Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

Sustainability challenges typically occur across sectoral boundaries, calling the state, market, and civil society to action. Although consensus exists on the merits of cross-sector collaboration, our understanding of whether and how it can create value for various, collaborating stakeholders is still limited. This special issue focuses on how new combined knowledge on cross-sector collaboration and business models for sustainability can inform the academic and practitioner debates about sustainability challenges and solutions. We discuss how cross-sector collaboration can play an important role (...) for the transition to new and potentially sustainability-driven business models given that value creation, delivery, and capture of organizations are intimately related to the collaborative ties with their stakeholders. Sustainable alternatives to conventional business models tend to adopt a more holistic perspective of business by broadening the spectrum of solutions and stakeholders and, when aligned with cross-sector collaboration, can contribute new ways of addressing the wicked sustainability problems humanity faces. (shrink)

Since 1989, clinical ethics consultation in form of hospital ethics committees was established in most of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Up to now, the similarities and differences between HECs in Central and Eastern Europe and their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe have not been determined. Through search in literature databases, we have identified studies that document the implementation of clinical ethics consultation in Central and Eastern Europe. These studies have been analyzed under the following (...) aspects: mode of establishment of HECs, character of consultation they provide, and their composition. The results show that HECs in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe differ from their western-European or U.S. counterparts with regard to these three aspects. HECs were established because of centrally imposed legal regulations. Little initiatives in this area were taken by medical professionals interested in resolving emerging ethical issues. HECs in the transition countries concentrate mostly on review of research protocols or resolution of administrative conflicts in healthcare institutions. Moreover, integration of non-professional third parties in the workings of HECs is often neglected. We argue that these differences can be attributed to the historical background and the role of medicine in these countries under the communist regime. Political and organizational structures of healthcare as well as education of healthcare staff during this period influenced current functioning of clinical ethics consultation in the transition countries. (shrink)

The executive board of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine and two AEM working groups formulated standards and recommendations for clinical ethics consultation in 2010, 2011, and 2013. These guidelines comply with the international standards like those set by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. There is no empirical data available yet that could indicate whether these standards and recommendations have been implemented in German hospitals. This desideratum is addressed in the present study. We contacted 1.858 German hospitals between (...) September 2013 and January 2014. A follow-up survey was conducted between October 2014 and January 2015. The data of the initial survey and the follow-up survey were merged and evaluated. The statements of the participants were compared with the standards and recommendations. The standards of the AEM concerning the tasks of clinical ethics consultation are employed by a majority of participants of the study. Almost all of these participants document their consultation activities by means of protocols or entries in the patient file. There are deviations from the recommendations of the AEM working groups regarding the drafting of statutes, activity reports, and financial support. The activities of clinical ethics consultation predominantly comply with the standards of the AEM and recommendations for the documentation. The recommendations for evaluation should be improved in practice. This applies particularly for activity reports in order to evaluate the activities. Internal evaluation could take place accordingly. (shrink)

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by (...) somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

New technologies regularly bring about profound changes in our daily lives. Romantic relationships are no exception to these transformations. Some philosophers expect the emergence in the near future of love drugs: a theoretically achievable biotechnological intervention that could be designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships. We investigated laypeople’s resistance to the use of such technologies and its sources. Across two studies (Study 1, French and Peruvian university students, N after exclusion = 186; Study 2, Amazon Mechanical Turk (...) sample, N after exclusion = 693, pre-registered), we found that the use of love drugs designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships are considered as more morally problematic than psychological therapy with the same aim. In Study 2, we show that this last effect is partially due to the fact that the love resulting from the use of love drugs is perceived as less authentic, intense, and durable. We discuss the specific role of authenticity in the relative moral disapproval of love drugs. (shrink)

