Anyone who is not a deontological absolutist regarding truthfulness will readily agree with Christopher Meyers’s thesis that there are cases in which...

Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible (...) to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Alan Turing’s 1950 imitation game has been widely understood as a means for testing if an entity is intelligent. Following a series of papers by Diane Proudfoot, I offer a socio-technological interpretation of Turing’s paper and present an alternative way of understanding both the imitation game and Turing’s concept of intelligence. Turing, I claim, saw intelligence as a social concept, meaning that possession of intelligence is a property determined by society’s attitude toward the entity. He realized that as long as (...) human society held a prejudiced attitude toward machinery—seeing machines a priori as mindless objects—machines could not be said to be intelligent, by definition. He also realized, though, that if humans’ a priori, chauvinistic attitude toward machinery changed, the existence of intelligent machines would become logically possible. Turing thought that such a change would eventually occur: He believed that when scientists overcome the technological challenge of constructing sophisticated machines that could imitate human verbal behavior—i.e., do well in the imitation game—humans’ prejudiced attitude toward machinery will have altered in such a way that machines could be said to be intelligent. The imitation game, for Turing, was not an intelligence test, but a technological aspiration whose realization would likely involve a change in society’s attitude toward machines. (shrink)

The late Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld possessed the enviable ability to relate to a wide range of people. The genuineness of his caring for others, his rock-solid convictions and fluent expression created a magnetic personality few could resist. His ch.

In this book, Shlomo Biderman examines the views, outlooks, and attitudes of two distinct cultures: the West and classical India. He turns to a rich and varied collection of primary sources: the _Rg Veda_, the Upanishads, and texts by the Buddhist philosophers Någårjuna and Vasubandhu, among others. In studying the West, Biderman considers the Bible and its commentaries, the writings of such philosophers as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, and Derrida, and the literature of Kafka, Melville, and Orwell. Additional sources (...) are Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ and seminal films like Ingmar Bergman's _Persona_. Biderman uses concrete examples from religion and literature to illustrate the formal aspects of the philosophical problems of transcendence, language, selfhood, and the external world and then demonstrates their plausibility in actual situations. Though his method of analysis is comparative, Biderman does not adopt the disinterested stance of an "ideal" spectator. Rather, Biderman approaches ancient Indian thought and culture from a Western philosophical standpoint to uncover cultural presuppositions that can be difficult to expose from within the culture in question. The result is a fascinating landmark in the study of Indian and Western thought. Through his comparative prism, Biderman explores the most basic ideas underlying human culture, and his investigation not only sheds light on India's philosophical traditions but also facilitates a deeper understanding of our own. (shrink)

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world. -/- This book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic (...) future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind's relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and more. (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism's notion of “nudging” refers to steering individual decision making so as to make choosers better off without breaching their free choice. If successful, this may offer an ideal synthesis between the duty to respect patient autonomy and that of beneficence, which at times favors paternalistic influence. A growing body of literature attempts to assess the merits of nudging in health care. However, this literature deals almost exclusively with health policy, while the question of the potential benefit of nudging (...) for the practice of informed consent has escaped systematic analysis. This article focuses on this question. While it concedes that nudging could amount to improper exploitation of cognitive weaknesses, it defends the practice of nudging in a wide range of other conditions. The conclusion is that, when ethically legitimate, nudging offers an important new paradigm for informed consent, with a special potential to overcome the classical dilemma between paternalistic beneficence and respect for autonomy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces the category of ‘non-deceptive manipulation that causes false beliefs’, analyzes how it narrows the traditional scope of ‘deception’, and draws moral implications.

