Are trust relationships involving humans and artificial agents possible? This controversial question has become a hotly debated topic in the emerging field of machine ethics. Employing a model of trust advanced by Buechner and Tavani :39–51, 2011), I argue that the “short answer” to this question is yes. However, I also argue that a more complete and nuanced answer will require us to articulate the various levels of trust that are also possible in environments comprising both human agents and (...) AAs. In defending this view, I show how James Moor’s model for distinguishing four levels of ethical agents in the context of machine ethics :18–21, 2006) can help us to develop a framework that differentiates four levels of trust. Via a series of hypothetical scenarios, I illustrate each level of trust involved in HA–AA relationships. Finally, I argue that these levels of trust reflect three key factors or variables: the level of autonomy of the individual AAs involved, the degree of risk/vulnerability on the part of the HAs who place their trust in the AAs, and the kind of interactions that occur between the HAs and AAs in the trust environments. (shrink)

Next SectionPurpose The importance of recognising patient dignity has been realised in recent years. Despite being a central phenomenon in medicine, dignity is a controversial concept, the definition of which in healthcare centres is influenced by a multitude of factors. The aim of this study was to explore the perspective of Iranian patients on respect for their dignity in healthcare centres. Methods With the use of purposeful sampling, 20 patients were interviewed over an 11-month period in three educational hospitals affiliated (...) with the government. They were questioned about experiences related to respect for their dignity during their hospital encounter. Data were processed by qualitative content analysis. Results Data analysis identified nine categories and four themes. Respondents expressed their expectations and attitudes about dignity by the following themes: seeking a haven; disrespecting privacy; communicating in a vacuum; and disregard for secondary caregivers. They described how respect for their privacy, effective communication, access to facilities, and a regard for the requirements of their companions made them feel that their dignity had been conserved. Conclusions The findings indicate that almost no patient is satisfied with the quality of services with respect to maintenance of their dignity. Regardless of their hospital location and state of health, most participants had common complaints. These findings agree with the literature and confirm that grounds should be provided for conserving dignity in the healthcare system. To reach this goal, healthcare professionals should be aware of the factors that violate or preserve dignity from the patient's perspective. (shrink)

A generic analysis of research article abstracts can cover issues of different types; among them are linguistic features. An integral part of linguistic features of research article abstracts is interactive metadiscourse usage that can assist to make the text persuasive and unfolding to a discourse community. The main principle behind applying interactive metadiscourse is the view of writing as socially engaging; specifically, it indicates the ways writers project themselves into their arguments to declare their attitudes and commitments to the readers. (...) This study aimed to explore how interactive metadiscourse markers are deployed by research article abstract writers belonging to different disciplinary communities within the soft sciences, while trying to reach the audience by creating a well-organized discourse. Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted to analyze 60 research article abstracts written in Applied Linguistics and Economics. Based on the results, there were marked variations found across the two disciplines in terms of interactive metadiscourse markers. (shrink)

Starting from a specific critique of the traditional «metaphysical mistake», Hannah Arendt comes to supporta “phenomenalism” that is not only radical but also spectacular in the sense that it enhances, not appearances that would replace an unknown being or substance, but an appearing as a unique exhibition on the world stage in view of an opinion to communicate or an action to perform. Along this path, an encounter with Merleau-Ponty’s thought can occur at several levels. Specifically, the thesis of the (...) ‘spectacular’ character of the world is presented in Arendt’s political theory as intimately linked to the thesis of an aesthetic and, at the same time, ontological basis of experience, which relates her thought to the Merleau-Pontian theory of vision as “thought conditioned” by the world and “which advents” as “instituted” in a body that is properly its own. For Arendt, thought is not only invisible, it is also ontologically visible as “doxa” in which it is divided into “aspects of world” that are revealed in a “specular” fashion as positions to take and show “outside,” to present and defend. This is a valuable asset in the context of political “advertising.”. (shrink)

The article is an investigation into theatricality from various standpoints in order to focus on different views on theatricality considered as partially emancipated from theatre and to verify if and to what extent each of them can apply to installation artworks as environments and intermedial devices. Ultimately the article propounds the idea of a paradoxical anti-theatrical theatricality of installation art, grasped in its very connection to site-specificity, critically engaging Martin Heidegger’s insights regarding the «Gestell» and the «work-being» of the work (...) of art, as a general theoretical basis through which a particular focus of ‘specificity’ of installation is endorsed. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