Plasmodium falciparum is the most deadly human malarial parasite, responsible for an estimated 207 million cases of disease and 627,000 deaths in 2012. Recent studies reveal that the parasite actively regulates a large fraction of its genes throughout its replicative cycle inside human red blood cells and that epigenetics plays an important role in this precise gene regulation. Here, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of three aspects of epigenetic regulation in P. falciparum: changes in histone modifications, nucleosome occupancy (...) and the three‐dimensional genome structure. We compare these three aspects of the P. falciparum epigenome to those of other eukaryotes, and show that large‐scale compartmentalization is particularly important in determining histone decomposition and gene regulation in P. falciparum. We conclude by presenting a gene regulation model for P. falciparum that combines the described epigenetic factors, and by discussing the implications of this model for the future of malaria research. (shrink)

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s (...) skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Purpose: The method of diagnosing diabetic retinopathy (DR) through artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems has been commercially available since 2018. This introduces new ethical challenges with regard to obtaining informed consent from patients. The purpose of this work is to develop a checklist of items to be disclosed when diagnosing DR with AI systems in a primary care setting. -/- Methods: Two systematic literature searches were conducted in PubMed and Web of Science databases: a narrow search focusing on DR and a (...) broad search on general issues of AI-based diagnosis. An ethics content analysis was conducted inductively to extract two features of included publications: (1) novel information content for AI-aided diagnosis and (2) the ethical justification for its disclosure. -/- Results: The narrow search yielded n = 537 records of which n = 4 met the inclusion criteria. The information process was scarcely addressed for primary care setting. The broad search yielded n = 60 records of which n = 11 were included. In total, eight novel elements were identified to be included in the information process for ethical reasons, all of which stem from the technical specifics of medical AI. -/- Conclusions: Implications for the general practitioner are two-fold: First, doctors need to be better informed about the ethical implications of novel technologies and must understand them to properly inform patients. Second, patient's overconfidence or fears can be countered by communicating the risks, limitations, and potential benefits of diagnostic AI systems. If patients accept and are aware of the limitations of AI-aided diagnosis, they increase their chances of being diagnosed and treated in time. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong-Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage (...) in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

To study how populist sentiments have increasingly influenced businesses in society, we examine how German and Swedish corporations addressed the refugee situation in their 2015 and 2016 annual reports. We find that corporations changed their communication once refugee migration became subjected to populist political sentiments, but that they did so without subscribing to those sentiments. Although populism is based on such sharp oppositions as welcoming refugees or closing borders, our analysis shows that corporations have found ways to communicate about the (...) refugee migration beyond these oppositions. Rather than taking a political stance, the corporations studied have primarily articulated the refugee situation as it pertains to their business operations. We identify four modes of articulation: the refugee as someone needing international aid, as a factor for economic analysis, as a benefit recipient, or as a potential stakeholder. These findings help nuance our understanding of how corporations navigate contested political issues. (shrink)

This paper describes the automated classification of legal norms in German statutes with regard to their semantic type. We propose a semantic type taxonomy for norms in the German civil law domain consisting of nine different types focusing on functional aspects, such as Duties, Prohibitions, Permissions, etc. We performed four iterations in classifying legal norms with a rule-based approach using a manually labeled dataset, i.e., tenancy law, of the German Civil Code ). During this experiment the \ score continuously improved (...) from 0.52 to 0.78. In contrast, a machine learning based approach for the classification was implemented. A performance of \ was reached. Traditionally, machine learning classifiers lack of transparency with regard to their decisions. We extended our approach using so-called local linear approximations, which is a novel technique to analyze and inspect a trained classifier’s behavior. We can show that there are significant similarities of manually crafted knowledge, i.e., rules and pattern definitions, and the trained decision structures of machine learning approaches. (shrink)

