I discuss everyday situations that bring about and contain suffering. We must take it seriously and distinguish between mental and physical pain and full-fledged suffering that entails dysphoria. I focus on morally relevant cases where I am innocent and contrast them with cases where my suffering is my fault. I discuss cases where we harm others and suffer from guilt and remorse. Our moral emotions cause extra suffering; sometimes, a person’s suffering is vicarious. Finally, I tackle the argument that suffering (...) develops the sufferer’s virtues. I believe suffering is an intrinsic evil, and its good consequences are controversial and, at best, incidental. One may also argue that suffering ruins the victim’s character. This question may belong to empirical psychology. (shrink)

Business ethics represents an important aspect that influences each country’s socio-economic system, and is important to society, environment, and economy. The present article aims to define significant attributes of business ethics in the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and compares their attitudes within the three most significant business sectors in the Visegrad Group countries (V4 countries: Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Poland, and Hungary). An empirical study, focusing on the attitudes of small and medium-sized firms, was conducted in June (...) 2022 in Visegrad Group countries through the reputable hired company MNFORCE, using the Computer Assisted Web Interviewing research method. The total number of respondents in the Visegrad Group countries was 1,398. Statistical hypotheses were tested using descriptive statistics, chi-square, and Z-score at a significance level of α = 5%. The most important conclusion of this research is that there are no significant differences in the approach of SMEs to business ethics based on the sector in which the companies operate. Some notable differences in attitudes among SMEs in Slovakia and the Czech Republic were identified, but these were marginal. Therefore, differences in the transformation process within selected economic sectors do not impact the formation of attitudes of small and medium-sized companies in business ethics. It is evident that business ethics is significantly determined primarily by the personal characteristics of the owner/manager of the company, and the specificities of individual sectors do not influence this field. (shrink)

Considering the recent epigenetic studies on the transgenerational transmission of trauma, this article aims to 1) explore its ethical implications for the concept and nature of moral damage, and 2) offer normative suggestions on collective responsibilities both synchronic and diachronic. To do so, I first address recent epigenetic studies’ showing the crystallization of emotional information through generations, and second, defend that a unified approach to the concept of ghost damage may be useful to categorize this phenomenon, facilitate future research on (...) this type of moral damage, and recognize its importance in the identification of hermeneutical injustice. Finally, I suggest that granting a right to transgenerational information may help avoid the perpetuation of inherited damage that jeopardize mental and physical health in the offspring. (shrink)

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has raised concerns regarding the potential risks it may pose to humans, society, and the environment. Recent advancements have intensified these concerns, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of the technical, societal, and ethical aspects that could lead to adverse or harmful failures in decisions made by autonomous and intelligent systems (AIS). This paper aims to examine the ethical dimensions of risk management in AIS. Its objective is to highlight the significance of (...) ethical considerations in mitigating risks associated with the development, deployment, and use of AIS. The paper provides an overview of various types of AI risks and risk management procedures aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of those risks. We employ a comprehensive risk management approach that combines technical expertise with ethical analysis to ensure alignment with human values and societal objectives. Through the analysis of AI risks and risk management procedures, we advocate for establishing effective mechanisms for ethical oversight and legal control to promote ethical and trustworthy AIS. The findings reveal key risks associated with transparency, accountability, privacy infringement, algorithmic bias, and unintended consequences. To address these challenges, we consider integrating ethical principles into risk management practices, transparent risk communication, continuous engagement with all stakeholders, establishing robust accountability mechanisms, and regular ethical oversight as imperative in ethically designing and operating AI systems. Given the diminished effectiveness of internal audits compared to external audits, we also recommend the implementation of regular monitoring mechanisms through independent external audits when evaluating risk management practices. (shrink)

The ecological crisis affects every person and place on the planet. Environmental thinking reflects on the causes of this crisis, the diversity of its consequences, as well as its solutions and their perception by individuals in the past and present. The presentation of local contexts of perceptions and solutions to the crisis emerging from lesser-known traditions helps to complete a holistic picture of a human and to find answers to the question of how to act rightly. Even Czech environmental thinking (...) emerging from specific Central European traditions (J. Hus, J. A. Comenius, T. G. Masaryk, V. Havel) has the potential to enrich the image of a human and the perception of the morality of existing proposed solutions. In the following text, the author will present the prehistory of environmental thinking in Czech lands, the development of this thinking, and the most important authors of the last 30 years. The presented research results are based on historical and research methods, the most important monographs, and scientific articles in the field of philosophy, history of philosophy, ethics, and sociology. Topics covered include the introduction and problems of evolutionary ontology, the importance of philosophy and environmental philosophy in times of ecological crisis, the issues of communities of people of voluntary frugality, the socio-ecological approach, ecological rationality, etc. The article points to the dominance of ecocentric views on the ecological crisis in Czech thinking, as well as to the causes of the limits of environmental thinking in the Czech environment. (shrink)

