How do ethics show up in the everyday behaviors and conversations of researchers in a scientific laboratory? How does the microcosmic culture of the laboratory shape researchers’ understandings of scientific ethics? We, an interdisciplinary team representing anthropology, computer science, and rhetorical studies, investigated these questions in two university STEM labs. Similar to previous work mapping out the epistemic cultures, we sought to understand the ethical cultures of these research groups. We observed their lab meetings for several months and conducted interviews (...) with members of the research laboratories. Ultimately, we recognized two distinct ethical cultures within the two laboratories: one focused on the relationship between science and social justice, and the other focused on clean data and accuracy as an ethical issue. These two distinct ethical cultures were discernable through ethnography, close reading of laboratory members’ language, as well as broad-scale topic modeling. Our project complements previous studies of ethics in science that have focused on codes of ethics or student curricula as ways in which scientists develop an understanding of scientific ethics. Our project demonstrates that everyday interactions between the members of scientific research labs additionally shape, at a decidedly local level, how scientists understand and ultimately approach ethical decision-making in the scientific research process. (shrink)

This volume provides an integrated and wide-ranging set of primary-source readings on the relationship between moral values and economic activity, as articulated by some of the leading figures in Western civilization.

We often rely on others for guidance about what to do. But wouldn't it be better to rely instead on only your own solo judgment? Deferring to others about moral matters, after all, can seem to conflict what Enlightenment demands. In Guided by Voices, however, Eric Wiland argues that there is nothing especially bad about relying on others in forming your moral views. You may rely on others for forming your moral views, just as you can your views about (...) anything else. You can accept moral testimony without loss. Furthermore, there are several distinctive social goods attainable by being guided by what others say. Thus, it can be better to be guided by moral testimony than by your own moral lights. Wiland also argues that relying on others for moral advice has one advantage over relying on others for moral testimony. For when you trust your adviser's advice, you both thereby form a joint agent that can achieve autonomy, moral understanding, and morally worthy action. Sometimes taking another's advice is your only way to act well. Arguing against the presumption that moral reasoning is ideally done alone, Guided by Voices is the first book to significantly address both moral testimony and advice. (shrink)

Here is a question as intriguing as it is brief: what are we? The animalist’s answer is equal in brevity: we are animals. This stark formulation of the animalist slogan distances it from nearby claims—that we are essentially animals, for example, or that we have purely biological criteria of identity over time. Is the animalist slogan—unburdened by modal or criterial commitments—still interesting, though? Or has it lost its bite? In this article we address such questions by presenting a positive case (...) for the importance of animalism and applying that case to recent critiques. (shrink)

As algorithms pervade numerous facets of daily life, they are incorporated into systems for increasingly diverse purposes. These systems’ results are often interpreted differently by the designers who created them than by the lay persons who interact with them. This paper offers a proposal for human-centered algorithm design, which incorporates human and social interpretations into the design process for algorithmically based systems. It articulates three specific strategies for doing so: theoretical, participatory, and speculative. Drawing on the author’s work designing and (...) deploying multiple related systems, the paper provides a detailed example of using a theoretical approach. It also discusses findings pertinent to participatory and speculative design approaches. The paper addresses both strengths and challenges for each strategy in helping to center the process of designing algorithmically based systems around humans. (shrink)