Background: Biomedical research nowadays is increasingly carried out in multinational and multicenter settings. Due to disparate national regulations on various ethical aspects, such as informed consent, there is the risk of ethical compromises when involving human subjects in research. Although the Declaration of Helsinki is the point of reference for ethical conduct of research on humans, national normative requirements may diverge from its provisions. The aim of this research is to examine requirements on informed consent in biomedical research in Germany, (...) Poland, and Russia to determine how each national regulatory framework relates to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki. Methods: For this analysis, we conducted a search of the legal databases “Gesetze im Internet” for Germany, “Internetowy System Aktow Prawnych” for Poland, and “ГAPAHT – Garant” for Russia. The search was complemented by a review of secondary literature contained in the databases Google Scholar, PubMed, Polish National Library, and eLibrary ru. We have identified 21 normative regulations containing provisions on informed consent in clinical research in all three countries. The content of these documents was systematically categorized and analyzed. Results: The normative framework in all three countries shows a strong commitment towards the core ethical principles of research envisaged in the Declaration of Helsinki. Nevertheless, provisions on informed consent vary between these three countries. The differences range from the method and language in which information should be provided, through the amount of information required to be disclosed, to the form of documenting consent or withdrawal. In the case of research on vulnerable groups, these differences are particularly visible. Conclusions: The identified differences can negatively impact the ethical conduct of international clinical studies. Attention needs to be paid that flexibilities within national regulations are not misused to undermine the protection of research subjects. Achieving global or regional legislative harmonization might prove impossible. Such lack of legal consensus reinforces the significance of the international ethical agreements. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subjects assertion that p matches her non-verbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from nearly 6,000 people across twenty-six samples, spanning twenty-two countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we suggest that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely (...) asserts that p, non-linguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

German medical students are not sufficiently introduced to the ethical principles and pitfalls of scientific work. Therefore, a compulsory course on good scientific practice has been developed and implemented into the curriculum of medical students, with the goal to foster scientific integrity and prevent scientific misconduct. Students’ knowledge and attitudes towards GSP were evaluated by a pre-post-teaching questionnaire survey. Most participants initially had startling knowledge gaps in the field. Moreover, they were not acquainted with core institutions on GSP, the office (...) of ombudsperson and the nationally binding guidelines on GSP. The pre-post-teaching comparison showed statistically significant improvement in all areas tested; moreover, after the course participants confided more trust in GSP institutions. Applying ethical rules into practice can be challenging; therefore, students need to learn to work independently with guidelines on GSP and should be introduced to institutions providing further guidance. As our study has shown, students are very willing to pursue a scientific career based on integrity and honesty, however, they lack the knowledge how to do so. In light of our results, we therefore recommend to integrate courses on GSP already at an early time into the mandatory curriculum of medical students. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

Biomarker-based predictive tests for subjectively asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are utilized in research today. Novel applications of artificial intelligence (AI) promise to predict the onset of AD several years in advance without determining biomarker thresholds. Until now, little attention has been paid to the new ethical challenges that AI brings to the early diagnosis in asymptomatic individuals, beyond contributing to research purposes, when we still lack adequate treatment. The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical arguments put forward (...) for AI aided AD prediction in subjectively asymptomatic individuals and their ethical implications. The ethical assessment is based on a systematic literature search. Thematic analysis was conducted inductively of 18 included publications. The ethical framework includes the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Reasons for offering predictive tests to asymptomatic individuals are the right to know, a positive balance of the risk-benefit assessment, and the opportunity for future planning. Reasons against are the lack of disease modifying treatment, the accuracy and explicability of AI aided prediction, the right not to know, and threats to social rights. We conclude that there are serious ethical concerns in offering early diagnosis to asymptomatic individuals and the issues raised by the application of AI add to the already known issues. Nevertheless, pre-symptomatic testing should only be offered on request to avoid inflicted harm. We recommend developing training for physicians in communicating AI aided prediction. (shrink)

