We introduce the Bias Network Approach (BNA) as a sociotechnical method for AI developers to identify, map, and relate biases across the AI development process. This approach addresses the limitations of what we call the "isolationist approach to AI bias," a trend in AI literature where biases are seen as separate occurrence linked to specific stages in an AI pipeline. Dealing with these multiple biases can trigger a sense of excessive overload in managing each potential bias individually or promote the (...) adoption of an uncritical approach to understanding the influence of biases in developers’ decision-making. The BNA fosters dialogue and a critical stance among developers, guided by external experts, using graphical representations to depict biased connections. To test the BNA, we conducted a pilot case study on the "waiting list” project, involving a small AI developer team creating a healthcare waiting list NPL model in Chile. The analysis showed promising findings: (i) the BNA aids in visualizing interconnected biases and their impacts, facilitating ethical reflection in a more accessible way; (ii) it promotes transparency in decision-making throughout AI development; and (iii) more focus is necessary on professional biases and material limitations as sources of bias in AI development. (shrink)

The inclusion of stakeholders and knowledge systems is increasingly valued in research to address complex socio-ecological challenges around the world. Often these projects take place in cross-cultural setting where external researchers risk perpetuating historically extractive research models that not only harm local communities but damage the validity of research projects. Responsible community engagement is increasingly recognized as a practice that can improve researcher-community relationships and research quality by incorporating principles of ethics, reciprocity, and power sharing. In partnership with local community (...) leaders, researchers from a U.S. university coded 76 research articles for indicators of responsible community engagement conducted in the Samburu, Kenya community since 2000. Findings from this study suggest that most of the research in Samburu has followed extractive models. Of the 76 articles reviewed many failed to acknowledge ethical protocols, did not address relevance of the study to the local community, and did not report any indication of outreach or community change as a result of the research. While a portion of articles showed evidence of community involvement in the studies, the involvement was primarily limited to secondary roles with little to no shared decision-making power over the research process. We discuss methodological considerations for future research and steps that must be taken in order to shift the norm and practice of academic research in sites such as Samburu, Kenya. (shrink)

A response to “CAHPS Surveys: Valid and Valuable Measures of Patient Experience,” byWilliam G. Lehrman and Mark W. Friedberg, and to “Courage, Context, and Contemporary Health Care,” by Jeffrey T. Berger.

It is commonplace by now that moral philosophy has a long history of gender biases, not only regarding the pertinent moral issues but also regarding the development of concepts and theories. This insight from feminist philosophy, however, has not yet received sufficient attention in the debate on supererogation. That is not least surprising, since we all are familiar with the phenomenon that what is morally expected of an agent is not gender-neutral but at least to some extent relates to gender (...) roles and social expectations. Therefore, the main aim of this chapter is to build on theoretical and methodological insights from feminist philosophy to carve out this research gap and to map the field for future research. It will be argued that feminist approaches can only be ignored within the debate on supererogation at the cost of philosophical rigor since they do not only give rise to novel perspectives and insights on questions already discussed, but also make matters visible that would have been overlooked otherwise. Thereby this chapter seeks essentially to contribute to a more extensive understanding of the social, political, and epistemic dimensions of supererogation that have hitherto been neglected. (shrink)

This paper provides the first examples of rings of algebraic numbers containing the rings of algebraic integers of the infinite algebraic extensions of where Hilbert's Tenth Problem is undecidable.

Regulatory agencies vary widely in their classification of FMT, with significant impact on patient access. This article conducts a global survey of national regulations and collates existing FMT classification statuses, ultimately suggesting that the human cell and tissue product designation best fits FMT's characteristics and that definitional objectives to that classification may be overcome.

Empowerment, an already central concept in public health, has gained additional relevance through the expansion of mobile health (mHealth). Especially direct-to-consumer self-testing app companies mobilise the term to advertise their products, which allow users to self-test for various medical conditions independent of healthcare professionals. This article first demonstrates the absence of empowerment conceptualisations in the context of self-testing apps by engaging with empowerment literature. It then contrasts the service these apps provide with two widely cited empowerment definitions by the WHO, (...) which describe the term as a process that, broadly, leads to knowledge and control of health decisions. We conclude that self-testing apps can only partly empower their users, as they, we argue, do not provide the type of knowledge and control the WHO definitions describe. More importantly, we observe that this shortcoming stems from the fact that in the literature on mHealth and in self-testing marketing, empowerment is understood as a goal rather than a process. This characterises a shift in the meaning of empowerment in the context of self-testing and mHealth, one that reveals a lack of awareness for relational and contextual factors that contribute to empowerment. We argue that returning to a process-understanding of empowerment helps to identify these apps’ deficits, and we conclude the article by briefly suggesting several strategies to increase self-testing apps’ empowerment function. (shrink)

