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

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Mapping Cognitive Structure onto the Landscape of Philosophical Debate

An Empirical Framework with Relevance to Problems of Consciousness, Free will and Ethics

Jared P. Friedman & Anthony I. Jack
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
pp 1–41

Abstract

There has been considerable debate in the literature as to whether work in experimental philosophy (X-Phi) actually makes any significant contribution to philosophy. One stated view is that many X-Phi projects, notwithstanding their focus on topics relevant to philosophy, contribute little to philosophical thought. Instead, it has been claimed the contribution they make appears to be to cognitive science. In contrast to this view, here we argue that at least one approach to X-Phi makes a contribution which parallels, and also extends, historically salient forms of philosophical analysis, especially contributions from Immanuel Kant, William James, Peter F. Strawson and Thomas Nagel. The framework elaborated here synthesizes philosophical theory with empirical evidence from psychology and neuroscience and applies it to three perennial philosophical problems. According to this account, the origin of these three problems can be illuminated by viewing them as arising from a tension between two distinct types of cognition, each of which is associated with anatomically independent and functionally inhibitory neural networks. If the parallel we draw, between an empirical project and historically highly influential examples of philosophical analysis, is viewed as convincing, it follows that work in the cognitive sciences can contribute directly to philosophy. Further, this conclusion holds whether the empirical details of the account are correct or not.

The article is here.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Judgment Before Emotion: People Access Moral Evaluations Faster than Affective States

Corey Cusimano, Stuti Thapa Magar, & Bertram F. Malle

Abstract

Theories about the role of emotions in moral cognition make different predictions about the relative speed of moral and affective judgments: those that argue that felt emotions are causal inputs to moral judgments predict that recognition of affective states should precede moral judgments; theories that posit emotional states as the output of moral judgment predict the opposite. Across four studies, using a speeded reaction time task, we found that self-reports of felt emotion were delayed relative to reports of event-directed moral judgments (e.g. badness) and were no faster than person directed moral judgments (e.g. blame). These results pose a challenge to prominent theories arguing that moral judgments are made on the basis of reflecting on affective states.

The article is here.

Enabling torture: APA, clinical psychology training and the failure to disobey.

Alice LoCicero, Robert P. Marlin, David Jull-Patterson, Nancy M. Sweeney, Brandon Lee Gray, & J. Wesley Boyd
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol 22(4), Nov 2016, 345-355.

Abstract

The American Psychological Association (APA) has historically had close ties with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Recent revelations describe problematic outcomes of those ties, as some in the APA colluded with the DOD to allow psychologists to participate, with expectation of impunity, in harsh interrogations that amounted to torture of Guantanamo detainees, during the Bush era. We now know that leaders in the APA purposely misled psychologists about the establishment of policies on psychologists’ roles in interrogations. Still, the authors wondered why, when the resulting policies reflected a clear contradiction of the fundamental duty to do no harm, few psychologists, in or out of the military, protested the policies articulated in 2005 by the committee on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS). Previous research suggested that U.S. graduate students in clinical psychology receive little or no training in the duties of psychologists in military settings or in the ethical guidance offered by international treaties. Thus psychologists might not have been well prepared to critique the PENS policies or to refuse to participate in interrogations. To further explore this issue, the authors surveyed Directors of Clinical Training of doctoral programs in clinical psychology, asking how extensively their programs address dilemmas psychologists may face in military settings. The results indicate that most graduate programs offer little attention to dilemmas of unethical orders, violations of international conventions, or excessively harsh interrogations. These findings, combined with earlier studies, suggest that military psychologists may have been unprepared to address ethical dilemmas, whereas psychologists outside the military may have been unprepared to critique the APA’s collusion with the DOD. The authors suggest ways to address this apparent gap in ethics education for psychology graduate students, interns, and fellows.

The article is here.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

A Proposal for a Scientifically-Informed and Instrumentalist Account of Free Will and Voluntary Action

Eric Racine
Frontiers in Psychology, 17 May 2017

Here is an excerpt:

From the perspective of applied ethics and social behavior, voluntariness is a key dimension in the understanding of autonomous decisions and actions as well as our responsibility toward and ownership of these decisions and actions (Dworkin, 1988; Wegner, 2002). Autonomous decisions and actions imply that the agent is initiating them according to his or her own wishes and that the person is free to do so (i.e., not under direct or indirect forms of coercion that would imperil the existence of such an ability). Accordingly, in applied ethics, voluntariness commonly refers to “the degree that [the moral agent] wills the action without being under the control of another's influence” (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001). Indeed, if moral agents have a jeopardized ability, or even lack the ability to initiate actions freely, then neither can they be faulted for their own actions (responsibility) nor encouraged to undertake actions on the premise of their expression of their own preferences (autonomy; Felsen and Reiner, 2011; Castelo et al., 2012). The concept of FW commonly captures a basic form of agency and a responsibility associated with this ability to self-control and initiate voluntary action (Roskies, 2006; Brass et al., 2013). Accordingly, in this paper, FW designates primarily a basic ability to envision options and choose between them such that the will or volition of the person is considered to be free.

The article is here.

