Human conflict and its resolution is obviously a subject of great practical importance. Equally obviously, it is a vast subject, ranging from total war at one end of the spectrum to negotiated settlement at its other end. The literature on the subject is correspondingly vast and, in recent times, technical, thanks to the valuable contributions made to it by game theorists, economists, and writers on industrial and international relations. In this essay, however, I shall discuss only one familiar form of (...) conflict-resolution. There is room for such a discussion, because philosophers have lately neglected compromise, despite the interest shown in it by the aforementioned experts, and despite the classic treatments of it by Halifax, Burke and Morley. Truly, ‘…compromise is not so widely discussed by philosophers as one might expect’, and ‘…the idea of compromise has been largely neglected by Anglo-American jurisprudence’. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas, or moral conflicts, present a leading problem in Ethics. Ross calls them the problem of conflicting prima facie moral obligations. Lemmon calls them ‘moral dilemmas’, and Sinnott-Armstrong in his recent book discusses them thoroughly and provides extensive references to relevant literature.

This paper responds to the recent situationist critique of practical rationality and decision-making. According to that critique, empirical evidence indicates that our choices are governed by morally irrelevant situational factors and not durable character traits, and rarely result from overt rational deliberation. This critique is taken to indicate that popular moral theories in the Western tradition are descriptively deficient, even if normatively plausible or desirable. But we believe that the situationist findings regarding the sources of, or influences over, our moral (...) agency do not reflect durable features of human nature, and claim that these findings are a byproduct of a deficient approach to moral education. Existing models of moral education, which are “positive” in nature, do a poor job of developing virtuous people. Instead, we argue that a “negative” approach to moral education, traceable to Locke, Smith, and Rousseau, would be more successful. This strategy represents something of a compromise between the strategies adopted by thinkers like Rachana Kamtekar : 458–491 2004), who argues that traditional moral categories escape largely untouched by findings in social psychology, and John Doris :504–530 1998) and Gilbert Harman : 87–94 2003), who argue that findings in psychology prove our traditional moral theories are defective. (shrink)

Context The conduct of medical research led by Northern countries in developing countries raises ethical questions. The assessment of research protocols has to be twofold, with a first reading in the country of origin and a second one in the country where the research takes place. This reading should benefit from an independent local ethical review of protocols. Consequently, ethics committees for medical research are evolving in Africa. Objective To investigate the process of establishing ethics committees and their independence. Method (...) Descriptive study of 25 African countries and two North American countries. Data were recorded by questionnaire and interviews. Two visits of ethics committee meetings were conducted on the ground: over a period of 3 months in Kigali (Rwanda) and 2 months in Washington DC (USA). Results 22 countries participated in this study, 20 from Africa and two from North America. The response rate was 80%. 75% of local African committees developed into national ethics committees. During the last 5 years, these national committees have grown on a structural level. The circumstances of creation and the general context of underdevelopment remain the major challenges in Africa. Their independence could not be ensured without continuous training and efficient funding mechanisms. Institutional ethics committees are well established in USA and in Canada, whereas ethics committees in North America are weakened by the institutional affiliation of their members. Conclusion The process of establishing ethics committees could affect their functioning and compromise their independence in some African countries and in North America. (shrink)

This discussion completes 'Moral Dilemmas, Compromise and Compensation' ("Philosophy", Vol. 66. No. 257, July 1991). In correction of the earlier discussion, the claim that resolution of moral dilemmas by compromise is always preferable to resolution by compensation, is withdrawn. In a particular case, the decision which is preferable requires judgment (Subsec. 3.8). In amplification of the earlier discussion, it is observed that another way of resolving moral conflicts is what M P. Follett calls 'Integration'. In this, the one (...) claimant is made better off and the other claimant is made no worse off. This is in fact an application of a principle of Pareto's. Here again, in a particular case, the decision whether resolution by integration is preferable to resolution by compromise, requires judgment (Subsec. 3.5). (shrink)

The United Network for Organ Sharing , the national organisation responsible for transplantable organ distribution in the United States, recently condemned the direct solicitation of organs in situations “where no personal bond exists between the patient and the donor or donor family”.1 UNOS worries that “such appeals, although well-intentioned, compromise the principle of fairness” or worse, “may divert organs from patients with critical need to those who are less ill.”.

