This paper explores the role of ethics in design. Traditionally, ethical questions have been seen as marginal issues in the design of technology. Part of the reason for this stems from the widely held notion of technology being “out of control.” This notion is a barrier to what I call “ethical design” because it implies that ethics has no role to play in the development of technology. This view, however, is challenged by recent work in the field of Science and (...) Technology Studies (STS). Looking into the dynamics of technological change, STS scholars argue that human choices are present at every stage of a technology’s development and, furthermore, that human values are reflected in the very design of artifacts. This alternative view suggests that ethics can and should be included in the design process. Drawing on examples from the privacy arena. I point to some of the potential advantages of addressing ethical concerns early on in the design of a technology. I conclude with some general strategies for bringing ethics back into design. (shrink)

Patrick Colm Hogan announced in 2002 that "cognitivist methods, topics, and principles have come to dominate what are arguably the most intellectually exciting academic fields today". Today, what dominates those "cognitivist methods, topics, and principles" is likely to be Distributed Cognition. The term was initially addressed by Edwin Hutchin in Cognition in the Wild and currently has been developed to encompass an intertwined group of theories including embodied cognition, embedded cognition, extended cognition, and enactive cognition. The distributed views of (...) cognition generally hold that mind is "spread out over the brain, the non-neural body and an environment... (shrink)

Key ethical issues arise in association with the conduct of stem cell research by research institutions in the United States. These ethical issues, summarized in detail, receive no adequate translation into federal laws or regulations, also described in this article. U.S. Federal policy takes a passive approach to these ethical issues, translating them simply into limitations on taxpayer funding, and foregoes scientific and ethical leadership while protecting intellectual property interests through a laissez faire approach to stem cell patents and licenses. (...) Those patents and licenses, far from being scientifically and ethically neutral in effect, virtually prohibit commercially sponsored research that could otherwise be a realistic alternative to the federal funding gap. The lack of federal funding and related data-sharing principles, combined with the effect of U.S. patent policy, the lack of key agency guidance, and the proliferation of divergent state laws arising from the lack of Federal leadership, significantly impede ethical stem cell research in the United States, without coherently supporting any consensus ethical vision. Research institutions must themselves implement steps, described in the article, to integrate addressing ethical review with the many legal compliance issues U.S. federal and state laws create. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 187-188 [Access article in PDF] Listening to Foucault Patrick J. Bracken ERICA LILLELEHT'S INTERESTING PAPER combines philosophy, history, service analysis, and social commentary. The philosophical themes are below the surface, implicit rather than explicit. As such the paper echoes the work of Foucault himself. The subjects of his books and other writings ranged from histories of madness and psychiatry, hospitals and medicine, (...) prisons and punishment, to sexuality and ethics. But these were clearly more than histories. In doing what he initially called archaeology and later genealogy, Foucault was writing about different dimensions of how the Western world has come to understand what it is to be human. In Foucault's hands history becomes philosophy. The essence of his work is an invitation to question the project of Enlightenment. However, his interrogation of the legacy of Enlightenment is far from a rejection of reason as has sometimes been claimed. Rather it represents a realization that there are different forms of reason, none of which can claim a place of privilege over others. Foucault challenged the idea that we have to choose to be for or against Enlightenment (Foucault, 1984).Of central concern for him is the idea that knowledge and power imply each other and cannot be separated. This, of course, is anathema to both Marxist and liberal analysts who hold out the idea that truth and ideology are mutually exclusive. The assumption is that if we get the starting point of our analysis right, the truth ("pure and simple") will emerge. For Foucault there are "regimes of truth," discourses through which certain things can be said and statements can be judged as true or false. Such regimes are social products, bound up with the economic, cultural, and political realities of their times. This is not some sort of mindless relativism nor a nihilistic advocacy that, when it comes to knowledge claims, "anything goes." As human beings in an imperfect world we have to struggle continuously toward a better understanding of ourselves and the make-up of this world. As individuals, we have to continue to debate and argue about ideas, facts, and the nature of knowledge. We have to present evidence, argue our case, and prepare to be contradicted as well as supported. This is not in question. Instead, what is involved here is recognition that there is no neutral asocial, acultural, or apolitical vantage point from we can judge the validity of one position over another. Foucault's work nurtures a healthy skepticism of those who claim to have found such a vantage point.Importantly, he rejected the idea that power is always repressive in its nature: working to silence, obscure, and suppress. Particularly in the modern era power is more characteristically productive. Its operations are bound up with the ever-multiplying discourses we produce about ourselves. While increasing scientific knowledge about the human condition appears to represent progress, listening to Foucault means coming to appreciate that things are a great deal more complex. The title of Lilleleht's paper reflects this. At [End Page 187] a time when there is a great deal of talk about "progress" in the area of mental health, her analysis is opportune. Unless we pay attention to the micropolitics of clinical encounters we are at some risk of simply endorsing new forms of professional power. In one light, the psychiatric rehabilitation approach of William Anthony and colleagues appears obviously progressive. It does not depend on the "medical model" and the use of medication and seems genuinely committed to the idea of empowerment. However, with the sort of sensibility engendered through an encounter with Foucault, other issues come into view. Beneath its focus on skills and training we see a very clear normative framework centered on the idea that the person with psychiatric problems should be guided and trained toward fitting in with "his or her particular environment." At stake here is the assumption that the deficit is in the patient. It is he or she who needs to change. Herein lies the issue of power: who is in control of the way in which... (shrink)

