Some theories suggest that women anticipate negative consequences (i.e., backlash) for counter-stereotypical actions and take steps to avoid those consequences. We propose that women may expect gender-based backlash for voicing, or contributing ideas that challenge the status quo, and thus engage in more silence (withholding those contributions) than men. However, we also propose that women anticipate gender backlash, and hence engage in more silence, only when other group members’ behavior signals that deviating from prescribed gender norms is risky. In two (...) studies with over 3000 participants, we found that incivility increased women’s expectation that voicing would lead to gender backlash. In turn, women engaged in more silence than men in uncivil groups, but we found no gender difference in silence in civil groups. Our findings reveal that certain situations differentially alert people to interpersonal risks, thus influencing their decision to withhold contributions. (shrink)

As COVID-19 drags on and new vaccines promise widespread immunity, the world's attention has turned to predicting how the present pandemic will end. How do societies know when an epidemic is over and normal life can resume? What criteria and markers indicate such an end? Who has the insight, authority, and credibility to decipher these signs? Detailed research on past epidemics has demonstrated that they do not end suddenly; indeed, only rarely do the diseases in question actually end. This article (...) examines the ways in which scholars have identified and described the end stages of previous epidemics, pointing out that significantly less attention has been paid to these periods than to origins and climaxes. Analysis of the ends of epidemics illustrates that epidemics are as much social, political, and economic events as they are biological; the “end,” therefore, is as much a process of social and political negotiation as it is biomedical. Equally important, epidemics end at different times for different groups, both within one society and across regions. Multidisciplinary research into how epidemics end reveals how the end of an epidemic shifts according to perspective, whether temporal, geographic, or methodological. A multidisciplinary analysis of how epidemics end suggests that epidemics should therefore be framed not as linear narratives—from outbreak to intervention to termination—but within cycles of disease and with a multiplicity of endings. (shrink)

ChatGPT has taken the academic community by storm (Cotton, Cotton, and Shipway 2023; Cox and Tzoc 2023; Sullivan, Kelly, and McLaughlan 2023). Since its release in November 2022, chatGPT has predic...

Social norms are commonly understood as rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to domain-specific adaptations for norm acquisition. In (...) this paper, we propose a novel methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. We begin with an analysis of the explanatory aims of the cognitive science of social norms. From this analysis, we derive a recommendation for a reformed conception of its explanandum: a minimally psychological construct that we call normative regularities. Our central empirical proposal is that the psychological underpinnings of social norms are most likely realized by a heterogeneous set of cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms that vary between norms and between individuals, rather than by a single type of process or distinctive norm system. This pluralistic approach, we suggest, offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of social norms. (shrink)

When applied in the health sector, AI-based applications raise not only ethical but legal and safety concerns, where algorithms trained on data from majority populations can generate less accurate or reliable results for minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

The societal and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked discussions among academics, policymakers and the public around the world. What has gone unnoticed so far are the likewise vibrant discussions in China. We analyzed a large sample of discussions about AI ethics on two Chinese social media platforms. Findings suggest that participants were diverse, and included scholars, IT industry actors, journalists, and members of the general public. They addressed a broad range of concerns associated with the application of (...) AI in various fields. Some even gave recommendations on how to tackle these issues. We argue that these discussions are a valuable source for understanding the future trajectory of AI development in China as well as implications for global dialogue on AI governance. (shrink)

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in healthcare raise pressing questions about how much users should trust AI/ML systems, particularly for high stakes clinical decision-making. Ensuring that user trust is properly calibrated to a tool’s computational capacities and limitations has both practical and ethical implications, given that overtrust or undertrust can influence over-reliance or under-reliance on algorithmic tools, with significant implications for patient safety and health outcomes. It is, thus, important to better understand how variability in trust (...) criteria across stakeholders, settings, tools and use cases may influence approaches to using AI/ML tools in real settings. As part of a 5-year, multi-institutional Agency for Health Care Research and Quality-funded study, we identify trust criteria for a survival prediction algorithm intended to support clinical decision-making for left ventricular assist device therapy, using semistructured interviews (n=40) with patients and physicians, analysed via thematic analysis. Findings suggest that physicians and patients share similar empirical considerations for trust, which were primarilyepistemicin nature, focused on accuracy and validity of AI/ML estimates. Trust evaluations considered the nature, integrity and relevance of training data rather than the computational nature of algorithms themselves, suggesting a need to distinguish ‘source’ from ‘functional’ explainability. To a lesser extent, trust criteria were also relational (endorsement from others) and sometimes based on personal beliefs and experience. We discuss implications for promoting appropriate and responsible trust calibration for clinical decision-making use AI/ML. (shrink)

