In this article, I examine the relation between philosophy and madness. It is often assumed that madness has to be suppressed, excluded, or conquered before a philosophically sensible text, logical argument, or world of meaning can appear. I argue, instead, that a certain concept of madness, when grafted on phenomenological psychiatry and philosophical mysticism, is intrinsically related to the project of philosophy. With the help of experiences of madness as presented in psychiatry and articulated in mad autobiographical reports, including my (...) own, I will show that philosophy and madness are in closer connection than is commonly assumed. In the introduction, I refer to some superficial... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How to Reason Beyond Reason? Toward a Philosophical Understanding of MadnessWouter Kusters, PhD (bio)To analyze the situation of madness on the ground, we need a grounded perspective, close to the situation at hand. The closer we come to the subject under scrutiny, the clearer its outlines, fine-grained details, and its dynamics, and the better we reach an explanation and understanding. The closer the approach, however, the higher the chances (...) are of becoming myopic and losing the connections with broader—or higher—perspectives: the view from above. It has been due to philosophical and historical approaches from above to the practices of philosophically inspired psychiatry that we may gain new insights into what is going on on the ground—and underground. This article by Garson provides such a view that may lead to a change in perspective, a new way to draw boundaries on the ground, to discover similarities and dissimilarities through space and time, without thereby losing the lived connection to the problematic ground.Garson proposes to replace a binary opposition of madness (in the sense of sick or insane) versus sanity (in the sense of healthy), with a triad of concepts, sanity, madness, and idiocy, taken from the work of philosophers of psychiatry avant la lettre in the early modern times, Locke, Kant, Wigan, and Heinroth. This triad is to be understood in terms of reason, where idiocy consists of the diminishment of some aspects of reason, while madness would be characterized by a perversion of reason. By examining how this perversion—or more neutrally said, this change—of reason was conceived by the four thinkers, Garson sheds a new light on research and theory within the philosophy of madness and the philosophy of psychiatry today. He examines the question of “how is it that the mad person “has” reason, but is still not reasonable?” with the help of the four authors mentioned above (of which I discuss three).In answering this question, Garson refers specifically to my work as an example of “exactly the kind of ontology we need for rethinking madness in a positive manner—not necessarily ‘positive’ in the sense of good, helpful, or ennobling, but in the sense of going beyond a mere lack, absence, or failure.” I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment, [End Page 317] and Garson’s proposal of this tripartite schema is helpful and valuable for thinking through how we can further nourish a positive view of madness, especially with reference to Mad Pride.Locke and HeinrothGarson discusses some fragments from Locke and concludes that according to Locke “the mad person, in contrast to the idiot, possesses reason by virtue of possessing an intact inferential capacity. What ultimately makes them mad, and not reasonable, is that their premises are flawed by the unhinged power of association.” So, with Locke the capacity for inferential logic is not disturbed, and in that sense reason is intact. The unreasonable behavior would be due, according to Locke, to an unbridled increase in imagination and associations, which are taken for reality. Instead of reason the capacity to align imagination and reality is afflicted. When we translate this Lockean view into contemporary terms, we could say that it is not their cognition, their way of processing stimuli that is problematic, but their being overwhelmed by impressions or stimuli. This is akin to “bottom-up” theories: Something is wrong with perception or experience, and ‘higher’ capacities of cognition and reasoning remain intact. Reason may seem ‘perverted,’ but at a closer look, this is a result of their being victim to anomalous experience, too many stimuli or too strong imaginations.Heinroth also explicitly distinguishes madness from idiocy, that is, from a diminishment of mental capacities. Instead, he considers madness as a reaction to what Garson calls “a reality that is too awful to bear.” Madness is then “a wholesome desire of nature to cure a perversion through another perversion.” Again, madness is then not in itself a diminishment of reason, but an attempt to cure something that went wrong, in a way that is also only seemingly wrong (perverted reason). Madness then is again within reason, but this core of intact reason is... (shrink)