Editor's note: The concept of free will is a main concern in psychotherapy.  How autonomous is your patient's behavior?

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Phenomenological Approaches to Ethics and Information Technology

Lucas Introna
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Here is an excerpt:

3.1 The Impact of Information Technology and the Application of Ethical Theory

Much of the ethical debate about computers and information technology more generally has been informed by the tool and impact view of information technology (discussed in section 1.1 above). Within this tradition a number of issues have emerged as important. For example, whether computers (or information and communication technology more generally) generate new types of ethical problems that require new or different ethical theories or whether it is just more of the same (Gorniak 1996). These debates are often expressed in the language of the impact of information technology on particular values and rights (Johnson 1985, 1994). Thus, within this approach we have discussions about the impact of CCTV or web cookies on the right to privacy, the impact of the digital divide on the right to access information, the impact of the piracy of software on property rights, and so forth. In these debates Jim Moor (1985) has argued that computers show up policy vacuums that require new thinking and the establishment of new policies. Others have argued that the resources provided by classical ethical theory such as utilitarianism, consequentialism and deontological ethics is more than enough to deal with all the ethical issues emerging from our design and use of information technology (Gert 1999).

The entry is here.

Editor's Note: Yes, I use the cut and paste function frequently, and in this entry as well.

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Responding to whistleblower’s claims, Duke admits research data falsification

Ray Gronberg
The Herald-Sun
Originally published July 2, 2017

In-house investigators at Duke University believe a former lab tech falsified or fabricated data that went into 29 medical research reports, lawyers for the university say in their answer to a federal whistleblower lawsuit against it.

Duke’s admissions concern the work of Erin Potts-Kant, and a probe it began in 2013 when she was implicated in an otherwise-unrelated embezzlement. The lawsuit, from former lab analyst Joseph Thomas, contends Duke and some of its professors used the phony data to fraudulently obtain federal research grants. He also alleges they ignored warning signs about Potts-Kants’ work, and tried to cover up the fraud.

The university’s lawyers have tried to get the case dismissed, but in April, a federal judge said it can go ahead. The latest filings thus represent Duke’s first answer to the substance of Thomas’ allegations.

Up front, it said Potts-Kant told a Duke investigating committee that she’d faked data that wound up being “included in various publications and grant applications.”

The article is here.

Human decisions in moral dilemmas are largely described by Utilitarianism

Anja Faulhaber, Anke Dittmer, Felix Blind, and others

Abstract

Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in a utilitarian way, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past years; especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles (ADVs). We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as the driver in a virtual reality environment. Participants had to make decisions between two discrete options: driving on one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, we tested the influence of a sidewalk as a potential safe harbor and a condition implicating a self-sacrifice. Results showed that subjects, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence of the other variables. Our findings support that people’s behavior is in line with the utilitarian approach to moral decision making. This may serve as a guideline for the
implementation of moral decisions in ADVs.

The article is here.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States

Katherine A. Fowler, Linda L. Dahlberg, Tadesse Haileyesus, Carmen Gutierrez, Sarah Bacon
Pediatrics
July 2017, VOLUME 140 / ISSUE 1

RESULTS: Nearly 1300 children die and 5790 are treated for gunshot wounds each year. Boys, older children, and minorities are disproportionately affected. Although unintentional firearm deaths among children declined from 2002 to 2014 and firearm homicides declined from 2007 to 2014, firearm suicides decreased between 2002 and 2007 and then showed a significant upward trend from 2007 to 2014. Rates of firearm homicide among children are higher in many Southern states and parts of the Midwest relative to other parts of the country. Firearm suicides are more dispersed across the United States with some of the highest rates occurring in Western states. Firearm homicides of younger children often occurred in multivictim events and involved intimate partner or family conflict; older children more often died in the context of crime and violence. Firearm suicides were often precipitated by situational and relationship problems. The shooter playing with a gun was the most common circumstance surrounding unintentional firearm deaths of both younger and older children.


CONCLUSIONS: Firearm injuries are an important public health problem, contributing substantially to premature death and disability of children. Understanding their nature and impact is a first step toward prevention.

The article is here.

The ethics of brain implants and ‘brainjacking’

Chelsey Ballarte
Geek Wire
Originally published June 29, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Fetz and the report’s other authors say we should regard advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence with the same measure of caution we use when we consider accountability for self-driving cars and privacy for smartphones.

Fetz recalled the time security researchers proved they could hack into a Jeep Cherokee over the internet and disable it as it drove on the freeway. He said that in the world of prosthetics, a hacker could conceivably take over someone’s arm.

“The hack could override the signals,” he said. It could even override a veto, and that’s the danger. The strategy to head off that scenario would have to be to make sure the system can’t be influenced from the outside.

Study co-author John Donoghue, a director of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, said these are just a few things we would have to think about if these mechanisms became the norm.

“We must carefully consider the consequences of living alongside semi-intelligent, brain-controlled machines, and we should be ready with mechanisms to ensure their safe and ethical use,” he said in a news release.

Donoghue said that as technology advances, we need to be ready to think about how our current laws would apply. “Our aim is to ensure that appropriate legislation keeps pace with this rapidly progressing field,” he said.

The article is here.