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
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Thursday, February 9, 2023

To Each Technology Its Own Ethics: The Problem of Ethical Proliferation

Sætra, H.S., Danaher, J. 
Philos. Technol. 35, 93 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00591-7

Abstract

Ethics plays a key role in the normative analysis of the impacts of technology. We know that computers in general and the processing of data, the use of artificial intelligence, and the combination of computers and/or artificial intelligence with robotics are all associated with ethically relevant implications for individuals, groups, and society. In this article, we argue that while all technologies are ethically relevant, there is no need to create a separate ‘ethics of X’ or ‘X ethics’ for each and every subtype of technology or technological property—e.g. computer ethics, AI ethics, data ethics, information ethics, robot ethics, and machine ethics. Specific technologies might have specific impacts, but we argue that they are often sufficiently covered and understood through already established higher-level domains of ethics. Furthermore, the proliferation of tech ethics is problematic because (a) the conceptual boundaries between the subfields are not well-defined, (b) it leads to a duplication of effort and constant reinventing the wheel, and (c) there is danger that participants overlook or ignore more fundamental ethical insights and truths. The key to avoiding such outcomes lies in a taking the discipline of ethics seriously, and we consequently begin with a brief description of what ethics is, before presenting the main forms of technology related ethics. Through this process, we develop a hierarchy of technology ethics, which can be used by developers and engineers, researchers, or regulators who seek an understanding of the ethical implications of technology. We close by deducing two principles for positioning ethical analysis which will, in combination with the hierarchy, promote the leveraging of existing knowledge and help us to avoid an exaggerated proliferation of tech ethics.

From the Conclusion

The ethics of technology is garnering attention for a reason. Just about everything in modern society is the result of, and often even infused with, some kind of technology. The ethical implications are plentiful, but how should the study of applied tech ethics be organised? We have reviewed a number of specific tech ethics, and argued that there is much overlap, and much confusion relating to the demarcation of different domain ethics. For example, many issues covered by AI ethics are arguably already covered by computer ethics, and many issues argued to be data ethics, particularly issues related to privacy and surveillance, have been studied by other tech ethicists and non-tech ethicists for a long time.

We have proposed two simple principles that should help guide more ethical research to the higher levels of tech ethics, while still allowing for the existence of lower-level domain specific ethics. If this is achieved, we avoid confusion and a lack of navigability in tech ethics, ethicists avoid reinventing the wheel, and we will be better able to make use of existing insight from higher-level ethics. At the same time, the work done in lower-level ethics will be both valid and highly important, because it will be focused on issues exclusive to that domain. For example, robot ethics will be about those questions that only arise when AI is embodied in a particular sense, and not all issues related to the moral status of machines or social AI in general.

While our argument might initially be taken as a call to arms against more than one fundamental applied ethics, we hope to have allayed such fears. There are valid arguments for the existence of different types of applied ethics, and we merely argue that an exaggerated proliferation of tech ethics is occurring, and that it has negative consequences. Furthermore, we must emphasise that there is nothing preventing anyone from making specific guidelines for, for example, AI professionals, based on insight from computer ethics. The domains of ethics and the needs of practitioners are not the same, and our argument is consequently that ethical research should be more concentrated than professional practice.

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Historical Fundamentalism? Christian Nationalism and Ignorance About Religion in American Political History

S. L. Perry, R. Braunstein, et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 
(2022) 61(1):21–40

Abstract

Religious right leaders often promulgate views of Christianity's historical preeminence, privilege, and persecution in the United States that are factually incorrect, suggesting credulity, ignorance, or perhaps, a form of ideologically motivated ignorance on the part of their audience. This study examines whether Christian nationalism predicts explicit misconceptions regarding religion in American political history and explores theories about the connection. Analyzing nationally representative panel data containing true/false statements about religion's place in America's founding documents, policies, and court decisions, Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor that Americans fail to affirm factually correct answers. This association is stronger among whites compared to black Americans and religiosity actually predicts selecting factually correct answers once we account for Christian nationalism. Analyses of “do not know” response patterns find more confident correct answers from Americans who reject Christian nationalism and more confident incorrect answers from Americans who embrace Christian nationalism. We theorize that, much like conservative Christians have been shown to incorrectly answer science questions that are “religiously contested,” Christian nationalism inclines Americans to affirm factually incorrect views about religion in American political history, likely through their exposure to certain disseminators of such misinformation, but also through their allegiance to a particular political-cultural narrative they wish to privilege.