Within The Doctrine of Right in The Metaphysics of Morals Kant deals with the social institution of household, the Domestic Society, next to Property Right and Contract Right as part of the Private Right. The juridical problem to solve is the question to what extent human beings can be entitled to dispose persons as a “belonging” at all. This problem of Reification insistently arises with regard to the relation of partners in a marriage: According to Kant, Sexuality as a consumption (...) by which human beings make use of themselves as of things is reconcilable with the dignity of humanity only under the condition of marriage. By marrying, persons acquire one another reciprocally, so that they aren't in an external relation to one another any more. However, in contrast to this strict juridical reciprocity of the sexes in a marriage there is no corresponding equality concerning the regime of the household. Hence, with his anthropology of the sexes Kant unintentionally implements teleological patterns of argumentation into the Right of pure practical reason. (shrink)

This article reexamines meaning, agency, and interpretation by challenging the view that they require primary or secondary agency. Using Paul Ricœur’s narrative temporality, it explores Terrence Deacon’s autogenic theory, reinterpreting it as a narrative process with non-agentic meaning by distinguishing between distended and displaced temporal relations. Distended relations pertain to agency and biosemiosis, while displaced relations involve the meaning found not in the entity but the processes which gave it a functionally historicized existence. Applying Ricœur’s analysis of temporal aporia and (...) Deacon’s concept of zero, the article suggests that meaning in Deacon’s model mirrors the normative process of narrative interpretation. It emphasizes that primary agency requires meaningful organization for agentic action to have a self for which decisions matter, concluding that meaning, life, and primary agency are grounded in already existing displaced temporal relations resultant from proto-interpretative relations not bounded within an organism. (shrink)

Rousseaus politisches Denken bewegt sich in beiden Bereichen der klassischen Politik: in denen von Haus und Staat, von Privatem und Öffentlichem. Der liberalen Opposition von Individuum und Staat setzt Rousseau ein Modell der politischen Einheit entgegen, das durch die Vermittlungsinstanzen von Geschlechter- und Familienordnung gewährleistet ist. Mit dem erstmals ausformulierten Ideal einer empfindsamen Beziehungskultur wird ein Modell bürgerlicher Lebenskultur propagiert, das sich gleichermaßen auf die häuslich-intime Privatsphäre wie auf die Dimension republikanischer Öffentlichkeit erstreckt und das Rousseaus nachhaltige Deutungsmacht für das (...) moderne bürgerliche Selbstverständnis erweist. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I will examine the question why it is so difficult to understand madness. First, I will examine what the third-person approach of psychosis or madness has to offer, and where its limitations lie with respect to its proper understanding. Next I will examine if and how the first-person perspective on madness contributes to our understanding. I will demonstrate that there is a stalemate between third- and first-person perspectives, which on the one hand hinders a free sight (...) on madness, but which is on the other hand exemplary of the problem that is presented by madness. This turns out to be a paradox that haunts both the concept and experience of madness itself, as well as those who try to understand it. In the fourth section, I will unpack some of the operations of the paradox as it is found both in philosophy and madness, both by their producers as by their consumers. In the fifth section, I will tentatively sketch (im)possibilities of escaping paradoxes. (shrink)

Nowadays, consumer ethics represents a relevant field of review. There have been some attempts to conduct literature reviews; however, these have been few and incomplete. For this reason, this paper follows two main objectives: (1) to develop a performance analysis to measure the impact/perceptibility of academic production on consumer ethics (most cited authors, journals and themes) and (2) to visually present the scientific structure by themes of research in consumer ethics as well as its evolution along time. Using SciMAT software, (...) a comprehensive thematic review is discussed. 568 scientific papers (2569 keywords and 8642 citations) were retrieved from the Web of Science from 1995 to 2021 (May). Our results show three main periods with two main research themes (consumer and corporate social responsibility), which remain relevant themes at the time. Also, some new themes that promote ethical consumption have gained weight or appear over time, some of which are linked to the marketing field (such as experiences, satisfaction, attitudes or privacy among others). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 4 Seiten: 447-463.