A recurring concern about luck egalitarianism is that its implementation would make some individuals, in particular those who lack marketable talents, experience shame. This, the objection goes, undermines individuals’ self-respect, which, in turn, may also lead to unequal respect between individuals. Loss of (self-)respect is a concern for any egalitarian, including distributive egalitarians, inasmuch as it is non-compensable. This paper responds to this concern by clarifying the relationship between shame and (self-)respect. We argue, first, a luck egalitarian society and ethos (...) would be radically different from the current one and incompatible with shame over lack of talent, and, second, that while shame may still occur in a less than ideal luck egalitarian society, this kind of shame does not undermine egalitarian commitments. (shrink)

The evidence-based practice and evidence-based medicine movements have promoted standardization through guideline development methodologies based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of best available research. EBM has challenged clinicians to question their reliance on practical reasoning and clinical judgement. In this paper, we argue that the protagonists of EBM position their mission as reducing uncertainty through the use of standardized methods for knowledge evaluation and use. With this drive towards uniformity, standardization and control comes a suspicion towards intuition, creativity and uncertainty (...) as integral parts of medical practice. We question the appropriateness of attempts to standardize professional practice through a discussion of the importance of uncertainty. Greenhalgh’s taxonomy of uncertainty is used to inform an analysis of the clinical reasoning occurring in a potentially life threatening emergency situation with a young patient. The case analysis is further developed by the use of the Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan’s theory about understanding and objective knowing. According to Lonergan it is not by getting rid of or even by reducing uncertainty, but by attending systematically to it and by relating to it in a self-conscious way, that objective knowledge can be obtained. The paper concludes that uncertainty is not a regrettable and unavoidable aspect of decision making but a productive component of clinical reasoning. (shrink)

We examined the relationship between leader behavioral integrity and leader behavioral courage using data from two studies. Results from Study 1, an online experiment, indicated that behavioral manifestations of leader behavioral integrity and situational adversity both have direct main effects on behavioral manifestations of leader courage. Results from Study 2, a multisource field study with practicing executives, indicated that leader behavioral courage fully mediates the effects of leader behavioral integrity on leader performance and leader executive image. Implications of these findings (...) and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

Voluntary actions and their distal effects are intimately related in conscious awareness. When an expected effect follows a voluntary action, the experience of the interval between these events is compressed in time, a phenomenon known as ‘intentional binding’ . Current accounts of IB suggest that it serves to reinforce associations between our goals and our intention to attain these goals via action, and that IB only occurs for self-generated actions. We used a novel approach to study IB in the context (...) of shared intentions and actions. Pairs of participants judged the time of occurrence of actions and events attributed either to oneself or to another agent. We found that IB and subjective agency are not mutually predictive when an action can be attributed to only one of two ‘co-intending’ agents. Our results pose a complication for the prevailing view that IB and subjective agency reflect a common mechanism. (shrink)

This is the first book on practical philosophy of science and how to practically evaluate scientific findings that have life-and-death consequences. Showing how to uncover scores of scientific flaws -- typically used by special interests who try to justify their deadly pollution -- this book aims to liberate the many potential victims of environmentally-induced disease and death.

This paper investigates the effect of the countervailing forces within organizations of formal systems that direct employees toward ethical acts and informal systems that direct employees toward fraudulent behavior. We study the effect of these forces on deception, a key component of fraud. The results provide support for an interactive effect of these formal and informal systems. The effectiveness of formal systems is greater when there is a strong informal “push” to do wrong; conversely, in the absence of a strong (...) push to do wrong, the strength of formal systems has little impact on fraudulent behavior. These results help to explain why the implementation of formal systems within organizations has been met with mixed results and identifies when formal systems designed to promote ethical behavior will be most efficacious. (shrink)

