Greta Jochem
NPR.org
Originally published December 5, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
We mention that not everyone is celebrating this. It raises some ethical questions. Is it possible with a procedure that is so experimental, so risky, to get informed consent from women who desperately want to have a baby?
Dr. Testa: I doubt it is possible for lay people to have informed consent about anything we do in medicine, if you ask me. This is even more complicated because we are going into uncharted waters. ... I think that we go through years of studying to understand what we do, and to achieve mastering the things we do. And then we pretend that in ten minutes we can explain something to anybody. ... I don't think it's really possible.
... We try to use the simplest terms we can think about and then we leave it to the autonomy of the patients, in this case not even patients, these women, to make the decisions. I think we really refrain, and it was really important for us, from any pressure of any kind from our side but then of course, the inner pressure of this woman to have a child I think drove the entire process and their decision at the end.
The article is here.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Moral Choices for Today’s Physician
Donald M. Berwick
JAMA. 2017;318(21):2081-2082.
Here is an excerpt:
Hospitals today play the games afforded by an opaque and fragmented payment system and by the concentration of market share to near-monopoly levels that allow them to elevate costs and prices nearly at will, confiscating resources from other badly needed enterprises, both inside health (like prevention) and outside (like schools, housing, and jobs).
And this unfairness—this self-interest—this defense of local stakes at the expense of fragile communities and disadvantaged populations goes far, far beyond health care itself. So does the physician’s ethical duty. Two examples help make the point.
In my view, the biggest travesty in current US social policy is not the failure to fund health care properly or the pricing games of health care companies. It is the nation’s criminal justice system, incarcerating and then stealing the spirit and hope of by far a larger proportion of our population than in any other developed nation on earth. If taking the life-years and self-respect of millions of youth (with black individuals being imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites), leaving them without choice, freedom, or the hope of growth is not a health problem, then what is?
The article is here.
JAMA. 2017;318(21):2081-2082.
Here is an excerpt:
Hospitals today play the games afforded by an opaque and fragmented payment system and by the concentration of market share to near-monopoly levels that allow them to elevate costs and prices nearly at will, confiscating resources from other badly needed enterprises, both inside health (like prevention) and outside (like schools, housing, and jobs).
And this unfairness—this self-interest—this defense of local stakes at the expense of fragile communities and disadvantaged populations goes far, far beyond health care itself. So does the physician’s ethical duty. Two examples help make the point.
In my view, the biggest travesty in current US social policy is not the failure to fund health care properly or the pricing games of health care companies. It is the nation’s criminal justice system, incarcerating and then stealing the spirit and hope of by far a larger proportion of our population than in any other developed nation on earth. If taking the life-years and self-respect of millions of youth (with black individuals being imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites), leaving them without choice, freedom, or the hope of growth is not a health problem, then what is?
The article is here.
Saturday, December 23, 2017
What Makes Moral Disgust Special? An Integrative Functional Review
Giner-Sorolla, Roger and Kupfer, Tom R. and Sabo, John S. (2018)
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 57
The role of disgust in moral psychology has been a matter of much controversy and experimentation over the past 20 or so years. We present here an integrative look at the literature, organized according to the four functions of emotion proposed by integrative functional theory: appraisal, associative, self-regulation, and communicative. Regarding appraisals, we review experimental, personality, and neuroscientific work that has shown differences between elicitors of disgust and anger in moral contexts, with disgust responding more to bodily moral violations such as incest, and anger responding more to sociomoral violations such as theft. We also present new evidence for interpreting the phenomenon of sociomoral disgust as an appraisal of bad character in a person. The associative nature of disgust is shown by evidence for “unreasoning disgust,” in which associations to bodily moral violations are not accompanied by elaborated reasons, and not modified by appraisals such as harm or intent. We also critically examine the literature about the ability of incidental disgust to intensify moral judgments associatively. For disgust's self-regulation function, we consider the possibility that disgust serves as an existential defense, regulating avoidance of thoughts that might threaten our basic self-image as living humans. Finally, we discuss new evidence from our lab that moral disgust serves a communicative function, implying that expressions of disgust serve to signal one's own moral intentions even when a different emotion is felt internally on the basis of appraisal. Within the scope of the literature, there is evidence that all four functions of Giner-Sorolla’s (2012) integrative functional theory of emotion may be operating, and that their variety can help explain some of the paradoxes of disgust.