Moral repair is an important way for firms to heal moral relationships with stakeholders following a transgression. The concept is rooted in recognition theory, which is often used to develop normative perspectives and prescriptions, but the same theory has also propelled a view of moral repair as premised on negotiation between offender and victim(s), which involves the complex social construction of the transgression and the appropriate amends. The tension between normative principles and socioconstructivist implementation begs the question how offending firms (...) should approach moral repair. Addressing this question, we develop a two-level conceptualization of moral repair, distinguishing between procedural and substantive levels of practice, which accommodate normativity and socioconstructivism, respectively. In so doing, we enrich the literature by 1) promoting conceptual clarity, 2) refining understanding of the moral repair process, and 3) suggesting the use of a unified, configurational approach to studying (nonlinear) relations between amends and moral outcomes. (shrink)

Morality constructs the relationship between the self and others, providing a sense of appropriateness that facilitates and coordinates social behaviors. We start from Moral Foundation Theory (MFT), and argue that multiple moral domains can shape the meaning of public service and engender Public Service Motivation (PSM). From the lens of cognitive science, we develop a causal map for PSM by understanding the social cognition process underlying PSM, focusing on five innate moralities as the potential antecedents of PSM: Care, Fairness, Authority, (...) Loyalty, and Sanctity. Extending moral domains beyond compassion and justice can provide a disaggregated view of PSM, which may help to identify institutional and cultural variation in the meaning of PSM. We discuss the theoretical implications of synthesizing MFT and PSM literatures, and provide directions for future research that could improve our understanding of PSM. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic generated overflow of healthcare systems in several countries. As the ethical debates focused on prioritisation for access to care with scarce medical resources, numerous recommendations were created. Late 2021, the emergence of the Omicron variant whose transmissibility was identified but whose vaccine sensitivity was still unknown, reactivated debates. Fears of the need to prioritise patients arose, particularly in France. Especially, a debate began about the role of vaccination status in the prioritisation strategy. The Ethics Committee (EC) of (...) the University Hospital of Bordeaux (UHB), France, identified prioritisation criteria in the literature (some recommended, such as being a healthcare worker (HCW) or having consented to research, while others were discouraged, such as age with a threshold effect or vaccination status). A survey was sent within the institution in January 2022 to explore frontline physicians' adherence to these prioritisation criteria. The decision making conditions were also surveyed. In 15 days, 78/165 (47.3%) frontline physicians responded, and more widely 1286/12946 (9.9%) professionals. A majority of frontline physicians were opposed to prioritising HCWs (54/75, 72%) and even more opposed to participating in research (69/76, 89.6%). Conversely, the results were very balanced for non-recommended criteria (respectively 39/77, 50.7% and 34/69 49.3% in favour for age with a threshold effect and for vaccination status). Decisions were considered to be multi-professional and multi-disciplinary for 65/76, 85.5% and 53/77, 68.8% of frontline physicians. Responders expressed opposition to extending decision-making to representatives of patients, civil society or HCWs not involved in care. Prioritisation recommendations in case of scarce medical resources were not necessarily approved by the frontline physicians, or by the other HCWs. This questions the way ethical recommendations should be communicated and discussed at a local scale, but it also questions these recommendations themselves. The article also reports the experience of seeking HCWs opinions on a sensitive ethical debate in a period of crisis. (shrink)