One way to do socially relevant investigations of science is through conceptual analysis of scientific terms used in special-interest science (SIS). SIS is science having welfare-related consequences and funded by special interests, e.g., tobacco companies, in order to establish predetermined conclusions. For instance, because the chemical industry seeks deregulation of toxic emissions and avoiding costly cleanups, it funds SIS that supports the concept of "hormesis" (according to which low doses of toxins/carcinogens have beneficial effects). Analyzing the hormesis concept of its (...) main defender, chemical-industry-funded Edward Calabrese, the paper shows Calabrese and others fail to distinguish three different hormesis concepts, H, HG, and HD. H requires toxin-induced, short-term beneficial effects for only one biological endpoint, while HG requires toxin-induced, net-beneficial effects for all endpoints/responses/subjects/ages/conditions. HD requires using the risk-assessment/regulatory default rule that all low-dose toxic exposures are net-beneficial, thus allowable. Clarifying these concepts, the paper argues for five main claims. (1) Claims positing H are trivially true but irrelevant to regulations. (2) Claims positing HG are relevant to regulation but scientifically false. (3) Claims positing HD are relevant to regulation but ethically/scientifically questionable. (4) Although no hormesis concept (H, HG, or HD) has both scientific validity and regulatory relevance, Calabrese and others obscure this fact through repeated equivocation, begging the question, and data-tri mm ing. Consequently (5) their errors provide some undeserved rhetorical plausibility for deregulating low-dose toxins. (shrink)

The communicative interactions of very young children almost always involve language, gesture and directed gaze. In this study, ninety-six children were asked to determine the location of a hidden toy by understanding a communicative act that contained none of these familiar means. A light-and-sound mechanism placed behind the hiding place and illuminated by a centrally placed switch was used to indicate the location of the toy. After a communicative training session, an experimenter pressed the switch either deliberately or accidentally, and (...) with or without ostension. In no condition did she orient towards the hiding place. When the switch was pressed intentionally, children used the light-and-sound cue to find the toy – and tended to do so even in the absence of ostensive eye contact. When the experimenter pressed the switch accidentally, children searched randomly – demonstrating that they were tracking her communicative intent, and not merely choosing on the basis of salience. The absence of an effect of ostension contradicts research that ostension helps children to interpret the communicative intentions underlying unfamiliar signs. We explain this by concluding that while it may play a role in establishing a communicative interaction, it is not necessary for sustaining one; and that even with a highly novel communicative act – involving none of the means of communication on which children typically rely – three-year-olds can comprehend the communicative intentions behind an intentionally produced act. (shrink)

Lifelong smokers lose on average a decade of life vis-à-vis non-smokers. Globally, tobacco causes about 5–6 million deaths annually. One billion tobacco-related deaths are predicted for the 21st century, with about half occurring before the age of 70. In this paper, we consider a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes and find that such a ban, if effective, would be justified. As with many policy decisions, the argument for such a ban requires a weighing of the pros and cons (...) and how they impact on different individuals, both current and future. The weightiest factor supporting a ban, we argue, is the often substantial well-being losses many individuals suffer because of smoking. These harms, moreover, disproportionally affect the disadvantaged. The potential gains in well-being and equality, we argue, outweigh the limits a ban places on individuals’ freedom, its failure to respect some individuals’ autonomous choice and the likelihood that it may, in individual cases, reduce well-being. (shrink)

In 2014, the first child in the world was born after live uterus transplantation and IVF (UTx-IVF). Before and after this event, ethical aspects of UTx-IVF have been discussed in the medical and bioethical debate as well as, with varying intensity, in Swedish media and political fora. This article examines what comes to be identified as important ethical problems and solutions in the media debate of UTx-IVF in Sweden, showing specifically how problems, target groups, goals, benefits, risks and stakes are (...) delineated and positioned. It also demonstrates how specific assumptions, norms and values are expressed and used to underpin specific positions within this debate, and how certain subjects, desires and risks become shrouded or simply omitted from it. This approach—which we label the Ethics of the Societal Entrenchment-approach, inspired by Koch and Stemerding (1994)—allows us to discuss how the identification of something as the problem helps to shape what gets to be described as a solution, and how specific solutions provide frameworks within which problems can be stated and emphasised. We also offer a critical discussion of whether some of these articulations and formations should be seen as ethically troubling, and if so, why. (shrink)

Emotions evoked in response to others’ distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tes...