Marketing research interviewers often feel that they must compromise their own moral principles while executing work-related activities. This finding is based on analysis of data obtained from three focus group interviews and a mail survey of 173 telephone survey interviewers. Data from the mail survey were used to construct scales measuring interviewers' perceived necessity of moral compromise, moral character, and job satisfaction. The three scales then were used in a hierarchical regression analysis to predict incidences of interviewers' self-reported (...) proscribed behaviors on the job, the latter being an index of behaviors known by interviewers to be wrong. Results support all hypothesized relationships. (shrink)

In jurisdictions where voluntary assisted dying is legal, eligibility assessments, prescription and administration of a VAD substance are commonly performed by senior doctors. Junior doctors’ involvement is limited to a range of more peripheral aspects of patient care relating to VAD. In the Australian state of Victoria, where VAD has been legal since June 2019, all health professionals have a right under the legislation to conscientiously object to involvement in the VAD process, including provision of information about VAD. While this (...) protection appears categorical and straightforward, conscientious objection to VAD-related care is ethically complex for junior doctors for reasons that are specific to this group of clinicians. For junior doctors wishing to exercise a conscientious objection to VAD, their dependence on their senior colleagues for career progression creates unique risks and burdens. In a context where senior colleagues are supportive of VAD, the junior doctor’s subordinate position in the medical hierarchy exposes them to potential significant harms: compromising their moral integrity by participating, or compromising their career progression by objecting. In jurisdictions intending to provide all health professionals with meaningful conscientious objection protection in relation to VAD, strong specific support for junior doctors is needed through local institutional policies and culture. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Background: Increasing interest in empirical ethics has enhanced understanding of healthcare professionals’ ethical problems and attendant decision-making. A four-stage decision-making model involving ethical attention, reasoning, intention and action offers further insights into how more than reasoning alone may contribute to decision-making.Aims: To explore how the four-stage model can increase understanding of decision-making in healthcare and describe the decision-making of an under-researched professional group.Methods: 23 purposively sampled UK community pharmacists were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe ethical problems in their work (...) and how they were resolved. Framework analysis of transcribed interviews utilised the four decision-making stages, together with constant comparative methods and deviant-case analysis.Results: Pharmacists were often inattentive and constructed problems in legal terms. Ethical reasoning was limited, but examples of appeals to consequences, the golden rule, religious faith and common-sense experience emerged. Ethical intention was compromised by frequent concern about legal prosecution. Ethical inaction was common, typified by pharmacists’ failure to report healthcare professionals’ bad practices, and ethical passivity emerged to describe these negative examples of the four decision-making stages. Pharmacists occasionally described more ethically active decision-making, but this often involved ethical uncertainty.Discussion: The four decision-making stages are a useful tool in considering how healthcare professionals try to resolve ethical problems in practice. They reveal processes often ignored in normative theories, and their recognition and the emergence of ethical passivity indicates the complexity of decision-making in practice. Ethical passivity may be deleterious to patients’ welfare, and concerns emerge about improving pharmacists’ ethical training and promoting ethical awareness and responsibility. (shrink)

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

Buildings are constructed for accommodating living and industrial needs. Floor cleaning robots have been developed to cater to the demand of these buildings. Area coverage and coverage time are crucial performance factors of a floor cleaning robot. Reconfigurable tiling robots have been introduced over fixed shape robots to improve area coverage in floor cleaning applications compared to robots with fixed morphologies. However, area coverage and coverage time of a tiling robot compromised one another. This study proposes a novel concept that (...) considers the ability of a tiling robot to configure both its morphology and size according to the environment. This concept is inspired by the pleomorphism that could be seen in bacteria. In this regard, P-hTetro, a pleomorphic tiling robot that can reconfigure its morphology and size, is considered. A novel coverage strategy for realizing the size reconfiguration is also proposed. According to this strategy, the robot covers obstacle-free areas with its maximum size, while an obstacle cluster is covered after shrinking to an optimum size. The optimum size for reconfiguration is determined by the genetic algorithm based on the arrangement of the environment. The performance and behavior of the proposed P-hTetro have been compared against that of an existing tiling robot which has a fixed size. According to the statistical outcomes, a tiling robot with the ability to reconfigure its size can significantly improve the performance in the aspects of area coverage and coverage time compared to a tiling robot with no ability to reconfigure its size. (shrink)