“de-extinction” refers to the process of resurrecting extinct species by genetic methods. This science-fiction-sounding idea is in fact already in early processes of scientific implementation. Although this recent “revival of the dead” raises deep ethical questions, the ethics of de-extinction has barely received philosophical treatment. Rather than seeking a verdict for or against de-extinction, this paper attempts an overview and some novel analyses of the main ethical considerations. Five dimensions of the ethics of de-extinction are explored: (a) the possible contribution (...) of de-extinction to promoting ecological values, (b) the deontological argument that we owe de-extinction to species we rendered extinct, (c) the question of “playing God” through de-extinction, (d) the utilitarian perspective, and (e) the role of aesthetic considerations in the ethics of de-extinction. A general feature arising from the paper’s discussion is that, due to de-extinction’s special character, it repeatedly tests the limits of our ethical notions. (shrink)

The nocebo effect, the mirror-phenomenon to the placebo effect, is when the expectation of a negative outcome precipitates the corresponding symptom or leads to its exacerbation. One of the basic ethical duties in health care is to obtain informed consent from patients before treatment; however, the disclosure of information regarding potential complications or side effects that this involves may precipitate a nocebo effect. While dilemmas between the principles of respect for patient autonomy and of nonmaleficence are recognized in medical ethics, (...) there has not yet been an ethical discussion focused on the potential dilemma raised by the nocebo effect of informed consent. This dilemma is especially pernicious, since it involves a direct causality of harm by the caregiver that is unparalleled by other potential harmful effects of information disclosure. This paper articulates the dilemma of the NEIC and offers a seminal ethical analysis. (shrink)

Thus, Meyers provides a valuable account, not only of current medical attitudes, but also of relevant case and statute law as it stands at present.

Based on a survey of editors, publishers and staff members of 300 newspapers, this work documents the ethical confusion in the American press in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers controversy. It provides an analytical and historical framework to show how the press reached this point and argues for an ethical audit to give publications an independent check on their moral condition.

Identitat ist unter den Bedingungen der Postmoderne kein festes Ganzes mehr. Die unuberschaubare Anzahl an Moglichkeiten in Ausbildung, Studium, Beruf, aber auch Partnerschaft und Lebensformen fuhren zu der Einsicht, dass Identitat sich immer neu konstituieren muss. Tatsachlich ist Identitat das, was mich als unverwechselbares Ich korperlich und geistig - und das heisst: leiblich - konstituiert. Zugleich entzieht sie sich mir und muss immer wieder neu errungen werden. Dies gilt gerade dann, wenn fruhere Ideale zusammenbrechen oder das zuvor Selbstverstandliche nicht mehr (...) tragt. Identitat und Identitatsbildung betreffen den Einzelnen ebenso wie politische oder religiose Gemeinschaften. In Zeiten, in denen vieles in Bewegung ist, ist Identitat eng verbunden mit der Frage nach den gemeinsamen Werten - das, wofur es sich zu leben lohnt und was wir an die nachste Generation weitergeben mochten. Besondere Beachtung verdienen in diesem Kontext phanomenologische Ansatze, die den leiblichen, sinnlichen und affektiven Dimensionen des Lebens Rechnung tragen. Auf diese Weise lassen sich Erfahrungen, die unsere Identitat begrunden und ausmachen, als Momente einer breiter angelegten Spiritualitat der Wahrnehmung verstehen. Mit Beitragen von Johannes Bundgens, Natalie Depraz, Stephan Gratzel, Caroline Horch, Antje Kapust, Rolf Kuhn, Elmar Nass, Simone Paganini, Michaela Puzicha, Bertin Rautenberg, Holger Zaborowski u. a. (shrink)

Ever since the discovery of Marx's Early Writings, most of the literature concerned with Marx's intellectual development has centred around the so-called gap between the 'young' Marx, who was considered to be a humanist thinker, and the 'older' Marx, who was held to be a determinist with little concern for anything outside his narrow theory of historical materialism. Dr Avineri claims that such a gap between the 'young' and 'older' Marx did not exist. He supports his claim by a detailed (...) study of the whole corpus of Marx's writing on social and political thought. (shrink)