The information is here.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 57
The role of disgust in moral psychology has been a matter of much controversy and experimentation over the past 20 or so years. We present here an integrative look at the literature, organized according to the four functions of emotion proposed by integrative functional theory: appraisal, associative, self-regulation, and communicative. Regarding appraisals, we review experimental, personality, and neuroscientific work that has shown differences between elicitors of disgust and anger in moral contexts, with disgust responding more to bodily moral violations such as incest, and anger responding more to sociomoral violations such as theft. We also present new evidence for interpreting the phenomenon of sociomoral disgust as an appraisal of bad character in a person. The associative nature of disgust is shown by evidence for “unreasoning disgust,” in which associations to bodily moral violations are not accompanied by elaborated reasons, and not modified by appraisals such as harm or intent. We also critically examine the literature about the ability of incidental disgust to intensify moral judgments associatively. For disgust's self-regulation function, we consider the possibility that disgust serves as an existential defense, regulating avoidance of thoughts that might threaten our basic self-image as living humans. Finally, we discuss new evidence from our lab that moral disgust serves a communicative function, implying that expressions of disgust serve to signal one's own moral intentions even when a different emotion is felt internally on the basis of appraisal. Within the scope of the literature, there is evidence that all four functions of Giner-Sorolla’s (2012) integrative functional theory of emotion may be operating, and that their variety can help explain some of the paradoxes of disgust.
The information is here.
Friday, December 22, 2017
Is Technology Value-Neutral? New Technologies and Collective Action Problems
John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions
Originally published December 3, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Value-neutrality is a seductive position. For most of human history, technology has been the product of human agency. In order for a technology to come into existence, and have any effect on the world, it must have been conceived, created and utilised by a human being. There has been a necessary dyadic relationship between humans and technology. This has meant that whenever it comes time to evaluate the impacts of a particular technology on the world, there is always some human to share in the praise or blame. And since we are so comfortable with praising and blaming our fellow human beings, it’s very easy to suppose that they share all the praise and blame.
Note how I said that this has been true for ‘most of human history’. There is one obvious way in which technology could cease to be value-neutral: if technology itself has agency. In other words, if technology develops its own preferences and values, and acts to pursue them in the world. The great promise (and fear) about artificial intelligence is that it will result in forms of technology that do exactly that (and that can create other forms of technology that do exactly that). Once we have full-blown artificial agents, the value-neutrality thesis may no longer be so seductive.
We are almost there, but not quite. For the time being, it is still possible to view all technologies in terms of the dyadic relationship that makes value-neutrality more plausible.
The article is here.
Philosophical Disquisitions
Originally published December 3, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Value-neutrality is a seductive position. For most of human history, technology has been the product of human agency. In order for a technology to come into existence, and have any effect on the world, it must have been conceived, created and utilised by a human being. There has been a necessary dyadic relationship between humans and technology. This has meant that whenever it comes time to evaluate the impacts of a particular technology on the world, there is always some human to share in the praise or blame. And since we are so comfortable with praising and blaming our fellow human beings, it’s very easy to suppose that they share all the praise and blame.
Note how I said that this has been true for ‘most of human history’. There is one obvious way in which technology could cease to be value-neutral: if technology itself has agency. In other words, if technology develops its own preferences and values, and acts to pursue them in the world. The great promise (and fear) about artificial intelligence is that it will result in forms of technology that do exactly that (and that can create other forms of technology that do exactly that). Once we have full-blown artificial agents, the value-neutrality thesis may no longer be so seductive.
We are almost there, but not quite. For the time being, it is still possible to view all technologies in terms of the dyadic relationship that makes value-neutrality more plausible.
The article is here.
Professional Self-Care to Prevent Ethics Violations
Claire Zilber
The Ethical Professor
Originally published December 4, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Although there are many variables that lead a professional to violate an ethics rule, one frequent contributing factor is impairment from stress caused by a family member's illness (sick child, dying parent, spouse's chronic health condition, etc.). Some health care providers who have been punished by their licensing board, hospital board or practice group for an ethics violation tell similar stories of being under unusual levels of stress because of a family member who was ill. In that context, they deviated from their usual behavior.