The inability of traditional Shi’a jurisprudents to respond to the challenges in the field of human rights and the rights of religious minorities, which is rooted in the denial of human dignity and the emphasis on religious dignity, has led to the emergence of a new discourse among contemporary Shi’a jurisprudents in Iran in recent years. This group of jurists known as reformist jurists seeks to re-evaluate the jurisprudential laws, re-interpret the Shari’a and find a way out of the religion (...) to reduce the existing conflict with the universal human rights standards. The opinions of this group of jurists, albeit criticized by the traditional scholars, have been welcomed by young clerics. To understand the main aspects of this jurisprudential dispute, two main questions have been considered by the researchers: What are the main principles of human rights in the thoughts of traditionalist and reformist jurists in Iran? And how differently have the reformist jurists conceptualized the subject of human rights? To answer these questions, the impact of traditional jurisprudents on the formulation of the current constitution of Iran is studied and the main differences between the views of traditional and modern jurists are evaluated. (shrink)

The common method of the traditional Islamic Jurisprudence in seminaries has been challenged by Ayatollah Yousef Saanei, one of the ten prominent Iranian Grand Ayatollahs. Saanei is well known for attempting to institutionalize a new method of Ijtihad, known as searching Ijtihad, which seeks to reconsider the common mode of understanding religious texts and jurisprudential inferences. His experiences of observing the systematic ineffectiveness and discrimination in popular jurisprudence regarding women’s rights, family, and religious minorities persuaded him to take scientific action (...) in revising the common jurisprudential method. In the present paper, the necessity of revising the common jurisprudential approach in seminaries from Saanei’s point of view is firstly studied. Afterwards, the foundations, principles, and methods of modern Saanei’s Ijtihad will be investigated to determine the structure and foundations of his jurisprudential method and evaluate its impact on resolving the contradictions between traditional perceptions of religion and human rights. (shrink)

In the recent decades, many Muslim intellectuals have devoted their intellectual efforts to reconstructing the jurisprudence through a new interpretation of Islam in order to solve the problem of human rights. While they have mostly tried to find a solution based on Ijtihad in derivation of Shari’a, Mahmoud Mohammad Taha and Mohsen Kadivar have asked for structural Ijtihad, presenting reversed and rational abrogation theories. In the current article, the researcher aims to focus on three main questions: Why do they believe (...) that traditional jurisprudence and Ijtihad in derivatives are not able to solve the conflict between Islam and human rights? What are the most important governing principles in the corrective theory of each thinker, and how can their proposed theories lead to the reconciliation of Islam and human rights? And finally, what are the most fundamental principles and common features that lie in the theory of the two thinkers? (shrink)

A review of Cecilia Sjöholm‘s Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things.

Is there a relationship between the psychological construct of hierarchic managerial role motivation and the moral construct of role-related ethical orientation? In this study we examine this question using responses from a sample of 147 business students in Hong Kong. Managerial role motivation or motivation to manage is defined as an internal force that leads select individuals to pursue, enjoy, and succeed in management positions in relatively large hierarchical organizations. As hypothesized, respondents with higher levels of managerial role motivation demonstrated (...) greater managerial role-related ethical orientation as compared with their less managerially motivated counterparts. Similarly, respondents with higher levels of respect for authority figures, competitive games, competitive situations, assertive role, imposing wishes, and a liking for routine administrative functions possessed greater ethical orientations. The research significance, limitations and future field applications are discussed. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

The current study was a cross-sectional research and aimed to investigate the factor structure, internal consistency, and validities of the Persian version of the Teasing Questionnaire-Revised. Forward and backward translations of the TQ-R were performed; face and content validities were determined based on comments by a sample of psychology students and specialists. Using the cluster sampling method, 290 participants were recruited, and 201 valid data were analyzed. The factor structure was assessed by confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. The result of (...) the confirmatory factor analysis did not confirm the proposed three, four, and five-factor models. EFA revealed four factors with 23 items, explaining 52.03% of the total variance. The internal consistency of the Persian version of Teasing Questionnaire 23 was in the excellent range, and its expected associations with external correlates supported the measure’s convergent validity. The findings indicated that the Persian version of the TQ-R has sound psychometric properties and can be used as a valid and reliable tool in research and clinical outcomes. (shrink)

