How do minds emerge from developing brains? According to the representational features of cortex are built from the dynamic interaction between neural growth mechanisms and environmentally derived neural activity. Contrary to popular selectionist models that emphasize regressive mechanisms, the neurobiological evidence suggests that this growth is a progressive increase in the representational properties of cortex. The interaction between the environment and neural growth results in a flexible type of learning: minimizes the need for prespecification in accordance with recent neurobiological evidence (...) that the developing cerebral cortex is largely free of domain-specific structure. Instead, the representational properties of cortex are built by the nature of the problem domain confronting it. This uniquely powerful and general learning strategy undermines the central assumption of classical learnability theory, that the learning properties of a system can be deduced from a fixed computational architecture. Neural constructivism suggests that the evolutionary emergence of neocortex in mammals is a progression toward more flexible representational structures, in contrast to the popular view of cortical evolution as an increase in innate, specialized circuits. Human cortical postnatal development is also more extensive and protracted than generally supposed, suggesting that cortex has evolved so as to maximize the capacity of environmental structure to shape its structure and function through constructive learning. (shrink)

The legal regime regulating cross-border investment gives key rights to foreign investors and places significant duties on states hosting that investment. It also raises distinctive moral questions due to its potential to constrain a state’s ability to manage its economy and protect its people. Yet international investment law remains virtually untouched as a subject of philosophical inquiry. The questions of international political morality surrounding investment rules can be mapped through the lens of two critiques of the law – that it (...) systemically takes advantage of the global South and that it constrains the policy choices of states hosting investment. Each critique contains certain moral and empirical assumptions that deserve further attention. The distributive justice implications of international investment rules are also relevant to scholars of global distributive justice. The aim of the analysis is to develop an interdisciplinary agenda – among law, philosophy, and social science – for inquiry into the justice of investment law and reform of its unjust elements. (shrink)

This up-to-date collection of more than two dozen real-life cases illustrates the moral issues facing contemporary American journalists. It will help students hone their reasoning skills, encouraging them to think rationally and act with integrity.

This volume is an introduction to the underpinnings of journalism ethics, and a guide for journalists and journalism teachers looking for ways to form consistent and informed ethical decisions.

Grant Gillett's (2009) welcome and extremely thought-provoking target article addresses many complex issues of such far-ranging consequence that it seems impossible to provide a commentary worthy o...

Robotization is an increasingly pervasive feature of our lives. Robots with high degrees of autonomy may cause harm, yet in sufciently complex systems neither the robots nor the human developers may be candidates for moral blame. John Danaher has recently argued that this may lead to a retribution gap, where the human desire for retribution faces a lack of appropriate subjects for retributive blame. The potential social and moral implications of a retribution gap are considerable. I argue that the retributive (...) intuitions that feed into retribution gaps are best understood as deontological intuitions. I apply a debunking argument for deontological intuitions in order to show that retributive intuitions cannot be used to justify retributive punishment in cases of robot harm without clear candidates for blame. The fundamental moral question thus becomes what we ought to do with these retributive intuitions, given that they do not justify retribution. I draw a parallel from recent work on implicit biases to make a case for taking moral responsibility for retributive intuitions. In the same way that we can exert some form of control over our unwanted implicit biases, we can and should do so for unjustifed retributive intuitions in cases of robot harm. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how methods of investigation can allow us either to appreciate the intact cognitive and social abilities of people with Alzheimer’s disease or unwittingly obscure those same abilities. Specifically, I shall assert that (1) the biomedical- quantitative approach, while being generally appropriate for drug efficacy studies, does not allow us to appreciate the many significant strengths possessed by people diagnosed with dementia, (2) qualitative/narrative approaches do so admirably, and (3) understanding the cognitive and social strengths of (...) people diagnosed is of paramount importance for developing optimal care giving approaches and reveals strikingly the shared humanity of those diagnosed with dementia and those deemed healthy. (shrink)

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved voluntarily (...) as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

