Eric Racine and William Affleck
AMA Journal of Ethics. December 2016, Volume 18, Number 12: 1241-1248.
doi: 10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.12.sect1-1612.
Abstract
Over the past decade, a debate has emerged between those who believe that memory-modulating technologies are inherently dangerous and need to be regulated and those who believe these technologies present minimal risk and thus view concerns about their use as far-fetched and alarmist. This article tackles three questions central to this debate: (1) Do these technologies jeopardize personhood? (2) Are the risks of these technologies acceptable? (3) Do these technologies require special regulation or oversight? Although concerns about the unethical use of memory-modulating technologies are legitimate, these concerns should not override the responsible use of memory-modulating technologies in clinical contexts. Accordingly, we call for careful comparative analysis of their use on a case-by-case basis.
The article is here.
Monday, December 26, 2016
Reframing Research Ethics: Towards a Professional Ethics for the Social Sciences
Nathan Emmerich
Sociological Research Online, 21 (4), 7
DOI: 10.5153/sro.4127
Abstract
This article is premised on the idea that were we able to articulate a positive vision of the social scientist's professional ethics, this would enable us to reframe social science research ethics as something internal to the profession. As such, rather than suffering under the imperialism of a research ethics constructed for the purposes of governing biomedical research, social scientists might argue for ethical self-regulation with greater force. I seek to provide the requisite basis for such an 'ethics' by, first, suggesting that the conditions which gave rise to biomedical research ethics are not replicated within the social sciences. Second, I argue that social science research can be considered as the moral equivalent of the 'true professions.' Not only does it have an ultimate end, but it is one that is – or, at least, should be – shared by the state and society as a whole. I then present a reading of confidentiality as a methodological – and not simply ethical – aspect of research, one that offers further support for the view that social scientists should attend to their professional ethics and the internal standards of their disciplines, rather than the contemporary discourse of research ethics that is rooted in the bioethical literature. Finally, and by way of a conclusion, I consider the consequences of the idea that social scientists should adopt a professional ethics and propose that the Clinical Ethics Committee might provide an alternative model for the governance of social science research.
The article is here.
Sociological Research Online, 21 (4), 7
DOI: 10.5153/sro.4127
Abstract
This article is premised on the idea that were we able to articulate a positive vision of the social scientist's professional ethics, this would enable us to reframe social science research ethics as something internal to the profession. As such, rather than suffering under the imperialism of a research ethics constructed for the purposes of governing biomedical research, social scientists might argue for ethical self-regulation with greater force. I seek to provide the requisite basis for such an 'ethics' by, first, suggesting that the conditions which gave rise to biomedical research ethics are not replicated within the social sciences. Second, I argue that social science research can be considered as the moral equivalent of the 'true professions.' Not only does it have an ultimate end, but it is one that is – or, at least, should be – shared by the state and society as a whole. I then present a reading of confidentiality as a methodological – and not simply ethical – aspect of research, one that offers further support for the view that social scientists should attend to their professional ethics and the internal standards of their disciplines, rather than the contemporary discourse of research ethics that is rooted in the bioethical literature. Finally, and by way of a conclusion, I consider the consequences of the idea that social scientists should adopt a professional ethics and propose that the Clinical Ethics Committee might provide an alternative model for the governance of social science research.
The article is here.
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Excerpt from Stanley Kubrick's Playboy Interview 1968
Playboy, 1968
Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel it’s worth living?
Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism - and their assumption of immortality.
As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong - and lucky - he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).
Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death - however mutable man may be able to make them - our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
The entire interview is here.
Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel it’s worth living?
Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism - and their assumption of immortality.
As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong - and lucky - he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).
Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death - however mutable man may be able to make them - our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
The entire interview is here.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
The Adaptive Utility of Deontology: Deontological Moral Decision-Making Fosters Perceptions of Trust and Likeability
Sacco, D.F., Brown, M., Lustgraaf, C.J.N. et al.