I will discuss the relationship between two different accounts of remedial duty ascriptions. According to one account, the beneficiary account, individuals who benefit innocently from injustices ought to bear remedial responsibilities towards the victims of these injustices. According to another account, the causal account, individuals who caused injustices ought to bear remedial duties towards the victim. In this paper, I examine the relation between the principles central to these accounts: the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the well-established principle of Strict Liability (...) in law. I argue that both principles display a strong yet unexplored similarity as they make certain kinds of causal connection sufficient for incurring liability. Because of this similarity, I suggest that insights into the Beneficiary Pays Principle can be gained from exploring its relation with Strict Liability. In particular, I examine two new positive arguments that could be adapted to support of the Beneficiary Pays Principle: the Minimising Injustice Argument and the Normative Connection Argument. However, I’ll show that only one of those arguments, namely the Normative Connection Argument, can truly support the Beneficiary Pays Principle. I conclude that, if you endorse the Normative Connection Argument for Strict Liability, you have at least a strong prima facie reason to endorse the parallel argument for the Beneficiary Pays Principle. (shrink)

Previous research suggested a role of gaze in preference formation, not merely as an expression of preference, but also as a causal influence. According to the gaze cascade hypothesis, the longer subjects look at an item, the more likely they are to develop a preference for it. However, to date the connection between viewing and liking has been investigated predominately with self-paced viewing conditions in which the subjects were required to select certain items from simultaneously presented stimuli on the basis (...) of perceived visual attractiveness. Such conditions might promote a default, but non-mandatory connection between viewing and liking. To explore whether the connection is separable, we examined the evaluative processing of single naturalistic food images in a 2 x 2 design, conducted completely within subjects, in which we varied both the type of exposure (self-paced versus time-controlled) and the type of evaluation (non-exclusive versus exclusive). In the self-paced exclusive evaluation, longer viewing was associated with a higher likelihood of a positive evaluation. However, in the self-paced non-exclusive evaluation, the trend reversed such that longer viewing durations were associated with lesser ratings. Furthermore, in the time-controlled tasks, both with non-exclusive and exclusive evaluation, there was no significant relationship between the viewing duration and the evaluation. The overall pattern of results was consistent for viewing times measured in terms of exposure duration (i.e., the duration of stimulus presentation on the screen) and in terms of actual gaze duration (i.e., the amount of time the subject effectively gazed at the stimulus on the screen). The data indicated that viewing does not intrinsically lead to a higher evaluation when evaluating single food images; instead, the relationship between viewing duration and evaluation depends on the type of task. We suggest that self-determination of exposure duration may be a prerequisite for any influence from viewing time on evaluative processing, regardless of whether the influence is facilitative. Moreover, the purported facilitative link between viewing and liking appears to be limited to exclusive evaluation, when only a restricted number of items can be included in a chosen set. (shrink)

Courts usually treat control over human bodies and body parts as a property issue and find that people do not have property rights in themselves. This contradicts the liberal philosophical principle that people should be able to perform any self-regarding actions that do not cause harm to others. The philosophical inconsistencies under pinning the legal treatment of body parts arguably stem from a misplaced judicial preoccupation with‘ property ’. A better approach would be to hold a policy inquiry into the (...) degree of liberty a society wishes to grant its inhabitants. Only once this substantive issue has been addressed should property be raised as a possible method of implementing the policy. (shrink)

Es ist ein verbreitetes Phänomen unserer moralischen Urteilspraxis, dass wir herausragende moralische Handlungen bisweilen als moralisch wertvoll und dennoch nicht als moralisch geboten beurteilen, d.i. als supererogatorisch. Für die kantische Ethik stellt diese Beobachtung eine Herausforderung dar. Nicht nur verfügt sie nicht über eine Kategorie der Supererogation, vielmehr scheinen die wenigen Stellen, an denen sich Kant explizit mit moralisch herausragendem Handeln befasst, auf den ersten Blick dafür zu sprechen, dass eine solche Urteilspraxis schlicht als fehlerhaft zurückzuweisen ist. Dagegen arbeitet die (...) Studie heraus, dass die kantische Ethik einen theoretischen Rahmen für eine nuancierte moralpsychologische Analyse dieser Praxis bietet: Moralisch herausragende Handlungen als supererogatorisch zu betrachten erweist sich demnach einerseits als vielschichtige Gefährdung der eigenen Moralität, andererseits vermag das gute Exempel anderer unter bestimmten Bedingungen durchaus zur Beförderung der eigenen Moralität beizutragen. Die Studie trägt zu einem differenzierteren Verständnis der kantischen Ethik bei und weist eine genuin kantische Perspektive auf Supererogation als systematisch anschlussfähig an aktuelle Debatten aus. (shrink)