From the Discussion and Conclusions

Our findings extend our understanding of contemporary culture war conflicts in the United States in several key ways. Our finding that Christian nationalist ideology is not only associated with different political or social values (Hunter 1992; Smith 2000), but belief in explicitly wrong historical claims goes beyond issues of subjective interpretation or mere differences of opinion to underscore the reality that Americans are divided by different information. Large groups of Americans hold incompatible beliefs about issues of fact, with those who ardently reject Christian nationalism more likely to confidently and correctly affirm factual claims and Christian nationalists more likely to confidently and incorrectly affirm misinformation. To be sure, we are unable to disentangle directionality here, which in all likelihood operates both ways. Christian nationalist ideology is made plausible by false or exaggerated claims about the evangelical character of the nation’s founders and founding documents. Yet Christian nationalism, as an ideology, may also foster a form of motivated ignorance or credulity toward a variety of factually incorrect statements, among them being the preeminence and growing persecution of Christianity in the UnitedStates.

Closely related to this last point, our findings extend recent research by further underscoring the powerful influence of Christian nationalism as the ideological source of credulity supporting and spreading far-right misinformation.

Thursday, June 25, 2020

Removing Confederate Monuments

Travis Timmerman
1000 Word Philosophy
Originally posted 19 June 20

Here are two excerpt:

1. A Moral Argument for Removing Confederate Monuments in Two Parts
Part 1:

(1) If some monument(s) unavoidably harms undeserving people, then there is moral reason to remove that monument.

(2) Public Confederate monuments unavoidably harm at least (i) those who suffer as a result of knowing the racist motivation behind the existence of most Confederate monuments and having those motivations made obvious by public Confederate monuments, and/or (ii) those who suffer as a result of being reminded of the horrors of the Civil War and the United States’ racist history by public Confederate monuments.

(3) Therefore, there is strong moral reason to remove public Confederate monuments.

If premises (1)-(2) are true, then the truth of (3) is logically guaranteed.

(1) should be uncontroversial since it follows from the more general claim that we have moral reason to avoid harming innocent people.

Part (i) of (2) is supported by the ample testimony of the groups fighting to remove Confederate monuments. Many know the history behind them, and are constantly reminded of the racist motivation for their creation, and suffer as a consequence.

(cut)

3. Conclusion

The above argument is but one possible point of entry into this complex debate. If successful, it shows that we’re obligated to continue removing public Confederate monuments.

The Pro and Con arguments are here.

Friday, February 14, 2020

Judgment and Decision Making

Baruch Fischhoff and Stephen B. Broomell
Annual Review of Psychology 
2020 71:1, 331-355

Abstract

The science of judgment and decision making involves three interrelated forms of research: analysis of the decisions people face, description of their natural responses, and interventions meant to help them do better. After briefly introducing the field's intellectual foundations, we review recent basic research into the three core elements of decision making: judgment, or how people predict the outcomes that will follow possible choices; preference, or how people weigh those outcomes; and choice, or how people combine judgments and preferences to reach a decision. We then review research into two potential sources of behavioral heterogeneity: individual differences in decision-making competence and developmental changes across the life span. Next, we illustrate applications intended to improve individual and organizational decision making in health, public policy, intelligence analysis, and risk management. We emphasize the potential value of coupling analytical and behavioral research and having basic and applied research inform one another.

The paper can be downloaded here.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Healthcare portraiture and unconscious bias

Karthik Sivashanker, Kathryn Rexrode, and others
BMJ 2019;365:l1668
Published April 12, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l1668

Here is an excerpt:

Conveying the right message

In this regard, healthcare organisations have opportunities to instil a feeling of belonging and comfort for all their employees and patients. A simple but critical step is to examine the effect that their use of all imagery, as exemplified by portraits, has on their constituents. Are these portraits sufficiently conveying a message of social justice and equity? Do they highlight the achievement (as with a picture of a petri dish), or the person (a picture of Alexander Fleming without sufficient acknowledgment of his contributions)? Further still, do these images reveal the values of the organisation or its biases?

At our institution in Boston there was no question that the leaders depicted had made meaningful contributions to our hospital and healthcare. After soliciting feedback through listening sessions, open forums, and inbox feedback from our art committee, employees, clinicians, and students, however, our institution agreed to hang these portraits in their respective departments. This decision aimed to balance a commitment to equity with an intent to honourably display these portraits, which have inspired generations of physicians and scientists to be their best. It also led our social justice and equity committee to tackle problems like unconscious bias and diversity in hiring. In doing so, we are acknowledging the close interplay of symbolism and policy making in perpetuating racial and sex inequities, and the importance of tackling both together.

The info is here.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

UNC protests present debate of law versus morality

Ali Akhyari
Charleston City Paper
Originally posted September 5, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Immediately afterwards, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt referenced a 2015 law that protects historical monuments from being removed from any public property. Instead of making a public statement about the gross persistence of monuments to hate, she claimed her hands were tied and that students shouldn't break the law. Remember, after Charlottesville, it was president Trump who seemed incapable of acknowledging hate, saying there were "very fine people on both sides" after a woman was killed protesting the white supremacist march.

