How celebrity activists are changing morality in America

Caroline Newman
phys.org
Originally posted July 1, 2019


Here is an excerpt:

Q. What are some of the risks of viewing celebrities as moral authorities?

A. Many argue that celebrities have no right to speak out on these issues because they do not have traditional credentials in law, religion or philosophy. I do not believe that. While there is a risk that people will pay less attention to those traditional leaders, religious or otherwise, that might not be such a bad thing, given some of the scandals we have seen recently.

Perhaps the biggest risk is that anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account can now get on their soapbox and start making moral proclamations, often with little to back that up. Morality has become more of a free-for-all and the responsibility for determining morality rests on the shoulders of everyday Americans, who might find it easier to listen to celebrities they already like rather than conducting research themselves. However, this is arguably what we have done all along, with priests, rabbis, political leaders, etc.

Q. What are some of the benefits?

A. One important benefit is that ethics becomes part of everyday life and everyday discussions. It used to be that people who studied philosophy or religion were kind of off to the side. Now that people like Taylor Swift, Oprah or Colin Kaepernick are talking about very important moral issues; those issues and debates have become mainstream and, if not cool, at least more frequently talked about.

The info is here.

Editor's Note: Ugh.

The Gap Between Rich And Poor Americans' Health Is Widening

Susie Neilson
npr.org
Originally posted June 28, 2019

Hereis an excerpt:

The researchers looked at differences in health between white and black people and between three income brackets. They assessed the degree to which race, income and gender influenced health outcomes over time, a measure they called "health justice."

Finally, they calculated the gap between people's health outcomes and that of the most privileged demographic: high-income white men.

"Results of this analysis suggest that there has been a clear lack of progress on health equity during the past 25 years in the United States," the researchers write.

Income was the biggest predictor of differences in health outcomes, according to Zimmerman. Health differences between the highest income group and lowest income group increased "really quite dramatically," he says.

Things weren't all negative. On one measure — disparity between health outcomes for black and white people — the gap between health outcomes narrowed significantly.

But gender and race still influenced health outcomes.

Lisa Cooper, a Bloomberg distinguished professor in health equity at Johns Hopkins University, called the study's conclusions "frustrating, but honestly not surprising."

The info is here.

Thomas Fisher on The Ethics of Architecture and Other Contradictions

Michael Crosbie
www.archdaily.com
Originally posted June 21, 2019

Here is an excerpt from the interview between Michael Crosbie and Thomas Fisher:

MJC: Most architects don’t give serious consideration to ethics in their design work. Why not?

TF: The revision of AIA’s Code of Ethics requiring members to discuss the environmental impacts of a project with the client really gets at that. In the past, architects have been wary to have such discussions because it questions the power of the client to do whatever they want because they have the means to do so. Architects have been designing for people with power and money for a very long time. It’s easier to talk about aesthetics, function, or the pragmatics of design because it doesn’t question a client’s power.

MJC: “The pursuit of happiness” is a very strong idea in American culture. How do architects balance serving clients—in their “pursuit of happiness” through architecture—with the greater good of the community?

TF: In ethics, “the pursuit of happiness” is often misunderstood. Utilitarian ethics states that you strive to make the greatest number of people happy; the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham promoted “the greatest good for the greatest number.” But ethics is also about understanding how others view the world, and how our actions affect the lives and welfare of others. The role of professionals is to look after the greater good. Licensure is a social contract in which, in exchange for a monopoly in providing professional services, the professional is responsible for the larger picture. Designing to satisfy someone’s hedonistic “pursuit of happiness” without regard to that bigger picture is unethical behavior for an architect. It violates the social contract behind licensure. I think an architect should lose his or her license for an action like that. Such an action might not be illegal, but it’s unethical. Ethics is really about our day-to-day interactions with people in the realm of space, public and private.

The interview is here.

Understanding the process of moralization: How eating meat becomes a moral issue

Feinberg, M., Kovacheff, C., Teper, R., & Inbar, Y. (2019).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(1), 50-72.

