This paper offers an ethical framework for the development of robots as home companions that are intended to address the isolation and reduced physical functioning of frail older people with capacity, especially those living alone in a noninstitutional setting. Our ethical framework gives autonomy priority in a list of purposes served by assistive technology in general, and carebots in particular. It first introduces the notion of “presence” and draws a distinction between humanoid multi-function robots and non-humanoid robots to suggest that (...) the former provide a more sophisticated presence than the latter. It then looks at the difference between lower-tech assistive technological support for older people and its benefits, and contrasts these with what robots can offer. This provides some context for the ethical assessment of robotic assistive technology. We then consider what might need to be added to presence to produce care from a companion robot that deals with older people’s reduced functioning and isolation. Finally, we outline and explain our ethical framework. We discuss how it combines sometimes conflicting values that the design of a carebot might incorporate, if informed by an analysis of the different roles that can be served by a companion robot. (shrink)
ABSTRACTContemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)
Business Ethics is intended for business practitioners and students of business at all levels and is written in a lively and accessible style. It redresses the balance of buisness ethics writing which, up to now, has been weighted heavily in favour of American cases. There are numerous references to real businesses - from multi-national chains to French restaurants, from manufacturing giants to driving schools. Ethically 'hot' topics such as the social chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, the new EC directives, entry (...) of the countries of the former Soviet Union into the world market economy, privatization and the 'green' environment are just some of the more general issues discussed. Companies covered in the book are: Allied Lyons, Apple Corporation, Avon, Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Barlow Clowes, Benetton, Body Shop, British Airways, British Rail, Cadbury-Schweppes, Ecology Building Society, Fiat, Gateway Foodmarkets, Grand Metropolitan, Guinness, ICI, John Lewis, Kingfisher, Ladbrokes, Lloyds Bank, Management Week, Marks & Spencer, Mirror Group Newspapers, Nestle, Polly Peck, Price Waterhouse, Scott Bader, Securicor, Traidcraft, United Biscuits, Virgin, Worldwide Fund for Nature...and many more. Packed with excellent examples from many international companies Written in a lively and accessible style. (shrink)
Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary. Analytic usually aspires to a very high degree of clarity and precision of formulation and argument, and it often seeks to be informed by, and consistent with, current natural science. In an earlier era, analytic philosophy aimed at agreement with ordinary linguistic intuitions or common sense beliefs, or both. All of these aspects of (...) the subject sit uneasily with the use of historical texts for philosophical illumination. In this book, ten distinguished philosophers explore the tensions between, and the possibilities of reconciling, analytic philosophy and history of philosophy. Contributors: M. R. Ayers, John Cottingham, Daniel Garber, Gary Hatfield, Anthony Kenny, Steven Nadler, G. A. J. Rogers, Tom Sorell, Catherine Wilson, Yves Charles Zarka. (shrink)
Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)
Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)
SCIENTISM AND 'SCIENTIFIC EMPIRICISM' WHAT IS SCIENTISM? Scientism is the belief that science, especially natural science, is much the most valuable part of ...
In Europe, telecare is the use of remote monitoring technology to enable vulnerable people to live independently in their own homes. The technology includes electronic tags and sensors that transmit information about the user's location and patterns of behavior in the user's home to an external hub, where it can trigger an intervention in an emergency. Telecare users in the United Kingdom sometimes report their unease about being monitored by a ?Big Brother,? and the same kind of electronic tags that (...) alert telecare hubs to the movements of someone with dementia who is ?wandering? are worn by terrorist suspects who have been placed under house arrest. For these and other reasons, such as ordinary privacy concerns, telecare is sometimes regarded as an objectionable extension of a ?surveillance state.? In this article, we defend the use of telecare against the charge that it is Orwellian. In the United States, the conception of telecare primarily as telemedicine, and the fact that it is not typically a government responsibility, make a supposed connection with a surveillance state even more doubtful than in Europe. The main objection, we argue, to telecare is not its intrusiveness, but the danger of its deepening the isolation of those who use it. There are ways of organizing telecare so that the independence and privacy of users are enhanced, but personal isolation may be harder to address. As telecare is a means of reducing the cost of publicly provided social and health care, and the need to reduce public spending is growing, the correlative problem of isolation must be addressed alongside the goal of promoting independence. (shrink)
Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)
"Modern" philosophy in the West is said to have begun with Bacon and Descartes. Their methodological and metaphysical writings, in conjunction with the discoveries that marked the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, are supposed to have interred both Aristotelian and scholastic science and the philosophy that supported it. But did the new or "modern" philosophy effect a complete break with what preceded it? Were Bacon and Descartes untainted by scholastic influences? The theme of this book is that the new and traditional philosophies (...) have much more in common than the orthodox account suggests. The contributors consider not only modernity in metaphysics and the sciences but also the claims of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza to have invented "modern" ethics and politics. These two aspects of "modernity" in philosophy are connected for the first time. The book offers a broad view of the early modern philosophers, covering not only the much-studied major figures but also relatively neglected writers: Mersenne, Gassendi, White, and Sergeant. (shrink)
