An emerging topic in robot design and scholarly research is socially assistive robots for senior citizens. Compared to robots in other sectors, SARs can augment their assistive-utilitarian functions by offering social, emotional, and cognitive support to seniors. This study draws upon interviews with 45 senior citizens to understand this group’s expectations for human-robot interactions and their anticipated needs for robots. Our grounded theory analysis suggests that senior citizens expect robots to meet three types of needs: physical, informational, and interactional. Furthermore, (...) they seek assurances that they will have complete control over interactions with robots. Findings show that seniors’ mental models about robots are shaped by their recent experiences with advanced communications technologies and mediated representations of robots in popular culture. Findings are discussed in light of practical design considerations and two theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

Hasian, Condit, and Lucaites argue that there is "a need for investigating and implementing procedures that would democratize the legal system"i and that the boundaries of the law provide a fruitful site for such investigation. I would argue that one particularly relevant site to recover such procedures is American Indian law. American Indian treaties, although more so in terms of their negotiation rather than their final form, are hybrid documents, combining elements from both indigenous and Western law. Because treaties exist (...) at the boundaries between two systems of law, they are positioned not only to illuminate differences in practice but also to shed light on the balance of power between Indian nations and the U.S. government. Evidence of law's boundaries can be found, for example, in the adherence to, or abandonment of, indigenous practices of law over time. The journals of the proceedings in particular, which recorded the negotiation of the treaties, also documented cultural understandings of power, leadership, human relations, and attitudes toward the land. So if ever there were an opportunity to investigate and implement procedures leading to a more democratized legal system, this would be one. ;Traditional American Indian communication practices were not, and still are not, empty rituals or colorful customs of an exotic culture performed for the entertainment of outsiders. Neither are American Indian law practices the quaint customs of a long-gone past but living traditions still practiced today. I document this continuity in practice by investigating two sites: first, the historical journal of the proceedings from the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, and then in the contemporary rhetoric of their descendents, Anishinaabe environmental activists. Rhetorical analyses of these texts reveal not only American Indian concepts of law, peace, and kinship but also an environmental ethic, all based upon a rhetoric of responsibility rather than rights. ;Treaties may always be the primary written documents scrutinized in the courts when treaty rights are being asserted or challenged, but if we were serious about democratizing our legal system, then we would do well to implement many of the traditional communication practices rooted in our indigenous heritage. ;iMarouf Hasian, Jr., Celeste Michelle Condit, and John Louis Lucaites, "The Rhetorical Boundaries of 'the Law': A Consideration of the Rhetorical Culture of Legal Practice and the Case of the 'Separate But Equal' Doctrine," Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 , 339. (shrink)

While the origin and development of the just war tradition until the early modern period blended concerns, ideas, and practices from the moral, legal, political, and military spheres, from the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth it largely disappeared as a conscious source of moral reflection about war and its restraint. Beginning in the 1960s, however, American theologian Paul Ramsey initiated a recovery of just war thinking in a series of writings applying the principles of discrimination and proportionality, ideas he traced (...) both to Augustinian theology and to natural law, to the debate over nuclear weapons and later to the Vietnam War. Ramsey's work directly engaged both theological and policy debate over military force, initiating lines of reflection that have since developed further and become increasingly institutionalized. This brief essay examines the nature of Ramsey's just war thought and its influence over the last 40 years. (shrink)

SummaryThe Gainj of highland Papua New Guinea do not use contraception but have a total fertility rate of only 4·3 live births per woman, one of the lowest ever recorded in a natural fertility setting. From an analysis of cross-sectional demographic and endocrinological data, the causes of low reproductive output have been identified in women of this population as: late menarche and marriage, a long interval between marriage and first birth, a high probability of widowhood at later reproductive ages, low (...) effective fecundability and prolonged lactational amenorrhoea. These are combined with near-universal marriage, a low prevalence of primary sterility and a pattern of onset of secondary sterility similar to that found in other populations. Of all the factors limiting fertility, by far the most important are those involved in birth spacing, especially lactational amenorrhoea. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we first argue that fairness is a matter of a decision-maker’s relative concern for the plight of people (...) from different groups, rather than of the outcomes produced for different groups. We then show how an agent’s preferences, including in particular their attitudes to error, give rise to their decision thresholds. Tying these points together, we argue that the agent’s relative degrees of concern for different groups manifest in a difference in decision thresholds applied to these groups. (shrink)