Evolutionary Psychological Science (2016).
doi:10.1007/s40806-016-0080-6
Abstract
Although various motives underlie moral decision-making, recent research suggests that deontological moral decision-making may have evolved, in part, to communicate trustworthiness to conspecifics, thereby facilitating cooperative relations. Specifically, social actors whose decisions are guided by deontological (relative to utilitarian) moral reasoning are judged as more trustworthy, are preferred more as social partners, and are trusted more in economic games. The current study extends this research by using an alternative manipulation of moral decision-making as well as the inclusion of target facial identities to explore the potential role of participant and target sex in reactions to moral decisions. Participants viewed a series of male and female targets, half of whom were manipulated to either have responded to five moral dilemmas consistent with an underlying deontological motive or utilitarian motive; participants indicated their liking and trust toward each target. Consistent with previous research, participants liked and trusted targets whose decisions were consistent with deontological motives more than targets whose decisions were more consistent with utilitarian motives; this effect was stronger for perceptions of trust. Additionally, women reported greater dislike for targets whose decisions were consistent with utilitarianism than men. Results suggest that deontological moral reasoning evolved, in part, to facilitate positive relations among conspecifics and aid group living and that women may be particularly sensitive to the implications of the various motives underlying moral decision-making.
The research is here.
Editor's Note: This research may apply to psychotherapy, leadership style, and politics.
Evolutionary Psychological Science (2016).
doi:10.1007/s40806-016-0080-6
Abstract
Although various motives underlie moral decision-making, recent research suggests that deontological moral decision-making may have evolved, in part, to communicate trustworthiness to conspecifics, thereby facilitating cooperative relations. Specifically, social actors whose decisions are guided by deontological (relative to utilitarian) moral reasoning are judged as more trustworthy, are preferred more as social partners, and are trusted more in economic games. The current study extends this research by using an alternative manipulation of moral decision-making as well as the inclusion of target facial identities to explore the potential role of participant and target sex in reactions to moral decisions. Participants viewed a series of male and female targets, half of whom were manipulated to either have responded to five moral dilemmas consistent with an underlying deontological motive or utilitarian motive; participants indicated their liking and trust toward each target. Consistent with previous research, participants liked and trusted targets whose decisions were consistent with deontological motives more than targets whose decisions were more consistent with utilitarian motives; this effect was stronger for perceptions of trust. Additionally, women reported greater dislike for targets whose decisions were consistent with utilitarianism than men. Results suggest that deontological moral reasoning evolved, in part, to facilitate positive relations among conspecifics and aid group living and that women may be particularly sensitive to the implications of the various motives underlying moral decision-making.
The research is here.
Editor's Note: This research may apply to psychotherapy, leadership style, and politics.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Hiding true emotions: micro-expressions in eyes retrospectively concealed by mouth movements
Miho Iwasaki & Yasuki Noguchi
Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 22049 (2016)
doi:10.1038/srep22049
Abstract
When we encounter someone we dislike, we may momentarily display a reflexive disgust expression, only to follow-up with a forced smile and greeting. Our daily lives are replete with a mixture of true and fake expressions. Nevertheless, are these fake expressions really effective at hiding our true emotions? Here we show that brief emotional changes in the eyes (micro-expressions, thought to reflect true emotions) can be successfully concealed by follow-up mouth movements (e.g. a smile). In the same manner as backward masking, mouth movements of a face inhibited conscious detection of all types of micro-expressions in that face, even when viewers paid full attention to the eye region. This masking works only in a backward direction, however, because no disrupting effect was observed when the mouth change preceded the eye change. These results provide scientific evidence for everyday behaviours like smiling to dissemble, and further clarify a major reason for the difficulty we face in discriminating genuine from fake emotional expressions.
The article is here.
Editor's note: This research may apply to transference and countertransference reactions in psychotherapy.
Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 22049 (2016)
doi:10.1038/srep22049
Abstract
When we encounter someone we dislike, we may momentarily display a reflexive disgust expression, only to follow-up with a forced smile and greeting. Our daily lives are replete with a mixture of true and fake expressions. Nevertheless, are these fake expressions really effective at hiding our true emotions? Here we show that brief emotional changes in the eyes (micro-expressions, thought to reflect true emotions) can be successfully concealed by follow-up mouth movements (e.g. a smile). In the same manner as backward masking, mouth movements of a face inhibited conscious detection of all types of micro-expressions in that face, even when viewers paid full attention to the eye region. This masking works only in a backward direction, however, because no disrupting effect was observed when the mouth change preceded the eye change. These results provide scientific evidence for everyday behaviours like smiling to dissemble, and further clarify a major reason for the difficulty we face in discriminating genuine from fake emotional expressions.