Recently, Rueger and Sharp (1996) and Koperski (1998) have been concerned to show that certain procedural accounts of model confirmation are compromised by non-linear dynamics. We suggest that the issues raised are better approached by considering whether chaotic data analysis methods allow for reliable inference from data. We provide a framework and an example of this approach.

I advance a type of conceptualist argument for substance dualism – minimally, the view that we are spiritual substances that have bodies – based on the understandability of what it would be for something to be a spirit, e.g. what it would be for God to be a spirit. After presenting the argument formally, I clarify and defend its various premises with a special focus on what I take to be the most controversial one, namely, if thinking matter is metaphysically (...) possible, it is not the case that we have a distinct positive concept of God's being a divine spirit. (shrink)

There are two tasks for any adequate philosophy of mind: (1) articulate one’s position and explain why dualism is the commonsense view; (2) defend one’s position. I believe that there is an argument that simultaneously satisfies both desiderata in a non–ad hoc way and, thus, the argument can thereby claim the virtue of theoretical simplicity in its favor. In what follows, I shall present the argument and defend its most crucial premise, respond to three criticisms that have been raised against (...) it, and draw out one dialectical implication of the argument. (shrink)

Objectives: To determine the effects of risk and payment on subjects’ willingness to participate, and to examine how payment influences subjects’ potential behaviours and risk evaluations.Methods: A 3 × 3 , between subjects, completely randomised factorial design was used. Students enrolled at one of five US pharmacy schools read a recruitment notice and informed consent form for a hypothetical study, and completed a questionnaire. Risk level was manipulated using recruitment notices and informed consent documents from hypothetical biomedical research projects. Payment (...) levels were determined using the payment models evaluated by Dickert and Grady as a guide. Five dependent variables were assessed in the questionnaire: willingness to participate, willingness to participate with no payment, propensity to neglect to tell about restricted activities, propensity to neglect to tell about negative effects, and risk rating.Results: Monetary payment had positive effects on respondents’ willingness to participate in research, regardless of the level of risk. However, higher monetary payments did not appear to blind respondents to the risks of a study. Payment had some influence on respondents’ potential behaviours regarding concealing information about restricted activities. However, payment did not appear to have a significant effect on respondents’ propensity to neglect to tell researchers about negative effects.Conclusions: Monetary payments appear to do what they are intended to do: make subjects more willing to participate in research. Concerns about payments blinding subjects to risks could not be substantiated in the present study. However, the findings do raise other concerns—notably the potential for payments to diminish the integrity of a study’s findings. Future research is critical to make sound decisions about the payment of research subjects. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the world is an amazing and puzzling fact in its own right. Indeed, consciousness is one of the most mystifying features of the cosmos. The unity of consciousness is something that cries out for analysis and explanation as well. This chapter provides a way of relating the three types of unity: objectual phenomenal unity; subject phenomenal unity; and subsumptive phenomenal unity. According to Tim Bayne and David Chalmers, this sort of unity is irrelevant for investigating (...) the nature of consciousness' unity because it is trivially true by definition and tells us nothing about consciousness. Many thinkers, including Bayne himself, believe there is no self or subject that unifies consciousness. Bayne's position amounts to a bunch of mere assertions that allow him to avoid an obvious solution: substance dualism. (shrink)

For some time now, Nancey Murphy has been a major voice on behalf of a certain form of Christian physicalism. This is a part of her project of reconciling science with Christian faith. In what follows, I shall state and criticize the three central components of her Christian physicalism, followed by a presentation of a dualist alternative along with a clarification of its advantages over Murphy-style physicalism.

