Empirical research in bioethics has developed rapidly over the past decade, but has largely eschewed the use of technology-driven methodologies. We propose “design bioethics” as an area of conjoined theoretical and methodological innovation in the field, working across bioethics, health sciences and human-centred technological design. We demonstrate the potential of digital tools, particularly purpose-built digital games, to align with theoretical frameworks in bioethics for empirical research, integrating context, narrative and embodiment in moral decision-making. Purpose-built digital tools can engender situated engagement (...) with bioethical questions; can achieve such engagement at scale; and can access groups traditionally under-represented in bioethics research and theory. If developed and used with appropriate rigor, tools motivated by “design bioethics” could offer unique insights into new and familiar normative and empirical issues in the field. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a proposal for a new metaphysical framework within which theology and science might both find a home. Our proposal draws on the triadic semiotics and threefold system of metaphysical categories of C. S. Peirce. We summarize the key features of a semiotic model of the Trinity, based on observed parallels between Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness and Christian thinking about, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We test and extend the semiotic model (...) by exploring how Peirce's taxonomy of signs offers a new approach to theological reflection on the Incarnation. This leads to a novel way of framing scientific questions about human evolution in semiotic terms and to a new approach to theological anthropology. Finally, we use the semiotic model of the Trinity as the basis of a trinitarian approach to the theology of creation according to which the semiotic processes that are fundamental to life and to human behavior and cognition may be understood as “vestiges of the Trinity in creation.”. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of authors have called for a return to an ethic of honour as a means of imparting virtue to military personnel. Mark Osiel, for instance, argues that ‘martial honor can be...

This paper is a commentary on Joseph Corabi’s “The Misuse and Failure of the Evolutionary Argument”, this Journal, vol. VI, No. 39; pp. 199-227. It defends William James’s formulation of the evolutionary argument against charges such as mishandling of evidence. Although there are ways of attacking James’s argument, it remains formidable, and Corabi’s suggested revision is not an improvement on James’s statement of it.

One antidote to moral distress is stronger moral agency—that is, an enhanced ability to act to bring about change. The Clinical Ethics Residency for Nurses, an educational program developed and run in two large northeastern academic medical centers with funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, intended to strengthen nurses’ moral agency. Drawing on Improving Competencies in Clinical Ethics Consultation: An Education Guide, by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and on the goals of the nursing profession, CERN (...) sought to change attitudes, increase knowledge, and develop skills to act on one's knowledge. One of the key insights the faculty members brought to the design of this program is that knowledge of clinical ethics is not enough to develop moral agency. In addition to lecture‐style classes, CERN employed a variety of methods based in adult learning theory, such as active application of ethics knowledge to patient scenarios in classroom discussion, simulation, and the clinical practicum. Overwhelmingly, the feedback from the participants (sixty‐seven over three years of the program) indicated that CERN achieved transformative learning. (shrink)

The speech act of bragging has never been subjected to conceptual analysis until now. We argue that a speaker brags just in case she makes an utterance that is an assertion and is intended to impress the addressee with something about the speaker via the belief produced by the speaker's assertion. We conclude by discussing why it is especially difficult to cancel a brag by prefacing it with, ‘I'm not trying to impress you, but…’ and connect this discussion with Moore's (...) paradox and the recent neologism ‘humblebrag’. (shrink)

Cultures, institutions, and social roles powerfully shape affective experience. Four types of social affect—cultural sentiments, characteristic emotions, structural emotions, and consequent emotions—characterize relations between culture, social structure, and individual affective experience within social interactions. This article briefly reviews findings from contemporary research traditions about these forms of affect and finishes with simulations comparing predictions about social emotions across cultures. The results of that simulation study illustrate how we might use data and tools from affect control theory to investigate differences in (...) basic cultural sentiments, as well as predictions about the core types of social emotions—those associated with identities, those associated with structural relationships, and those evoked by a social event. (shrink)

The main theme of this book is the view that psychiatrists have been unable to cope with the problems facing their patients.

An ongoing challenge facing emotion researchers is finding appropriate measurement tools. Many of our theories focus on emotion in the context of dynamic interaction, yet many of our most relied-upon measures either interrupt or alter interaction. New research suggests that infrared thermography may be useful as a nonintrusive way to measure emotion. Here we discuss the viability of thermography for studying emotion response and advancing emotion theory.

Moral obligations rest on circumstances. But what are these obligating reasons and in virtue of what are they such reasons? Nomological conceptions define such reasons in terms of moral laws. I argue that one such conception cannot be correct and that others do not support the familiar and plausible view that obligating reasons are pro tanto reasons, either because they entail that this view is false or else because they cannot explain—or even help to explain—how it could be true. I (...) also argue that a particular dispositional conception of obligating reasons does support this view of obligating reasons by enabling an explanation of how it could be true. Moreover, my arguments show that the dispositional moral metaphysic on which this conception is predicated can do something that nomological alternatives cannot: explain why obligating reasons and moral obligations are pro tanto reasons and obligations. (shrink)

Accounting for the epistemic contribution of deduction has been a pervasive problem for logicians interested in deduction, such as, among others, Jakko Hintikka. The problem arises because the conclusion validly deduced from a set of premises is said to be “contained” in that set; because of this containment relation, the conclusion would be known from the moment the premises are known. Assuming this, it is problematic to explain how we can gain knowledge by deducing a logical consequence implied by a (...) set of known premises. To address this problem, we offer an alternative account of the epistemic contribution of deduction as the process required to deduce a conclusion or a theorem, understanding such a process not only in terms of the number of steps in the derivation but also, more importantly, in terms of the reason for or justification for every step. That is, we do not know a proposition unless we have a justification or proof of that proposition. With this goal in mind, we develop a justification logic system which exhibits the epistemic contribution of a deductive derivation as the resulting justified formula. (shrink)