ArgumentThe Argentine-based Yiddish philosophical journal Davke functioned as a mediator between general European philosophy and Jewish philosophy. Its editor Shlomo Suskovich wished to introduce readers of Yiddish to the western tradition of philosophy and, at the same time, to show how Jewish thought contributed to abstract thinking. Through topical issues dedicated to central ideas or to giants among Jewish philosophers, particular knowledge could be successfully transmitted to the reading public. Sigmund Freud was honored with such a topical issue. In (...) it the editor wished to show this Jew's contribution to basic philosophical contemplation rather than limit the discussion to his contributions in the field of psychology. In the central article of the issue on Freud, the editor emphasizes that all the articles in the issue, including those which deal with psychoanalysis, focus on Freud's importance to the world of ideas rather than just the world of medicine. (shrink)

Moral reflection and deliberation on both deception and manipulation is hindered by lack of agreement on the precise meanings of these concepts. Specifically, there is disagreement on how to understand their relation vis-à-vis each other. Curiously, according to one prominent view, all deceptions are instances of manipulations, while according to another, all manipulations are instances of deceptions. This paper makes that implicit disagreement explicit, and argues that both views are untenable. It concludes that deception and manipulation partially overlap, and takes (...) further steps in delineating the border between these concepts. The paper ends with the conclusion that moral judgments regarding either manipulation or deception cannot be transferred wholesale from the one concept to the other just by virtue of the relations between the concepts. (shrink)

_Interpretation in Religion_ is the work of a group of contemporary American, European, and Israeli scholars and philosophers, who analyze the crucial course of interpretation in religion — religion in general, and, in particular, Hinduism, ancient Egyptian religion, Judaism, christianity, and Islam.

section 1. Medical ethics -- section 2. Technology -- section 3. Social and business issues -- section 4. Ritual -- section 5. Women -- section 6. Israel -- section 7. Kashrut -- section 8. Jewish identity and marriage -- section 9. Shabbat and holiday.

This conversation took place in December 2002 but was published much later. It focuses on ethics.

We reviewed 272 phase I oncology trial consent forms and then created an improved informed consent template in both English and Spanish by redesigning and rewording the consent form to be specific to phase I trials, to avoid repetition, and to use simplified language, identifiable sections framed by first-person questions, and tables to present information. The resulting consent form template is shorter than average and considerably easier to read . The template also meets the recommended eighth-grade maximum reading level for (...) consent forms. Use of this template should help improve the informed consent process. (shrink)

One of the fundamental enigmas of our existence, and for that matter, God's existence, is the act of creation. Has the cosmos been created ex nihilo or was it an intelligent design by God? Does God, having created the world, let it evolve and develop on its own, subject to the rules of evolution and chance; or does God intervene in every step of evolution in a deus ex machina manner? What is the role of man in creation? Is it (...) as central as existentialism and quantum mechanics assure us: that without human consciousness interacting with energy-matter, there would not be any objects and life forms? Is man the crown of creation permanently, or once evolution forms a more effective connecting agent between spirit and energy-matter, will man be relegated to the world of fossils? The book concludes with a thorough examination of human norms, values and morals. As such, this book constitutes a comprehensive treatise on the genesis of the world, the birth of God, and the role of man. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to formulate first-order Peano arithmetic within the resources of relevant logic, and to demonstrate certain properties of the system thus formulated. Striking among these properties are the facts that it is trivial that relevant arithmetic is absolutely consistent, but classical first-order Peano arithmetic is straightforwardly contained in relevant arithmetic. Under, I shall show in particular that 0 = 1 is a non-theorem of relevant arithmetic; this, of course, is exactly the formula whose unprovability was (...) sought in the Hilbert program for proving arithmetic consistent. Under, I shall exhibit the requisite translation, drawing some Goedelian conclusions therefrom. Left open, however, is the critical problem whether Ackermann’s rule γ is admissible for theories of relevant arithmetic. The particular system of relevant Peano arithmetic featured in this paper shall be called R♯. Its logical base shall be the system R of relevant implication, taken in its first-order form RQ. Among other Peano arithmetics we shall consider here in particular the systems C♯, J♯, and RM3♯; these are based respectively on the classical logic C, the intuitionistic logic J, and the Sobocinski-Dunn semi-relevant logic RM3. And another feature of the paper will be the presentation of a system of natural deduction for R♯, along lines valid for first-order relevant theories in general. This formulation of R♯ makes it possible to construct relevantly valid arithmetical deductions in an easy and natural way; it is based on, but is in some respects more convenient than, the natural deduction formulations for relevant logics developed by Anderson and Belnap in Entailment. (shrink)