As the commentaries reveal, cognitive neuroscience's first steps toward a theory of development are marked by vigorous debate, ranging from basic points of definition to the fine details of mechanism. In this Response, we present the neural constructivist position on this broad spectrum of issues, from basic questions such as what sets constructivism apart from other theories (particularly selectionism) to its relation to behavioral theories and to its underlying mechanisms. We conclude that the real value of global theories at this (...) stage of cognitive neuroscience is not just their answers but the new set of research questions they pose. (shrink)

Policies that determine whether someone is allowed access to reproductive healthcare or not vary widely among countries, especially in their age requirements. This raises the suspicion of arbitrariness, especially because often no underlying justification is provided. In this article, we pose the question—under which circumstances is it morally acceptable to use age for policy and legislation in the first place? We start from the notion that everyone has a _conditional positive_ right to fertility treatment. Subsequently, we set off to formulate (...) a framework that helps to determine who should be excluded from treatment nonetheless. The framework’s three core elements are: choosing and ethically justifying exclusion criteria (target), determining the actual limit between in- and exclusion (cut-off), and selecting variables that help to predict the exclusion criteria via correlation (as they are not directly measurable) (proxy). This framework allows us to show that referring to age in policy and legislation is only ethically justifiable if there is a sufficiently strong correlation with a non-directly measurable exclusion criterion. Moreover, since age is only one of many predicting variables, it should therefore not be ascribed any special status. Finally, our framework may be used as an argumentative scheme to critically assess the ethical legitimacy of policies that regulate access to (fertility) treatments in general. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Van Gelder seeks to distinguish between the computational and the dynamical hypotheses primarily on the basis of ontic criteria – the kind of systems cognitive agents really are. I suggest that this meets with mixed success. By shifting to epistemic criteria – what kind of explanations we require to understand cognitive agents – I suggest there is an easier and more intuitive way to distinguish between these two competing views of cognitive agents.

International law and ethics share a common goal of helping us understand the norms and institutions needed to promote a just world order. Yet each of the two fields has approached this shared task with little regard for the insights of other, and interdisciplinary collaboration is now imperative. This essay shows the complementary nature of inquiries in political and moral philosophy, on the one hand, and international law, on the other, by examining the so-called New Haven School (or policy-oriented jurisprudence), (...) an international law method that explicitly considers values as both inputs and outputs of the process of making law. It finds that the School’s sociological orientation does not adequately integrate ethical inquiries essential to prescribing law, in particular questions about the scope of duties that individuals and states owe those abroad. Using the current legal debate over the extraterritorial application of human rights as an example, the paper shows how approaches from moral and political philosophy can help provide a rigorous and principled basis for the prescription of law, as well as link seemingly unrelated questions of international law to each other. (shrink)

The most important election held in 2001 was that to the House of Councillors. Here, however, I will report on several surprising gubernatorial elections and the shocking LDP party presidential election. Each of these elections sent a similar message from the voters: . Powerful political machines using tried and true campaign techniques were repeatedly defeated by novices whose primary attraction was that they were not part of the political establishment.

Preventive vaccination can protect not just vaccinated individuals, but also others, which is often a central point in discussions about vaccination. To date, there has been no systematic study of self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination. This article has two major goals: first, to examine and distinguish between self- and other-directed motives behind vaccination, especially with regard to vaccinating for the sake of third parties, and second, to explore some ways in which this approach can help to clarify and guide (...) vaccination debates and policy. I propose conceiving of vaccination in terms of three basic elements: the vaccination decision-maker, the vaccine recipient and the primary beneficiary. I develop a taxonomy based on the relations between these elements to distinguish four kinds of vaccination: self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic and indirect. I finally discuss the case of human papillomavirus vaccine regulation for men and women to show how each kind of vaccination is associated with and raises specific ethical questions. (shrink)