The article is here.
Editor's note: This research may apply to transference and countertransference reactions in psychotherapy.
When A.I. Matures, It May Call Jürgen Schmidhuber ‘Dad’
John Markoff
The New York Times
Originally posted November 27, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Dr. Schmidhuber also has a grand vision for A.I. — that self-aware or “conscious machines” are just around the corner — that causes eyes to roll among some of his peers. To put a fine point on the debate: Is artificial intelligence an engineering discipline, or a godlike field on the cusp of creating a new superintelligent species?
Dr. Schmidhuber is firmly in the god camp. He maintains that the basic concepts for such technologies already exist, and that there is nothing magical about human consciousness. “Generally speaking, consciousness and self-awareness are overrated,” he said, arguing that machine consciousness will emerge from more powerful computers and software algorithms much like those he has already designed.
It’s been an obsession since he was a teenager in Germany reading science fiction.
“As I grew up I kept asking myself, ‘What’s the maximum impact I could have?’” Dr. Schmidhuber recalled. “And it became clear to me that it’s to build something smarter than myself, which will build something even smarter, et cetera, et cetera, and eventually colonize and transform the universe, and make it intelligent.”
The article is here.
The New York Times
Originally posted November 27, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Dr. Schmidhuber also has a grand vision for A.I. — that self-aware or “conscious machines” are just around the corner — that causes eyes to roll among some of his peers. To put a fine point on the debate: Is artificial intelligence an engineering discipline, or a godlike field on the cusp of creating a new superintelligent species?
Dr. Schmidhuber is firmly in the god camp. He maintains that the basic concepts for such technologies already exist, and that there is nothing magical about human consciousness. “Generally speaking, consciousness and self-awareness are overrated,” he said, arguing that machine consciousness will emerge from more powerful computers and software algorithms much like those he has already designed.
It’s been an obsession since he was a teenager in Germany reading science fiction.
“As I grew up I kept asking myself, ‘What’s the maximum impact I could have?’” Dr. Schmidhuber recalled. “And it became clear to me that it’s to build something smarter than myself, which will build something even smarter, et cetera, et cetera, and eventually colonize and transform the universe, and make it intelligent.”
The article is here.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Hard Time or Hospital Treatment? Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System
Christine Montross
The New England Journal of Medicine
2016; 375:1407-1409
Here is an excerpt:
When law enforcement is involved, the trajectory of my patients’ lives veers sharply. The consequences are unpredictable and range from stability and safety to unmitigated disaster. When patients are ill or afraid enough to be potentially assaultive, the earliest decision as to whether they belong in jail or in the hospital may shape the course of the next many years of their lives.
It’s now well understood that the closing of state hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s led to the containment of mentally ill people in correctional facilities. Today our jails and state prisons contain an estimated 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness, while only about 35,000 people with serious mental illness are being treated in state hospitals — stark evidence of the decimation of the public mental health system.
When a mentally ill person comes into contact with the criminal justice system, the decision about whether that person belongs in jail or in the hospital is rarely a clinical one. Instead, it’s made by the gatekeepers of the legal system: police officers, prosecutors, and judges. The poor, members of minority groups, and people with a history of law-enforcement involvement are shuttled into the correctional system in disproportionate numbers; they are more likely to be arrested and less likely than their more privileged counterparts to be adequately treated for their psychiatric illnesses.
The article is here.
The New England Journal of Medicine
2016; 375:1407-1409
Here is an excerpt:
When law enforcement is involved, the trajectory of my patients’ lives veers sharply. The consequences are unpredictable and range from stability and safety to unmitigated disaster. When patients are ill or afraid enough to be potentially assaultive, the earliest decision as to whether they belong in jail or in the hospital may shape the course of the next many years of their lives.
It’s now well understood that the closing of state hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s led to the containment of mentally ill people in correctional facilities. Today our jails and state prisons contain an estimated 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness, while only about 35,000 people with serious mental illness are being treated in state hospitals — stark evidence of the decimation of the public mental health system.
When a mentally ill person comes into contact with the criminal justice system, the decision about whether that person belongs in jail or in the hospital is rarely a clinical one. Instead, it’s made by the gatekeepers of the legal system: police officers, prosecutors, and judges. The poor, members of minority groups, and people with a history of law-enforcement involvement are shuttled into the correctional system in disproportionate numbers; they are more likely to be arrested and less likely than their more privileged counterparts to be adequately treated for their psychiatric illnesses.
