Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and summarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a short and condensed method, in order to present a network of d...

Background: Privacy has been recognized as a basic human right and a part of quality of care. However, little is known about the privacy of Somali asylum seekers in healthcare, even though they are one of the largest asylum seeker groups in the world. Objectives: The aim of the study was to describe the content and importance of privacy and its importance in healthcare from the perspective of Somali asylum seekers. Research design: The data of this explorative qualitative study were (...) collected by four focus group interviews with 18 Somali asylum seekers with the help of an interpreter. The data were analysed by inductive content analysis. Ethical considerations: Research permissions were obtained from the director of the reception centre and from the Department of Social Services. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Turku University. Findings: The content of privacy includes visual privacy, physical privacy and informational privacy. All contents can be shared with healthcare professionals. The importance of privacy includes respect, dignity and freedom. Discussion: Privacy is strongly connected to the collectivism of Somali culture and religion. Unlike the Western cultures, privacy is not important only for the individual; most of all, it is seen to support collectivism. Conclusion: Even though all contents of privacy can be shared with healthcare professionals, it is important to recognize the cultural aspect of privacy especially when using interpreters with Somali background. (shrink)

Background: Privacy is one of the key principles in health care and requires understanding of the cultural aspects of patients’ privacy. In Western cultures privacy is focused on the individual, however, in some non-Western cultures, privacy is linked to the collectivism of the community or religion. Objectives: The objective of this study is to describe the factors related to the realisation of privacy of Somali refugees in health care by describing the factors related to the patient, healthcare professional and interpreter. (...) Research design: The data were collected from Somali refugees (N = 29) using a qualitative questionnaire and were analysed by deductive content analysis based on factors related to the patient, healthcare professional and interpreter. Ethical consideration: Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Turku, and research permissions were obtained from all participating institutions. Findings: Factors related to the patient were as follows: privacy was realised when the patient had self-determination; was able to act according to Somali culture; had knowledge and understanding of treatment; and trusted the healthcare professional. Factors related to the healthcare professional were as follows: the healthcare professional was expected to be of the same gender as the patient, act professionally, focus on the health issues, and to have knowledge and understanding of the Somali culture. Factors related to the interpreter were as follows: the presence and Somali background of the interpreter decreased privacy; the interpreter was expected to be of the same gender as the patient; to have competence and to behave professionally. Discussion: Gender congruence, professionalism and caring attitude and common understanding between the Somali patient and Finnish provider increase the privacy of Somali patients. Conclusion: Somali patients’ privacy can be improved by increasing healthcare professionals’ understanding of Somali culture, acknowledging the importance of gender concordance in relation to healthcare professionals and interpreters, and the effect of the presence of the interpreter on patients’ privacy. (shrink)

In the era of generative AI and specifically large language models (LLMs), exemplified by ChatGPT, the intersection of artificial intelligence and human reasoning has become a focal point of global attention. Unlike conventional search engines, LLMs go beyond mere information retrieval, entering into the realm of discourse culture. Their outputs mimic well-considered, independent opinions or statements of facts, presenting a pretense of wisdom. This paper explores the potential transformative impact of LLMs on democratic societies. It delves into the concerns regarding (...) the difficulty in distinguishing ChatGPT-generated texts from human output. The discussion emphasizes the essence of authorship, rooted in the unique human capacity for reason—a quality indispensable for democratic discourse and successful collaboration within free societies. Highlighting the potential threats to democracy, this paper presents three arguments: the Substitution argument, the Authenticity argument, and the Facts argument. These arguments highlight the potential risks that are associated with an overreliance on LLMs. The central thesis posits that widespread deployment of LLMs may adversely affect the fabric of a democracy if not comprehended and addressed proactively and properly. In proposing a solution, we advocate for an emphasis on education as a means to mitigate risks. We suggest cultivating thinking skills in children, fostering coherent thought formulation, and distinguishing between machine-generated output and genuine, i.e., human, reasoning. The focus should be on the responsible development and usage of LLMs, with the goal of augmenting human capacities in thinking, deliberating and decision-making rather than substituting them. (shrink)

Pierson et al. (2024) conducted a survey of American bioethicists and compared their bioethical views to those of the general U.S. population. Recently, we also conducted a survey of researchers wo...

Although there is a vast body of work on legitimacy, we still have a limited understanding of the discursive aspects of moral legitimation. This is surprising considering the increase in morally laden societal discussions, for example related to understanding gender, rights and regulations during a pandemic, political scandals and ethics of global business amongst others. In particular, from an organization studies perspective, we lack knowledge on how journalists negotiate moral legitimation of controversial organizational decisions such as closures or shutdown decisions (...) related to global industrial restructuring. Therefore, drawing on the critical discourse studies tradition, we examine the media coverage of controversial shutdowns in Finland over the past 2 decades. Our analysis suggests three moral legitimation types: moral engaging, moral distancing and moral surrendering. These types involve specific discursive moralization practices and strategies, and they each paint a different picture of the moral options, responsibility, and inevitability in these decisions. These types can be found in the same texts supporting each other, but they also help us understand how legitimation may involve a pattern where the most explicit reflections (moral engagement) are followed by more indirect (moral distancing) and less apparent but very powerful (moral surrendering) forms of legitimation. By so doing, we also offer a heuristic that can, with due caution, be used for analyzing other texts on adverse effects of globalization or events that might include moral and ideological conflicts. (shrink)