This paper is about syllogistic reasoning, i.e., reasoning from such pairs of premises as, All the chefs are musicians; some of the musicians are painters. We present a computer model that implements the latest account of syllogisms, which is based on the theory of mental models. We also report four experiments that were designed to test this account. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the strategies revealed by the participants' use of paper and pencil as aids to reasoning. Experiment 3 used (...) a new technique to externalize thinking. The participants had to refute, if possible, putative conclusions by constructing external models that were examples of the premises but counterexamples of the conclusions. Experiment 4 used the same techniques to examine the participants' strategies as they drew their own conclusions from syllogistic premises. The results of the experiments showed that individuals not trained in logic can construct counterexamples, that they use similar operations to those implemented in the computer model, but that they rely on a much greater variety of interpretations of premises and of search strategies than the computer model does. We re‐evaluates current theories of syllogistic reasoning in the light of these results. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical review of the moral disengagement literature, integrating research that has been completed as well as identifying thought lacunas, including the subfield of organizational moral disengagement. It is proposed that because moral disengagement is an inherently interpersonal phenomenon, organizational moral disengagement should be a salient concern of both organizational and management researchers. A conceptual framework of organizational moral disengagement is suggested, examining moral disengagement at both the employee as well as manager/executive (...) level. Lastly, a series of propositions are proffered in order to provide direction to organizational moral disengagement researchers, including the proposition that moral disengagement is a function of interpersonal proximity and the possession or lack of organizational power. Methods for effectively studying organizational moral disengagement are suggested. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Using an approach developed in the context of human bioethics, we argue that chimpanzees in research can be regarded as vulnerable subjects. This vulnerability is primarily due to communication barriers and situational factors—confinement and dependency—that make chimpanzees particularly susceptible to risks of harm and exploitation in experimental settings. In human research, individuals who are deemed vulnerable are accorded special protections. Using conceptual and moral resources developed in the context of research with vulnerable humans, we show how chimpanzees warrant additional safeguards (...) against harm and exploitation paralleling those for human subjects. These safeguards should include empowering third parties to act as surrogate decision makers for chimpanzees, ensuring participant “assent,” and avoiding recruitment of animal subjects based merely on convenience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe conducted two studies to determine whether there is a relationship between dispositional optimism and the attribution of good or bad luck to ambiguous luck scenarios. Study 1 presented five scenarios that contained both a lucky and an unlucky component, thereby making them ambiguous in regard to being an overall case of good or bad luck. Participants rated each scenario in toto on a four-point Likert scale and then completed an optimism questionnaire. The results showed a significant correlation between optimism (...) and assignments of luck: more optimistic people rated the characters in the ambiguous scenarios as more lucky while more pessimistic people rated the same characters in the same scenarios as more unlucky. Study 2 separated the good and bad luck components of the study 1 scenarios and presented the components individually to a new group of participants. Participants rated the luckiness of each component on the same four-point scale and then completed the optimism questionnaire. We found... (shrink)

This research was designed to understand better the patterns of agricultural intensification and transformation occurring in Africa south of the Sahara using the Ghanaian case. The paper examines changes in farming systems and the role of various endogenous and exogenous factors in driving the conversion of arable lands to agricultural uses in four villages within two agro-ecologically distinct zones of Ghana: the Guinea Savannah and Transition zones. Using historical narratives and land-cover maps supplemented with quantitative data at regional levels, the (...) research shows that farming has intensified in the villages, as farmers increased their farm size in response to factors such as population growth, market access, and changing rural lifestyle. The overall trend suggests a gradual move toward intensification through increasing use of labor-saving technologies rather than land-saving inputs—a pattern that contrasts with Asia’s path to its Green Revolution. The findings in this paper provide evidence of the dynamism occurring in African farming systems; hence, they point toward a departure from stagnation narratives that have come to prevail in the debate on agricultural transformation and intensification in Africa south of the Sahara. We conclude that it is essential for future research to expand the scope of this work, while policies should focus on lessons learned from these historical processes of genuine change and adaptation. (shrink)