The development of empathy is central to positive social adjustment. However, issues remain with integrating empathy research conducted with children, adolescents, and adults. The current article (...

While examples of bacteria benefiting eukaryotes are increasingly documented, studies examining effects of eukaryote hosts on microbial fitness are rare. Beneficial bacteria are often called “mutualistic” even if mutual reciprocity of benefits has not been demonstrated and despite the plausibility of other explanations for these microbes' beneficial effects on host fitness. Furthermore, beneficial bacteria often occur in diverse communities, making mutualism both empirically and conceptually difficult to demonstrate. We suggest reserving the terms “mutualism” and “parasitism” for pairwise interactions where the (...) relationship is largely independent of other species and can be verified by measuring the fitness effect experienced by both partners. In hosts with diverse microbial communities, we propose re‐formulating some of the essential questions of symbiosis research – e.g. concerning specificity, transmission mode, and common evolutionary fates – as questions of community ecology and ecosystem function, allowing important biological interactions to be investigated without making assumptions about reciprocity. Understanding the fitness of host‐associated bacteria is a crucial component of investigations into the role of microbes in eukaryote evolution. (shrink)

Legal interpretations of the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) can and have evolved over time. Interpretation of the statutory term “irreversible” (circulation cannot ever resume) to mean “...

Do neuromodulation technologies change patients’ personal identities? Haeusermann et al. claim that there is not enough evidence to support this worry. In their study, participants, following a res...

Egoismus wie Genuß scheinen heutzutage zunächst ichbezogen und daher asozial; Erfahren und Erkennen, Genießen und Produzieren stehen sich merkwürdig fern. Eher selten geht - wie für den jungen Karl Marx - der "Anblick eines bunten Luftspringers" entschieden über den eines "ängstlich-zugeknöpften, in sich geduckten Indivi-duums". Genuß und Egoismus können jedoch als verbunden gedacht und so als unverzichtbar erfahren werden für menschlich verfaßte Gemeinschaften. Geschichtlich haben beson-ders die Literatur sowie Teile der Sozial- und Moralphilosophie zu einem solchen Denken Beiträge geleistet. Eine (...) Reihe dieser Konzepte - von Augustinus bis zu neuen Modernetheorien in Lateinamerika, mit dem Schwerpunkt im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert - genauer zu begreifen und zu vergegenwärtigen ist das Ziel des Buches. Sie zeigen: Das Vergnügen, aus eignen Mitteln eine ganze Welt zu bauen, vermag zu den höchsten zu zählen. Welten verlieren an Lebenswert, wenn sie dieses Vergnügen aufs Geistige beschränken oder die Selbstsucht gar hinter Masken und in die entfremdete Existenz zwingen. Der Anspruch, für sich genießend zu produzieren, kommt - allen Dementis der Praxis zum Trotz - aus gesundem Menschenverstand und ist ein Menschenrecht. Die Autoren des Buches sind Romanisten und Komparatisten, Philosophiehistoriker, Anglisten und Amerikanisten, sie haben ihre Texte aus Anlaß des 75. Geburtstages des Aufklärungsforschers, Stendhal-Kenners, Literaturtheoretikers und genießenden Egotisten Manfred Naumann, über den einige Beiträge und eine umfassende Bibliographie der Schriften informieren, zur Verfügung gestellt. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effect of conspiracy ideation, moral disengagement, and intolerance of uncertainty on compliance with the anti-SARS-COV-2 social distancing rules and two other facets of people’s reactions toward the coronavirus crisis. A convenience sample of 245 Romanians completed an online survey in March 2020. Results indicate that conspiracy ideation is associated with lower assessments of virus risk and lower compliance with the confinement measures. Moral disengagement had a parallel effect of undermining personal compliance to the social distancing (...) regulations, highlighting the need to define social distancing as morally relevant and prevent individual justifications for noncompliance. (shrink)