In this book about the philosophy of education, Loomis and Rodriguez carefully examine the first principles of theoretic and practical reason necessary for human development and flourishing. Collaborating with the genius of C.S. Lewis, and particularly his brilliant work The Abolition of Man , the authors offer a multi-facetted, interdisciplinary investigation of perennial questions that impact human development and freedom. What is the human being? What are essential criteria for human flourishing? What is the best institutional framework for education? What (...) are the non-naturalistic, normative constraints to the ordering and functioning of a social institution like education? Are there particular institutional environments that threaten moral agency and human freedom? Are there information patterns and practices that substitute one institutional vision of reality for another? Is there a model of education that reflects truer structures of reality? Is there a particular vision embodied in the logic of institutional growth? (shrink)

Many aspects of design require engineers to make choices based on non-quantifiable personal perspectives. These decisions touch issues in aesthetics, ethics, social impact, and responsibility and sustainability. Part of Baylor University’s mission is to provide a learning community in which Christian life values and worldviews might be integrated into academic disciplines. In view of this institutional commitment, members of the Engineering faculty are investigating how Christian worldviews might interact with elements of engineering design in such a way as to produce (...) uniquely Christian insights and inform the non-quantifiable aspects of the engineering process. (shrink)

In the ongoing attempt to provide a satisfactory analysis of knowledge numerous conditions have been proposed as necessary and sufficient — the most noteworthy being justification, truth, and belief. In addition, various epistemic principles are frequently employed. In this paper I intend to show how the seemingly innocuous justification condition, along with two relatively uncontroversial epistemic principles, can give rise to a paradoxical situation.

Offering a new interdisciplinary approach to global justice and integrating the insights of international relations and contemporary ethics, this book asks whether the core norms of international law are just by appraising them according to a standard of global justice grounded in the advancement of peace and protection of human rights.

Mammalian neural cells contain at least two forms of brain spectrin: brain spectrin (240/235) which is located primarily in the axons and presynaptic terminals of neurons, and brain spectrin (240/235E) which is found in the cell bodies, dendrites and postsynaptic terminals of neurones. Brain spectrin (240/235E) is also found in certain glial cell types. Antibodies against red blood cell spectrin detect only brain spectrin (240/235E), while antibodies against brain spectrin isolated from axonal and synaptic membranes detect brain spectrin (240/235). Previous (...) apparent discrepancies in the literature concerning brain spectrin localization at the light microscope level were undoubtedly due to different laboratories detecting distinct brain spectrin subtypes, based on the particular antibody being utilized for immunohistochemistry. In this review we (1) discuss the data supporting the presence of at least two distinct subtypes of mammalian brain spectrin, (2) explain how these results reconcile previous discrepancies concerning the localization of spectrin within neural cells, and (3) suggest the future implications of these findings. (shrink)

This study examines the moral and ethical arguments presented by public relations practitioners in online debate on the appropriateness of representing the tobacco industry or tobacco interests. It is a descriptive and inferential analysis of 21 e-mail messages posted during a 14-month debate on the PRForum, an online newsgroup for public relations professionals, applying Kohlberg's cognitive-development theory of moralization. Debate focused on the right of an organization to promote a legal product versus a practitioner's obligation to protect the welfare of (...) society. Intensity of disagreement, and the inability to achieve consensus, suggests that personal ethical baselines are subjective, that practitioner perceptions of right or wrong are injluenced by their level of cognitive and moral development, and that codes of behavior of professional organizations are too ambiguous to use in dealing with complex ethical issues. (shrink)

