error. Others see genuine philosophical issues in public affairs but try to resolve them through fanciful examples. Both, argues Robert E. Goodin, are wrong. Goodin--a political scientist who is also an associate editor of Ethics--shows that empirical and ethical theory can and should guide policy. To be useful, however, these philosophical discussions of public affairs must draw upon actual policy experiences rather than contrived (...) cases. Further, they must reflect the broader social consequences of policies rather than just the dilemmas of personal conscience. Effectively integrating the literatures of social science, policy science, and philosophy, Goodin provides a theoretically sophisticated yet empirically well-grounded analysis of public policies, the principles underlying them, the institutions shaping them, and the excuses offered for their failures. This analysis is enhanced by the author's discussion of such specific cases as the disposal of nuclear wastes and the priority accorded national defense--cases that illustrate Goodin's theoretical and methodological framework for approaching policy issues. (shrink)

A clinical ethics fit for the Anthropocene—our current geological era in which human activity is the primary determinant of environmental change—needs to incorporate environmental ethics to be fit for clinical practice. Conservationist Aldo Leopold’s essay ‘The Land Ethic’ is probably the most widely-cited source in environmental philosophy; but Leopold’s work, and environmental ethics generally, has made little impression on clinical ethics. The Land Ethic holds that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of (...) the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” I argue that a Land Ethic helps to re-frame problems in clinical ethics that more common philosophical approaches struggle to handle, and that it can be incorporated into clinical ethics without succumbing to “environmental fascism”. I motivate viewing problems in clinical ethics from the perspective of the ‘integrity of the biotic community’, then illustrate how this perspective can offer guidance where more commonly-invoked theories—such as consequentialism and Kantian-inspired approaches—struggle, using antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial infection as a case study. The Land Ethic equips us to understand human values as arising within and inseparable from a social-ecological context, and by treating communities as valuable in themselves rather than just through the aggregate welfare of their individual participants, we can avoid problems with the ‘repugnant conclusion’ and utility monster that plague utilitarian accounts. (shrink)

his paper argues that we will never get rid of the extremist mentality unless the dualist view prevails and is taught as part of the educational system. The dualist view takes account of both sides of an argument whereas the extremist view promotes one side unequivocally without considering the merits of the opposing view. The merits of the dualist view can be taught in schools so that everyone learns to recognise that mentality when it is evident not only in other (...) people’s behaviour but also in their own thinking about things. The dualist view is a flexible one involving trial-and-error processes as we work our way through life. That view is contrasted with the monist view that focuses on one point of view to the exclusion of all others. The extremist’s view is usually monistic and is intolerable of views that contradict or dispute their dogmatic view of things. This paper therefore examines these two contrasting views. It outlines the spectrum between monist and dualist ways of thinking, and it concludes that systematic form of dualism is possible that takes the middle way between the extremes of dogmatic and sceptical thinking. Only through dualist studies will the dualist view be more thoroughly developed, as is outlined here. (shrink)