Der Unterricht in Medizinethik soll Medizinstudierenden die Grundlagen dafür vermitteln, in ihrer zukünftigen ärztlichen Tätigkeit gute Entscheidungen treffen zu können. Im Rahmen einer Panelstudie wird derzeit die Entwicklung moralischer Positionen, medizinethischer Kenntnisse und Motivationen von Medizinstudierenden der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München über den Verlauf des Studiums untersucht. Für die Datenerhebung wurde ein Fragebogen entwickelt, der medizinethische Positionen und Kenntnisse sowie Motivationen erfasst. Im Wintersemester 2009/10 wurde die erste Querschnittsuntersuchung mit Studierenden im 1., 3. und 8. Semester sowie im Praktischen Jahr durchgeführt. Die (...) Mehrzahl der Befragten verfügte über einen geringen Kenntnisstand in verschiedenen Themenbereichen des Unterrichtsfachs GTE. Rechtliche Grundlagen und praktische Umsetzung von Therapiebegrenzungsmaßnahmen waren bis ins PJ-Semester vielen Studierenden nicht bekannt. Im Verlauf des Studiums veränderten sich die Motivationen weg von der Motivation, Menschen helfen zu wollen, hin zu Wissenserwerb und dem Ergreifen eines sicheren Berufs. Obwohl viele Befragte ein hohes Interesse an medizinethischen Fragestellungen und Unterricht im Bereich GTE angaben, zeigte sich kein nachhaltiger Zuwachs an medizinethischen Kenntnissen im Laufe des Studiums. In der Zusammenschau werfen die Ergebnisse die Frage auf, inwieweit verschiedene Ausbildungskonzepte Einfluss auf die individuelle ethische Entwicklung Medizinstudierender nehmen können. Eine Untersuchung dieser Fragestellung bleibt Gegenstand weitergehender Forschung. (shrink)

Overtreatment is when medical or dental services are provided with a higher volume or cost than is appropriate. This study aimed to investigate how a group of dentists in Switzerland, a wealthy country known to have high standards of healthcare including dentistry, evaluated the meaning of unnecessary treatments from an ethical perspective and, assessed the expected frequency of different possible behaviors among their peers.

Background: Smart sensors have been developed as diagnostic tools for rehabilitation to cover an increasing number of geriatric patients. They promise to enable an objective assessment of complex movement patterns. -/- Objective: This research aimed to identify and analyze the conflicting ethical values associated with smart sensors in geriatric rehabilitation and provide ethical guidance on the best use of smart sensors to all stakeholders, including technology developers, health professionals, patients, and health authorities. -/- Methods: On the basis of a systematic (...) literature search of the scientific databases PubMed and ScienceDirect, we conducted a qualitative document analysis to identify evidence-based practical implications of ethical relevance. We included 33 articles in the analysis. The practical implications were extracted inductively. Finally, we carried out an ethical analysis based on the 4 principles of biomedical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. The results are reported in categories based on these 4 principles. -/- Results: We identified 8 conflicting aims for using smart sensors. Gains in autonomy come at the cost of patient privacy. Smart sensors at home increase the independence of patients but may reduce social interactions. Independent measurements performed by patients may result in lower diagnostic accuracy. Although smart sensors could provide cost-effective and high-quality diagnostics for most patients, minorities could end up with suboptimal treatment owing to their underrepresentation in training data and studies. This could lead to algorithmic biases that would not be recognized by medical professionals when treating patients. -/- Conclusions: The application of smart sensors has the potential to improve the rehabilitation of geriatric patients in several ways. It is important that patients do not have to choose between autonomy and privacy and are well informed about the insights that can be gained from the data. Smart sensors should support and not replace interactions with medical professionals. Patients and medical professionals should be educated about the correct application and the limitations of smart sensors. Smart sensors should include an adequate representation of minorities in their training data and should be covered by health insurance to guarantee fair access. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a growing interest among psychologists for debates in moral philosophy. Moral psychologists have investigated the causal origins of the opposition between utilitarian and deontological judgments and the psychological underpinnings of people’s beliefs about the moral status of animals. One issue that remains underexplored in this research area is the relationship between people’s disposition to engage in utilitarian thinking and their attitudes towards animals. This gap is unfortunate considering the tight philosophical connection between utilitarianism and the claim (...) that animals have the same moral status as humans. Indeed, the principle of utility leads naturally enough to the view that animals count every bit as much as human beings. In this paper, we report two empirical studies dedicated to bridging this gap. In Study 1, we looked at the relationship between attitudes towards animals and utilitarian judgments in the context of sacrificial dilemmas. In Study 2, we bypassed the problems raised by the use of such dilemmas as a measure of utilitarianism by relying on other types of thought experiments. Overall, our results suggest no strong correlation between utilitarianism and attitudes towards animals. Rather, the existence of a correlation between utilitarianism and attitudes towards animals very much depends on how both are measured. (shrink)