Fertility preservation has become more common for various populations, including oncology patients, transgender individuals, and women who are concerned about age-related infertility. Little attention has been paid to fertility preservation for patients with differences/disorders of sex development (DSD). Our goal in this article is to address specific ethical considerations that are unique to this patient population. To this end, we present a hypothetical DSD case. We then explore ethical considerations related to patient’s age, risk of cancer, concern about genetic transmission (...) of a DSD condition to children, co-occurring gender dysphoria, and access to experimental fertility preservation procedures. Given the limitations of current technologies, we recommend offering fertility preservation to individuals living with DSD using an informed decision-making approach that instills realistic expectations and minimizes the potential for false hope. Finally, we conclude with practical recommendations for this case based on the ethical considerations. (shrink)

Neoliberalism’s project of making the market the model for all modern freedoms means that critique needs to be able to unmask the distortions and to weigh the costs of its cultural appropriations and resignifications. This diagnostic/evaluative task presents a seeming challenge to the sociologist who is also answerable to scientific purposes that demand objectivity and impartiality. This article investigates two very different attempts to grasp this nettle. It contrasts Peter Wagner’s proposal to reclaim critique as ‘an essential feature of the (...) social sciences’ with Axel Honneth’s call for a reinvigoration of the ‘sociologizing dimension’ of a critical theory tradition. It is argued that neither approach is fully adequate to the challenges set by neoliberalism. The final section of the article suggests that to demonstrate the efficacy of sociology’s contribution to a critique of neoliberalism we need to review the relationship between theoretical reflection and everyday thinking and permit the former to do more analytic/evaluative work. (shrink)

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...) game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

How is it that humans can react emotionally to fiction when they know it is not real? Following the lead of Denis Dutton in The Art Instinct, we propose a solution to this so-called paradox of fiction. The paradox assumes that our conscious awareness that something is not real should prevent an emotional reaction. But such reactions are often the result of aptly named “mirror neurons” that mimic the brain activity of those around us and cause us to mimic the (...) emotions of others. So because mirror neurons do not distinguish between fiction and reality, we react emotionally to both fiction and reality. (shrink)

God Never ChangesOr does he? God has been getting a makeover of late, a "reinvention" that has incited debate and troubled scholars and laypeople alike. Modern theological sectors as diverse as radical feminism and the new “open theism” movement are attacking the classical Christian view of God and vigorously promoting their own images of Divinity.God Under Fire refutes the claim that major attributes of the God of historic Christianity are false and outdated. This book responds to some increasingly popular alternate (...) theologies and the ways in which they cast classical Christian theism in a negative light. Featuring an impressive cast of world-class biblical scholars, philosophers, and apologists, God Under Fire begins by addressing the question, “Should the God of Historic Christianity Be Replaced?” From there, it explores issues as old as time and as new as the inquest into the “openness of God.” How, for instance, does God risk, relate, emote, and change? Does he do these things, and if so, why? These and other questions are investigated with clarity, bringing serious scholarship into popular reach.Above all, this collection of essays focuses on the nature of God as presented in the Scriptures and as Christians have believed for centuries. God Under Fire builds a solid and appealing case for the God of classical Christian theism, who in recent years—as through the centuries—has been the God under fire. (shrink)