The article is here.
Lawsuit Aims to Hold 2 Contractors Accountable for C.I.A. Torture
By Sheri Fink and James Risen
The New York Times
Originally posted on November 27, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Dr. Mitchell was first publicly identified as one of the architects of the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation” program nearly a decade ago, and has given some news media interviews, but is now providing a more detailed account of his involvement. His book, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America” (Crown Forum), was written with Bill Harlow, a former C.I.A. spokesman. It was reviewed by the agency before release. (The New York Times obtained a copy of the book before its publication date.)
In the book, Dr. Mitchell alleges that harsh interrogation techniques he devised and carried out, based on those he used as an Air Force trainer in survival schools to prepare airmen if they became prisoners of war, protected the detainees from even worse abuse by the C.I.A.
Dr. Mitchell wrote that he and Dr. Jessen sequestered prisoners in closed boxes, forced them to hold painful positions for hours and prevented them from sleeping for days. He also takes credit for suggesting and implementing waterboarding — covering a detainee’s face with a cloth and pouring water over it to simulate the sensation of drowning — among other now-banned techniques. “Although they were unpleasant, their use protected detainees from being subjected to unproven and perhaps harsher techniques made up on the fly that could have been much worse,” he wrote. C.I.A. officers, he added, “had already decided to get rough.”
The article is here.
Editor's note: If you think torture works, please read: Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation, by Shane O'Mara.
The New York Times
Originally posted on November 27, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Dr. Mitchell was first publicly identified as one of the architects of the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation” program nearly a decade ago, and has given some news media interviews, but is now providing a more detailed account of his involvement. His book, “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America” (Crown Forum), was written with Bill Harlow, a former C.I.A. spokesman. It was reviewed by the agency before release. (The New York Times obtained a copy of the book before its publication date.)
In the book, Dr. Mitchell alleges that harsh interrogation techniques he devised and carried out, based on those he used as an Air Force trainer in survival schools to prepare airmen if they became prisoners of war, protected the detainees from even worse abuse by the C.I.A.
Dr. Mitchell wrote that he and Dr. Jessen sequestered prisoners in closed boxes, forced them to hold painful positions for hours and prevented them from sleeping for days. He also takes credit for suggesting and implementing waterboarding — covering a detainee’s face with a cloth and pouring water over it to simulate the sensation of drowning — among other now-banned techniques. “Although they were unpleasant, their use protected detainees from being subjected to unproven and perhaps harsher techniques made up on the fly that could have been much worse,” he wrote. C.I.A. officers, he added, “had already decided to get rough.”
The article is here.
Editor's note: If you think torture works, please read: Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation, by Shane O'Mara.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Empathy, Schmempathy
By Tom Bartlett
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted November 27, 2016
No one argues in favor of empathy. That’s because no one needs to: Empathy is an unalloyed good, like sunshine or cake or free valet parking. Instead we bemoan lack of empathy and nod our heads at the notion that, if only we could feel the pain of our fellow man, then everything would be OK and humanity could, at long last, join hands together in song.
Bah, says Paul Bloom. In his new book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (Ecco), Bloom argues that when it comes to helping one another, our emotions too often spoil everything. Instead of leading us to make smart decisions about how best to use our limited resources altruistically, they cause us to focus on what makes us feel good in the moment. We worry about the boy stuck in the well rather than the thousands of boys dying of malnutrition every day.
Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, calls on us to feel less and think more.
The interview is here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted November 27, 2016
No one argues in favor of empathy. That’s because no one needs to: Empathy is an unalloyed good, like sunshine or cake or free valet parking. Instead we bemoan lack of empathy and nod our heads at the notion that, if only we could feel the pain of our fellow man, then everything would be OK and humanity could, at long last, join hands together in song.
Bah, says Paul Bloom. In his new book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (Ecco), Bloom argues that when it comes to helping one another, our emotions too often spoil everything. Instead of leading us to make smart decisions about how best to use our limited resources altruistically, they cause us to focus on what makes us feel good in the moment. We worry about the boy stuck in the well rather than the thousands of boys dying of malnutrition every day.
Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, calls on us to feel less and think more.
The interview is here.
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