How should we design AI systems that make moral decisions that affect us? When there is disagreement about which moral decisions should be made and which methods would produce them, we should avoid arbitrary design choices. However, I show that this leads to a regress problem similar to the one metanormativists face involving higher orders of uncertainty. I argue that existing strategies for handling this parallel problem give verdicts about where to stop in the regress that are either too arbitrary (...) or too difficult to implement. I propose a new strategy for AI designers that is better than these alternatives. (shrink)

How should we design AI systems that make moral decisions that affect us? When there is disagreement about which moral decisions should be made and which methods would produce them, we should avoid arbitrary design choices. However, I show that this leads to a regress problem similar to the one metanormativists face involving higher orders of uncertainty. I argue that existing strategies for handling this parallel problem give verdicts about where to stop in the regress that are either too arbitrary (...) or too difficult to implement. I propose a new strategy for AI designers that is better than these alternatives. (shrink)

This work is a thought experiment in re-interpreting the virtue of li or ritual/propriety for the contemporary, multi-cultural, world. Using Zhuangzi, the Lunyu, and Zhongyong as my primary points of departure, I re-interpret the Confucian ideas of hierarchy in terms of the Daoist conception of harmony. Many scholars today argue that Confucianism has a relational ontology, yet at the same time, we find that Confucian values can and do lead to rigid and harmful traditions that have historically oppressed marginalized groups (...) like women. As such, I re-imagine what li might look like if we take relational ontology seriously, Drawing from Zhuangzi, I argue that Confucian harmony and order do not necessarily arise out of hierarchy, and that harmony, the most primary goal of li and of the Confucian project, can be best attained through propriety that is influenced by Daoism and feminist values such as equality. (shrink)

There was a deep continuity in Wollheim’s thought from his book on F. H. Bradley onward. His notion of the concept of art as deeply interiorized was inextricable from his sense of the psychological unity of the mind and the historical continuity of artistic tradition, seen on analogy with an inherited language. His study of pictorial representation pivoted on the innate psychological capacity of ‘seeing-in’, perceiving the represented subject in a surface from which it was seen as distinct but to (...) which it could be related. The expressiveness of depiction he explained through a psychoanalytic concept of projection in which we come to see a piece of the external world as corresponding to an inward state of mind. He reserved the use of the term ‘imagination’ for the artist’s elaboration of ‘seeing-in’. This he exemplified in accounts of painting by Manet, Friedrich, Titian, and Ingres among others. His critical stance has a close affinity with certain essays by Pater. (shrink)

Substance dualism is the view that humans are essentially immaterial souls, and that conscious events are events in that soul. This chapter considers the arguments for and against this view. It argues that such questions as ‘Would I have existed if my mother's egg had been fertilized by a different though genetically identical sperm from my father?’ must have a sharp yes-or-no answer, but that they would not have a sharp answer if being me consisted simply of being made of (...) similar genetic material and having a similar conscious life. (shrink)

One way to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt‐style cases is to challenge the claim that agents in these scenarios are genuinely morally responsible for what they do. Alternatively, one can grant that agents are morally responsible for what they do in these cases but resist the idea that they could not have done otherwise. This latter strategy is known as the flicker defense of PAP. In an argument he calls the W‐Defense, David Widerker adopts the former (...) approach. I argue that, while Widerker's argument does a poor job showing that these agents are not morally responsible for what they do, it does a very good job highlighting the alternative possibilities that remain open to agents in these cases and illustrating their moral significance (or robustness). In doing so, my aim is to co‐opt Widerker's argument to bolster the most promising versions of the flicker defense. (shrink)

Frente a una América Latina movilizada, conflictuada y atravesada por conatos de violencia interactoral, cívica-contestataria y política, y ante los abusos de gobiernos que resultan en reclamos y nuevas prácticas políticas de los sujetos sin derechos, se genera un escenario de riesgo para la endeble democracia. En virtud de esto el autor analiza la democracia no sólo en torno a los procesos y eventos electorales sino tambi{en abarcando otras aristas de este fenómeno, como la participación, las movilizaciones, los nuevos actores (...) y los comportamientos de las multitudes, buscando dar cuenta sobre los riesgos de la democracia. (shrink)

This edition includes the letters exchanged between Charles S. Peirce and the Open Court Publishing Company between 1890 and 1913. Open Court published more of Peirce’s philosophical writings than any other publisher during his lifetime, and played a critical role in what little recognition and financial income he received during these difficult, yet philosophically rich, years. This correspondence is the basis for much of what is known surrounding Peirce’s publications in The Monist and The Open Court—two of the publisher ́s (...) most popular forums for philosophical, scientific, and religious thought—and is therefore referenced heavily in Peirce editions dealing partly or wholly with his later work, including The Essential Peirce series and Writings of Charles S. Peirce. The edition provides for the first time a complete text of this oft-cited correspondence, with textual apparatus, contextual annotation, and careful replications of existential graphs and other complex illustrations. By so doing, this edition sheds critical light not only on Peirce and Open Court, but also on the context, relationships, and concepts that influenced the development of Progressive Era intellectual history and philosophy. (shrink)

Prejudice in the selection of the subjects of scientific research is morally unacceptable. Indeed, the occurrence of prejudice in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study prompted the production of the Belmont Report, setting out the basic ethical principles for the protection of human subjects of biomedical and behavioral research. The relevance of the Belmont Report to the protection of all animal subjects of scientific research is discussed.