Mobile phone-based applications (apps) can promote faster targeted actions to control COVID-19. However, digital contact tracing systems raise concerns about data security, system effectiveness, and their potential to normalise privacy-invasive surveillance technologies. In the absence of mandates, public uptake depends on the acceptability and perceived legitimacy of using technologies that log interactions between individuals to build public health capacity. We report on six online deliberative workshops convened in New South Wales to consider the appropriateness of using the COVIDSafe app to (...) enhance Australian contact tracing systems. All groups took the position (by majority) that the protections enacted in the app design and supporting legislation were appropriate. This support is contingent on several system attributes including: the voluntariness of the COVIDSafe app; that the system relies on proximity rather than location tracking; and, that data access is restricted to local public health practitioners undertaking contact tracing. Despite sustained scepticism in media coverage, there was an underlying willingness to trust Australian governing institutions such that in principle acceptance of the new contact tracing technology was easy to obtain. However, tensions between the need to prove system effectiveness through operational transparency and requirements for privacy protections could be limiting public uptake. Our study shows that informed citizens are willing to trade their privacy for common goods such as COVID-19 suppression. But low case numbers and cautionary public discourses can make trustworthiness difficult to establish because some will only do so when it can be demonstrated that the benefits justify the costs to individuals. (shrink)

Heralded as revolutionary in their potential to improve efficiency, transparency, and sustainability, blockchain technologies promise new forms of large-scale coordination between actors that do not necessarily trust each other. This paper examines blockchain imaginaries and associated metaphors. Our analysis focuses on bitcoin and ethereum, today’s most prominent blockchains that use the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. We identify three principles that organise blockchain imaginaries: substantial, morphological, and structural. These principles position blockchain as an enabler of economic, political and epistemological practices, respectively. Blockchain (...) infrastructure and protocols rely on substantial metaphors (e.g. gold, gas) to govern resource allocation, morphological metaphors (e.g. work, trust) to generate consensus and structural metaphors (e.g. chain, transaction) to establish shared knowledge. Those imaginaries rely on metaphorical displacements of meaning that make blockchain technology relevant and intelligible while simultaneously shaping the direction of technological development and positing these technologies as new forms of economic, political and epistemological organisation. They are not merely descriptive but performative. We conclude by showing how these principles partially overlap with three symbolically generalized media: money, power and truth. Money organises scarcity within the economic system, power organises consensus within the political system, and truth organises knowledge within the science system. (shrink)

Space is something. Space inherently contains laws of nature: universal rules, laws and symmetries. We have significant knowledge about these laws of nature because all our scientific theories assume their presence. Their existence is critical for developing either a unique theory of our universe or more speculative multiverse theories. Scientists generally ignore the laws of nature because they “are what they are” and because visualizing different laws of nature challenges the imagination. This article defines a conceptual model separating space from (...) the universe’s energy source and expansion. By considering the ramifications of changing the laws of nature, initial condition parameters, and two variables in the big bang theory, the model demonstrates that traditional fine tuning is not the whole story when creating a universe. Supporting the model, space and “nothing” are related to the laws of nature, mathematics and multiverse possibilities. Speculation on the beginning of time completes the model. (shrink)

Given powerful globalizing processes under way, the topic of how to conceptualize the modern public sphere is becoming increasingly urgent. Amidst the array of alternatives, the efforts of Jürgen Habermas to attempt to balance out the two main conceptual requirements of this idea, a universalistic construction of the principle of shared interests and a sensitivity to the fact of modern pluralism, might seem a particularly promising option. In order to reconstruct the main motivations of, and to determine a set of (...) criteria of assessment for, Habermas's ongoing attempt to outline a theory of the public sphere adequate to the conditions of the present, the article turns first to a discussion of the seminal formulations of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. I suggest that the later writings are only partially successful in their attempt to redress some of the main conceptual difficulties that emerge in this early account. (shrink)

In reaction to a particularly scathing review of his Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard postulated what he called a ‘preacher-machine.’ As we will see, the preacher-machine is only one type of character-machine, for, in Practice in Christianity, there are five other such machines. Starting up these character-machines will allow for an analysis of the repulsion of the God-man, Christ himself. This repulsion is important because Kierkegaard claims that it is the condition for the emergence of faith. After discussing repulsion, Kierkegaard will (...) locate a singular mistake of Christendom, which will allow him to offer his remedy to this problem. In doing so, I will claim, Kierkegaard makes a particularly forceful claim about the true status of Christianity. We begin by attempting an articulation of a definition of monstrosity before setting the scene of these six machines. (shrink)