A longstanding orthodoxy holds that the Mohists regard the promotion of li (benefit, 利) as their ultimate normative criterion, meaning that they measure what is yi (just, 義) or buyi (unjust, 不義) depending on whether it maximizes li or not. This orthodoxy dates back at least to Joseph Edkins (1859), who saw Mozi as a utilitarian and an ally of Bentham. In this paper, we will argue that this orthodoxy should be reconsidered because it does not square with several passages (...) from the Mozi. That the Mohists place a strong weight on the promotion of ‘li for the whole world (tianxia zhi li, 天下之利)’ is uncontroversial. We argue, however, that in certain cases the Mohist moral calculus diverges in its rationale or outcome from li-promotionalism. This position rejects the orthodoxy by showing that Mohism and li-promotionalism are not entirely coterminous. (shrink)

The autonomy of chronic patients in Iranian hospitals is challenged by impaired functioning resulting from chronic illness, a negative image in society, and effects related to hospitalization. Comprehensive interviews and observations of 34 patients, nurses, and physicians were performed to assess the autonomy of chronic patients in Iran. Conceptualization, constant comparison, and the combination of data resulted in the identification of 5 main categories related to autonomy: welcoming paternalism, self-expression, self-proof, shared decision making, and self-determination. Authority scrambling was a central (...) category describing chronic patients’ perceptions of their autonomy during hospitalization. These patients sought to maintain their independence despite serious threats to their autonomy. (shrink)

Dignity is the most fundamental right of every human being, patients in particular. Despite being a fairly disputed concept, dignity is a multidimensional issue, the interpretation of which is affected by a multitude of factors. Semistructured interviews and observation data from 35 patients, their companions, and nurses were performed to highlight their views with regard to patients? dignity in health care centers. Although findings reveal that nearly all patients felt that their dignity had been violated, there is a considerable difference (...) between participants? viewpoints of dignity. Interactions among participants can increase their awareness of dignity and may lead to its maintenance. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to explore, through a qualitative study of small regional airports, how sustainability issues are taken into account in remote small- and medium-sized enterprises. Based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted with managers of small regional Canadian airports and experts in this area, this study shows the quasi-absence of specific measures for sustainability, despite the seriousness of environmental issues, which tend to be subordinated to economic priorities and operational activities. The paper contributes to the literature on (...) sustainability in SMEs by focusing on passive organizations located in remote areas and the complex reasons underlying their lack or absence of environmental commitment. The paper sheds more light on the essential role of stakeholders in providing the resources and skills necessary for the development of sustainability initiatives in passive SMEs. The study’s managerial contributions and implications for stakeholders are also discussed. (shrink)

This essay critically examines some classic philosophical and legal theories of privacy, organized into four categories: the nonintrusion, seclusion, limitation, and control theories of privacy. Although each theory includes one or more important insights regarding the concept of privacy, I argue that each falls short of providing an adequate account of privacy. I then examine and defend a theory of privacy that incorporates elements of the classic theories into one unified theory: the Restricted Access/Limited Control (RALC) theory of privacy. Using (...) an example involving data-mining technology on the Internet, I show how RALC can help us to frame an online privacy policy that is sufficiently comprehensive in scope to address a wide range of privacy concerns that arise in connection with computers and information technology. (shrink)

Background:To provide care with high quality, nurses face a number of moral issues requiring them to have moral abilities in professional performance. Moral sensitivity is the first step in moral performance. However, its relation to the quality of care patients receive is controversial.Research objective:This study aims to determine the relationship between the moral sensitivity of nurses and the quality of care received by patients in the medical wards.Research design:A descriptive correlational study using validated tools, including Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the (...) Quality Patient Quality Scale.Participants and research context:In total, 198 nurses and 198 patients in 17 medical wards of hospitals affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran.Ethical considerations:The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.Findings:The mean values of nurses’ moral sensitivity and nurses’ quality care were 136.47 ± 13.30 and 196.36 ± 44.10, respectively. There was no significant relationship between the patient care quality and nurses’ moral sensitivity ( r = −.14, p =.5). However, there was a significant inverse relationship between the dimension of “Experiencing moral conflicts” and the overall score of quality care ( r = −.50, p =.04), the dimensions of “psychosocial ( r = −.50, p =.04)” and “physical ( r = −.50, p =.03).”Conclusion:Considering the significant inverse relationship between the score of patient quality care and the dimension of moral conflict experience, it seems when nurses make moral decisions, they experience a conflict between personal and professional values in their careers and thus experience moral tension. If this tension is not resolved properly, it can provide a way for them to distance themselves from patients, thereby making nurses indifferent to moral care. (shrink)