Medical therapy, research and technology enable us to make our bodies, or parts of them, available to others in an increasing number of ways. This is the case in organ, tissue, egg and sperm donation as well as in surrogate motherhood and clinical research. Bringing together leading scholars working on the ethical, social and cultural aspects of such bodily exchanges, this cutting-edge book develops new ways of understanding them. Bodily Exchanges, Bioethics and Border Crossing both probes the established giving and (...) selling frameworks for conceptualising bodily exchanges in medicine, and seeks to develop and examine another, less familiar framework: that of sharing. A framework of sharing can capture practices that involve giving up and giving away part of one's body, such as organ and tissue donation, and practices that do not, such as surrogacy and research participation. Sharing also recognizes the multiple relationalities that these exchanges can involve and invites inquiry into the context in which they occur. In addition, the book explores the multiple forms of border crossing that bodily exchanges in medicine involve, from the physical boundaries of the body to relational borders - as can happen in surrogacy - to national borders and the range of ethical issues that these various border-crossings can give rise to. Engaging with anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and feminist and postcolonical perspectives, this is an original and timely contribution to contemporary bioethics in a time of increasing globalization. It will be of use to students and researchers from a range of humanities and social science backgrounds as well as medical and other healthcare professionals with an interest in bioethics. (shrink)

According to the theory of natural pedagogy, humans have a set of cognitive adaptations specialized for transmitting and receiving knowledge through teaching; young children can acquire generalizable knowledge from ostensive signals even in a single interaction, and adults also actively teach young children. In this article, we critically examine the theory and argue that ostensive signals do not always allow children to learn generalizable knowledge more efficiently, and that the empirical evidence provided in favor of the theory of natural pedagogy (...) does not defend the theory as presented, nor does it support a weakened version of the theory. We argue that these problems arise because the theory of natural pedagogy is grounded in a misguided assumption, namely that learning about the world and learning about people are two distinct and independent processes. If, on the other hand, we see the processes as interrelated, then we have a better explanation for the empirical evidence. (shrink)

This article examines the construction of gender within men's accounts of domestic violence. Analyses of in-depth interviews conducted with 33 domestically violent heterosexual men indicate that these batterers used diverse strategies to present themselves as nonviolent, capable, and rational men. Respondents performed gender by contrasting effectual male violence with ineffectual female violence, by claiming that female partners were responsible for the violence in their relationships and by constructing men as victims of a biased criminal justice system. This study suggests that (...) violence against female partners is a means by which batterers reproduce a binary framework of gender. (shrink)

The language of ‘experience’ in nursing researchThis paper is an analysis of how the signifier ‘experience’ is used in nursing research. We identify a set of issues we believe accompany the use of experience but are rarely addressed. These issues are embedded in a spectrum that includes ontological commitments, visions of the person/self and its relation to ‘society’, understandings of research methodology and the politics of nursing. We argue that a poststructuralist understanding of the language of experience in research opens (...) up additional ways to analyze the relationship between the conduct of nursing research and cultural/political commitments. (shrink)

This paper argues the case for taking a critical realist (CR) approach to social work research. The normativity in social work is often under-communicated in the social sciences, resulting in research that has an unclear value base as its starting point. Social work practice promotes social change and people's development, empowerment, and liberation. By taking a CR of view as a starting point for researching social problems, the focus shifts towards explaining phenomena by revealing and discussing the mechanisms through which (...) they are produced and maintained. Child welfare issues are argued to be “wicked problems”, on top of which the practice of social work itself is a complex field. Two studies from the field of child and family welfare are presented here to illustrate how CR has been fruitfully applied in research on such complex phenomena. These two studies comprise research on child protection assessment and parental high conflict. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of nursing as a knowledgeable discipline. We examined ways in which knowledge operates in the practice of home care nursing and explored how knowledge might be fruitfully understood within the ambiguous spaces and competing temporalities characterizing contemporary healthcare services. Two popular metaphors of knowledge in nursing practice were identified and critically examined; evidence-based practice and the nurse as an intuitive worker. Pointing to faults in these conceptualizations, we suggest a different way of conceptualizing the relationship (...) between knowledge and practice, namely practice as being activated by contextualized knowledge. This conceptualization is captured in an understanding of the intelligent creation of context by the nurse for nursing practice to be ethical and effective. (shrink)