The least common subsumer of a set of concept descriptions is the most specific concept description that subsumes all of the concept descriptions in the given set. By computing the lcs, commonalities between concept descriptions can be made explicit. This is an important inference task useful in several applications, including, for instance, the bottom-up construction of description logic knowledge bases. Previous work on the lcs has concentrated on description logics that either allow for number restrictions or for existential restrictions. Many (...) applications, however, require to combine these constructors. In this work, we present an algorithm for computing the lcs in the description logic ALEN which comprises both constructors—number and existential restrictions—as well as concept conjunction, primitive negation, and value restrictions. To prove correctness of our lcs algorithm, we develop a structural characterization of subsumption in ALEN. (shrink)

A groundbreaking, deeply personal, magnum opus on madness and philosophy from a psychotic patient turned philosopher.

Zusammenfassung: Der folgende Beitrag handelt vom Rückgriff auf den Körper an der Grenze und will einige der besonderen Problematiken skizzieren, die sich durch eine kontrollpolitisch begründete Ontologie des Körpers und seine weitere Verarbeitung als datenbankgestützte Identität im Kontext der europäischen Migrationspolitik ergeben. Er will damit einen Beitrag zur Politisierung der konstitutiven Instabilität einer verkörperten Identität leisten, d. h. einer Identität und vor allem auch eines Körpers, wie sie – gewissermaßen gegen das somatische Identitätskriterium, demgemäß „wir“ unser Körper „sind“ – von (...) Feminist*innen wie etwa Elizabeth Grosz oder Niamh Stephenson und Dimitris Papadopoulos und, für den Bereich der Surveillance Studies, etwa von Kirstie Ball postuliert wurde. Im ersten Teil des Textes greifen wir drei Fälle auf. Sie haben sich infolge der Flüchtlingsbewegungen nach Europa ab 2015 ereignet und sind ihrerseits – wie wir zeigen werden, ganz und gar nicht rational begründet – zu Skandalen beschworen und anschließend als Argumente angeführt worden, um sowohl für die gesellschaftliche und politische Akzeptanz als auch für die Zweckmäßigkeit einer zunehmenden Daten-Interoperabilität und einer Ausweitung der Geltungsbereiche zu werben, wie sie sich anhand der EURODAC-Novellierung erkennen lassen, die sich gegenwärtig vollzieht. Im zweiten Teil fassen wir den EURODAC-Recast zusammen – und skizzieren damit eine neue Entwicklungsphase der soziotechnischen Assemblage, durch die in den europäischen Entwicklungs- und Forschungseinrichtungen der biometrischen Identifikation und der Kontrolle der Mobilität eine verkörperte Identität der Migration produziert wird. (shrink)

Ästhetik, Schönheit? beides geläufige Begriffe. Jedoch konnte die Wissenschaft die Frage nach einem universellen Prinzip Schönheit bisher nicht beantworten: Was gefällt uns? Warum ist etwas schön? Warum gibt es das Phänomen Schönheit überhaupt und wie funktionieren die Mechanismen der Schönheit? 0Dieses wissenschaftlich fundierte Buch untersucht das Phänomen mit klarem Blick und gibt Antworten auf komplizierte Fragen. Dabei werden unterschiedliche wissenschaftliche Sichtweisen zu kognitiven Modellen zusammengeführt. Von Kunst und Architektur bis hin zu Logodesign und Popkultur werden zahlreiche ästhetische Ausdrucksformen mit einbezogen. (...) 0Ausgewählte Themen aus Wissenschaft, Literatur und Philosophie liefern einen neuen Blick auf die Ästhetik. Anhand überraschender Beobachtungen und faszinierender Bildbeispiele offenbart das Buch, wie grundlegend die Ästhetik für den modernen Menschen ist und wie unser Denken und Handeln vom?Prinzip Schönheit? geprägt wird. (shrink)

