Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Two licensing boards, for psychologists and counselors, at impasse with governor over sexual orientation language

Nancy Hicks
Lincoln Journal Star  
Originally posted March 11, 2017

Two state licensing boards that oversee psychologists and mental health counselors have been at odds with two Nebraska governors and the Nebraska Catholic Conference for almost a decade over sexual orientation and gender identity language in their rules.

The two licensing boards -- the Board of Psychology and the Board of Mental Health Practice -- have been unable to update their rules because they have refused to compromise on these issues.

And it looks like that impasse will continue, after the administration of Gov. Pete Ricketss recently rejected both sets of rules and provided its own draft of acceptable language.

That proposed language -- which strips out antidiscrimination protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity -- “is completely unacceptable and egregious,” said Dr. Anne Talbot, president of the Nebraska Psychological Association, which represents psychologists across the state.

Her group will oppose the administration's proposed changes when the issue is before the state licensing board May 31.

The article is here.

Illusions in Reasoning

Sangeet S. Khemlani & P. N. Johnson-Laird
Minds & Machines
DOI 10.1007/s11023-017-9421-x

Abstract

Some philosophers argue that the principles of human reasoning are and that mistakes are no more than momentary lapses in ‘‘information processing."  This article makes a case to the contrary. It shows that human reasoners systematic fallacies. The theory of mental models predicts these
errors. It postulates that individuals construct mental models of the possibilities to the premises of an inference refer. But, their models usually represent what is in a possibility, not what is false. This procedure reduces the load on working and for the most part it yields valid inferences. However, as a computer implementing the theory revealed, it leads to fallacious conclusions for inferences—those for which it is crucial to represent what is false in a possibility.  Experiments demonstrate the variety of these fallacies and contrast them control problems, which reasoners tend to get right. The fallacies can be illusions, and they occur in reasoning based on sentential connectives as ‘‘if’’ and ‘‘or’’, quantifiers such as ‘‘all the artists’’ and ‘‘some of the artists’’, deontic relations such as ‘‘permitted’’ and ‘‘obligated’’, and causal relations such causes’’ and ‘‘allows’’. After we have reviewed the principal results, we consider potential for alternative accounts to explain these illusory inferences. And show how the illusions illuminate the nature of human rationality.

Find it here.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Conviction, persuasion and manipulation: the ethical dimension of epistemic vigilance

Johannes Mahr
Cognition and Culture Institute Blog
Originally posted 10 March 2017

In today’s political climate moral outrage about (alleged) propaganda and manipulation of public opinion dominate our discourse. Charges of manipulative information provision have arguably become the most widely used tool to discredit one’s political opponent. Of course, one reason for why such charges have become so prominent is that the way we consume information through online media has made us more vulnerable than ever to such manipulation. Take a recent story published by The Guardian, which describes the strategy of information dissemination allegedly used by the British ‘Leave Campaign’:
“The strategy involved harvesting data from people’s Facebook and other social media profiles and then using machine learning to ‘spread’ through their networks. Wigmore admitted the technology and the level of information it gathered from people was ‘creepy’. He said the campaign used this information, combined with artificial intelligence, to decide who to target with highly individualised advertisements and had built a database of more than a million people.”
This might not just strike you as “creepy” but as simply unethical just as it did one commentator cited in the article who called these tactics “extremely disturbing and quite sinister”. Here, I want to investigate where this intuition comes from.

The blog post is here.

Can Human Evolution Be Controlled?

William B. Hurlbut
Big Questions Online
Originally published February 17, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

These gene-editing techniques may transform our world as profoundly as many of the greatest scientific discoveries and technological innovations of the past — like electricity, synthetic chemistry, and nuclear physics. CRISPR/Cas9 could provide urgent and uncontroversial progress in biomedical science, agriculture, and environmental ecology. Indeed, the power and depth of operation of these new tools is delivering previously unimagined possibilities for reworking or redeploying natural biological processes — some with startling and disquieting implications. Proposals by serious and well-respected scientists include projects of broad ecological engineering, de-extinction of human ancestral species, a biotechnological “cure” for aging, and guided evolution of the human future.

