Organizations are making massive investments in artificial intelligence, and recent demonstrations and achievements highlight the immense potential for AI to improve organizational and human welfare. Yet realizing the potential of AI necessitates a better understanding of the various ethical issues involved with deciding to use AI, training and maintaining it, and allowing it to make decisions that have moral consequences. People want organizations using AI and the AI systems themselves to behave ethically, but ethical behavior means different things to different (...) people, and many ethical dilemmas require trade-offs such that no course of action is universally considered ethical. How should organizations using AI—and the AI itself—process ethical dilemmas where humans disagree on the morally right course of action? Though a variety of ethical AI frameworks have been suggested, these approaches do not adequately address how people make ethical evaluations of AI systems or how to incorporate the fundamental disagreements people have regarding what is and is not ethical behavior. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we theorize that a person will perceive an organization’s use of AI, its data procedures, and the resulting AI decisions as ethical to the extent that those decisions resonate with the person’s moral foundations. Since people hold diverse moral foundations, this highlights the crucial need to consider individual moral differences at multiple levels of AI. We discuss several unresolved issues and suggest potential approaches for thinking about conflicts in moral judgments concerning AI. (shrink)

Background: Clinical genomic implementation studies pose challenges for informed consent. Consent forms often include complex language and concepts, which can be a barrier to diverse enrollment, and these studies often blur traditional research-clinical boundaries. There is a move toward self-directed, web-based research enrollment, but more evidence is needed about how these enrollment approaches work in practice. In this study, we developed and evaluated a literacy-focused, web-based consent approach to support enrollment of diverse participants in an ongoing clinical genomic implementation study. (...) Methods: As part of the Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many (CHARM) study, we developed a web-based consent approach that featured plain language, multimedia, and separate descriptions of clinical care and research activities. CHARM offered clinical exome sequencing to individuals at high risk of hereditary cancer. We interviewed CHARM participants about their reactions to the consent approach. We audio recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using a deductively and inductively derived codebook. We reviewed coded excerpts as a team to identify overarching themes. Results: We conducted 32 interviews, including 12 (38%) in Spanish. Most (69%) enrolled without assistance from study staff, usually on a mobile phone. Those who completed enrollment in one day spent an average of 12 minutes on the consent portion. Interviewees found the information simple to read but comprehensive, were neutral to positive about the multimedia support, and identified increased access to testing in the study as the key difference from clinical care. Conclusions: This study showed that interviewees found our literacy-focused, web-based consent approach acceptable; did not distinguish the consent materials from other online study processes; and valued getting access to testing in the study. Overall, conducting empirical bioethics research in an ongoing clinical trial was useful to demonstrate the acceptability of our novel consent approach but posed practical challenges. (shrink)

Games and simulations--from quantitative modeling to immersive, experiential scenarios--as methods for engagement within futures studies have a substantial history. In recent years, there has been a surge of projects using a wide array of tools. As practitioners and researchers have gravitated toward more playful approaches, there is a need to review and evaluate such approaches. This chapter provides an introduction to gaming and simulations as anticipatory processes. Offering a snapshot of contemporary projects from around the world, this chapter utilizes a (...) range of voices and perspectives on gaming and simulations to explore how such tools and methods use the future. (shrink)

The structure of communication networks can be more or less “democratic”: networks are less democratic if (a) communication is more limited in terms of characteristic degree and (b) is more tightly channeled to a few specifc nodes. Together those measures give us a two-dimensional landscape of more and less democratic networks. We track opinion volatility across that landscape: the extent to which random changes in a small percentage of binary opinions at network nodes result in wide changes across the network (...) as a whole. If wide and frequent swings of popular opinion are taken as a mark of instability, democratic communication networks prove far more stable than anti-democratic ones. In a fnal section, we consider the democratic or anti-democratic character of networks that respond to volatility by rewiring at random, in a search for community, or in a search for a leader. (shrink)

The notion of an object file figures prominently in recent work in philosophy and cognitive science. Object files play a role in theories of singular reference, object individuation, perceptual memory, and the development of cognitive capacities. However, the philosophical literature lacks a detailed, empirically informed theory of object files. In this paper, we articulate and defend the multiple-slots view, which specifies both the format and architecture of object files. We argue that object files represent in a non-iconic, propositional format that (...) incorporates discrete symbols for separate features. Moreover, we argue that features of separate categories are stored in separate memory slots within an object file. We supplement this view with a computational framework that characterizes how information about objects is stored and retrieved. (shrink)

Contrary to political and philosophical consensus, we argue that the threats posed by climate change justify population engineering, the intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations. Specifically, we defend three types of policies aimed at reducing fertility rates: choice enhancement, preference adjustment, and incentivization. While few object to the first type of policy, the latter two are generally rejected because of their potential for coercion or morally objectionable manipulation. We argue that forms of each policy type are (...) pragmatically and morally justified tools for preventing the harms of global climate change. (shrink)