Abstract

A large literature demonstrates that moral convictions guide many of our thoughts, behaviors, and social interactions. Yet, we know little about how these moral convictions come to exist. In the present research we explore moralization—the process by which something that was morally neutral takes on moral properties—examining what factors facilitate and deter it. In 3 longitudinal studies participants were presented with morally evocative stimuli about why eating meat should be viewed as a moral issue. Study 1 tracked students over a semester as they took a university course that highlighted the suffering animals endure because of human meat consumption. In Studies 2 and 3 participants took part in a mini-course we developed which presented evocative videos aimed at inducing moralization. In all 3 studies, we assessed participants’ beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions at multiple time points to track moral changes and potential factors responsible for such changes. A variety of factors, both cognitive and affective, predicted participants’ moralization or lack thereof. Model testing further pointed to two primary conduits of moralization: the experience of moral emotions (e.g., disgust, guilt) felt when contemplating the issue, and moral piggybacking (connecting the issue at hand with one’s existing fundamental moral principles). Moreover, we found individual differences, such as how much one holds their morality as central to their identity, also predicted the moralization process. We discuss the broad theoretical and applied implications of our results.

A pdf can be viewed here.

The world is broken—and human kindness is the only solution

Anee Kingston
McClean's
Originally published June 19, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

The U.S. government has literally institutionalized cruelty, caging migrant children and arresting “Good Samaritans” helping ailing migrants at the Mexican border. Austerity programs, including those in Ontario, are targeting the vulnerable—the poor, children, those on the margins. The divisive, toxic political climate gave rise to the British group Compassion in Politics, founded last fall by activists and academics. “People look at British politics and see a lack of compassion in policy on refugees, immigration, housing, Brexit,” group co-founder Ma
tt Hawkins tells Maclean’s. Forty years of neo-liberal, free-market policies created widening inequities, falling incomes and a sense of desperation, he says. “There’s frustration with a political system that puts party above universal progress, majorities in Parliament over collaboration.” Support has been overwhelmingly positive, Hawkins says, including from the moral philosopher Peter Singer and Noam Chomsky; there’s interest in Australia and they’re liaising with Ardern’s office. In May, a cross-party group of British MPs called for legislation to contain a “compassion threshold.”

The loudest cries for compassion, tellingly, are heard within systems literally created to care for people. Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference, by American physician-scientists Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, published in April, is the latest book to sound the alarm about systemic inhumanity within “patient-based” medicine. The authors identify a “compassion crisis” in U.S. health care; treating patients more kindly, they argue, improves health outcomes, reduces doctor burnout and lowers costs.

Canada is in similar straits, Toronto physician Brian Goldman, author of the 2018 bestseller The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy is Essential in Everyday Life, tells Maclean’s. “We’ve designed a system that edits out empathy, that makes it almost impossible.” Something has to crack, Goldman says: “We’ve reached the limit of the myth of the superman-superwoman [doctor] who can juggle 10 things at once.”

The info is here.

Microsoft Reconsidering AI Ethics Review Plan

Deborah Todd
Forbes.com
Originally posted June 24, 2019


Here is an except:

In March, Microsoft executive vice president of AI and Research Harry Shum told the crowd at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital Conference the company would  someday add AI ethics reviews to a standard checklist of audits for products to be released. However, a Microsoft spokesperson said in an interview that the plan was only one of “a number of options being discussed,” and its implementation isn’t guaranteed. He said efforts are underway for an AI strategy that will influence operations companywide, in addition to the product stage.

“Microsoft has implemented its internal facial recognition principles and is continuing work to operationalize its broader AI principles across the company,” said the spokesman.

The adjustment comes during a time when executives across Silicon Valley are grappling with the best ways to ensure the implicit biases affecting human programmers don’t make their way into machine learning and artificial intelligence architecture. It also comes as the industry works to address issues where bias may have already crept in, including facial recognition systems that misidentify individuals with dark skin tones, autonomous vehicles with detection systems that fail dark-skinned pedestrians more than any other group and voice recognition systems that struggle to recognize non-native English speakers.

The info is here.

Revisiting Morality In the Age of Dishonesty

Wim Laven
citywatchla.com
Originally posted June 27, 2019

If Donald Trump actually follows through on his recently tweeted promise that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “will begin deporting the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States … as fast as they come in,” what will you do?