No single text could be considered more important in the history of philosophy than Descartes' Meditations. This unique collection of background material to this magisterial philosophical text has been translated from the original French and Latin. The texts gathered here illustrate the kinds of principles, assumptions, and philosophical methods that were commonplace when Descartes was growing up. The selections are from: Francisco Sanches, Christopher Clavius, Pierre de la Ramee, Francisco Suárez, Pierre Charron, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Scipion Dupleix, Marin Mersenne, (...) Pierre Gassendi, Jean de Silhon, François de la Mothe le Vayer, Charles Sorel, and Jean-Baptiste Morin. (shrink)
In this book Tom Sorell argues that emergencies can justify types of action that would normally be regarded as wrong. Beginning with the ethics of emergencies facing individuals, he explores the range of effective and legitimate private emergency response and its relation to public institutions, such as national governments. He develops a theory of the response of governments to public emergencies which indicates the possibility of a democratic politics that is liberal but that takes seriously threats to life and limb (...) from public disorder, crime or terrorism. Informed by Hobbes, Schmitt and Walzer, but substantially different from them, the book widens the justification for recourse to normally forbidden measures, without resorting to illiberal politics. This book will interest students of politics, philosophy, international relations and law. (shrink)
Telecare is often regarded as a win/win solution to the growing problem of meeting the care needs of an ageing population. In this paper we call attention to some of the ways in which telecare is not a win/win solution but rather aggravates many of the long-standing ethical tensions that surround the care of the elderly. It may reduce the call on carers' time and energy by automating some aspects of care, particularly daily monitoring. This can release carers for other (...) caring activities. On the other hand, remote and impersonal monitoring seems to fall short of providing care. Monitoring may be used to help elderly users retain independence. But it may also increase the amount of information which flows from users to carers, which can result in a form of function-creep that actually undermines independence. (shrink)
Contemporary experimental philosophers sometimes use versions of an argument from the history of philosophy to defend the claim that what they do is philosophy. Although experimental philosophers conduct surveys and carry out what appear to be experiments in psychology, making them methodologically different from most analytic philosophers working today, techniques like theirs were not out of the ordinary in the philosophy of the past, early modern philosophy in particular. Or so some of them argue. This paper disputes the argument, citing (...) important differences between early modern philosopher-scientists – Descartes, Hobbes and Boyle – and their supposed modern counterparts. Although there is some continuity between early modern philosopher-scientists and the contemporary experimentalists, it is mostly a continuity of interest in empirically informed philosophy, not a distinctively experimental philosophy. (shrink)
Jecker’s paper focuses on the value of sex and sexuality in the lives of older people, and she argues that there is nothing wrong with the use of sex robots to realise that value. She concedes that sex robots marketed today are overwhelmingly designed for heterosexual males, and that their appearance corresponds to certain objectionable stereotypes of sexually attractive women, and of exciting sexual practices. Still, she says, sex robots do not have to be like that, and a less stereotype-ridden (...) design could take away the sexism, heterosexualism and ageism of current ones. I am sympathetic to these conclusions. But I believe that they are not general enough, and I want to take issue with the argumentative strategy that leads to them. The conclusions are not general enough, because disability or bad circumstantial luck can lead to the damaging absence of sex in the lives of people from many adult age groups, not just people in their 70s and 80s. Jecker’s paper starts with the case of couples whose sex life deteriorates with old age. But there are also many people, whether disabled or not, who fail to acquire a sex life, and who want one, sometimes desperately. They, too, have a problem that a suitable sex robot might help …. (shrink)
It was as a political thinker that Thomas Hobbes first came to prominence, and it is as a political theorist that he is most studied today. Yet the range of his writings extends well beyond morals and politics. Hobbes had distinctive views in metaphysics and epistemology, and wrote about such subjects as history, law, and religion. He also produced full-scale treatises in physics, optics, and geometry. All of these areas are covered in this Companion, most in considerable detail. The volume (...) also reflects the multidisciplinary nature of current Hobbes scholarship by drawing together perspectives that are now being developed in parallel by philosophers, historians of science and mathematics, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. (shrink)
Agents sometimes feel free to resort to underhand or brutal measures in coping with an emergency. Because emergencies seem to relax moral inhibitions as well as carrying the risk of great loss of life or injury, it may seem morally urgent to prevent them or curtail them as far as possible. I discuss some cases of private emergency that go against this suggestion. Prevention seems morally urgent primarily in the case of public emergencies. But these are the responsibility of defensibly (...) partisan agents, and call for the exercise of powers that are legitimately hard to control. Philosophical standards for dealing with public emergency often ignore these facts, and are unduly moralistic as a result. (shrink)
