Autolycus or the Future for Miscreant Youth R G Gordon Originally published in 1928. "His clear and spirited presentation of the problem should rekindle interest in the subject and help towards legislation…" Times Educational Supplement Methods are outlined for dealing with the difficult problem of young offenders. The volume is aimed not only at teachers, doctors and social workers but also parents. 86pp ************** Thrasymachus or the Future of Morals C E M Joad Originally published in 1925. "…outspoken (...) and unequivocal. A book that will startle." Daily Chronicle A study of the conventional morality of the day, prophesying a Puritan revival in morals with intolerance which will lead to the Americanization of England and a great increase in irregular sexual relationships. 86pp ******************** Romulus or the future of the Child Robert T Lewis Originally published in 1929. "This interesting and stimulating book should be read by all…" Daily Chronicle Concentrating on the pre-school child, this book pays particular attention to the question of the only child and advocates making nursery schools an integral part of our educational system. A guide to psychological and educational theory, this book challenges our accepted ideas of discipline, gives play its true importance in child education and helps the parent or carer in handling issues which most seriously affect the future of the child. 92pp. **************** Procrustes, or the Future of English Education M Alderton Pink Originally published in 1927 "Undoubtedly he makes out a very good case." Daily Herald "This interesting addition to the series." Times Educational Supplement If everyone receives a higher education, who is going to do manual work? Can a man with a superior education be happy if he has to do heavy work? These are the questions which the author discusses. He also considers whether all children are qualified for anything more than a rudimentary education and discusses the modern day curriculum. 108pp. (shrink)

Sometimes one can prevent harm only by contravening rights. If the harm one can prevent is great enough, compared to the stringency of the opposing rights, then one has a lesser-evil justification to contravene the rights. Non-consequentialist orthodoxy holds that, most of the time, lesser-evil justifications add to agents’ permissible options without taking any away. Helen Frowe rejects this view. She claims that, almost always, agents must act on their lesser-evil justifications. Our primary task is to refute Frowe’s flagship argument. (...) Secondarily, it is to sketch a positive case for nonconsequentialist orthodoxy. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 1, Page 88-117, March 2022.

This chapter is intended to provide the reader with a brief biographical overview of Adorno's life and thought, with an emphasis on the key turning points in his career. It discusses his childhood, his education in Frankfurt, his musical studies, his emigration first to Oxford and then to the United States, his return to Germany after World War Two, his tenure as professor at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt and his prominence as a public intellectual, and his confrontation with students. Together (...) with biographical details the chapter also offers a simple overview of Adorno's major concerns as a philosopher. (shrink)

Moral enhancement proposals struggle to be both plausible and ethically defensible while nevertheless interestingly distinct from both cognitive enhancement as well as (mere) moral education. Brian Earp (_Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement_ 83:415–439, 12 ) suggests that a promising middle ground lies in focusing on the (suitably qualified) use of psychedelics as _adjuncts_ to moral development. But what would such an adjunctive use of psychedelics look like in practice? In this paper, I draw on literature from three areas where techniques (...) for moral development have been discussed: psychotherapy (e.g., Overholser 2010; Burns 1980) education (e.g., Uhl and Lütge, 2018), and AI-assisted enhancement (e.g., Lara and Deckers, _Neuroethics_ 13(3):275–287, 17 ) in order to propose more concrete ways in which to use psychedelics as adjuncts to moral development. It is shown that in each of these areas, we can see that _trusting_ relationships (e.g., Baier 1986; Hawley 2019) between the facilitator and the agent will very plausibly maximize the success of this type of moral enhancement. Finally, I appeal to literature on informed consent for use of psychedelics (e.g., Smith and Sisti, _Journal of Medical Ethics_, 22 ; Johnson et al., _The Journal of Psychopharmacology_ 22(6):603–20, 23 ) and on the therapeutic relationship in psychotherapy (e.g., Dryden and Reeves 2013; Horvath et al. 2011) to outline concrete suggestions for facilitating dimensions of trust most likely to maximize the benefits of (adjunctive) psychedelic moral enhancement. The result is a newly detailed practical proposal for how we might best facilitate moral enhancement by using drugs as adjuncts to moral development. (shrink)

