Whole-genome analysis and whole-exome analysis generate many more clinically actionable findings than traditional targeted genetic analysis. These findings may be relevant to research participants themselves as well as for members of their families. Though researchers performing genomic analyses are likely to find medically significant genetic variations for nearly every research participant, what they will find for any given participant is unpredictable. The ubiquity and diversity of these findings complicate questions about disclosing individual genetic test results. We outline an approach for (...) disclosing a select range of genetic results to the relatives of research participants who have died, developed in response to relatives? requests during a pilot study of large-scale medical genetic sequencing. We also argue that studies that disclose individual research results to participants should, at a minimum, passively disclose individual results to deceased participants? relatives. (shrink)

Different types of consent are used to obtain human biospecimens for future research. This variation has resulted in confusion regarding what research is permitted, inadvertent constraints on future research, and research proceeding without consent. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center's Department of Bioethics held a workshop to consider the ethical acceptability of addressing these concerns by using broad consent for future research on stored biospecimens. Multiple bioethics scholars, who have written on these issues, discussed the reasons for consent, the (...) range of consent strategies, and gaps in our understanding, and concluded with a proposal for broad initial consent coupled with oversight and, when feasible, ongoing provision of information to donors. This article describes areas of agreement and areas that need more research and dialogue. Given recent proposed changes to the Common Rule, and new guidance regarding storing and sharing data and samples, this is an important and tim.. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our (...) Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

ḥeleḳ 1-3. Toldot Bet Hilel -- ḥeleḳ 4. [without special title].

We investigated the understanding of causal systems categories—categories defined by common causal structure rather than by common domain content—among college students. We asked students who were either novices or experts in the physical sciences to sort descriptions of real-world phenomena that varied in their causal structure (e.g., negative feedback vs. causal chain) and in their content domain (e.g., economics vs. biology). Our hypothesis was that there would be a shift from domain-based sorting to causal sorting with increasing expertise in the (...) relevant domains. This prediction was borne out: The novice groups sorted primarily by domain and the expert group sorted by causal category. These results suggest that science training facilitates insight about causal structures. (shrink)

In this pilot study, deliberate practice and competence-based assessment were incorporated into a first-year graduate course on professional issues and ethics. Students responded to challenging simulations of basic ethical situations in therapy before and after the course. Aspects of deliberate practice were incorporated into the course. Student self-report ratings and independent performance ratings blind to timing found improvements in students’ ability to manage basic ethical situations in practice. Pilot evidence suggests competence-based assessment and training have potential use for training students (...) preparing to engage in their first therapy practicum experiences. Additional controlled studies are needed to examine the benefits of competence-based assessment and training. (shrink)

The ability to learn the direction of causal relations is critical for understanding and acting in the world. We investigated how children learn causal directionality in situations in which the states of variables are temporally dependent (i.e., autocorrelated). In Experiment 1, children learned about causal direction by comparing the states of one variable before versus after an intervention on another variable. In Experiment 2, children reliably inferred causal directionality merely from observing how two variables change over time; they interpreted Y (...) changing without a change in X as evidence that Y does not influence X. Both of these strategies make sense if one believes the variables to be temporally dependent. We discuss the implications of these results for interpreting previous findings. More broadly, given that many real-world environments are characterized by temporal dependency, these results suggest strategies that children may use to learn the causal structure of their environments. (shrink)

Three theses are explored, the first two historical and the third philosophical‐theological: (1) throughout most of the history ofWestern civilization, science and religion have been closely connected with each other, and each has benefited from the connection; (2) the belief that science and religion have always been in conflict is not based on the actual history of either set of institutions; and (3) structurally a relationship between the two institutions is in the interest of both. By religion here I mean (...) specifically, but not exclusively, Judaism. (shrink)