Values such as respect for autonomy, safety, enablement, independence, privacy and social connectedness should be reflected in the design of social robots. The same values should affect the process by which robots are introduced into the homes of older people to support independent living. These values may, however, be in tension. We explored what potential users thought about these values, and how the tensions between them could be resolved. With the help of partners in the ACCOMPANY project, 21 focus groups (...) were convened in France, the Netherlands and the UK. These groups consisted of: older people, informal carers and formal carers of older people. The participants were asked to discuss scenarios in which there is a conflict between older people and others over how a robot should be used, these conflicts reflecting tensions between values. Participants favoured compromise, persuasion and negotiation as a means of reaching agreement. Roles and related role-norms for the robot were thought relevant to resolving tensions, as were hypothetical agreements between users and robot-providers before the robot is introduced into the home. Participants’ understanding of each of the values—autonomy, safety, enablement, independence, privacy and social connectedness—is reported. Participants tended to agree that autonomy often has priority over the other values, with the exception in certain cases of safety. The second part of the paper discusses how the values could be incorporated into the design of social robots and operationalised in line with the views expressed by the participants. (shrink)
_Moral Theory and Anomaly_ considers and rejects the claim that moral theory is too utopian to apply properly to worldly pursuits like political office holding and business, and too patriarchal and speciesist to generate a theory of justice applicable to women and the non-human natural world.
In this study, Tom Sorell seeks to rehabilitate views that are often instantly dismissed in analytic philosophy. His book serves as a reinterpretation of Cartesianism and responds directly to the dislike of Descartes in contemporary philosophy. To identify what is defensible in Cartesianism, Sorell starts with a picture of unreconstructed Cartesianism, which is characterized as realistic, antisceptical but respectful of scepticism, rationalist, centered on the first person, dualist, and dubious of the comprehensiveness of natural science and its supposed independence of (...) metaphysics. Bridging the gap between history of philosophy and analytic philosophy, Sorell also shows for the first time how some contemporary analytic philosophy is deeply Cartesian, despite its outward hostility to Cartesianism. (shrink)
Agents sometimes feel free to resort to underhand or brutal measures in coping with an emergency. Because emergencies seem to relax moral inhibitions as well as carrying the risk of great loss of life or injury, it may seem morally urgent to prevent them or curtail them as far as possible. I discuss some cases of private emergency that go against this suggestion. Prevention seems morally urgent primarily in the case of public emergencies. But these are the responsibility of defensibly (...) partisan agents, and call for the exercise of powers that are legitimately hard to control. Philosophical standards for dealing with public emergency often ignore these facts, and are unduly moralistic as a result. (shrink)
Principlism is the approach promoted by Beauchamp and Childress for addressing the ethics of medical practice. Instead of evaluating clinical decisions by means of full-scale theories from moral philosophy, Beauchamp and Childress refer people to four principles—of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Now it is one thing for principlism to be invoked in an academic literature dwelling on a stock topic of medical ethical writing: end-of-life decisions, for example. It is another when the topic lies further from the mainstream. In (...) such cases the cost of reaching for the familiar Beauchamp and Childress framework, with its formulaic set of concerns, may be to miss something morally important. After discussing an example of the sort of academic literature I have in mind, I propose to distinguish the uses of the formulaic from the uses of the more unapologetically theoretical in applied ethics, and to suggest that the latter can make up for some of the limitations of the former. This is not to say that the more theoretical literature has no limitations of its own, or that it should take the place of the formulaic. On the contrary, there is room in applied ethics and a use in applied ethics for both. But there is a sense in which there is a greater dependence of principlism on theory than the other way round, and at the end I try to spell out the significance of this fact. (shrink)
Hobbes thinks that people who submit to government can not only hope for, but actually experience, something they recognise as a good life. The good life involves the exercise of harmless liberty –activity that the sovereign should not prohibit. The exchange of harmless liberty in the commonwealth for ruthless self-protection in the state of nature is what might be called Hobbes’s peace dividend. It is the liberty of ordinary citizens to buy, sell, choose and practice a trade as a source (...) of income, and the liberty to keep some of the proceeds if the state does not need resources for public protection. (shrink)
Consumers can sustain markets that are morally questionable. They can make immoral or morally suspect demands of individual businesses, especially small businesses. Even when they do not, the costs to firms of consumer protection can sometimes drive them to ruin. This paper presents cases where deference to the consumer is variously unwarranted, cases that may prompt second thoughts about some kinds of consumerism.