Fictions feature prominently in several of Hume’s important arguments about the external world. For example, Hume is clear that there would be no belief in the continued existence of objects, were it not for the fictions that are causally responsible for effecting this belief. Interpreters of Hume on the topic of fiction generally argue that the formation of fiction requires the possession of general ideas and the use of language. Drawing upon recent attempts in the literature to advance this claim, (...) I offer reasons for why this general approach is undesirable. By examining Hume’s comments on the capabilities of children, this paper advances a novel approach to the topic of fictions in Hume’s philosophy that separates the matter of fiction formation from the use of language, arguing instead that it is not the use of language that establishes fictions; fictions exert their influence upon the mind before the use of language becomes available to us. (shrink)

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections (...) of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus. (shrink)

This volume of essays offers direct comparisons of historic Western and Buddhist perspectives on ethics and metaphysics, tracing parallels and contrasts all the way from Plato to the Stoics, Spinoza to Hume, and Schopenhauer through to contemporary ethicists such as Arne Naess, Charles Taylor and Derek Parfit. It compares and contrasts each Western philosopher with a particular strand in the Buddhist tradition, in some chapters represented by individual writers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santideva or Tsong Khapa. It does so in (...) light of both analytic concerns and themes from the existentialist and phenomenological traditions, and often in an ecumenical spirit that bridges both analytic and continentalist approaches. Some of the deepest questions in ethics, dealing with the scope of agency, value-laden notions of personhood and the nature of value in general, are intertwined with questions in metaphysics. One set of questions addresses how varying conceptions of selfhood relate to moral values ; another set of questions addresses how a conception of oneself or one’s selves should or should not affect how one thinks of happiness, or eudaimonia, or – in classical Indian terms – artha, sukha or nirvana. Western philosophy has featured discussion of both, but some would argue that certain traditions of Asian philosophy have offered a more sustained and even treatment of both sets of questions. The Buddhist tradition in particular has not only featured much discussion on both fronts, but has attracted many contemporary philosophers to its distinctive spectrum of approaches, and to what is – from many ‘Western’ points of view – a seemingly subversive analysis of ego, selfhood and personhood, whether in metaphysical, phenomenological or other incarnations. (shrink)

No crucial experiment demonstrates that four hue categories are needed to describe color appearance. Instead, converging lines of evidence suggest that the terms red, yellow, green, and blue are sufficient and precise enough for deriving color discrimination functions and for a useful model constraining relations between color appearance and neuronal responses. Such a model need not be based on linguistic universals. Until something better is available, this holds.

Sociologists increasingly draw on dual-process models of cognition to account for the ways context, cognition, and action interrelate. Drawing from 40 interviews with improvisers and observations from improvisational theater, I find that dual-process model scholarship is limited in three respects: It does not consider how cognition operates in situations where order and disruption are concurrent, it fails to realize there is interindividual variation in cognitive processing, and it underestimates the creativity emerging through automatic processes. Interactions in improv contain elements of (...) both order and disruption, and they place demands on automatic and deliberate cognition simultaneously. Improvisers respond to these competing demands through either automatic or deliberate thinking dispositions, which are engendered through explicit instruction, practical experience, and artistic commitments. These dispositions, in turn, shape creative decision-making, predicting interindividual differences in how improvisers respond to contingencies on stage. I conclude by discussing the implications for culture, cognition, and action. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Quantum theory offers mathematical descriptions of measurable phenomena with great facility and accuracy, but it provides absolutely no understanding of why any particular quantum outcome is observed. It is the province of genuine explanations to tell us how things actually work—that is, why such descriptions hold and why such predictions are true. Quantum theory is long on the what, both mathematically and observationally, but almost completely silent on the how and the why. What is even more interesting is that, in (...) some sense, this state of affairs seems to be a necessary consequence of the empirical adequacy of quantum descriptions. One of the most noteworthy achievements of quantum theory is the accurate prediction of phenomena that, on pain of experimental contradiction, have no physical explanation. It is the purpose of this essay to make clear why quantum mechanics and quantum field theory are complete physical descriptions that describe the metaphysical incompleteness of the physical world, then to press the negative implications of this fact for naturalistic metaphysics. (shrink)