Although the terminology of Big Data has so far gained little traction in economics, the availability of unprecedentedly rich datasets and the need for new approaches – both epistemological and computational – to deal with them is an emerging issue for the discipline. Using interviews conducted with a cross-section of economists, this paper examines perspectives on Big Data across the discipline, the new types of data being used by researchers on economic issues, and the range of responses to this opportunity (...) amongst economists. First, we outline the areas in which it is being used, including the prediction and ‘nowcasting’ of economic trends; mapping and predicting influence in the context of marketing; and acting as a cheaper or more accurate substitute for existing types of data such as censuses or labour market data. We then analyse the broader current and potential contributions of Big Data to economics, such as the ways in which econometric methodology is being used to shed light on questions beyond economics, how Big Data is improving or changing economic models, and the kinds of collaborations arising around Big Data between economists and other disciplines. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the transcendental distinction between agents qua phenomena and qua noumena in Kant's theory of free will. It argues (1) that Kant's incompatibilism can be accommodated if one accepts the "ontological" interpretation of this distinction (i.e. the view that agents qua noumena are ontologically prior to agents qua phenomena), and (2) that Kant's incompatibilism cannot be accommodated by the "two-aspect" interpretation, whose defining feature is the rejection of the ontological priority of agents qua noumena. The (...) ontological interpretation allows Kant to be an incompatibilist because the ontological priority of agents qua noumena "ontologically undermines" the significance of phenomenal determinism for agents' free will. That is, since agents qua noumena are ontologically prior to agents qua phenomena, the fact that agents qua noumena are not subject to determinism is more fundamental than the fact that agents qua phenomena are subject to determinism, and it is the more fundamental fact that we should be concerned with in the metaphysical foundations of moral responsibility. Recent (independent) work by myself, Eric Watkins, and Robert Hanna is drawn on to demonstrate that the ontological interpretation can mount a better defense against some traditional objections than has often been thought. -/- According to the two-aspect interpretation, the transcendental distinction between agents qua noumena and qua phenomena is a semantic and epistemological distinction. Since it rejects the ontological priority of noumena, it has no way to assert that the non-determinism of agents qua noumena is more metaphysically fundamental than the determinism of agents qua phenomena. For the two-aspect interpretation, the truth of determinism must remain just as fundamental as the truth of any other characterization of agents. This means that, on the two-aspect interpretation, there is no better reason to call Kant an incompatibilist than there is to call him a compatibilist. Since Henry Allison has presented the most detailed two-aspect interpretation of the agential transcendental distinction, the arguments against the two-aspect distinction address his interpretation. Part of Allison's strategy is to argue that phenomenal determinism poses less of a problem for free will if we accept his accounts of the Second Analogy and empirical psychology. I point our problems in these accounts and argue that this strategy cannot be accepted. -/- . (shrink)

This research provides the first look into the experiences of openly gay male team sport athletes on ostensibly all-heterosexual teams. Although openly gay athletes were free from physical harassment, in the absence of a formal ban against gay athletes, sport resisted their acceptance and attempted to remain a site of orthodox masculine production by creating a culture of silence surrounding gay athleticism, by segmenting gay men's identities, and by persistently using homophobic discourse to discredit homosexuality in general. Sports attempt to (...) tolerate gay male athletes when they contribute to the overarching ethos of sport—winning—but try to taint the creation of a gay identity within sport that would see homosexuality and athleticism as compatible. Still, by proving themselves successful in sport, and meeting most other mandates of hegemonic masculinity except for their sexual identity, gay male athletes show that hegemony is not seamless and that there is a possibility of softening hegemonic masculinity in the sporting realm. (shrink)

In this article I report findings from interviews with 26 openly gay male athletes who came out between 2008 and 2010. I compare their experiences to those of 26 gay male athletes who came out between 2000 and 2002. The athletes in the 2010 cohort have had better experiences after coming out than those in the earlier cohort, experiencing less heterosexism and maintaining better support among their teammates. I place these results in the context of inclusive masculinity theory, suggesting that (...) local cultures of decreased homophobia created more positive experiences for the 2010 group. (shrink)

This study explores linguistic variation in outsourced call centers involving Filipino call-takers and American callers engaged in various types of customer service transactions. The specific goals of this study are: 1) to establish the statistical co-occurrence of linguistic features in outsourced call center discourse; and 2) to examine how the speakers use these features and patterns of speech based on role, gender, and the types of service transactions. The data for analysis come from a corpus of call center texts collected (...) in the Philippines. The research design follows a quantitative multi-dimensional framework developed by Biber for the extraction and interpretation of linguistic co-occurrence in the corpus. Three linguistic dimensions are extracted and interpreted microanalytically: 1) Addressee-Focused, Polite, and Elaborated Information vs Involved and Simplified Narrative; 2) Planned, Procedural Talk; and 3) Managed Information Flow. Results show that the discourse of agents and callers are different in linguistic and textual composition across these extracted dimensions. Similarly, accounts and participants' gender are both found to affect linguistic choices in the transactions. (shrink)

Academic productivity is realized through resources obtained from professional networks in which scientists are embedded. Using a national survey of academic faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields across multiple institution types, we examine how the structure of professional networks affects scholarly productivity and how those effects may differ by race, ethnicity, and gender. We find that network size masks important differences in composition. Using negative binomial regression, we find that both the size and composition of professional networks affect (...) scientific productivity, but bigger is not always better. We find that instrumental networks increase scholarly productivity, while advice networks reduce it. There are important interactive effects that are masked by modeling only direct effects. We find that white men are especially advantaged by instrumental networks, and women are especially advantaged by advice networks. (shrink)

Reading the New Nietzsche is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the four most important and widely read of Nietzsche's works. After a largely biographical introduction, a chapter is devoted to each work. Read in succession they give an overall philosophical account of Nietzsche's thought.