For example, a surgeon whose son was mentally ill prescribed psychotropic medications to him because he refused to go to a psychiatrist. This surgeon was entering into a dual relationship with her child and prescribing outside of her area of competence, but felt desperate to help her son. Another physician, deeply unsettled by his wife’s diagnosis with and treatment for breast cancer, had an extramarital affair with a nurse who was also his employee. This physician sought comfort without thinking about the boundaries he was violating at work, the risk he was creating for his practice, or the harm he was causing to his marriage.
Physicians cannot avoid stressful events at work and in their personal lives, but they can exert some control over how they adapt to or manage that stress. Physician self-care begins with self-awareness, which can be supported by such practices as mindfulness meditation, reflective writing, supervision, or psychotherapy. Self-awareness increases compassion for the self and for others, and reduces burnout.
The article is here.
The Ethical Professor
Originally published December 4, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Although there are many variables that lead a professional to violate an ethics rule, one frequent contributing factor is impairment from stress caused by a family member's illness (sick child, dying parent, spouse's chronic health condition, etc.). Some health care providers who have been punished by their licensing board, hospital board or practice group for an ethics violation tell similar stories of being under unusual levels of stress because of a family member who was ill. In that context, they deviated from their usual behavior.
For example, a surgeon whose son was mentally ill prescribed psychotropic medications to him because he refused to go to a psychiatrist. This surgeon was entering into a dual relationship with her child and prescribing outside of her area of competence, but felt desperate to help her son. Another physician, deeply unsettled by his wife’s diagnosis with and treatment for breast cancer, had an extramarital affair with a nurse who was also his employee. This physician sought comfort without thinking about the boundaries he was violating at work, the risk he was creating for his practice, or the harm he was causing to his marriage.
Physicians cannot avoid stressful events at work and in their personal lives, but they can exert some control over how they adapt to or manage that stress. Physician self-care begins with self-awareness, which can be supported by such practices as mindfulness meditation, reflective writing, supervision, or psychotherapy. Self-awareness increases compassion for the self and for others, and reduces burnout.
The article is here.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
An AI That Can Build AI
Dom Galeon and Kristin Houser
Futurism.com
Originally published on December 1, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Thankfully, world leaders are working fast to ensure such systems don’t lead to any sort of dystopian future.
Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and several others are all members of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, an organization focused on the responsible development of AI. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEE) has proposed ethical standards for AI, and DeepMind, a research company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, recently announced the creation of group focused on the moral and ethical implications of AI.
Various governments are also working on regulations to prevent the use of AI for dangerous purposes, such as autonomous weapons, and so long as humans maintain control of the overall direction of AI development, the benefits of having an AI that can build AI should far outweigh any potential pitfalls.
The information is here.
Futurism.com
Originally published on December 1, 2017
Here is an excerpt:
Thankfully, world leaders are working fast to ensure such systems don’t lead to any sort of dystopian future.
Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and several others are all members of the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, an organization focused on the responsible development of AI. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEE) has proposed ethical standards for AI, and DeepMind, a research company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, recently announced the creation of group focused on the moral and ethical implications of AI.
Various governments are also working on regulations to prevent the use of AI for dangerous purposes, such as autonomous weapons, and so long as humans maintain control of the overall direction of AI development, the benefits of having an AI that can build AI should far outweigh any potential pitfalls.
The information is here.
The Sex Robots Are Coming – an intriguing report into the mind-boggling world of adult dolls
Jasper Rees
The Telegraph
Originally posted November 30, 2017
Sex robots: where do you start? In a Californian laboratory, obviously, where a hot next generation of Frankenstein’s monster is being conjured into existence. The latest prototype is a buxom object called Harmony who talks dirty in (for some reason) a Scottish accent. We made her acquaintance in The Sex Robots Are Coming (Channel 4) which, for reasons one needn’t explain, was not necessarily an accurate title.
Sexbots are the next big thing in Artificial Intelligence. We met James, a gentle lantern-jawed man from Atlanta whose current harem of life-size dolls uncomplainingly submit to a regime of two to four couplings a week in a host of positions. The only drawback, it seemed, was they couldn’t tell him they love him like a sexbot would.