When Kangas suggested in 1986 that wildlife reserve designs could be much smaller than previously thought, community ecologists attacked his views on methodological grounds (island biogeographical theory is beset with uncertainties) and on conservation grounds (Kangas seemed to encourage deforestation and extinction). Kangas' defenders, like Simberloff, argued that in a situation of biological uncertainty (the degree/type of deforestation-induced extinction), scientists ought to follow the epistemologically conservative course and risk type-II error (the risk of not rejecting a null hypothesis that is (...) false), rather than type-I error. (This is the risk of rejecting a null hypothesis that is true). Kangas' opponents, like Noss, argued that, in a situation of scientific uncertainty, scientists ought to risk type-I, rather than type-II, error. This essay argues that there are different types of rationality appropriate to science and applied science and, therefore, in cases of applied science (like conservation biology), the more conservative course of action is for scientists to risk type-I error. The essay argues further that, on grounds of scientific rationality, Kangas, Simberloff, and others were correct in risking type-II error, but that, on grounds of decision-theoretic rationality, Noss, Waide, and others were correct in risking type-I error. (shrink)

While the proliferation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives among medical schools and residency training programs has provided important benefits of demographic and experiential diversity among medical trainees, there has not been a similar emphasis upon the importance of moral diversity in medical training. Enhanced attention to the importance of moral diversity and the centrality of conscience to medical practice might allow trainees to better interface with the morally diverse patients they serve, learn important virtues like humility, patience, and (...) tolerance, and deepen their understanding of and appreciation for alternative moral viewpoints among their fellow practitioners. (shrink)

Currently, there is a great number of approaches to the semantics-pragmatics distinction on the market. This book is unique in that it offers a comprehensive overview, comparison and critical evaluation of these approaches. At the same time, it covers a wide range of the key current topics in semantics and pragmatics (e.g., the saying/meaning distinction, minimalism vs. contextualism, (generalised) conversational implicatures).

The ideal of trust pervades nursing. This article uses empirical material from acute psychiatry that reveals that it is distrust rather than trust that is prevalent in this field. Our data analyses show how distrust is expressed in the therapeutic environment and in the relationship between nurse and patient. We point out how trust can nonetheless be created in an environment that is characterized by distrust. Both trust and distrust are exposed as `fragile' phenomena that can easily `tip over' towards (...) their opposites. Trust is not something that nurses possess or are given; it is rather something that they earn and have to work hard to achieve. Regarding themselves as potential causes of distrust and active wielders of power can contribute to nurses developing a more realistic view of their practice. Assuming a realistic middle-way perspective can help to manoeuvre between the extremities of excellence and resignation, which in turn can lead to processes that create trust between psychotic patients and nurses. (shrink)

Conservation planning is only as good as the science on which it relies. This paper evaluates the science underlying the least-cost-path model, developed by Meegan and Maehr (2002) , for the Florida panther, Puma concolor coryi. It also assesses the resulting claim that private lands in central Florida are desirable for panther colonization (Maehr et al. 2002a , p. 187; Maehr 2001 , pp. 3–4; Maehr and Deason 2002 , p. 400). The paper argues that panther conservation planning, as proposed (...) by Maehr, is flawed because of its (1) poor analysis of panther-habitat requirements, owing largely to use of only daytime telemetry, a black-box model, and failure to take account of spatial and temporal uncertainties; (2) use of stipulative and misleading definitions of key biological terms, such as “forest obligate” and panther “dispersal”; (3) employment of question-begging value judgments to rank habitat; (4) weak testing of the model; (5) inconsistency in evaluation of forest habitat; (6) inconsistency in evaluation of agricultural lands; and (7) inconsistency in assessing effects of highways on panther habitat. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the commitment to the inclusion of historically underrepresented communities, Christian ethics continues to be dominated by the voices, concerns, norms and methodologies of scholars from the northern hemisphere. This paper analyses the state of the field through the lens of the Catholic Theological Ethics in a World Church network whose mission is to promote international exchange. It assesses the lacunae arising from the northern-centric nature of Christian ethics as practiced in the northern hemisphere, highlights the inflection points, and considers (...) the likely re-prioritization of concerns that will flow from the systemic inclusion of the multiple, diverse voices of majority world scholars. (shrink)

Informed consent represents a cornerstone of the endeavours to make health care research ethically acceptable. Based on experience of qualitative research on power dynamics in nursing care in acute psychiatry, we show that the requirement for informed consent may be practised in formalistic ways that legitimize the researcher's activities without taking the patient's changing perception of the situation sufficiently into account. The presentation of three patient case studies illustrates a diversity of issues that the researcher must consider in each situation. (...) We argue for the necessity of researchers to base their judgement on a complex set of competencies. Consciousness of research ethics must be combined with knowledge of the challenges involved in research methodology in qualitative research and familiarity with the therapeutic arena in which the research is being conducted. The article shows that the alternative solution is not simple but must emphasize the researcher's ability to doubt and be based on an awareness of the researcher's fallibility. (shrink)