What exactly is Cyberethics? How did the field develop? What are some of the central issues and themes in this field, and what methodologies are used by those working in this area of applied ethics? These and related questions are considered in the readings included in Chapter 1. It is perhaps important to note at the outset that the field that many are now beginning to refer to as "cyberethics" has until quite recently been referred to by the more general (...) label "computer ethics." Other expressions that are also now used to refer to ethical issues involving computing and Internet technologies are "information ethics," "information technology ethics," "information and communication technology ethics," "global information ethics," and "Internet ethics." As in the case of "Internet ethics," "cyberethics" is intended to refer to ethical concerns involving the Internet, in particular. And it is primarily with ethical issues involving that particular medium that we will be concerned in this textbook of readings. It is also important to note that the expression "computer ethics" describes better the impact that computing technology in general has had for ethics as well as for our social and political institutions. Although our main concern will be with those ethical issues involving the Internet, many of the readings included in Chapter 1 are also concerned with ethical issues in a broader sense of computing technologies. Hence, the expressions "cyberethics" and "computer ethics" may, at times, be used interchangeably in this chapter. (shrink)

The Velvet Revolution of Armenia, which took place in 2018, was an important event in the history of Armenia and changed the government peacefully by means of large demonstrations, rallies and marches. This historic event was covered by Armenian news media. Our goal here was to do a Discourse-Historical Analysis of the Armenian Velvet Revolution as covered by two Armenian websites: armenpress.am-the governmental website and 168.am-the non-governmental website. In our analysis we identified how the lexicon related to the Armenian Velvet (...) Revolution was negotiated and legitimized by these media, and which discursive strategies were applied. We concluded that ‘Armenpress’ paid more attention to the government’s speeches, discussions, meetings and tried to impose the opinion of the government upon the people. In contrast, ‘168’ tried to present itself as an independent website with a neutral attitude toward the Velvet Revolution but, in reality, as we can conclude from the negative opinions about the Velvet Revolution in the coverage of ‘168’, it also represented the government’s interests. There was also a discursive struggle over the exact meaning of ‘revolution’ and the sense of ‘velvet’ in politics and the academic field that was to some extent introduced by these media. (shrink)

Over the past years, Massive Open Online Courses have emerged as new competitive advantages in the digital economy of higher education globally. Accordingly, an increasing number of individuals are attracted to these new learning environments for developing their knowledge and skills in a variety of subject areas. Despite these developments, research on linguistic features of MOOCs lectures as the main mediums for delivering the course contents remained limited. To address this gap, the present study analyzed a corpus of MOOCs lectures (...) with around 4.45 million words to determine the size of vocabulary knowledge needed for 95 and 98% coverages. The findings revealed that sufficient coverage of the course contents requires knowledge of the 5,000 most frequent words in English. Nonetheless, achieving adequate coverage level requires a much larger vocabulary size of around 9,000 most frequent words in English. The study also found that widely used word lists for general and academic vocabulary fail to support MOOCs learners with sufficient vocabulary knowledge for adequate lexical coverage. Based on these findings, the study draws a number of implications for preparing non-native English speakers to use MOOCs effectively and setting research-informed vocabulary learning goals in instructional programs and materials. (shrink)

The paper reviews a book by Massimo Modica dedicated to Denis Diderot's 'Salons' and in particular to Denis Diderot's statements about painter Claude-Josef Vernet and his "Promenade" (XVIII Century).

The present study examines certain challenges that KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) in general and data mining in particular pose for normative privacy and public policy. In an earlier work (see Tavani, 1999), I argued that certain applications of data-mining technology involving the manipulation of personal data raise special privacy concerns. Whereas the main purpose of the earlier essay was to show what those specific privacy concerns are and to describe how exactly those concerns have been introduced by the (...) use of certain KDD and data-mining techniques, the present study questions whether the use of those techniques necessarily violates the privacy of individuals. This question is considered vis-à-vis a recent theory of privacy advanced by James Moor (1997). The implications of that privacy theory for a data-mining policy are also considered. (shrink)

Privacy concerns involving data mining are examined in terms of four questions: What exactly is data mining? How does data mining raise concerns for personal privacy? How do privacy concerns raised by data mining differ from those concerns introduced by traditional information-retrieval techniques in computer databases? How do privacy concerns raised by mining personal data from the Internet differ from those concerns introduced by mining such data from data warehouses? It is argued that the practice of using data-mining techniques, whether (...) on the Internet or in data warehouses, to gain information about persons raises privacy concerns that go beyond concerns introduced in traditional information-retrieval techniques in computer databases and are not covered by present data-protection guidelines and privacy laws. (shrink)