A discussion of the sense in which reality is mind-dependent for Kant and for David Lewis. Plus a lot about space-aliens (and a bit about pimple-worms).

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Recent discussions of cognitive enhancement often note that drugs and technologies that improve cognitive performance may do so at the risk of “cheapening” our resulting cognitive achievements Arguing about bioethics, Routledge, London, 2012; Harris in Bioethics 25:102–111, 2011). While there are several possible responses to this worry, we will highlight what we take to be one of the most promising—one which draws on a recent strand of thinking in social and virtue epistemology to construct an integrationist defence of cognitive enhancement.. (...) According to such a line, there is—despite initial appearances to the contrary—no genuine tension between using enhancements to attain our goals and achieving these goals in a valuable way provided the relevant enhancement is appropriately integrated into the agent’s cognitive architecture. In this paper, however, we show that the kind of integration recommended by such views will likely come at a high cost. More specifically, we highlight a dilemma for users of pharmacological cognitive enhancement: they can meet the conditions for cognitive integration at the significant risk of dangerous dependency, or remain free of such dependency while foregoing integration and the valuable achievements that such integration enables. After motivating and clarifying the import of this dilemma, we offer recommendations for how future cognitive enhancement research may offer potential routes for navigating past it. (shrink)

The accurate delineation of various forms of business organization requires a comparative analysis of their objectives, functions, and organizational structures. In particular, this paper highlights differences in managerial work between business firms and non-profits exemplified by the charitable organization. It adopts as its template the theory of the marketing firm, a depiction of the modern corporation as it responds to the imperatives of customer-oriented management, namely consumer discretion and consumer sophistication. It describes in §2 the essentials of the theory and (...) its basis in consumer behavior analysis, and outlines its unique position as the organization responsible for marketing transactions, based on objective exchange, competitive markets and prices, and the deployment of the entire marketing mix. §3 deals in greater depth with the objective, strategic functions, and organization of the marketing firm in terms of the concepts of metacontingency and bilateral contingency. §4 discusses how the marketing firm differs from charities in terms of goal separation, market-based pricing and competition, the entrepreneurial process, the pursuit of customer-oriented management, and organizational structure. Particular attention is accorded the organizational differences between marketing firms and charities, which arise as a direct consequence of the distinct patterns of contingency they entail. §5 discusses the implications of the foregoing analysis and draws appropriate conclusions. (shrink)

Pharmacological cognitive enhancements nontherapeutically improve cognitive functioning, though recent critics have challenged their use by claiming that cognitive success, aided by the use of cognitive enhancement, is less valuable than otherwise. We criticize two recent responses to this objection, due to Carter and Pritchard and Wang, and propose a different response on behalf of proponents of cognitive enhancement that is shown to be more promising.

Following Foucault’s remarks on the importance of architecture to disciplinary power, this paper offers a typology of power relations expressed in different models of Internet governance. Infrastructure governance understands the Internet as a common pool or public resource, on the model of traditional infrastructures like roads and bridges. Modulation governance, which I study by way of Net Neutrality debates in the U.S., understands Internet governance as traffic shaping. Portal governance, which I study by way of data collection policies of dominant (...) platform companies, understands the Internet as creating a user experience that facilitates data mining. The latter two are forms of architectural disciplinary power that undermine the first. I then argue that the rise of portal and modulation governance primarily serves to remake parts of civil society by fostering market norms of consumption and entrepreneurialism. In that sense, efforts to shape Internet architecture need to be understood as techniques of subjectification. (shrink)