This work employs Husserl's concept of responsibility as a guiding clue for the clarification of the self-understanding of phenomenology as a `rigorous science'. Originally an appeal for radical accountability and ultimate foundation in the field of philosophical theory, Husserl's concept of responsibility culminated finally in a philosophy of human self-renewal. This philosophical telos of ultimate self-responsibility, which was also fuelled by a striving towards cultural reform, was realised for Husserl in a transcendental field of transparent self-evidence, linguistic univocity and transhistorical (...) ideality. With reference to J. Derrida's reading of Husserl, the author shows, that the elements singled out as those for which phenomenology cannot assume responsibility - exteriority, passivity and contingency - are not only delivered over to the interminable process of being worked upon, but remain rather constitutive for the endeavour of phenomenologising itself. This becomes manifest in the inevitable linguisticality of phenomenology, its `secondary enworlding', as it is conceived in E. Fink's project of the VIth Cartesian Meditation. In the context of this linguisticality it is the explosive power of the metaphor, which vouches for the openness, that fulfils the mission of phenomenology to carry in its innermost nature responsibility for a space of transgression. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Delusions in schizophrenia are commonly approached as empirical false beliefs about everyday reality. Phenomenological accounts, by contrast, have suggested that delusions are more adequately understood as pertaining to a different kind of reality experience. How this alteration of reality experience should be characterised, which dimensions of experiential life are involved, and whether delusional reality might differ from standard reality in various ways is unclear and little is known about how patients with delusions value and relate to these experiential alterations. (...) This study aimed to investigate the nature of delusional reality experience, and its subjective apprehension, in individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis. METHODS: In this qualitative phenomenological study, we recruited individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis from two psychiatric-hospital services in Belgium using homogenous sampling. Criteria for participation were having undergone at least one psychotic episode with occurring delusional symptoms, present at least 1 year before participation, on the basis of clinical notes assessed by the attending psychiatrist; a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis, ascertained through clinical interview by the attending psychiatrist upon admission; being aged between 18 years and 65 years; and having the capacity to give informed consent. Exclusion criteria included worries concerning capacity to consent and risk of distress caused by participation. We did phenomenologically driven semi-structured interviews with the participants to explore the nature of delusional reality experience and their subjective valuation of these experiences. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis, a qualitative method tailored to the in-depth exploration of participants’ first-person perspective, to analyse their accounts. FINDINGS: Between March 2, 2020, and Sept 30, 2020, 18 adults participated in the interview study. The findings suggest that delusions are often embedded in wide-ranging alterations of basic reality experience, involving quasi-ineffable atmospheric and ontological qualities that undermine participants’ sense of the world as unambiguously real, fully present, and shared with others. We also found that delusional reality experience can differ from standard reality in various ways, across multiple dimensions, and that participants are often implicitly or explicitly aware of the distinction between delusional and standard reality. Delusional experience can have an enduring value and meaning that is not fully captured by a strictly medical perspective. INTERPRETATION: Increased awareness and recognition of the distinctive nature of delusional reality experience, in both clinical and research settings, can improve diagnostic accuracy, explanatory models, and therapeutic support for individuals with delusions whose lived realities are not always evident from an everyday perspective. FUNDING: FWO Flanders. TRANSLATION: For the Dutch translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section. (shrink)

It is well known that classical, aka ‘sharp’, Bayesian decision theory, which models belief states as single probability functions, faces a number of serious difficulties with respect to its handling of agnosticism. These difficulties have led to the increasing popularity of so-called ‘imprecise’ models of decision-making, which represent belief states as sets of probability functions. In a recent paper, however, Adam Elga has argued in favour of a putative normative principle of sequential choice that he claims to be borne out (...) by the sharp model but not by any promising incarnation of its imprecise counterpart. After first pointing out that Elga has fallen short of establishing that his principle is indeed uniquely borne out by the sharp model, I cast aspersions on its plausibility. I show that a slight weakening of the principle is satisfied by at least one, but interestingly not all, varieties of the imprecise model and point out that Elga has failed to motivate his stronger commitment. (shrink)