The inconsistent definition of empathy has had a negative impact on both research and practice. The aim of this article is to review and critically appraise a range of definitions of empathy and, through considered analysis, to develop a new conceptualisation. From the examination of 43 discrete definitions, 8 themes relating to the nature of empathy emerged: “distinguishing empathy from other concepts”; “cognitive or affective?”; “congruent or incongruent?”; “subject to other stimuli?”; “self/other distinction or merging?”; “trait or state influences?”; “has (...) a behavioural outcome?”; and “automatic or controlled?” The relevance and validity of each theme is assessed and a new conceptualisation of empathy is offered. The benefits of employing a more consistent and complete definition of empathy are discussed. (shrink)

The ethical considerations of insider trading have been widely debated in the academic literature :171–182, 1990). In 2013, the STOCK Act, which was initially passed to mitigate insider trading by government officials, was quickly and unexpectedly amended to allow certain government employees to withhold their financial information. To identify and quantify the potential costs placed on investors by non-corporate insider traders, we use the unusual circumstances surrounding this amendment. For a sample of stocks most held by members of Congress, we (...) find that, relative to control stocks, liquidity significantly worsens and volatility increases during the post-amendment period. Our results highlight the costs that are incurred by investors in the presence of non-corporate insider trading. These findings call for a stronger development of an ethical framework that justifies the restriction of all types of insider trading. (shrink)

Prior research argues that religiosity increases the ethical behavior and levels of risk aversion of firm managers. To the extent that this is true, more religious countries might exhibit more stability in stock prices. This study tests this assertion by determining whether religiosity in countries is negatively associated with volatility in financial markets. Using a unique empirical design, we account for the possibility that the structure of financial markets is endogenously related to a country’s religiosity by examining the volatility of (...) American Depositary Receipts while conditioning on a number of home country variables capturing religiosity. We also control for the possibility of endogeneity bias by identifying an appropriate instrumental variable. Interestingly, our tests show that religious affiliation and, to a lesser extent, religious adherence and religious beliefs negatively affect the level of ADR volatility. (shrink)

When a cause interacts with unobserved factors to produce an effect, the contingency between the observed cause and effect cannot be taken at face value to infer causality. Yet, it would be computationally intractable to consider all possible unobserved, interacting factors. Nonetheless, two experiments found that when an unobserved cause is assumed to be fairly stable over time, people can learn about such interactions and adjust their inferences about the causal efficacy of the observed cause. When they observed a period (...) in which a cause and effect were associated followed by a period of the opposite association, rather than concluding a complete lack of causality, subjects inferred an unobserved, interacting cause. The interaction explains why the overall contingency between the cause and effect is low and allows people to still conclude that the cause is efficacious. (shrink)

Socialist courts are supposed to apply the law, not make it, and socialist legality denies judicial decisions any precedential status. In 2011, the Chinese Supreme People’s Court designated selected decisions as Guiding Cases to be referred to by all judges when adjudicating similar disputes. One decade on, the paucity of citations to Guiding Cases has been taken as demonstrating the incongruity of case-based adjudication and the socialist legal tradition. Citations are, however, an imperfect measure of influence. Reproduction of language uniquely (...) traceable to Guiding Cases can also be evidence of their impact on judicial decision-making. We employ a local alignment tool to detect unattributed text reuse of Guiding Cases in local court decisions. Our findings suggest that Guiding Cases are more consequential than commonly assumed, thereby complicating prevailing narratives about the antagonism of socialist legality to case law. (shrink)

Scholars of political thought often view Plato as a ‘political moralist’, or a ‘utopian’ partly due to the Republic’s emphasis on ‘justice’. But in the Republic, Plato offers a distinctive theory of legitimacy, one that grounds legitimacy on an interdependent relationship between justice and moderation. Justice requires that the principle of specialisation be respected, while moderation requires that citizens agree about who should rule. But citizens will only agree if their ‘necessary’ desires are satisfied. Conversely, the ‘necessary’ desires can only (...) be satisfied when the principle of specialisation is maintained. In this way, justice requires moderation, and moderation requires justice, and both are necessary for legitimacy. Plato’s theory of legitimacy is positioned in relation to existing accounts, especially those of John Rawls and Bernard Williams. It is shown that Plato’s theory is a genuine theory of legitimacy, not a theory of acquiescence. In the concluding section, Rawls’ theory is subjected to a critique based on Plato’s theory. (shrink)