While most philosophers agree that libertarian agency and naturalism are incompatible, few attempts have been offered to spell out in some detail just why this is the case. My purpose in this article is to fill this gap in the literature by expanding on and clarifying the connection between naturalism as it is widely understood today and the rejection of libertarian agency. To accomplish this end I begin by clarifying different forms of libertarian agency and identity the key philosophical components (...) that constitute libertarian agency per se. Second, three different aspects of contemporary scientific naturalism are analyzed and the relations among them clarified: the naturalist epistemic attitude, etiology, and ontology. This is followed by a presentation of six arguments for the claim that libertarian agency should be rejected by advocates of scientific naturalism. Finally, I criticize a recent attempt by Randolf Clarke to reconcile libertarian agency and scientific naturalism. (shrink)

Although canine identification of body odor (BO) has been widely used as forensic evidence, the concept of nosewitness identification by human observers was only recently put to the test. The results indicated that BOs associated with male characters in authentic crime videos could later be identified in BO lineup tests well above chance. To further evaluate nosewitness memory, we assessed the effects of lineup size (Experiment 1) and retention interval (Experiment 2), using a forced-choice memory test. The results showed that (...) nosewitness identification works for all lineup sizes (3, 5, and 8 BOs), but that larger lineups compromise identification performance in similarity to observations from eye- and earwitness studies. Also in line with previous eye- and earwitness studies, but in disagreement with some studies on odor memory, Experiment 2 showed significant forgetting between shorter retention intervals (15 min) and longer retention intervals (1-week) using lineups of five BOs. Altogether this study shows that identification of BO in a forensic setting is possible and has limits and characteristics in line with witness identification through other sensory modalities. (shrink)

1. Introduction . In the chapter which he devotes to the applications of his principle of individual liberty, Mill considers the question ‘how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the prevention of crime, or of accident’. On the latter topic, he writes:—‘… it is a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents. If either a public officer or anyone else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were (...) no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river.”. (shrink)

Moral conflicts occur in theories that involve more than one principle. I examine basic ways of dealing with moral dilemmas in medical ethics and in ethics generally, and propose a different approach based on a principle I call the "mutuality principle". It is offered as an addition to Tom Beauchamp and James Childress' principlism. The principle calls for the mutual enhancement of basic moral values. After explaining the principle and its strengths, I test it by way of an examination of (...) three responses—in the recent Festschrift for Dr Raanon Gillon—to a case involving parental refusal of a blood transfusion. The strongest response is the one that comes closest to the requirements of the mutuality principle but yet falls short. I argue that the mutuality principle provides an explicit future orientation in principlism and gives it greater moral coherence. (shrink)

One of the most important features of living beings that seems universal is perhaps their ability to be modified in a functional way.In order to modelize this characteristic, we designed automata with a finite number of instantaneous internal descriptions, with input(s) and output(s) and which are able to be functionally modified.

Voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about living and dying will be lostIn the first of this two part series, I unpack the historical philosophical distinction between killing and allowing a patient to die in order to clear up the confusion that exists. Historically speaking the two kinds of actions are morally distinct because of older notions of causality and human agency. We no longer understand that distinction primarily because (...) we have shifted our notions of causality from a traditional formulation to a modern formulation of causality and thus of moral assessment that focuses on the effects of an action. In this essay, I prepare the ground for a companion essay by showing that the traditional formulation allows us to maintain notions of meaning and purpose to human living and dying that are precluded in the efficiency paradigm of modernity. Taken together with the companion essay, I am claiming that voluntary active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should not be legalised because too much that is important about dying and living will be lost.TWO LIESIt would be naïve to think that euthanasia, in either the VAE sense, or in the more passive sense of PAS, does not happen. It would even be naïve to think that it does not occur in a non-voluntary form. It would be equally naïve, however, to think it could be controlled through governmental regulation. The real question with regard to PAS/VAE, put so eloquently by Martha Minow, is which lie do you countenance: the lie that euthanasia does not already happen, or the lie that it can be controlled without having repercussions well beyond the limits of procedural mastery?1 With this two part paper series, I will argue that the …. (shrink)