Mass-marketing frauds are on the increase. Given the amount of monies lost and the psychological impact of MMFs there is an urgent need to develop new and effective methods to prevent more of these crimes. This paper reports the early planning of automated methods our interdisciplinary team are developing to prevent and detect MMF. Importantly, the paper presents the ethical and social constraints involved in such a model and suggests concerns others might also consider when developing automated systems.
This paper explores ethical issues raised by whole slide image-based computational pathology. After briefly giving examples drawn from some recent literature of advances in this field, we consider some ethical problems it might be thought to pose. These arise from the tension between artificial intelligence research—with its hunger for more and more data—and the default preference in data ethics and data protection law for the minimisation of personal data collection and processing; the fact that computational pathology lends itself to kinds (...) of data fusion that go against data ethics norms and some norms of biobanking; the fact that AI methods are esoteric and produce results that are sometimes unexplainable and the fact that computational pathology is particularly dependent on scanning technology manufacturers with interests of their own in profit-making from data collection. We shall suggest that most of these issues are resolvable. (shrink)
Rene Descartes had a remarkably short working life, yet his contribution to philosophy and physics have endured to this day. He is perhaps best known for his statement, "Cogito, ergo sum," the cornerstone of his metaphysics. Descartes did not intend the metaphysics to stand apart from his scientific work, which included important investigations into physics, mathematics, and optics. In this book, Sorell shows that Descarates was, above all, an advocate and practitioner of the new mathematical approach to physics, and that (...) he developed his philosophies to support his discoveries in the sciences. (shrink)
In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act criminalizes the act of meeting a child—someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be pursued in this paper is whether grooming—I confine myself to online grooming—is justly criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, but (...) there are others, sometimes associated with terrorism. According to me, the general argument misapplies certain considerations about autonomy that are alleged to be in force in other areas of criminal law. Contrary to that general argument, criminalization of preparatory acts does not, in general, bypass the agency of citizens. Moreover, the criminalization of preparatory acts can disrupt activity that would have led to very serious crime, and with relatively low costs to the perpetrators, costs that reflect the non-occurrence of the more serious crime. There is evidence that grooming is harmful in itself, and so another point against the general argument is its assumption that preparatory offences are often harmless or at least victimless. There are objections to some of the undercover policing techniques that lead to a Section 15 prosecution, but these objections are not all weighty. (shrink)
Microfinance - the practice of providing small loans to promote entrepreneurial activity among those with few financial assets - is increasingly seen as a sustainable means of aiding the global poor. Perhaps its most influential advocate, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, has claimed that there is a human right to microfinance, given its potential for poverty alleviation. This book directs critical philosophical attention at this very widely used and praised poverty-reducing measure. In chapters that discuss microfinance schemes and models around the (...) world, internationally renowned contributors address important questions about both the positive impact of microfinance and cases of exploitation and repayment pressure. Exploring how far microfinance can or should be situated within broader concerns about justice, this volume sheds light on ethical issues that have so far received little systematic attention, and it advances discussion on new human rights, exploitation, and global justice. (shrink)
Descartes was disappointed with most of the Objections collected to accompany the Meditations in 1641, but he took a particularly dim view of the Third Set. ‘I am surprised that I have found not one valid argument in these objections,’ he wrote, close to the end of a series of curt and dismissive replies. The author of the objections was Thomas Hobbes. There was one other unfriendly exchange between Descartes and Hobbes in 1641. Descartes received through Mersenne some letters criticizing (...) theses in the Dioptrics, one of the Essays published with the Discourse on Method in 1637. Mersenne did not name Hobbes as the writer of the letters, attributing them to an unspecified Englishman, and it seems that Descartes never connected the critic of his optics with the author of the objections to his metaphysics. Nevertheless, Descartes responded with some hostility to the letters, angrily rebutting some points about refraction and charging that others had been appropriated from his own writings. Insinuating that the English correspondent was dishonest, Descartes decided to have no more to do with him. A meeting between the two men did take place in 1648 at a dinner given by the Marquis of Newcastle, but even on this occasion they did not see eye to eye, getting into an argument about the nature of hardness. (shrink)