Recently, many comparativists and democratic theorists have argued that democracy is in imminent peril, even in countries that are thought to be its strongholds. But theorists like Andrew Gamble, Wolfgang Streeck, and David Runciman suggest that some democracies are too embedded to collapse. Instead, they argue these democracies are experiencing long-term structural crises. This article explains how this alternative kind of crisis works. It conceives of legitimacy crises as ‘chronic crises’ in which democratic procedures are contested even as the democratic (...) political system is affirmed. In these crises, democracies are threatened by distortion and deadlock rather than death. The article gives a precise account of chronic legitimacy crises. It treats legitimacy as a scalar concept, going beyond binary views where legitimacy is something a state either has or lacks. It distinguishes periods of chronic crisis from stable periods and from acute crises. It shows how chronic crises are distinctively about legitimacy. It carves out conceptual space for a different kind of legitimacy crisis, and it assists comparativists in thinking about how younger democracies differ from older ones. (shrink)

Par leurs contributions à ce livre, vingt-trois chercheur.e.s rendent hommage à leur collègue qui souvent fut aussi leur professeure, l’historienne juive Paula Hyman. Comme le rappelle Richard I. Cohen dans son avant-propos, P. Hyman fut une historienne des Juifs de France et les publications qu’elle a consacrées à la vie des Juifs dans la France contemporaine ont constitué un apport considérable à ce champ de recherches. Toutefois le volume dont il est ici question célèbre P. Hyman pour ses...

Whole–exome sequencing (WES) has increased our ability to analyze large parts of the human genome, bringing with it a plethora of ethical, legal, and social implications. A topic dominating discussion of WES is identification of “secondary findings” (SFs), defined as the identification of risk in an asymptomatic individual unrelated to the indication for the test. SFs can have considerable psychosocial impact on patients and families, and patients with an SF may have concerns regarding genomic privacy and genetic discrimination. The Genetic (...) Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) currently excludes protections for members of the military. This may cause concern in military members and families regarding genetic discrimination when considering genetic testing. In this report, we discuss a case involving a patient and family in which a secondary finding was discovered by WES. The family members have careers in the U.S. military, and a risk–predisposing condition could negatively affect employment. While beneficial medical management changes were made, the information placed exceptional stress on the family, who were forced to navigate career–sensitive “extra–medical” issues, to consider the impacts of uncovering risk–predisposition, and to manage the privacy of their genetic information. We highlight how information obtained from WES may collide with these issues and emphasize the importance of genetic counseling for anyone undergoing WES. (shrink)

Bloch's Teppich : an initial approach -- On the genealogy of the Teppich metaphor before Bloch -- The conceptual constellation of Bloch's musical philosophy -- Entering Bloch's musical system -- Wagner's animal lyricism -- Bloch's vision of the armored men, or the limits of enlightenment -- The achievement of symphonic authenticity -- Epilogue : an atheism of presence and absence.

Geven, Ben‐Shakhar, Kindt and Verschuere point out that research on deception detection usually employs instructed cheating. They experimentally demonstrate that participants show slower reaction times for concealed information than for other information, regardless of whether they are explicitly instructed to cheat or whether they can freely choose to cheat or not. Finding this ‘cognitive signature of lying’ with self‐initiated cheating too is argued by the authors to strengthen the external validity of deception detection research. [75].