Interest in the role of nitric oxide (NO) in the nervous system began with the demonstration that glutamate receptor activation in cerebellar slices causes the formation of a diffusible messenger with properties similar to those of the endothelium-derived relaxing factor. It is now clear that this is due to the Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent activation of the enzyme NO synthase, which forms NO and citrulline from the amino acid L-arginine. The cerebellum has very high levels of NO synthase, and although it has low (...) levels of guanylyl cyclase, cerebellar cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) levels are an order of magnitude higher than in other brain regions. A transcellular metabolic pathway is also present in the cerebellar cortex to recycle citrulline back to arginine. The NO formed binds to and activates soluble guanylyl cyclase to elevate cGMP levels in target cells. Studies employing NADPH-diaphorase, a selective histochemical marker for NO synthase, together with immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization and biochemical studies have indicated that NO production occurs in granule and basket cells in the cerebellar cortex, whereas cGMP formation appears to occur largely in other cells, including Purkinje cells. Given that a long-term depression of AMPA currents can be seen in isolated Purkinje cells, this anatomical localization suggests that NO cannot play an essential role in the induction of this form of synaptic plasticity. (shrink)

The potential for vaccines to prevent the spread of infectious diseases is crucial for vaccination policy and ethics. In this paper, I discuss recent evidence that the current COVID-19 vaccines have only a modest and short-lived effect on reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission and argue that this has at least four important ethical implications. First, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 should be seen primarily as a self-protective choice for individuals. Second, moral condemnation of unvaccinated people for causing direct harm to others is unjustified. (...) Third, the case for a harm-based moral obligation to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is weak. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, coercive COVID-19 vaccination policies (e.g., measures that exclude unvaccinated people from society) cannot be directly justified by the harm principle. (shrink)

Vaccination can protect vaccinated individuals and often also prevent them from spreading disease to other people. This opens up the possibility of getting vaccinated for the sake of others. In fact, altruistic vaccination has recently been conceptualized as a kind of vaccination that is undertaken primary for the benefit of others. In order to better understand the potential role of altruistic motives in people’s vaccination decisions, we conducted two focus group studies with a total of 37 participants. Study 1 included (...) three focus groups on the subject of HPV vaccination for boys. Study 2 included three focus groups on the subject of pertussis and measles vaccination for childcare workers. We found substantial evidence of other-regarding motives across all focus groups, which suggests that altruistic motives could be an important factor when it comes to people’s vaccination decisions. We address the significance of these findings for vaccination policy surrounding HPV vaccination for boys and vaccination for childcare workers. We also extend the findings to normative work on vaccination for the sake of others more generally. (shrink)

In the 1993 general election the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. The coalition government that followed enacted the most far-reaching political reforms Japan has experienced since the American Occupation. The country has now experienced two elections since these reforms so we can begin to analyze trends and dynamics. It is now possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the effects of these reforms. I evaluate the reforms under three headings: (1) (...) reducing the cost of elections and levels of corruption; (2) replacing candidate-centered with party-centered campaigns; and (3) moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the parties of the government and the parties of the opposition. In conclude that, with some notable exceptions, the reforms are working well, about as well as should have been expected. (shrink)

Onychectomy involves the surgical amputation of a cat's claws. Tendonectomy entails surgically cutting tendons to prevent the extension and full use of a cat's claws. Both surgeries practically declaw cats and are not only painful but also associated with high complication rates. While feline declawing surgeries have been banned in various places around the world, they are still elective in many countries and U.S. states. This article provides an ethical analysis of declawing cats. It discusses the harms posed by feline (...) declawing surgeries, like pain and complications, which are not offset by any benefits to cats. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, it also offers an additional and broader ethical argument against declawing, namely that removing cats' claws is unjust because it thwarts important capabilities for feline flourishing (e.g., play, bodily integrity, control over one's environment). It concludes that declawing cats for non-medical purposes is unethical and must be opposed. (shrink)

Using the 2005 and 2006 AsiaBarometer surveys I analyze religiosity and secularization in Asia. I find that, in South Asia, identification with a particular religion is the norm and most people pray every day but, in East Asia, religious identification and religious practice are both much less common. Even in secular East Asia, however, the demand for religious services is high and belief in a spiritual world is common. I conclude that secularization does not necessarily produce uniformly secular societies. Turning (...) to the causes and consequences of religiosity, I find surprisingly few significant relationships, results that echo similar analyses in Western Europe. I then discuss the implications of these non-findings. (shrink)