Innovative practice occurs when a clinician provides something new, untested, or nonstandard to a patient in the course of clinical care, rather than as part of a research study. Commentators have noted that patients engaged in innovative practice are at significant risk of suffering harm, exploitation, or autonomy violations. By creating a pathway for harmful or nonbeneficial interventions to spread within medical practice without being subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation, innovative practice poses similar risks to the wider community of patients (...) and society as a whole. Given these concerns, how should we control and oversee innovative practice, and in particular, how should we coordinate innovative practice and clinical research? In this article, I argue that an ethical approach to overseeing innovative practice must encourage the early transition to rigorous clinical research without delaying or deferring the development of beneficial innovations or violating the autonomy rights of clinicians and their patients. (shrink)

I explore how agent-regret and its object—faultlessly harming someone—can call for various responses. I look at two sorts of responses. Firstly, I explore responses that respect the agent’s role as an agent. This revolves around a feature of “it was just an accident”—a common response to agent-regret—that has largely gone ignored in the literature: that it can downplay one’s role as an agent. I argue that we need to take seriously the fact that those who have caused harms are genuine (...) agents, to ignore this fails to allow these agents to move on. Secondly, following Sussman and MacKenzie, I explore responses that benefit the victim. I argue that we should strive to understand how to configure these responses in a way that does not blame the agent. To do this I look at the role of actions in our self-understanding, as people who have done particular things. I end by briefly considering the ways in which tort law and restorative justice might help us to understand how to appropriately respond to accidentally harming someone. I urge that we need to take this as a starting point to find a better way to respond to the agents of faultless harms. (shrink)

In this article, I examine stigmatizing and especially patronizing attitudes towards others’ depression that people who are well-intentioned produce. The strategy of the article is to consider the social experience of depression through two separate subfields of philosophy: epistemic injustice and phenomenology. The solution that I propose is a phenomenological account of empathy. The empathetic attitude that I argue for involves actively listening to the depressed individual and taking their depression testimony as direct evidence. The article has been written both (...) for those who seek to better support neurodiverse people in their lives and for depressives (and other neurodivergents) themselves in order to provide them with a better account for advocating for themselves against social stigma. (shrink)

Introductory students regularly endorse naïve skepticism—unsupported or uncritical doubt about the existence and universality of truth—for a variety of reasons. Though some of the reasons for students’ skepticism can be traced back to the student—for example, a desire to avoid engaging with controversial material or a desire to avoid offense—naïve skepticism is also the result of how introductory courses are taught, deemphasizing truth to promote students’ abilities to develop basic disciplinary skills. While this strategy has a number of pedagogical benefits, (...) it prevents students in early stages of intellectual development from understanding truth as a threshold concept. Using philosophy as a case study, I argue that we can make progress against naïve skepticism by clearly discussing how metadisciplinary aims differ at the disciplinary and course levels in a way that is meaningful, reinforced, and accessible. (shrink)

A survey of the recent literature suggests that physicians should engage religious patients on religious grounds when the patient cites religious considerations for a medical decision. We offer two arguments that physicians ought to avoid engaging patients in this manner. The first is the Public Reason Argument. We explain why physicians are relevantly akin to public officials. This suggests that it is not the physician’s proper role to engage in religious deliberation. This is because the public character of a physician’s (...) role binds him/her to public reason, which precludes the use of religious considerations. The second argument is the Fiduciary Argument. We show that the patient-physician relationship is a fiduciary relationship, which suggests that the patient has the clinical expectation that physicians limit themselves to medical considerations. Since engaging in religious deliberations lies outside this set of considerations, such engagement undermines trust and therefore damages the patient-physician relationship. (shrink)