STEM faculty are encouraged to incorporate ethical, social, and historical content into their undergraduate STEM courses. This is a challenge, for there is more than enough foundational material, and interdisciplinary content can introduce a steep learning curve for students and faculty. As part of the NSF-funded Fall 2020 STEM Futures Education Project (https://serc.carleton.edu/stemfutures/about.html), we presented a plan for developing 1–2-day ethics modules that STEM faculty can easily incorporate into their courses and that STEM departments can use to craft ethics credentials (...) that suit their purposes. Each module would have a materials list with readings, videos, and podcasts; a series of discussion questions; 2–3 interactive small group activities; and a list of prompts for an essay assignment. Some modules would have suggestions for community-based and project-based learning, and all would employ learner-centered and inclusive pedagogies to create a more inclusive and ethical culture in STEM undergraduate education. The modules empower STEM faculty with limited expertise in the humanities to deliver this new content responsibly, especially at 2- and 4-year institutions that need more resources to support team teaching. (shrink)

In his lectures on general logic Kant maintains that the generality of a representation (the form of a concept) arises from the logical acts of comparison, reflection and abstraction. These acts are commonly understood to be identical with the acts that generate reflected schemata. I argue that this is mistaken, and that the generality of concepts, as products of the understanding, should be distinguished from the classificatory generality of schemata, which are products of the imagination. A Kantian concept does not (...) provide mere criteria for noting sameness and difference in things, but instead reflects the inner nature of things. Its form consists in the self-consciousness of a capacity to judge (i.e. the Concept is the ‘I think’). (shrink)

This book examines the conceptual and temporal frames through which modern Western historiography has linked itself to classical antiquity. In doing so, it articulates a genealogical problematic of what history is and a more strictly focused reappraisal of Greek and Roman historical thought. Ancient ideas of history have played a key role in modern debates about history writing, from Kant through Hegel to Nietzsche and Heidegger, and from Friedrich Creuzer through George Grote and Theodor Mommsen to Momigliano and Moses Finley; (...) yet scholarship has paid little attention to the theoretical implications of the reception of these ideas. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of relevant topics and approaches and boast distinguished authors from across Europe in the fields of classics, ancient and modern history and the theory of historiography. (shrink)

Putnam’s internal realism implies a form of conceptual relativity with respect to ontology. There can be different descriptions of the world which are based on distinct ontologies. It has been argued that this relativity forecloses any possibility of unifying our knowledge and can even lead to inconsistency. If this is true, internal realism should be abandoned because it is compatible with non-rational positions. We will argue that these objections can be dismissed if truth as idealized warranted assertibility is understood as (...) stability of a belief state under new evidence. This view of truth is still compatible with the existence of distinct belief states expressing different views on the world. This understanding of the notion of truth is a consequence of interpreting both our cognitive activities and the notion of meaning dynamically. The meaning of a sentence is no longer given in terms of (static) truth conditions but as a relation between belief sets, that is, as a kind of information change potential. (shrink)

Literature on political perfectionism has often mainly focused on dealing with objections. This book highlights the intuitive appeal of liberal perfectionism. Many objections to perfectionism are shown to fail to reach their target once appropriate.

In 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in exile from France and Switzerland, came to England, where he made the acquaintance of Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. The two began to botanise together and to exchange letters about botany. These letters contain salient statements about Rousseau's views on natural theology, gardens, botanical texts and exotic botany. This exchange entailed not only discussions about plant identifications and other botanical matters, but most important, reciprocal gifts of books and specimens in the manner of (...) gentlemanly scientific correspondence of the period. Rousseau volunteered his services as the Duchess's ‘herborist’ or plant collector, and collected specimens and seeds in her behalf; these were destined for her own extensive herbaria and other natural history collections. Rousseau, who elsewhere denied female talent for science, admired the Duchess's knowledge of natural history, acknowledging his own as inferior. Their correspondence ended when the Duchess sent him the Herbarium amboinense of Georg Rumpf (Rumphius), an important work of exotic botany. Rousseau considered exotic botany to be the antithesis of the domination-free nature from which he derived solace and inspiration. (shrink)

Autism is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder that presents unique challenges to bioethicists. In particular, bioethicists ought to reconsider pediatric consent in light of disparity between beliefs that are held about the disorder by parents and adults with autism. The neurodiverse community ought to be given some consideration in this debate, and, as such, there may be a role for autistic narratives in clarifying this problem.