This paper examines the question whether, and to what extent, John Locke’s classic theory of property can be applied to the current debate involving intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the information commons. Organized into four main sections, Section 1 includes a brief exposition of Locke’s arguments for the just appropriation of physical objects and tangible property. In Section 2, I consider some challenges involved in extending Locke’s labor theory of property to the debate about IPRs and digital information. In Section (...) 3, it is argued that even if the labor analogy breaks down, we should not necessarily infer that Locke’s theory has no relevance for the contemporary debate involving IPRs and the information commons. Alternatively, I argue that much of what Locke has to say about the kinds of considerations that ought to be accorded to the physical commons when appropriating objects from it – especially his proviso requiring that “enough and as good” be left for others – can also be applied to appropriations involving the information commons. Based on my reading of Locke’s proviso, I further argue that Locke would presume in favor of the information commons when competing interests (involving the rights of individual appropriators and the preservation of the commons) are at stake. In this sense, I believe that Locke offers us an adjudicative principle for evaluating the claims advanced by rival interests in the contemporary debate about IPRs and the information commons. In Section 4, I apply Locke’s proviso in my analysis of two recent copyright laws: the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I then argue that both laws violate the spirit of Locke’s proviso because they unfairly restrict the access that ordinary individuals have previously had to resources that comprise the information commons. Noting that Locke would not altogether reject copyright protection for IPRs, I conclude that Locke’s classic property theory provides a useful mechanism for adjudicating between claims about how best to ensure that individuals will be able to continue to access information in digitized form, while at the same time also allowing for that information to enjoy some form of legal protection. (shrink)

This essay examines issues involving personal privacy and informed consent that arise at the intersection of information and communication technology and population genomics research. I begin by briefly examining the ethical, legal, and social implications program requirements that were established to guide researchers working on the Human Genome Project. Next I consider a case illustration involving deCODE Genetics, a privately owned genetics company in Iceland, which raises some ethical concerns that are not clearly addressed in the current ELSI guidelines. The (...) deCODE case also illustrates some ways in which an ICT technique known as data mining has both aided and posed special challenges for researchers working in the field of population genomics. On the one hand, data-mining tools have greatly assisted researchers in mapping the human genome and in identifying certain “disease genes” common in specific populations. On the other hand, this technology has significantly threatened the privacy of research subjects participating in population genomics studies, who may, unwittingly, contribute to the construction of new groups that put those subjects at risk for discrimination and stigmatization. In the final section of this paper I examine some ways in which the use of data mining in the context of population genomics research poses a critical challenge for the principle of informed consent, which traditionally has played a central role in protecting the privacy interests of research subjects participating in epidemiological studies. (shrink)

During the past decade, a fairly extensive literature on the digital divide has emerged. Many reports and studies have provided statistical data pertaining to sociological aspects of ‘the divide,’ while some studies have examined policy issues involving universal service and universal access. Other studies have suggested ways in which the digital divide could be better understood if it were ‘reconceptualized’ in terms of an alternative metaphor, e.g. a ‘divide’ having to do with literacy, power, content, or the environment. However, with (...) the exception of Johnson and Koehler, authors have tended not to question ‐ at least not directly ‐ whether the digital divide is, at bottom, an ethical issue. Many authors seem to assume that because disparities involving access to computing technology exist, issues underlying the digital divide are necessarily moral in nature. Many further assume that because this particular ‘divide’ has to do with something that is digital or technological in nature, it is best understood as a computer ethical issue. The present study, which examines both assumptions, considers four questions: What exactly is the digital divide? Is this ‘divide’ ultimately an ethical issue? Assuming that the answer to is ‘yes,’ is the digital divide necessarily an issue for computer ethics? If the answer to is ‘yes,’ what can/should computer professionals do bridge the digital divide? (shrink)

The Mohists develop the concept of yi 義 to denote what is morally right in a normative sense. We argue that this concept has, as one of its necessary conditions, a requirement to not harm others. Additionally, we will show that the motivation of developing this concept is that it can be both universalized and publicly agreed upon, thus serving the Mohists’ endeavor to overcome human conflicts that make the world chaotic and unlivable. We argue therefore that the Mohist notion (...) of gongyi 公義 is best captured by the requirement of “not harming.” Moreover, we shall show that the Mohists themselves committed to this requirement as the first principle of all their core doctrines. Finally, we argue that due to the justifiability and universalizability of the requirement of “not harming,” the Mohists’ commitment to it as a prerequisite normatively justifies their other values in a way that was unprecedented at the time. (shrink)