There is a disturbing kind of situation that presents agents with only two possibilities of moral action—one especially praiseworthy, the other condemnable. I describe such scenarios and argue that moral action in them exhibits a unique set of parameters: performing the commendable action is especially praiseworthy; not performing is not blameworthy; not performing is wrong. This set of parameters is distinct from those which characterize either moral obligation or supererogation. It is accordingly claimed that it defines a distinct, yet unrecognized, (...) deontic category, to which the name ‘Forced Supererogation’ is appropriate. The moral parameters of Forced Supererogation and the relations between them are discussed, especially the divergence of wrongness and blame. I argue that this new category allows a more accurate classification of moral actions than that imposed by the strained dichotomy of obligation versus supererogation. (shrink)

How is women’s conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women’s lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics survive in face of the diversity of women’s experience, which is shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as by gender? Exploring such questions, leading feminist thinkers have (...) reinvigorated work on the concept of self and personal identity, as demonstrated by the discussions in this insightful volume.The concerns that animate feminist scholarship have prompted feminist philosophers to sideline the theme of individualism and to focus on the theme of intersubjectivity. In conceptualizing the self, the contributors to this volume highlight emotional bonds among people, the stories people tell one another, and the systems of categories and behavioral norms that unite and divide groups of people. Topics addressed include sexual violence and the self, the social self and autonomy, the narrative self and integrity, self-ownership and the body, forgetting yourself and your race, group membership and personal identity, grief and gender, sympathy and women’s diversity, emotion and emancipatory epistemology, and dependency and justice. This volume will be important reading for students of feminist theory, ethics, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

The inclusion of engineering standards in US science education standards is potentially important because of how limited engineering education for K-12 learners is, despite the ubiquity of engineering in students’ lives. However, the majority of learners experience science education throughout their compulsory schooling. If improved engineering literacy is to be achieved, then its inclusion in science curricula is perhaps the most efficient means. One significant challenge that arises, however, is in the framing of engineering relative to science by both teachers (...) and curriculum. Science and engineering are both distinct and interdependent. The nature of the contributions of science and engineering to one another has been an area of some examination in philosophy of technology and engineering, but little framing of this relationship has been conducted with K-12 science and engineering education contexts in mind. Nature of science is a critical layer of scientific understanding that has been used to explicitly support literacy in K-16 science classrooms for decades. However, engineering cannot be authentically and appropriately supported by NOS framing. There is an immediate need for discourse on the nature of engineering knowledge but not in isolation of NOS. Given the increasing inclusion of engineering in science classrooms, relationships between NOS and NOEK are in need of explication and argument. Our purpose is to promote a discussion about NOS, engineering, and the relationship between them without misrepresenting engineering as a subdomain of science or as an oversimplification of itself. (shrink)

Since the introduction of radio and television news, journalism has gone through multiple transformations, but each time it has been sustained by a commitment to basic values and best practices. Journalism Ethics is a reminder, a defense and an elucidation of core journalistic values, with particular emphasis on the interplay of theory, conceptual analysis and practice. The book begins with a sophisticated model for ethical decision-making, one that connects classical theories with the central purposes of journalism. Top scholars from philosophy, (...) journalism and communications offer essays on such topics as objectivity, privacy, confidentiality, conflict of interest, the history of journalism, online journalism, and the definition of a journalist. The result is a guide to ethically sound and socially justified journalism-in whatever form that practice emerges. Journalism Ethics will appeal to students and teachers of journalism ethics, as well as journalists and practical ethicists in general. (shrink)