The attitude to the Bible is a seismograph for scrutinizing the attitude of Zionism, in general, and that of the settlers, in particular, to their ideological and political world view. To where in the Bible are the settlers returning? To the Land of Canaan, to the land of the Patriarchs, or perhaps to the Kingdom of David? And what is the meaning of this return? It is not only the land that is basic to this question, but the relationship of (...) the Land of Israel to the people of Israel. In this article, we will mainly address the radical theological facets of the settler movement, not the proponents of Greater Israel. Our article will focus on the replication of settler theology from the first stage of Gush Emunim and the act of settlement, which in the opinion of the settlers is in accord with the continuation and completion of the Zionist project, to a more metaphysical phase, in which the centrality of the act of settlement gives way to Hassidic or kabbalistic thinking. The models which we present, make possible a fresh look at the utopian thinking and radical theology that are nourished by the settler movement and reflect a new, non-homogeneous stage. (shrink)

David Gordon; The Concept of the Hidden Curriculum, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 187–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

Scientific evolutionary/ecological thinking is the basis for today's understanding that we are now in an ecological crisis. Religions, however, often resist reordering their thinking in light of scientific ideas, and this presents difficulties in trying to develop a viable global ecological ethic. In both the West and Asia religiomoral ecological concerns continue to be formulated largely in terms of traditional concepts rather than in more global terms, as scientific thinking about ecological matters might encourage them to do. The majority of (...) this article is devoted to the kind of reformulation of Western Christian conceptions of God, humanity, and the relation between them that is necessary to address this problem. The question is then raised whether similar critical thinking about religiomoral issues raised by today's evolutionary/ecological scientific thinking is going on in Asian religions and whether it would be too presumptuous (in view of our colonial history) for us Westerners to ask for such rethinking. This leads to a final question: Without such transformations in religious traditions East and West, is the development of a truly global ecological ethic really feasible? (shrink)

This paper situates the data privacy debate in the context of what I call the death of the data subject. My central claim is that concept of a rights-bearing data subject is being pulled in two contradictory directions at once, and that simultaneous attention to these is necessary to understand and resist the extractive practices of the data industry. Specifically, it is necessary to treat the problems facing the data subject structurally, rather than by narrowly attempting to vindicate its rights. (...) On the one hand, the data industry argues that subjects of biometric identification lack legal standing to pursue claims in court, and Facebook recently denied that that its facial recognition software recognizes faces. On the other hand, industry takes consent to terms of service and arbitration clauses to create enforceable legal subject positions, while using promises of personalization to create a phenomenological subject that is unaware of the extent to which it is being manipulated. Data subjects thus have no legal existence when it is a matter of corporate liability, but legal accountability when it is a matter of their own liability. Successful reform should address the power asymmetries between individuals and data companies that enable this structural disempowerment. (shrink)

It is difficult to generalize about ethical values in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, let alone in Buddhist philosophy more generally. One author identifies seventeen distinct ethical approaches in the Mahāyāna scholarly traditions alone (i.e., not including various folk traditions).1 Nonetheless, in comparative studies in the history of ethics, there is increasing recognition that several different Buddhist traditions have stressed a foundational role for universalist altruism that was largely absent from ancient Greek eudaimonism and perhaps even absent-qua foundational-from most other premodern (...) traditions of moral reflection in the West, including much of the Christian tradition.2 In particular, ancient and .. (shrink)

An emerging line of research in bioethics questions whether enhanced love is less significant or valuable than otherwise, where "enhanced love" generally refers to cases where drugs (e.g., oxytocin, etc.) are relied on to maintain romantic relationships. Separate from these debates is a recent body of literature on the philosophy and psychology of "Virtual Reality (VR) dating," where romantic relationships are developed and sustained in a way that is mediated by VR. Interestingly, these discussions have proceeded largely independently from each (...) other. This article considers whether and to what extent philosophical arguments leveled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that, while some worries about the pharmacological case do not extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies are not insurmountable and, thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that VR-mediated love can largely withstand variations on the bioconservative critiques that target pharmacologically enhanced love. (shrink)