The debate regarding Confederate monuments and flags will never end so long as there are southerners more interested in rewriting history than admitting the Confederacy is intimately related to white supremacy. The true danger, though, is the normalization of white supremacy and nationalism in the Trump era. So it should follow, then, that Americans toppling monuments to oppression and hate will be increasingly forgivable as long as the the state and federal government coddles white nationalism.

Right after UNC, Trump tweeted a popular white nationalist talking point about land redistribution in post-Apartheid South Africa — a mirror of the battle minorities in this country have fought since emancipation.

So, I applaud the removal of Silent Sam. The monument fell at a time when the president has not only failed to recognize racism and historical oppression, instead encouraging it, pining for the return of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

The info is here.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Social Media as a Weapon to Harass Women Academics

George Veletsianos and Jaigris Hodson
Inside Higher Ed
Originally published May 29, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Before beginning our inquiry, we assumed that the people who responded to our interview requests would be women who studied video games or gender issues, as prior literature had suggested they would be more likely to face harassment. But we quickly discovered that women are harassed when writing about a wide range of topics, including but not limited to: feminism, leadership, science, education, history, religion, race, politics, immigration, art, sociology and technology broadly conceived. The literature even identifies choice of research method as a topic that attracts misogynistic commentary.

So who exactly is at risk of harassment? They form a long list: women scholars who challenge the status quo; women who have an opinion that they are willing to express publicly; women who raise concerns about power; women of all body types and shapes. Put succinctly, people may be targeted for a range of reasons, but women in particular are harassed partly because they happen to be women who dare to be public online. Our respondents reported that they are harassed because they are women. Because they are women, they become targets.

At this point, if you are a woman reading this, you might be nodding your head, or you might feel frustrated that we are pointing out something so incredibly obvious. We might as well point out that rain is wet. But unfortunately, for many people who have not experienced the reality of being a woman online, this fact is still not obvious, is minimized, or is otherwise overlooked. To be clear, there is a gendered element to how both higher education institutions and technology companies handle this issue.

The article is here.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

What did Hannah Arendt really mean by the banality of evil?

Thomas White
Aeon.co
Originally published April 23, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Arendt dubbed these collective characteristics of Eichmann ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: he was a man who drifted into the Nazi Party, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief. In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’.

This wasn’t Arendt’s first, somewhat superficial impression of Eichmann. Even 10 years after his trial in Israel, she wrote in 1971:
I was struck by the manifest shallowness in the doer [ie Eichmann] which made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous.
The banality-of-evil thesis was a flashpoint for controversy. To Arendt’s critics, it seemed absolutely inexplicable that Eichmann could have played a key role in the Nazi genocide yet have no evil intentions. Gershom Scholem, a fellow philosopher (and theologian), wrote to Arendt in 1963 that her banality-of-evil thesis was merely a slogan that ‘does not impress me, certainly, as the product of profound analysis’. Mary McCarthy, a novelist and good friend of Arendt, voiced sheer incomprehension: ‘[I]t seems to me that what you are saying is that Eichmann lacks an inherent human quality: the capacity for thought, consciousness – conscience. But then isn’t he a monster simply?’

The information is here.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Ancient Ethical Theory

By Richard Parry
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Substantial Revision August 13, 2014

While moral theory does not invent morality, or even reflection on it, it does try to bring systematic thinking to bear on the phenomenon. Ancient moral theory, however, does not attempt to be a comprehensive account of all the phenomena that fall under the heading of morality. Rather, assuming piecemeal opinions and practices, it tries to capture its underlying essence. It is the nature of such an enterprise to evaluate and criticize some of these opinions and practices but that is not its primary goal. Ancient moral theory tries to provide a reflective account of an essential human activity so one can grasp what is of fundamental importance in pursuing it. In historical order, the theories to be considered in this article are those of Socrates as presented in certain dialogues of Plato; Plato in the Republic; Aristotle; the Cynics; Cyrenaic hedonism; Epicurus; the Stoics; and Pyrrhonian skepticism.

The entire post is here.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

What can History do for Bioethics?

Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online)
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2011.01933.x
Volume 27 Number 4 2013 pp 215–223

ABSTRACT

This article details the relationship between history and bioethics. I argue that historians’ reluctance to engage with bioethics rests on a misreading of the field as solely reducible to applied ethics, and overlooks previous enthusiasm for historical perspectives. I claim that seeing bioethics as its practitioners see it – as an interdisciplinary meeting ground – should encourage historians to collaborate in greater numbers. I conclude by outlining how bioethics might benefit from new histories of the field, and how historians can lend a fresh perspective to bioethical debates.

The entire article is here.