I argue that sports clubs should be punished for bad behaviour by their fans in a way that affects the club’s sporting success: for example, we are justified in imposing points deductions and competition disqualifications on the basis of racist chanting. This is despite a worry that punishing clubs in such a way is unfair because it targets the sports team rather than the fans who misbehaved. I argue that this belies a misunderstanding of the nature of sports clubs and (...) of the nature of sporting success. Further, I argue that fans should want to be held responsible in such a way because it vindicates the significant role that they play in the life of their club. (shrink)

After a number of decades of research into the dynamics of rational belief, the belief revision theory community remains split on the appropriate handling of sequences of changes in view, the issue of so-called iterated revision. It has long been suggested that the matter is at least partly settled by facts pertaining to the results of various single revisions of one’s initial state of belief. Recent work has pushed this thesis further, offering various strong principles that ultimately result in a (...) wholesale reduction of iterated to one-shot revision. The present paper offers grounds to hold that these principles should be significantly weakened and that the reductionist thesis should ultimately be rejected. Furthermore, the considerations provided suggest a close connection between the logic of iterated belief change and the logic of evidential relevance. (shrink)

Diverse and dynamic societies face a problem of social control. Institutions of social control, of which the police are a part, are a necessary part of just and legitimate governance. But in our non-ideal world they are also responsible for injustices of their own. This project raises questions of political philosophy as they apply to the professional police agency. It begins by constructing an inchoate, but mainstream view about just policing, legalism, according to which police power is justified by the (...) criminal code, and just policing is just the faithful enforcement of law. This view is undermined by the practical realities of policing, which involves widespread and unavoidable police discretion. It then develops an account of just and legitimate police discretion, including principles of proportionality, liberal neutrality, and democratic responsiveness. This sheds lights on controversial police tactics, order maintenance initiatives, and community policing strategies. This account also informs the just institutional arrangement of police powers, informing ongoing debates about police reform and abolition. (shrink)

Buddhism originated and developed in an Indian cultural context that featured many first-person practices for producing and exploring states of consciousness through the systematic training of attention. In contrast, the dominant methods of investigating the mind in Western cognitive science have emphasized third-person observation of the brain and behavior. In this chapter, we explore how these two different projects might prove mutually beneficial. We lay the groundwork for a cross-cultural cognitive science by using one traditional Buddhist model of the mind (...) – that of the five aggregates – as a lens for examining contemporary cognitive science conceptions of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that reproducibility is a severe problem that concerns simulation models. The reproducibility problem challenges the concept of numerical solution and hence the conception of what a simulation actually does. We provide an expanded picture of simulation that makes visible those steps of simulation modeling that are numerically relevant, but often escape notice in accounts of simulation. Examining these steps and analyzing a number of pertinent examples, we argue that numerical solutions are importantly different from usual (...) mathematical solutions. They are do not merely approximate the latter, but introduce new problems, including issues of artificiality, stability, and well-posedness. Consequently, simulation modelling can attain reproducibility only to a certain degree because it is working with numerical solutions. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Why It’s OK to Be a Sports Fan, by Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz, with contributions from Adam Kadlac, Joe Slater, Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, and Nina Windgätter. The discussion covers a range of topics, including the form of love involved in fandom, the epistemic status of fans, fictionalism, and the role of communities in fandom.

Poetry is a process. While people typically refer to poems as textual objects, our experience of poetry is inherently embodied and enacted, meaning that we experience poems as events that we contextualize as gestalt representations. We experience metaphors, too, as processes, which arise from experiential gestalts, that extend gestalt structures and lay the conceptual foundation for our experience of the world. This article argues that, like metaphors, poetic gestalts can be mapped onto other experiences to help people navigate their worlds. (...) While this kind of poetic thought has largely been considered by scholars to have existed only since the emergence of the modern human mind sometime in the last 60,000 years, the author suggests that poetic thought likely arose prior to modern cognition, and may have in fact given rise to it. A crucial aspect of the embodied and enactive approach to poetry outlined in the article is that people’s experience of poetry is fundamentally contextual and emotional. Furthermore, because emotions are a primary source of meaning, our emotional responses to poetry make it a useful tool for extending our own conceptual apparatuses, enhancing emotional intelligence, and for generating shared values. (shrink)