Our examination of universal origins and fine-tuning will begin with a discussion of infl ationary scenarios grafted onto Big Bang cosmology and the proof that all infl ationary spacetimes are past-incomplete. After diverting into a lengthy critical examination of the “different physics” offered by quantum cosmologists at the past-boundary of the universe, we will proceed to dissect the inadequacies of infl ationary explanations and string-theoretic constructs in the context of three cosmological models that have received much attention: the Steinhardt-Turok cyclic (...) ekpyrotic model (which does not invoke inflation), the Gasperini-Veneziano pre-Big Bang infl ationary model, and the inflationary string landscape model advanced by Susskind, Polchinski, Bousso, and Linde. We will argue that none of these highly speculative string cosmologies removes the necessity of a beginning to the process of universe generation, and we will emphasize the implications of this fact. Then, since the inflationary “mechanism” only really addresses the fi ne-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe and not the conditions embodied in its finely tuned laws and constants, we will analyze the adequacy of the string multiverse in its three versions (cyclic ekpyrotic, pre-Big Bang, and landscape) for explaining the nomological structure and values of these precisely tuned life-compatible universal parameters. When all is said and done, it will be clear that transcendent intelligent agency is not just the only causally suffi cient and therefore metaphysically sound explanation for universal origins and fine-tuning, but it is also much more parsimonious, elegant, and resonant with meaning than all of the ad hoc machinations of multiverse cosmology. (shrink)

The practice of science rests on the assumption of dependable regularity in the behavior of the physical world. It presumes that the world has an investigable causal structure and that scientific experimentation, observation, and theorizing provide a reliable pathway to its discernment. This much is not in dispute. What is in dispute is what warrants the metaphysical and methodological assumption—essential to the heuristic utility of science—that nature is uniform in such a way that the present can serve as a key (...) to both the past and the future. This article focuses on the metaphysical foundation and justification for uniformitarian assumptions about nature and argues that they are inconsistent with both metaphysical and methodological naturalism. (shrink)

If clinical trials become a commercial venture in which self-interest overrules public interest and desire overrules science, then the social contract which allows research on human subjects in return for medical advances is broken.BackgroundIn the past two decades, the involvement of non-academic sponsors of biomedical research, particularly clinical trial research, has increased exponentially. The value of such sponsored research is difficult to ascertain. However, it is estimated that, between 1980 and 2003, overall research and development expenditures by US pharmaceutical companies (...) increased from $2 billion to $33 billion and that, in 2001, clinical trial research expenditures in Canada totaled $800 million to $1 billion.The source of funding for biomedical research has shifted significantly from predominantly government and private foundations to industry. By 2002,70% of funding for clinical trials came from industry. These factors have affected the conduct of research, particularly clinical trial research, in a variety of ways. (shrink)

The focus here is on the neglected, simply accepted, quotidian world, rather than the much-discussed consciousness. Contra common sense and science both, any actual independent external world out there is here denied. World is conceived instead as a _continual creation_ on the part of each quantum thermofield brain in parallel, which is “triply-tuned”: by sensory input, by memory and by self-tuning. Such a brain does not primarily process information—does not compute—but through its multiple tunability achieves an internal match in which (...) a world is disclosed, even though there is no world out there, only objects under quantum description at microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. This unconventional formulation revives a version of monadology via quantum brain theory. ER -. (shrink)

Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece represents the first comprehensive study of the role of sound and hearing in the ancient Greek world. While our modern western culture is almost an entirely visual one, hearing and sound were central to ancient Greeks. The fifteen chapters of this edited volume explore "hearing" as being philosophically significant across numerous texts and figures in ancient Greek philosophy. Through close analysis of the philosophy of such figures as Heraclitus, Sophocles, Plato, Socrates, and (...) Aristotle, Hearing, Sound, and Auditory in Ancient Greece presents new and unique research from philosophers and classicists that aims to redirect us to the ways in which sound, hearing, music, listening, voice, and even silence shaped and reflected the worldview of ancient Greece. (shrink)