Several scholars, including Martin Hengel, R. Alan Culpepper, and Richard Bauckham, have argued that Papias had knowledge of the Gospel of John on the grounds that Papias’s prologue lists six of Jesus’s disciples in the same order that they are named in the Gospel of John: Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and John. In “A Note on Papias’s Knowledge of the Fourth Gospel” (JBL 129 [2010]: 793–794), Jake H. O’Connell presents a statistical analysis of this argument, according to which (...) the probability of this correspondence occurring by chance is lower than 1%. O’Connell concludes that it is more than 99% probable that this correspondence is the result of Papias copying John, rather than chance. I show that O’Connell’s analysis contains multiple mistakes, both substantive and mathematical: it ignores relevant evidence, overstates the correspondence between John and Papias, wrongly assumes that if Papias did not know John he ordered the disciples randomly, and conflates the probability of A given B with the probability of B given A. In discussing these errors, I aim to inform both Johannine scholarship and the use of probabilistic methods in historical reasoning. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)

The systems approach to niche presented herein stands as an example of the unifying potential of mathematical system theory when applied to concepts and principles of ecology. Beginning with subjective concepts from the naturalistic tradition, the niche was framed in the formalism of general system theory. So modeled, it appeared as a restriction of a more general construct, the environ. Both niches and environs are implementable in the context of ecosystem models, and with the growing ability of ecologists to construct (...) such models, system theoretic niches and environs both should serve in the future to clarify old problems of ecology, and make it possible to raise new classes of problems. The nature of niches, always difficult conceptually for the ecologist, may now give way to further development, both theoretical and empirical. (shrink)

I give the label “ethical pluralism” to the meta-ethical view that competing moral views are valid. I assume that validity is conferred on a moral view by its satisfying the relevant meta-ethical criteria in a maximally satisfactory way. If the relevant meta-ethical criteria are based on something roughly like the wide reflective equilibrium model, then ethical pluralism is likely to be correct. Traditional moral views do not grant exemptions from their own binding rules or principles to agents – should any (...) exist – who adhere to a competing valid moral view. Given the usual conception of accepting a moral view, an ethical pluralist cannot honestly accept a traditional moral view. Consequently, I argue, an ethical pluralist is committed to the view that all traditional moral views are invalid. Given the likelihood of ethical pluralism, this conclusion is alarming. I set forth a weak conception of accepting a moral view that is designed to allow an ethical pluralist honestly to accept a traditional moral view. In particular, my conception is designed to explain how someone can (a) be guided by the view that she accepts; (b) accept her own moral view while rationally not accepting competing views that she thinks are equally valid; and (c) not be prepared to prescribe morally to those who are following other valid views. Central to my formulation are what I call a stance of modest respectful disapproval toward other people’s wrong behavior, together with acceptance of decisive moral reasons for oneself that are generated by the valid moral view that one accepts. (shrink)

This paper owes its inspiration to a remark made by Professor M. Rostovtzeff; in a note in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire on the widespread social unrest of the first two centuries A.D., having cited other literary authorities such as Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, etc., he writes: ‘The social problem as such, the cleavage between the poor and the rich, occupies a prominent place in the dialogues of Lucian; he was fully aware of the importance of (...) the problem.’ No one, as far as I know, has attempted to collect and discuss the main passages in Lucian on this topic, and the latest writer on this aspect of Lucian reaches a conclusion quite opposed to Rostovtzeff and one which I believe to be wholly misleading. The aim of this paper is to collect and discuss the main references in Lucian to the social problem interpreting them in the light of Lucian's life and background, and the social and economic conditions of his age. In particular I shall stress the importance of the Cynic tradition as it bears on Lucian's attitude, but shall endeavour to show that this tradition is firmly rooted in practical politics and actual participation in social revolutionary movements and goes far beyond the repetition of mere ethical cliches generally ascribed to it. (shrink)

From what has been argued, it should now be apparent how Heidegger's philosophy of the affect, its ontological disclosures and its relation to authenticity might be enlarged to meet certain marxist challenges. The most valuable instruction to be gained from these citicisms, I think, is that which Lukacs offers in the example of Szilasi's intuition of co-presence. Traditional phenomenology needs to enrich its investigations into the social and historical reality of situation. Kosik's point that Heideggerian authenticity lacks the crucial third (...) step (revolutionary change of society) is also profound but again, not incompatiblein se with Heidegger's concept. Alternatively, one might as easily say that Critical Marxism or any Marxist Humanism can still be enriched by certain Heideggerian insights. (shrink)

Modern science is big business. Governments, universities, and corporations have invested billions of dollars in scientific and technological research in the hope of obtaining power and profit. In The Price of Truth, David B. Resnik examines some of the important and difficult questions resulting from the financial and economic aspects of modern science.

As I had rejected en bloc references to Bacchanalia as indications of date, it was a mere chance which led me, after the above had left my hands, to look up Cas. 980 ‘ nunc Bacchae nullae ludunt,’ quoted in Schanz, R. Lit.3, p. 78. As this affords an excellent opportunity of testing my conclusions, perhaps a word or two will not be out of place.

The problem of finding irreducible representations of a simple Lie group that decompose into just pure replications of a representation of a subgroup is considered. Replications involving tensor representations of the orthogonal groups are studied in detail using counting groups whose representation dimensions correspond to branching multiplicities. Replications involving spinor and mixed tensor representations are briefly considered.