Several contemporary philosophers have argued that democracy earns its moral keep in part by rendering political authority compatible with social or relational equality. In a recent article in this journal, Alexander Motchoulski examines these relational egalitarian defenses of democracy, finds the standard approach wanting, and advances an alternative. The standard approach depends on the claim that inequality of political power constitutes status inequality (the ‘constitutive claim’). Motchoulski rejects this claim on the basis of a theory of social status: once you (...) see what social status is, Motchoulski thinks, the constitutive claim is a non-starter. In its place, Motchoulski suggests that relational egalitarians can and should content themselves with a defense of democratic institutions on the basis of a causal-instrumental link between equality of political power and equality of social relations. In this reply, I advance three main claims. First, relational egalitarians have good reason to hope for a defense of the constitutive claim, since that claim is required if relational equality is to vindicate the intrinsic value of democracy. Second, Motchoulski’s argument against the constitutive claim fails, because it depends on conflating one species of social status for the genus as a whole. Finally, I argue that the constitutive claim is trivially true for one kind of status, namely de facto authority, but, since equality of that kind of status is not intrinsically valuable, this does not amount to a defense of the intrinsic value of democracy. (shrink)

Organizations are making massive investments in artificial intelligence, and recent demonstrations and achievements highlight the immense potential for AI to improve organizational and human welfare. Yet realizing the potential of AI necessitates a better understanding of the various ethical issues involved with deciding to use AI, training and maintaining it, and allowing it to make decisions that have moral consequences. People want organizations using AI and the AI systems themselves to behave ethically, but ethical behavior means different things to different (...) people, and many ethical dilemmas require trade-offs such that no course of action is universally considered ethical. How should organizations using AI—and the AI itself—process ethical dilemmas where humans disagree on the morally right course of action? Though a variety of ethical AI frameworks have been suggested, these approaches do not adequately address how people make ethical evaluations of AI systems or how to incorporate the fundamental disagreements people have regarding what is and is not ethical behavior. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we theorize that a person will perceive an organization’s use of AI, its data procedures, and the resulting AI decisions as ethical to the extent that those decisions resonate with the person’s moral foundations. Since people hold diverse moral foundations, this highlights the crucial need to consider individual moral differences at multiple levels of AI. We discuss several unresolved issues and suggest potential approaches for thinking about conflicts in moral judgments concerning AI. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Why It’s OK to Be a Sports Fan, by Alfred Archer and Jake Wojtowicz, with contributions from Adam Kadlac, Joe Slater, Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, and Nina Windgätter. The discussion covers a range of topics, including the form of love involved in fandom, the epistemic status of fans, fictionalism, and the role of communities in fandom.

Aulisio and Arora argue that the moral significance of value imposition explains the moral distinction between traditional conscientious objection and non-traditional conscientious objection. The former objects to directly performing actions, whereas the latter objects to indirectly assisting actions on the grounds that indirectly assisting makes the actor morally complicit. Examples of non-traditional conscientious objection include objections to the duty to refer. Typically, we expect physicians who object to a practice to refer, but the non-traditional conscientious objector physician refuses to refer. (...) Aulisio and Arora argue that physicians have a duty to refer because refusing to do so violates the patient’s values. While we agree with Aulisio and Arora’s conclusions, we argue value imposition cannot adequately explain the moral difference between traditional conscientious objection and non-traditional conscientious objection. Treating autonomy as the freedom to live in accordance with one’s values, as Aulisio and Arora do, is a departure from traditional liberal conceptions of autonomy and consequently fails to explain the moral difference between the two kinds of objection. We outline how a traditional liberal understanding of autonomy would help in this regard, and we make two additional arguments—one that maintains that non-traditional conscientious objection undermines society’s autonomy, and another that maintains that it undermines the physician-patient relationship—to establish why physicians have a duty to refer. (shrink)