Accounts of change in contemporary research in industry and the academy often note the increasing coexistence of market and academic norms and practices. This article suggests that, at least in industry, these conflicting norms and practices are often preserved by loose coupling between market pressures and the research organization. Based on a two-year case study, this article examines the imposition of tight coupling at an industry lab that had previously been able to maintain some of the norms and practices associated (...) with the academy. Tight market coupling limited the role of judgment in the governance of research. First, a market-based quantitative project selection system delegitimized expert judgment. As a result, projects with obvious market and technical uncertainties were more difficult to justify. Second, objective, market-based oversight also limited the role of expert judgment. Tracking the return on investment of scientists’ hours with time cards had the effect of discouraging time spent on learning or exploratory work. In many cases, researchers argued that displacement of judgment for a quantitative governance system caused work to shift away from research and toward product development. (shrink)

Most medical research and a substantial amount of non-medical research, especially that involving human participants, is governed by some kind of research ethics committee (REC) following the recommendations of the Declaration of Helsinki for the protection of human participants. The role of RECs is usually seen as twofold: firstly, to make some kind of calculation of the risks and benefits of the proposed research, and secondly, to ensure that participants give informed consent. The extent to which the role of the (...) REC includes the former is not uncontroversial. Indeed, the most prevalent debate on the role of RECs sees liberals and strong paternalists arguing over the importance of informed consent given by competent agents versus the significance of making benevolent decisions on behalf of others. On the one hand, liberals argue for the rights of competent adults to decide for themselves the kinds and extents of risks to which they wish to expose themselves. On the other hand, proponents of strong paternalism raise concerns about the likelihood of participants being able to truly understand the complex data involved in research. They support a role for RECs in which they exercise duties of benevolence towards patients and participants by limiting the extent to which they can be exposed to significant, permanent and irreversible harms. In this paper, we will argue that when it comes to decisions about risk it is neither possible nor desirable for RECs to adopt either role. (shrink)

Probably the most interesting feature of the 40-year history of biomedical biotechnology is the extent to which it has been open to – and influenced by – concerns over social values and the public’s voice. Good intentions notwithstanding, however, benchmarks and best practices are woefully lacking for informing the policy-making process with public values. This is particularly true in the United States where the call for “public debate” is often heard but seldom heeded by policy-making bodies. Geneforum, an Oregon-based non-profit, (...) has developed a practical and working model designed to encourage deliberative democratic processes for addressing the ethical and social issues raised by emerging biotechnologies. Ordinary citizens do not need to be scientists to understand the important implications of the new technological advances. When factual information and basic principles are conveyed in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways, the scene is set for a shift from monologue to dialogue, from “I-thinking” to “We-thinking,” to occur. This paper describes the Geneforum model structured to intensify the democratization of policy decision-making, in general, using genomic science, in particular, as one example of its application. (shrink)

Annotation Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, immigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. (...) During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings. (shrink)

The mutations that cause many forms of inherited retinal degenerations have been identified, yet the mechanisms by which these mutations lead to death of photoreceptor cells of the retina are not completely understood. Investigations of the pathways from mutation to retinal degeneration have focused on spontaneous and engineered animal models of disease. Based on the studies performed to date, four major categories of degeneration mechanism can be identified. These include disruption of photoreceptor outer segment morphogenesis, metabolic overload, dysfunction of retinal (...) pigment epithelial cells, and chronic activation of phototransduction. Future investigations will likely identify additional mechanisms of photoreceptor damage. This review will summarize what has been learned from studying animal models of non-syndromic inherited retinal degenerations. BioEssays 23:605–618, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In this short essay I focus on two ethnographic scenes from the operating room in order to show the OR as a place both assiduously sterile and deeply intimate. In the process of these Facial Feminization Surgery procedures, surgeons and other OR staff reflect on the social changes that the surgery may (or may not) enable even while they are working to enact physical changes in the faces of their patients.