This chapter demonstrates that the Seventh Letter, explicitly and throughout its entirety, thematizes hearing and listening, and it comprises an exhortation to listen well. After laying down groundwork showing that logos must include listening, not merely assertion or expression, the chapter first demonstrates the political significance of the exhortation to listen based on a unified reading of the Letter that conjoins the concerns of the so-called digression with the rest of its content. It situates the “weakness of logos” taken up (...) in the digression, which most scholars treat in an ontological-linguistic weakness, as an aural phenomenon within the Letter’s distinctly political aims. That is to say, the “weakness of logos,” referred to in the so-called digression is also a weakness of hearers and hearing and is thus a political weakness, as well. The chapter then goes on to argue that the politics of listening in the Seventh Letter, as well as in some aspects of Socratic dialectic, rely necessarily on certain forms of domination or compelled listening, and I therefore consider the links between hearing and tyranny in the Letter. Finally, I speculate on what a more liberated politics of listening and hearing might look like and what role the Platonic writings might play as a propaedeutic to better listening in the city. I conclude by arguing that because of the “weakness of logos,” Plato’s task is inherently paradoxical: Plato calls us to hear what we are not yet able to hear, tyrannizing in order to liberate our sense of hearing. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was born into an aristocratic family with strong political connections. He served as a representative in the French Chamber of Deputies starting in 1839 and was briefly Minister of Foreign of Affairs in 1849. As an author, he attained instant fame after publishing the first part of Democracy in America in 1835 (the second part appeared in 1840). In 1838, he was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and, in 1841, to the even (...) more prestigious French Academy whose forty members were, in principle, the greatest living writers in the French language, known as 'the immortals.' In spite of these achievements, his was an anguished life. He was tormented by the depressing fluctuations of his country between revolution and Bonapartism, and by his own political ineffectiveness. Yet, it was not a failed life. Although he was unable to modify the course of history, he succeeded in articulating a new set of terms for the comprehension of political regimes and how they change. His cultivation of paradoxical theses (for example, that revolutions often occur when improving social conditions create rising expectations), his perception of how cultural values affect government and vice versa, and finally, his capacity to dramatize why the understanding of social institutions is an important part of our search for meaning in life, all this made him a profound historical and sociological thinker. The existential problem at the heart of Tocqueville's identity was that he was a democratically inclined aristocrat. (shrink)

'Origin of Species is a must read for Christians in our secularized, Darwin-saturated society. From a factual foundation, Charles Darwin persuasively extrapolates an erroneous explanation of life's diversity and complexity apart from God's handiwork, although there's a lot Darwin argues that his modern-day proponents ignore. Christians, using Scripture and science, should study this profoundly influential book thoroughly and cautiously'--from Dr. Wilson's guide. The Worldview Guides from the Canon Classics Literature Series provide an aesthetic and thematic Christian perspective on the most (...) definitive and daunting works of Western Literature. Each Worldview Guide presents the big picture (both the good and the bad) without neglecting the details. Each Worldview Guide is a friendly literary coach--and a treasure map, and a compass, and a key--to help teachers, parents, and students appreciate, critique, and begin to master the classics. (shrink)

Libertarians propose that if agents are to act freely they must have alternative possibilities open to them and control over which possibility becomes actual. To secure alternative possibilities, libertarians must accept that our free actions are undetermined events. Proponents of the “luck objection” to libertarianism argue that undetermined events are not the sorts of things over which agents can have control. In what follows, I defend the luck objection against three of the more promising libertarian rejoinders.

Purpose Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they (...) consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature. Design/methodology/approach Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics. Findings The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature. Social implications In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns. Originality/value The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics. (shrink)