There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves (...) are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA), an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely what one’s actions say about oneself given the impacts on others or society that one’s action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities. (shrink)

Uncivil behavior by leaders may be viewed as an effective way to motivate employees. However, supervisor incivility, as a form of unethical supervision, may be undercutting employees’ ability to do their jobs. We investigate linkages between workplace incivility and perceived work ability, a variable that captures employees’ appraisals of their ability to continue working in their jobs. We draw upon the appraisal theory of stress and social identity theory to examine incivility from supervisors as an antecedent to PWA, and to (...) investigate job involvement and grit as joint moderators of this association. Results from data collected in two samples of working adults provided evidence for three-way interactions in relation to PWA. Among employees with high levels of grit, there was no significant relation between supervisor incivility and PWA, regardless of employee job involvement. However, we found some evidence that for those low in grit, having high job involvement was associated with a stronger relationship between supervisor incivility and PWA. Findings attest to the importance of unethical supervisor behavior, showing the potential for supervisor incivility to erode PWA, as well as the importance of grit as a potential buffer. (shrink)

Anwarul Hoda and Ashok Gulati: WTO Negotiations on Agriculture and Developing Countries Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9278-y Authors Benjamin M. Munro, Kansas State University Department of Geography Manhattan KS 66506 USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

Technologies can be not only contentious—overthrowing existing ways of doing things—but also morally contentious—forcing deep reflection on personal values and societal norms. This article investigates that what may impede the acceptance of a technology and/or the development of the field that supports or exploits it, the lines between which often become blurred in the face of morally contentious content. Using a unique dataset with historically important timing—the United States Biotechnology Study fielded just 9 months after the public announcement of the (...) successful cloning of the first mammal (i.e., Dolly the sheep)—we find that microlevel factors (i.e., conservative Christianity) predict unfavorable judgments of the technology-field intersection while macrolevel representations [i.e., exposure to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines and media coverage] predict more favorable judgments. (shrink)

This volume offers the first English language collection of academic essays on the post-Holocaust thought of Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian-Belgian essayist, journalist and literary author. Comprehensive in scope and multi-disciplinary in orientation, contributors explore central aspects of Améry's philosophical and ethical position, including dignity, responsibility, resentment, and forgiveness.

Background: It is not known how neonatologists address the affective and cognitive loads on parents deciding whether to resuscitate infants born extremely preterm. This study explores expert neonatologists' views on these decision-making processes and their own roles in counseling parents. Methods: Semistructured interviews asked internationally recognized experts to share their perspectives on perinatal consultations. Their responses were subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Eighteen of 22 invited experts participated. Approximately equal numbers reported employing a physician-driven approach, a parent-driven approach, and a (...) combined approach during these consultations. Those who followed a physician-driven approach typically focused on conveying standard information about adverse outcomes. Those who followed a parent-driven approach typically focused on addressing parents' information requests, guiding their decision making, and providing affective support. Nearly all experts, in each group, endorsed addressing the child's quality of life, in terms of functionality, when discussing long-term outcomes. Although many believed that families adjusted to life with a disabled child, few discussed the topic during prenatal consultations. Most, in each group, reported trying to alleviate future “decisional regret” for parents whose premature infants subsequently became disabled. None spoke to parents about possible decisional regret after deciding to forgo resuscitation. Conclusions: Expert neonatologists are deeply concerned that parents understand the decision facing them. However, they differ on what information they offer and how they balance parents' need for cognitive and affective support. They expressed more concern about parents' decisional regret should their child survive resuscitation, but have severe disability, than about decisional regret after foregoing resuscitation. (shrink)

The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. For (...) example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. In Study 2, we hypothesized that having neutral preferences (e.g., preferring neither increased nor decreased spending on border security) would lead to more accurate assessments overall, compared to having a strong initial preference; however, we did not find evidence for such an effect. In Study 3, we tested whether providing participants with possible functional forms of the policies (e.g., the policy takes some time to work or initially has a negative influence but eventually a positive influence) would lead to a smaller influence of motivated reasoning but found little evidence for this effect. This research advances the field of causal learning by studying the role of prior preferences, and in doing so, integrates the fields of causal learning and motivated reasoning using a novel explore‐exploit task. (shrink)

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...