Although scholars have examined the oral and gustatory terms used by medieval authors to describe speech and other verbal phenomena, the significant role of the chest in medieval accounts of verbal experience has been largely ignored. Medieval authors commonly describe speech as issuing from the chest, often without mentioning the mouth at all; and they associate the chest with not only individual speech acts but also the faculty of speech as well as the psychological functions relating to speech and to (...) language generally. Old English literature, among others, widely manifests this tendency to describe speech and other verbal functions in pectoral terms. Although Old English poetry sometimes mentions the mouth in connection with speech, many contexts instead specify the chest as the source of utterance and as the center of verbal activity, usually without any mention of the mouth. As a corrective to the tendency of “orality” and similar terms to deflect attention from the chest's significant verbal role, this essay uses the term “pectorality” to describe the chest's various verbal functions in Old English poetry and other literature. (shrink)

Beauchamp and Childress (1994) elaborated an approach to bioethical deliberations based on four universalistic principles. This framework of ‘principlism’ has been criticized from within biomedical ethics as insufficient and problematic. However, this article considers a more radical sociological critique by John Evans (2002) that rejects the entire approach of defining ‘principles’ a priori. This sociological critique is based on classical sociologist Max Weber's (1925) distinction between instrumental (‘thin’) and substantive (‘thick’) rationality. As an exploratory assessment of Evans' critique, his conceptualization (...) of ‘thin’ versus ‘thick’ rationalization is applied to a large sample of Anglo-American press coverage (n = 5126) of the bioethical controversy surrounding therapeutic cloning. Given the role of mainstream news media as a key arena for the discursive framing of biomedical research and its ethical implications, the findings raise important questions about principlism and the mediation of bioethical debates on issues such as therapeutic cloning. (shrink)

God gave Scripture to his people for many reasons. Two of the most important are the subversive and the therapeutic. This article concentrates on the former. All humans are blind to the extent of their alienation from God, others, and themselves. Christians have begun the process of salvation, part of which includes growth in theocentric self-awareness, and God uses Scripture to promote this growth. Christians, however, face a formidable challenge at this point, because in our remaining sin, we can also (...) distort Scripture for sinful purposes. As a result, God has to use Scripture subversively and indirectly in order to enable Christians to read the Bible to promote the healing of inward deepening. A case for this agenda will be made from the Bible itself and the Christian tradition. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether ‘self-mediated risk’ – risk whose coming-to-fruition depends on future volitional conduct by the actor himself – bears on the wrongfulness of an actor's present conduct. Moral philosophers have long been divided on this question. ‘Actualists’ take the view that an actor's present moral obligations do, in fact, depend on what he or she actually is likely to do in the future. In contrast, ‘possibilists’ take the view that an actor's present obligations depend only on (...) what he or she will have the capacity to do in the future. This paper argues that actualism better captures the morality that underlies the criminal law. The paper also explores actualism's implications for criminal law. Among these is the implication that the locus of moral fault in criminal cases sometimes is temporally removed from the conduct that triggers the assignment of blame. (shrink)

There are powerful fairness and efficiency arguments for making charitable donations to soup kitchens 100% deductible. These arguments have no purchase for donations to fund opulent church organs, yet these too are 100% deductible under the current tax code. This stark dichotomy is only the tip of the iceberg. Looking at a wider sampling of charitable gifts reveals a charitable continuum. Based on sliding scales for efficiency, multiple theories of fairness, pluralism, institutional competence and social welfare dictate that charitable deductions (...) should in most cases be fractions between zero and one. Moreover, the Central Limit Theorem strongly suggests that combining this welter of largely independent criteria with the wide variety of charitable gifts results in a classic bell-shaped normal curve of optimal deductions, with a peak at some central value and quickly decaying to zero at the extremes of 0% and 100%. Given that those are the only two options under the current tax code, the current charitable deduction regime inevitably makes large errors in most cases. Actually calculating a precise optimal percentage for each type of charitable donation is of course impractical. This Article suggests, however, that we can do much better than the systematically erroneous current charitable deduction. Granting a 100% deduction only for donations to the desperately poor, along with 50%, 25%, and 0% for gifts yielding progressively fewer efficiency, fairness, pluralism, and institutional competence benefits, promises to deliver a socially more desirable charitable deduction. (shrink)