The parameters governing our behavior are in constant flux. Accurately capturing these dynamics in cognitive models poses a challenge to modelers. Here, we demonstrate a mapping of ACT-R's declarative memory onto the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA), a mathematical model describing a competition between evidence accumulation processes. We show that this mapping provides a method for inferring individual ACT-R parameters without requiring the modeler to build and fit an entire ACT-R model. Existing parameter estimation methods for the LBA can be used, (...) instead of the computationally expensive parameter sweeps that are traditionally done. We conduct a parameter recovery study to confirm that the LBA can recover ACT-R parameters from simulated data. Then, as a proof of concept, we use the LBA to estimate ACT-R parameters from an empirical dataset. The resulting parameter estimates provide a cognitively meaningful explanation for observed differences in behavior over time and between individuals. In addition, we find that the mapping between ACT-R and LBA lends a more concrete interpretation to ACT-R's latency factor parameter, namely as a measure of response caution. This work contributes to a growing movement towards integrating formal modeling approaches in cognitive science. (shrink)

To organise future behaviour, it is important to remember both the central and contextual aspects of a situation. We examined the impact of contextual threat or safety, learned through verbal instructions, on face identity recognition. In two studies (N = 140), 72 face–context compounds were presented each once within an encoding session, and an unexpected item/source recognition task was performed afterwards (including 24 new faces). Hierarchical multinomial processing tree modelling served to estimate individual parameters of item (face identity) and source (...) memory (threat or safety context) as well as guessing behaviour. Results show that language was highly effective in establishing threatening and safe context conditions. In Study 1, a fleeting picture stream (1 s per picture) led to poor item and source recognition. Prolonged presentation times (Study 2 with 6 s per picture) improved face memory but no contextual modulation was observed. Thus, incidental face learning was surprisingly poor and rapidly changing contextual settings might have interfered with the accurate encoding of face identity information and item–source binding. (shrink)

Between 1983 and 1990, at least 163 Western drugs were tested in the GDR. On the basis of archival documentation, relevant literature, and interviews we examined the clinical trials of five drugs more thoroughly; two of these individual case studies are introduced in this article. In the case of the clinical trials of the synthetic human growth hormone Saizen we found extensive trial and patient documentation, which allows for a detailed analysis of ethical aspects such as parent information and informed (...) patient consent. In the case of the clinical trials of the „abortion pill“ Mifepristone for the World Health Organization we uncovered irregularities with regard to the ethical evaluation. However, taken together, we could not find any serious violation of ethical norms in connection with our cases studies. (shrink)

The importance of the hidden curriculum is recognised as a practical training ground for the absorption of medical ethics by healthcare professionals. Pakistan’s healthcare sector is hampered by the exclusion of ethics from medical and nursing education curricula and the absence of monitoring of ethical violations in the clinical setting. Nurses have significant knowledge of the hidden curriculum taught during clinical practice, due to long working hours in the clinic and front-line interaction with patients and other practitioners.

Is the basic mechanism behind presupposition projection fundamentally asymmetric or symmetric? This is a basic question for the theory of presupposition, which also bears on broader issues concerning the source of asymmetries observed in natural language: are these simply rooted in superficial asymmetries of language use— language use unfolds in time, which we experience as fundamentally asymmetric— or can they be, at least in part, directly referenced in linguistic knowledge and representations? In this paper we aim to make progress on (...) these questions by exploring presupposition projection across conjunction, which has typically been taken as a central piece of evidence that presupposition projection is asymmetric. As a number of authors have recently pointed out, however, whether or not this conclusion is warranted is not clear once we take into account independent issues of redundancy. Building on previous work by Chemla & Schlenker (2012) and Schwarz (2015), we approach this question experimentally by using an inference task which controls for redundancy and presupposition suspension. We find strong evidence for left-to-right filtering across conjunctions, but no evidence for right-to-left filtering, suggesting that, at least as a default, presupposition projection across conjunction is indeed asymmetric. (shrink)