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated advances in bioethical approaches to medical decision-making. This paper develops an alternative method for rationing care during periods of resource scarcity. Typical approaches to triaging rely on utilitarian calculations; however, this approach introduces a problematic antihumanist sentiment, inviting the proposition of alternative schemata. As such, we suggest a feminist approach to medical decision-making, founded in and expanding upon the framework of Eva Kittay’s Ethics of Care. We suggest that this new structure addresses (...) the issue of medical decision-making during times of resource scarcity just as well as pure utilitarian approaches while better attending to their significant theoretical concerns, forming a coherent alternative to the current bioethical consensus. (shrink)

The concept of free will is fraught with controversy, as readers of this volume likely know. Philosophers disagree about what free will is, whether we have it, what mitigates or destroys it, and what it's good for. Indeed, philosophers even disagree about how to fix the referent of the term 'free will' for purposes of describing and exploring these disagreements. What one person considers a reasonably neutral working definition of 'free will' is often considered question-begging or otherwise misguided by another. (...) Such disputes make it difficult to summarize the problem of free will, roughly the debate over the nature and existence of free will, in a clear and uncontentious way. In generic terms, however, the two basic solutions to the problem of free will are free-willism, the view that we have free will, and free-will denialism, i.e. the view that we do not have free will. As stated here, neither denialism nor free-willism constitutes a complete solution to the problem of free will; to be complete, a proposed solution must also tell us a convincing story about what free will is and that, as it turns out, is a very difficult task indeed. One historically popular way of approaching the problem of free will is to ask about the relationship between free will and determinism: "Does free will stand in relation R to determinism: yes or no?" This is just a template for a question, of course. To transform this template-question into a substantive question with a clear meaning, we need to flesh out the template's free-will relatum, its determinism relatum, and give a precise value to relation R. There is, however, no uncontroversial way to do this. In addition to the standard difficulties raised by fixing the referent of 'free will', philosophers hold radically different views about what is-or should be-meant by 'determinism', Shabo ), and they identify relations which are as substantively different as correlation and causation when characterizing relation R. In practical terms, then, it may be best to think of the problem of determinism as a loose collection of disagreements about how to best spell out and answer the template-question, and how asking and answering such questions would help us to solve the problem of free will. (shrink)

"We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty (...) contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history." -Excerpt from Introduction. ... ... To read full introduction, (1) download attached file or (2) follow wiley_dot_com link below, click "Read An Excerpt", then click :Excerpt 3:(pdf)". (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 34-36.

The article analyses the debate on egg donation in Norway using source material from the parliamentary debate of amendments to the Biotechnology Law. In both policy documents on bioethics and the Biotechnology Law, gender is not a spoken issue, but bringing egg and sperm directly to the fore highlights how gender is implicated in bioethics debates. Gender perceptions affect the understanding of `what egg and sperm may do' at the same time as the debate sets established perceptions of gender in (...) motion. In Norway, gender equality is a valid and important premise within the general political debate. It is, however, contested as a valid argument in the context of egg donation, which therefore becomes a field of negotiations about the limits of equal opportunities. The article analyses the egg donation debate as a process of cultural co-production and asks how the Norwegian emphasis on gender equality influences the debate on egg donation and, vice versa, how debates of assisted reproductive technology reopen debates on gender in relation to reproduction and parenthood. (shrink)

Gene editing in agriculture and food (GEAF) is a nascent development with few products and is unfamiliar among the wider US public. GEAF has garnered significant praise for its potential to solve for a variety of agronomic problems but has also evoked controversy regarding safety and ethical standards of development and application. Given the wake of other agribiotechnology debates including GMOs (genetically modified organisms), this study made use of 36 in-depth key interviews to build the first U.S. based typology of (...) proponent and critic priorities for shaping public trust in GEAF actors and objects. Key organizational actors provide early and foundational messaging, which is likely to contribute heavily to public salience, comprehension, and decision-making as potential consumers reflect upon their experiences, envision future outcomes, and consider the reputation of those trying to influence them. As is documented in our results, the trust-building priorities of these groups often stand in opposition to one another and are influenced by distinct motivations for how the public will come to trust or distrust GEAF actors and objects as more products are developed and enter the market. (shrink)