The questions raised by such projects go beyond issues of individual rights and social responsibilities to considerations of the very source and significance of the natural world, its integrated and interdependent processes, and the way these provide the foundational frame for the physical, psychological, and spiritual meaning of human life.

The article is here.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Presidential aide’s tweets violate law, ethics lawyers say

The Associated Press
Originally posted April 1, 2017

A top adviser to President Trump on Saturday urged the defeat of a Michigan congressman and member of a conservative group of U.S. House lawmakers who derailed the White House on legislation to repeal and replace the Obama-era health care law.

But the tweet by White House social media director Dan Scavino Jr. violated federal law that limits political activity by government employees, government ethics lawyers said.

The White House had no immediate comment.

The article is here.

The Problem of Evil: Crash Course Philosophy #13

Published on May 9, 2016

After weeks of exploring the existence of nature of god, today Hank explores one of the biggest problems in theism, and possibly the biggest philosophical question humanity faces: why is there evil?


Saturday, April 1, 2017

Does everyone have a price? On the role of payoff magnitude for ethical decision making

Benjamin E. Hilbig and Isabel Thielmann
Cognition
Volume 163, June 2017, Pages 15–25

Abstract

Most approaches to dishonest behavior emphasize the importance of corresponding payoffs, typically implying that dishonesty might increase with increasing incentives. However, prior evidence does not appear to confirm this intuition. However, extant findings are based on relatively small payoffs, the potential effects of which are solely analyzed across participants. In two experiments, we used different multi-trial die-rolling paradigms designed to investigate dishonesty at the individual level (i.e., within participants) and as a function of the payoffs at stake – implementing substantial incentives exceeding 100€. Results show that incentive sizes indeed matter for ethical decision making, though primarily for two subsets of “corruptible individuals” (who cheat more the more they are offered) and “small sinners” (who tend to cheat less as the potential payoffs increase). Others (“brazen liars”) are willing to cheat for practically any non-zero incentive whereas still others (“honest individuals”) do not cheat at all, even for large payoffs. By implication, the influence of payoff magnitude on ethical decision making is often obscured when analyzed across participants and with insufficiently tempting payoffs.

The article is here.

Bannon May Have Violated Ethics Pledge by Communicating With Breitbart

Lachlan Markay
Daily Beast
Originally published March 30, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Bannon, Breitbart’s former chairman, has spoken directly to two of the company’s top editors since joining the White House. Trump’s predecessor publicly waived portions of the ethics pledge for similar communications, but the White House confirmed this week that it has not done so for Bannon.

“It seems to me to be a very clear violation,” Richard Painter, who was White House counsel for President George W. Bush, told The Daily Beast in an interview.

A White House spokesperson confirmed that every Trump appointee has signed the ethics pledge required by an executive order imposed by the president in January. No White House employees have received waivers to the pledge, the spokesperson added.

All incoming appointees are required to certify that they “will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients.”

The article is here.

Friday, March 31, 2017

Dishonesty gets easier on the brain the more you do it

Neil Garrett
Aeon
Originally published March 7, 2017

Here are two excerpts:

These two ideas – the role of arousal on our willingness to cheat, and neural adaptation – are connected because the brain does not just adapt to things such as sounds and smells. The brain also adapts to emotions. For example, when presented with aversive pictures (eg, threatening faces) or receiving something unpleasant (eg, an electric shock), the brain will initially generate strong responses in regions associated with emotional processing. But when these experiences are repeated over time, the emotional responses diminish.

(cut)

There have also been a number of behavioural interventions proposed to curb unethical behaviour. These include using cues that emphasise morality and encouraging self-engagement. We don’t currently know the underlying neural mechanisms that can account for the positive behavioural changes these interventions drive. But an intriguing possibility is that they operate in part by shifting up our emotional reaction to situations in which dishonesty is an option, in turn helping us to resist the temptation to which we have become less resistant over time.

The article is here.