Science is critical and thrives on discourse. However, new challenges for science and academic freedom have arisen from an often-discussed cancel culture and an increasing demand for safe spaces, which are justified by their assumed protection against microaggressions. These phenomena can impede scientific progress and innovation by prohibiting certain thought processes and heterodox ideas that eventually result in new ideas, publications, statements, etc. In this paper, we use the approach of property rights ethics to shed light on these phenomena, especially (...) in academia. First, we argue that microaggressions must be generally tolerated according to property rights ethics as the starting point for discussion. Then, we analyze cancel culture and safe spaces in academia. To this end, we distinguish between two basic cases in the educational system. We show that cancel culture and safe spaces seem justifiable in a private education system but have no place in public, tax-funded universities from the perspective of property ethics. Our essay contributes, on the one hand, to the economic analysis of science and, on the other hand, to the ethical study of new phenomena in modern societies. (shrink)

Telemedicine is a complex field including various applications and target groups. Especially telehealthcare is seen by many as a means to revolutionize medicine. It gives patients the opportunity to take charge of their own health by using self-tracking devices and allows health professionals to treat patients from a distance. To some, this means an empowerment of patient autonomy as well as an improvement in the quality of care. Others state the dangers of depersonalization of medicine and the pathologization of daily (...) life. This paper examines the ethical implications of telehealthcare, focusing on patient autonomy and quality of care by analyzing metareviews, randomized controlled trials and narrative ethical analyses on the topic. As a result, we conclude that the technically enhanced encounter between patients and health professionals may mean an empowerment of patient autonomy when it goes along with a personal relationship based on trust, assistance and support. When it comes to the quality of care, telehealthcare may lead to an improvement as long it is adopted to the patient’s individual needs. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze the ethical challenges in experimental drug use during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, using Germany as a case study. In Germany uniform ethical guidelines were available early on nationwide, which was considered as desirable by other states to reduce uncertainties and convey a message of unity. The purpose of this ethical analysis is to assist the preparation of future guidelines on the use of medicines during public health emergencies. The use of hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir (...) and COVID-19 convalescent plasma in clinical settings was analyzed from the perspective of the ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and autonomy. We observed that drug safety and drug distribution during the pandemic affects all four ethical principles. We therefore recommend to establish ethical guidelines (i) to discuss experimental treatment options with patients from all population groups who are in urgent need, (ii) to facilitate the recording of patient reactions to drugs in off-label use, (iii) to expand inclusion criteria for clinical studies to avoid missing potentially negative effects on excluded groups, and (iv) to maintain sufficient access to repurposed drugs for patients with prior conditions. (shrink)

In March 2019, the German Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss (G‑BA; Federal Joint Committee) presented the result of the method assessment process on non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). The aim of this method assessment process was to decide whether NIPT should become a publicly funded procedure of routine prenatal care. The G‑BA decided in favor of NIPT, making the implementation of NIPT very likely, provided that other healthcare and political institutions also agree. This development could be interpreted as empowering from the perspective of reproductive (...) autonomy, since NIPT allows pregnant women to obtain valuable information on the health of the fetus in a fast and easy manner and without the risks of invasive methods. However, the routinization of NIPT also implies ethical challenges. Will the routinization lead to a normalization of prenatal quality control? Will it lead to an expansion to women outside the high-risk group? What would be the ethical implications of such a development? How should physicians, geneticists, and patients deal with the increased amount of obtainable information? What are the implications for choice and decision-making in the prenatal care context? In this paper, we analyze the ethical aspects of the routinization of NIPT, focusing on information and the counseling process, the burden of choice, and the threats to reproductive autonomy by societal interests linked to NIPT. (shrink)