The bioethical principle of autonomy is of paramount importance within medical practice. The extent to which a patient’s autonomy overlaps or conflicts with the physician’s duty of beneficence and non-maleficence, however, is not so clear cut, especially for those cases in which the patient’s request for medical intervention goes against the physician’s advice, either because of personal belief or because there is uncertainty regarding the therapeutic approach. Body integrity dysphoria (BID) is a condition that has been included recently in the (...) International Classification of Diseases, 11th edition (ICD-11). It may lead an affected individual to develop an intense desire to remove a specific body part in order to restore congruity between their body and their mind. Thus, its occurrence creates challenging moral and ethical dilemmas for the medical world (Loriga, 2023). The aim of this study was to investigate how Czech physicians understood, assessed and supported patient autonomy regarding requests for invasive body modifications. The objective was to produce a blueprint regarding how much a patient could influence the medical treatment they could gain within the Czech medical system and to develop a comparison with the ethical challenges of BID. A five-section survey was designed and submitted to Czech physicians on topics relevant to the BID debate. On the surface, the results showed an apparent predisposition toward collaboration between doctors and patients. However, further investigation showed that this supposed collaboration crumbled as the physiological risk-reward ratio moved further toward risk, which caused physicians progressively to rely less on the patient’s opinion and psychological needs. Moreover, a strongly authoritarian approach was evident, which became overwhelming in cases of amputation requests and removed, a priori, any collaboration. The results indicate that the Czech medical system does not accept or comprehend fully patients’ psychological needs, and therefore the BID phenomenon is a long way from being understood, which requires a fundamental paradigm shift. (shrink)

Introduction: Public health ethics addresses moral dilemmas arising from balancing individual healthcare needs with societal interests. Ethical considerations in public health during pandemics and disasters aim to reduce mortality rates and minimize social injustice through fair principles. Objective: This paper analyzes public health ethics and ethical values in allocating resources during mass casualty incidents. The intersection of public health ethics, applied bioethics, and ethics of social consequences (through non-utilitarian consequentialism) guides addressing serious public health challenges in catastrophic scenarios. The application (...) of the given interaction is significant for professional medical ethics. Methodology: The paper employs inductive, deductive, and normative methods of bioethics and the methodology of ethics of social consequences. Conclusion: The paradigmatic disparity between the bioethics of pandemics and disaster bioethics lies in the fluid application of bioethical principles and the accentuation of utilitarian demands depending on the severity and scale of mass casualty incidents. Applied bioethics in crisis situations respects the approaches of public health ethics and attempts to increase positive social outcomes. The application of (scarce) resource allocation criteria and triage of patients is derived from ethical decisions beneficial to public health and lege artis approaches of medical bioethics. The paper presents professional and ethical criteria for medically inappropriate treatment within the framework of patient triage; we approach crisis ethics from the perspective of maximization of benefit. Age is not an exclusion criterion of acute healthcare provision in crisis situations. Ethics of social consequences as a form of non-utilitarian consequentialism allowing for social consequences bridges public health ethics and applied bioethics. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has an increasing role to play in medical education and has great potential to revolutionize health professional education systems overall. However, this is accompanied by substantial questions concerning technical and ethical risks which are of particular importance because the quality of medical education has a direct effect on physical and psychological health and wellbeing. This article establishes an overarching distinction of AI across two typological dimensions, functional and humanistic. As indispensable foundations, these are then related to medical (...) practice overall, and forms of implementation with examples are described in both general and medical education. Increasingly, the conditions for successful medical education will depend on an understanding of AI and the ethical issues surrounding its implementation, as well as the formulation of appropriate guidelines by regulatory and other authorities. Within that discussion, the limits of both narrow or Routine AI (RAI) and artificial general intelligence or Decision AI (DAI) are examined particularly in view of the ethical need for Trustworthy AI (TAI) as part of the humanistic dimension. All stakeholders, from patients to medical practitioners, managers, and institutions, need to be able to trust AI, and loss of confidence could be catastrophic in some cases. (shrink)

The paper discusses the conception of philosophy and ethics in Seneca’s Letters, as well as in his other writings, which it sets in the broader context of ancient and modern thought. The introduction outlines the Socratic and Stoic foundations of Seneca’s ethics. The next section focuses on the interpretation of passages from the Letters that remind us that the task of philosophy is to teach human to live an active life. The paper points out that, according to Seneca, philosophy resembles (...) art more than knowledge, and Seneca adapts his language and the examples he uses to this effect. In the next section, the paper returns to delineating the relationship between theoretical and practical thought. The specificity of Seneca’s position becomes visible in the background of Aristotle’s problematization of this relationship. The last section asks how we should approach Seneca’s conception of ethics and philosophy. The analyses outlined above show that Seneca’s Letters fully express an approach to philosophy as an art of living, an approach that modern authors such as Nietzsche and Foucault consider determinative for the whole of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

The paper presents an analysis and interpretation of axiology and ethics as seen by the writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. The author follows the assumption that, in a situation where indifference is observed with regard to values (cf. Simmel, Sloterdijk), a return of philosophical reasoning to the idea of objectivity of values could be worthwhile. Therefore, he examines a specific type of axiological objectivism that can be found in Rand’s work. In the present paper, the suggested comparison with Baden neo-Kantism (...) as well as phenomenological axiology serves to capture the specifics of Rand’s axiological approach. These lie in placing emphasis on such a relationship between facts and values in which values result from the facts of reality, as well as in the very understanding of the objectivity of values that Rand identifies with long-term life goals and identifies them as an objective necessity for an individual’s life. Following the analysis of Rand’s axiology, the author focuses on her understanding of ethics, which he places in contrast to Kant’s deontology, as well as morality, which he views through the prism of a business relationship based on the exchange of values. The aim of the paper is to, by means of an analysis and interpretation of Rand’s ideas, show that objective values can be understood as a necessary prerequisite for consequential ethics and an individual living a happy life without being anchored in transcendence or social consensus. (shrink)