According to the faith I was raised with I hope I would act according to the lessons found in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus told of a traveler who was beaten, stripped, and left naked waiting for death. People who claimed to have good faith avoided this victim, but it was the Samaritan who stopped and rendered aid—a selfless act of altruism. Charity, compassion, and forgiveness are the highest values I was raised with. I do my best to dedicate myself to their service, and I’m sure I’m not the only one left in a bind: what will I do?

Recent stories tell of modern day Samaritans rendering aid to travelers (some seeking asylum, some trying to immigrate legally, some illegally…) at great risk. The case of Scott Warren in Arizona presents offering humanitarian aid as a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison; but there is no verdict, the jury is hung. His specific crimes are putting out food and water, and pointing directions (actions consistent with No More Deaths, a part of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson), which appears reflect values just like I was raised with. Do I have the strength to follow my religious convictions, even in the face of criminal prosecution like Warren has?

The info is here.

Cognitive skills and decision-making are related to distinct facets of trait mindfulness

Tung Bui, Neil Dittmann, Kaleb Hobgood, and Neil Schmitzer-Torbert
PsyArXiv Preprints
Lasted edited June 1, 2019

Abstract

Objective: Mindfulness has been an active area of research focused on the potential links to health. Recent work has also established that trait mindfulness is also related to cognition and decision-making. The present study tested the relationship between dimensions of trait mindfulness and measures of perception, cognition, and decision-making.

Method: Forty-three undergraduate males and 126 online participants (54 females) completed a perceptual accuracy task, Stroop task, and surveys assessing five facets of trait mindfulness, problem solving, decentering, and mental health measures (stress, depression, anxiety).

Results: Overall, only a subset of mindfulness facets were related to performance on the perceptual accuracy and Stroop tasks, partially replicating previous reports. Similarly, a subset of mindfulness dimensions was related to ethical decision-making and problem-solving success. In contrast, measures of poor mental health (stress, worry, depression) were non-specifically related to the majority of mindfulness facets. Relationships between mental health measures, but not measures of cognition and decision-making, were mediated by decentering. One exception was perceptual accuracy, which was related to several mindfulness facets, and mediated by decentering.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that separable dimensions of mindfulness are specifically related to distinct cognitive skills and decision-making, and that these relationships are largely distinct from those between mindfulness and psychological health.

The research is here.

The Theory That Justified Anti-Gay Crime

Caleb Crain
The New Yorker
Originally posted June 26, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

As preposterous as the idea of homosexual panic may sound today, for much of the twentieth century it was treated as something like common sense. “When a beast attacks, you are justified in killing him,” is the way one defense attorney phrased the principle behind it, in 1940. The press, too, sometimes discussed the idea approvingly. The New York Daily News described a 1944 murder of a gay man as an “honor slaying.” In 1952, homosexual panic was listed as a mental disorder in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and, as late as the nineteen-nineties, the notion was still so current in the popular mind that a Christopher Street shop selling gay-themed T-shirts was called, in what seems to have been ironic homage, Don’t Panic.

It turns out that the psychological concept has a less than illustrious origin. The term “homosexual panic,” Polchin reports, was coined by a psychiatrist named Edward Kempf, in a 1920 treatise titled “Psychopathology.” Polchin garbles a key quote from Kempf, printing “sexually attracted” where Kempf wrote “sexually attractive,” and I took a look at the relevant chapter to see if I could make sense of it. It’s understandable that Polchin got confused. Kempf’s text is neither lucid nor coherent.

Kempf theorized that homosexual panic emerged from “the pressure of uncontrollable perverse sexual cravings,” that is, from the frustration of homosexual urges that typically arose in same-sex environments, such as prison or the military. According to Kempf, symptoms of the panic included a fearfulness that could lead to catatonia, a “compulsion to seek or submit to assault,” and delusional perceptions of being poisoned or entranced. Indeed, the hallucinations and paranoid delusions that many of Kempf’s patients suffered from were quite serious. One patient imagined that broken pills were being surreptitiously put into his pudding; another went through spells of believing he was God.

The info is here.