The nonidentity problem is a deep puzzle challenging the moral intuition that what is bad must be bad for someone. The first part of the paper constructs a new theory of harming, whereas the second part builds on the conclusions of the first to offer a new solution to the NIP. The first part discusses the neglected question of when a burden inflicted in the context of overall benefitting can be discretized as a separate entity—only when it can, is it (...) possible to identify the burden as harm, and only then is it possible to harm in bringing into overall good existence. The second part explains how, in those cases where creating is indeed harming, we can use the logic of concept expansion to construct a concept of wronging that applies to creation cases. (shrink)

Recent research, especially with functional brain imaging, demonstrated cases where the administration of a placebo produces objective effects in tissues that are indistinguishable from those of the real therapeutic agents. This phenomenon has been shown in treatments of pain, depression, Parkinsonism, and more. The main ethical complaint against placebo treatment is that it is a kind of deception, where supposedly we substitute what works just psychologically for a real drug that actually works on the tissue level. We claim that the (...) scientific findings bring to a new level the seeming deconstruction of the distinction between “placebo” and “real” drugs, and that instances of placebo treatment which fulfill this criterion should be recognized as a unique category—we call it “comparable placebo treatment” (CPT). The paper uses an analysis of the notion of deception to argue that CPT does not amount to deception; that it can preserve patient autonomy; and that it is therefore morally legitimate. (shrink)

John Rawls, father of contemporary distributive justice, professed the metaphysical neutrality of his theory, and formulated an additional theory to support such neutrality generally. This article exposes Rawls’s own theological underpinnings concerning his conception of the moral arbitrariness of existence, and his structural dichotomous approach for engaging it. I show how both of his theories are reminiscent of Calvin, employing methods of bifurcation, and thus generating tensions within both the concept of justice and moral personality. I end with analysis of (...) the relationship of this structural rationality to arbitrariness. This exposure of Rawls’s theological debt is part of a wider argument concerning the theological basis of distributive justice theory, and the relevance of Theology for philosophical ethics. (shrink)

A central debate in the ethics of deception concerns the moral comparison among the three media through which deception is executed: lying, falsely implicating, or nonlinguistic deception. The two prominent views are that lying is morally worse or that the choice of medium is morally insignificant. This article refutes both and argues for a new position. The article first presents a theory on the moral significance of the medium of deception as such: it argues that the medium of communication affects (...) the reliability of beliefs formed through it, which amounts to gradations in the warrant of truth of different media. Breach of lower warrant of truth is a lesser breach of trust; it therefore deserves lighter condemnation. Consequently, the article shows that, morally speaking, lying is either worse than or equal to falsely implicating and that there is no a priori gradation between nonlinguistic deception and the two linguistic media. (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism is an approach within current distributive justice theory which aims to focus redistributive efforts solely upon disadvantages that ensue from bad luck. This article considers how central assumptions and themes of both luck egalitarianism and its critics parallel those of providence theology and share some of their concerns. These relate to problems such as the basis of equality, the extent and nature of our knowledge, and of course, the paternalism that assessing people’s responsibility over their own disadvantages involves. (...) I highlight the similarity of luck egalitarianism to the role of providence and providence theory thinking, and particularly the tension between egalitarianism as a theological concept and the condescension inherent to imitatio Dei ethics. I approach these issues by analyzing standard criticisms of the luck egalitarian project, espoused by Susan Hurley and Elizabeth Anderson. I then proceed to assess the values of luck egalitarianism itself and consider different models of providence, and the meaning of this analysis for normative ethics. The subject matter of this article is part of a wider comparison of distributive justice and providence theory, within which luck egalitarianism affords a very fruitful and highly relevant case study. (shrink)