These things were being fixed in the lab, which looked like a charnel house of serried butts and decapitated manikins. The task of chief engineer Matt was to turn all this plasticated form into a set of mechanised emotions. He was developing a range of personalities, he said, though the array of demeaning stereotypes didn’t seem to include the harridan or the hysteric.
The article is here.
The Telegraph
Originally posted November 30, 2017
Sex robots: where do you start? In a Californian laboratory, obviously, where a hot next generation of Frankenstein’s monster is being conjured into existence. The latest prototype is a buxom object called Harmony who talks dirty in (for some reason) a Scottish accent. We made her acquaintance in The Sex Robots Are Coming (Channel 4) which, for reasons one needn’t explain, was not necessarily an accurate title.
Sexbots are the next big thing in Artificial Intelligence. We met James, a gentle lantern-jawed man from Atlanta whose current harem of life-size dolls uncomplainingly submit to a regime of two to four couplings a week in a host of positions. The only drawback, it seemed, was they couldn’t tell him they love him like a sexbot would.
These things were being fixed in the lab, which looked like a charnel house of serried butts and decapitated manikins. The task of chief engineer Matt was to turn all this plasticated form into a set of mechanised emotions. He was developing a range of personalities, he said, though the array of demeaning stereotypes didn’t seem to include the harridan or the hysteric.
The article is here.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Americans have always been divided over morality, politics and religion
Andrew Fiala
The Fresno Bee
Originally published December 1, 2017
Our country seems more divided than ever. Recent polls from the Pew Center and the Washington Post make this clear. The Post concludes that seven in 10 Americans say we have “reached a dangerous low point” of divisiveness. A significant majority of Americans think our divisions are as bad as they were during the Vietnam War.
But let’s be honest, we have always been divided. Free people always disagree about morality, politics and religion. We disagree about abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, drug legalization, pornography, the death penalty and a host of other issues. We also disagree about taxation, inequality, government regulation, race, poverty, immigration, national security, environmental protection, gun control and so on.
Beneath our moral and political disagreements are deep religious differences. Atheists want religious superstitions to die out. Theists think we need God’s guidance. And religious people disagree among themselves about God, morality and politics.
The post is here.
The Fresno Bee
Originally published December 1, 2017
Our country seems more divided than ever. Recent polls from the Pew Center and the Washington Post make this clear. The Post concludes that seven in 10 Americans say we have “reached a dangerous low point” of divisiveness. A significant majority of Americans think our divisions are as bad as they were during the Vietnam War.
But let’s be honest, we have always been divided. Free people always disagree about morality, politics and religion. We disagree about abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, drug legalization, pornography, the death penalty and a host of other issues. We also disagree about taxation, inequality, government regulation, race, poverty, immigration, national security, environmental protection, gun control and so on.
Beneath our moral and political disagreements are deep religious differences. Atheists want religious superstitions to die out. Theists think we need God’s guidance. And religious people disagree among themselves about God, morality and politics.
The post is here.
Can psychopathic offenders discern moral wrongs? A new look at the moral/conventional distinction.
Aharoni, E., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Kiehl, K. A.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(2), 484-497. (2012)
Abstract
A prominent view of psychopathic moral reasoning suggests that psychopathic individuals cannot properly distinguish between moral wrongs and other types of wrongs. The present study evaluated this view by examining the extent to which 109 incarcerated offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy could distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions relative to each other and to nonincarcerated healthy controls. Using a modified version of the classic Moral/Conventional Transgressions task that uses a forced-choice format to minimize strategic responding, the present study found that total psychopathy score did not predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual subfacets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authors conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathic individuals cannot know what is morally wrong.
The article is here.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(2), 484-497. (2012)
Abstract
A prominent view of psychopathic moral reasoning suggests that psychopathic individuals cannot properly distinguish between moral wrongs and other types of wrongs. The present study evaluated this view by examining the extent to which 109 incarcerated offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy could distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions relative to each other and to nonincarcerated healthy controls. Using a modified version of the classic Moral/Conventional Transgressions task that uses a forced-choice format to minimize strategic responding, the present study found that total psychopathy score did not predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual subfacets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authors conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathic individuals cannot know what is morally wrong.
The article is here.
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