In this contribution we examine the various amoral types of reasoning that have long predominated in the history of tolerance. In doing this we also hope to show that these amoral notions of tolerance are always far removed from, and in conflict with, the idea of freedom of religion as a moral and political right. In conclusion we show that when the liberal notion of freedom as a personal and moral right predominates, then the notion of tolerance loses some of (...) its meaning. (shrink)

Au Moyen Âge, les rapports entre savoirs théorique et pratique dans la mesure des champs sont difficiles à appréhender. L’article examine d’une part l’évolution de la géométrie depuis les premiers traités de l’époque carolingienne jusqu’à l’apparition de la geometria practica, puis l’évolution de ce dernier genre, d’autre part la pratique effective des mesureurs telle qu’on la reconstitue à partir d’une documentation évasive. On observe que les techniques de mesure ne relèvent jamais de la géométrie savante, euclidienne ou pratique, malgré les (...) tentatives de quelques savants à partir du xiii e siècle. (shrink)

Government policy aims at a 'seamless web' of learning provision. This is exemplified in a local Learning and Skills Council supported by work on widening participation to higher education (HE) in another London sub-region. The emerging system described is comprehended as a whole from 'Foundation Learning' in compulsory schooling to post-compulsory 'Lifelong Learning' in further, higher and continuing education and training thereafter.

The mechanical aspect of momentum, basically its role as a tangent vector of the trajectory of the particle, is related to properties of the momentum found in the contexts of Hamilton's optico-mechanical analogy, de Broglie's matter waves, and quantum mechanics. These properties are treated in a systematic way by considering an approximation of the particle mechanical action of the particle by a step function. A special method of discretizing partial differential equations is shown to be required. Using this method, a (...) discrete dynamics is developed. It is shown that particle dynamics can be regarded as the limit case of the discrete dynamics as the step functions tend to the continuous ones. The equation of motion of a free particle in an arbitrary reference system is deduced in two ways: (i) in continuous dynamics by making use of the invariance of action within changes of reference systems, and (ii) by taking the mentioned limit in discrete dynamics of an equation which expresses that the mechanical and wave-theoretical aspects of the momentum are interrelated in specific way. (shrink)

A wealthy eccentric bought a house in a neighborhood I know.  The house was surrounded by a beautiful display of grass, plants, and flowers, and it was shaded by a huge old avocado tree. But the grass required cutting, the flowers needed tending, and the man wanted more sun. So he cut the whole lot down and covered the yard with asphalt. After all it was his property and he was not fond of plants. (Hill 1983: 98).

Author of the 'obscene' narrative Story of the Eye and of works of heretical philosophy such as Inner Experience, Georges Bataille is one of the most powerful and secretly influential French thinkers of the last century. His work is driven by a compulsion to communicate an experience which exceeds the limits of communicative exchange, and also constitutes a sustained focus on the nature of this demand. After Bataille takes this sense of compulsion as its motive and traces it across different (...) figures in Bataille's thought, from an obsession with the thematic and the event of sacrifice, through the exposure of being and of the subject, to the necessary relation to others in friendship and in community. In each of these instances After Bataille is distinctive in staging a series of encounters between Bataille, his contemporaries, and critics and theorists who extend or engage with his legacy. It thus offers a vital account of the place of Bataille in contemporary thought. Book jacket. (shrink)

This short essay analyzes an unusual typographical feature in the Epistle to the Reader that precedes Locke’s Essay. Specifically, it asks why there is a line prior to Christiaan Huygens’ name in the famous Underlaborer Passage. The paper provides a thorough look at the line’s longevity through early editions of the Essay and considers a number of possible explanations for the line’s presence. It is argued that the line may well have held some meaning for early readers; contemporary scholars should (...) be motivated to investigate the issue further. (shrink)

We believe that the task goal in voluntary movements provides meaning to existing information sources in the environment and determines, in a dynamic way, the use and relative importance of these different sources. This task-centered meaning bridges the apparent controversy between what information is available in principle (i.e., specification), and what information is perceived.

Philosophy's only celebration of photography's 150th, the long-neglected philosophical job of clarification: drawing basic distinctions and defining basic conceptions, including photographic depiction, photographic detection, 'photograph of', 'documentary'. More than a lexicon, it explains why photography is important, by historically characterizing it through its uses for depiction, detection, reproduction, all of which have shaped the modern world. By consideration of it as 'mechanical', the paper explains photography's differences from practices with which it shares these functions. Happy birthday, photography.