I criticize the view that top-down causation is a proper model for depicting and justifying belief in mental causation. When properly interpreted, I believe that there are no clear examples of top-down causation, and there is a persuasive case against it. In order to defend these claims, I, first, clarify three preliminary considerations; second, undermine alleged examples of top-down causation; third, present a case for why there is no top-down mental causation; fourth, explain an important option for moving forward in (...) preserving what we all know to be the case—that mental causation is real. (shrink)

I present and clarify one form of the modal argument for substance dualism, and go on to state and provide defeaters for five of the major arguments raised against the modal argument as a whole. I do not provide an unabridged defence of the modal argument. Instead, I focus on a range of defeaters scattered throughout the literature that are raised against the modal argument. In my view, these have not been gathered in one place and freshly evaluated. Accordingly, my (...) limited purpose is to fill this lacuna. Thus, I present a representative version of the modal argument to set the context for what follows. Next, I clarify and critique the five major objections directed at the modal argument in general. (shrink)

Hume fully recognised, and partially explained, the role of inductions from single experiments in human knowledge - something his Scottish critics, and some more recent ones, failed to understand. Those inferences, he maintains, depend on the use of a Newtonian rule and the removal of superfluous circumstances. But that rule is not sufficient, and Hume never stated the exact conditions of this removal. We should distinguish between survey and experience in his philosophy, to understand how experience of conjunctions where inductive (...) knowledge has accumulated, in uniform or regular classes or sets of phenomena, may produce cognitive situations when once is enough - without relying on any mysterious innate principles. (shrink)

Hume fully recognised, and partially explained, the role of inductions from single experiments in human knowledge - something his Scottish critics, and some more recent ones, failed to understand. Those inferences, he maintains, depend on the use of a Newtonian rule and the removal of superfluous circumstances. But that rule is not sufficient, and Hume never stated the exact conditions of this removal. We should distinguish between survey and experience in his philosophy, to understand how experience of conjunctions where inductive (...) knowledge has accumulated, in uniform or regular classes or sets of phenomena, may produce cognitive situations when once is enough - without relying on any mysterious innate principles. (shrink)

Steve Cowan had criticized my defense of theistic science on four grounds: (1) my critique of compatibilism attacks a straw man; (2) libertarianism cannot meet some of the conditions for responsible action; (3) attributing libertarian agency to God has the unacceptable implication that God can do evil; and (4) we don’t need libertarianism to provide a model of divine actions sufficient to justify the scientific detectability of miracles. I clarify and respond to these points in the order listed and conclude (...) that Cowan’s critique fails. (shrink)

This article reflects on three issues: the past twenty years of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, ideas for EPS's future, and some words of advice to my younger EPS colleagues. Regarding, I identify four values that were central to the rebirth of the EPS and that have guided us for twenty years. Regarding, I issue a warning and a challenge. Regarding, I provide three words of advice for keeping us on course.

In a previous article, I argue that on the assumption that God exercises libertarian agency, a primary causal divine miracle could, in principle, leave a scientifically detectable gap in the natural world. In a subsequent publication, Evan Fales offered a critique of my argument and this article is my rejoinder. I justify my employment of Divine libertarian agency and respond to Fales’s two, closely-related questions: How much energy could one add to a room by making a lot of decisions? Would (...) the increase in energy be measurable? (shrink)

The progress in artificial intelligence enables us to conceive adaptive systems whose characteristics are nearer and nearer to those of living beings. These characteristics though depend on ingenious choices by the designer of these systems: Initial conditions, parameters, optimisation functions, gradient and measure of fitness within the environment. Nevertheless, in living systems which are non-finalist, there are no programmers or designers to conceive of such ingenious choices. Our paper “Self-Programming Machines (I)” presents a non-finalist model since initial states and functions (...) are randomly chosen at the beginning and once and for all. In spite of the fact that they are non-finalist, these machines always stabilise at fixed points when they are connected to an external process. (shrink)

The first comprehensive study of Nietzsche's earliest book, The Birth of Tragedy, this important volume by M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern examines the work in detail: its place in Nietzsche's philosophical career; its value as an account of ancient Greek culture; its place in the history of German ideas, and its value as a theory of tragedy and music. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Lesley Chamberlain, illuminating its enduring (...) importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this accessible study has been revived for a new generation of readers. (shrink)