Social justice is a key value of social care. Yet, research on social justice in the context of related higher education is limited. This study uses qualitative interviews to focus on undergraduate social care students' (N = 19) approaches to social justice at the outset of their studies at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, utilizing Bell's (2007) social justice framework. Please see Bell (2007) “Theoretical Foundations for Social Justice Education.” In Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, 2nd ed., (...) edited by M. Adams, L. A. Bell, and P. Griffin, 1–14. New York: Routledge. Bell's (2007) framework includes social political and value elements as well as moral considerations on individuals' social and civic agency. As a result, most of the students indicated that they valued equality. Just over half of them stated that they are engaged in extra-curricular voluntary community service, mainly because it 'felt good'. Some of them exhibited political awareness, discussing voting and fair distribution of resources, but otherwise, few links between social justice and broader societal issues were made. Also, they seldomly addressed the broader community impact of their voluntary extracurricular community service, suggesting they might not yet fully comprehend their roles as purposeful social and civic change agents. The implications of this study are discussed in reference to developing these students' social justice-related knowledge, skills, values and agency. (shrink)

Software systems play an ever more important role in our lives and software engineers and their companies find themselves in a position where they are held responsible for ethical issues that may arise. In this paper, we try to disentangle ethical considerations that can be performed at the level of the software engineer from those that belong in the wider domain of business ethics. The handling of ethical problems that fall into the responsibility of the engineer has traditionally been addressed (...) by the publication of Codes of Ethics and Conduct. We argue that these Codes are barely able to provide normative orientation in software development. The main contribution of this paper is, thus, to analyze the normative features of Codes of Ethics in software engineering and to explicate how their value-based approach might prevent their usefulness from a normative perspective. Codes of Conduct cannot replace ethical deliberation because they do not and cannot offer guidance because of their underdetermined nature. This lack of orientation, we argue, triggers reactive behavior such as “cherry-picking,” “risk of indifference,” “ex-post orientation,” and the “desire to rely on gut feeling.” In the light of this, we propose to implement ethical deliberation within software development teams as a way out. (shrink)

Differences in empathic abilities between acting, dance, and psychology students were explored, in addition to the appropriateness of existing empathy measures in the context of these cohorts. Students (N= 176) across Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom and Europe were included in the online survey analysis, consisting of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), the Empathy Quotient (EQ), and the E-drawing test (EDT), each measuring particular facets of empathy. Based on existing (...) evidence and our understanding of the discipline practices, we predicted that acting students would perform the best at identifying people’s emotional expressions but might lack other cognitive or affective empathy skills, particularly those related to emotional reactions. This cohort thus provides an opportunity to evaluate different empathy measures. While actors showed significantly higher RME scores than dancers, the difference between actors and psychologists was marginal. Moreover, actors’ scores did not differ significantly on other empathy measures, such as their concern for others’ emotional wellbeing or fantasy, both measured by IRI subscales. Psychology students scored highest in the IRI perspective taking subscale and the data supported anecdotal evidence that psychologists were more concerned for others’ emotional wellbeing than dancers or actors. Dancers seemed the least concerned with others’ perspectives and emotional states, which we explained through a somatosensory ‘inward’ focus required by their art form. Nevertheless, compared to the general population, our groups reported higher empathic abilities on all IRI subscales except for personal distress. Altogether, our study shows that the RME, the IRI, and the EDT vary in their susceptibility to different facets of empathic abilities in acting, dance, and psychology students whereas the EQ does not. Emotions can be expressed and perceived through language, facial expressions, or behavior. As many empathy tests focus on one type of signal they might miss other strategies. Where empathy tests are applied to individuals that have a predominance to read or respond to others in a particular way, as we showed through these three disciplines, they might not capture these empathic strategies. We thus propose that empathy tests must evolve by means of integrating varied forms of communication. (shrink)

Julian Nida-Rümelin’s philosophical approach to rationality is radical: It transcends the reductive narrowness of instrumental rationality without denying its practical impact. Actions exist which are carried out in accordance to utility maximizing or even self-interest maximizing. Yet not all actions are to be understood in these terms. Actions that are oriented around social roles, for example, cannot count as irrational just because no underlying maximizing heuristics are found. The concept of bounded rationality tries to embed instrumental rationality into a form (...) of life to highlight limits of our cognitive capabilities and selective perceptions. However, the agent is still situated within the realm of cost-benefit reasoning. The idea of social preferences (e.g. Rabin, Fehr and Schmidt) or meta-preferences (Sen) is insufficient to reflect the plurality of human actions. According to Nida-Rümelin, those concepts ignore the plurality of reasons which drive agency. Hence, they try to fit agency into a theory which undermines humanity. His theory of structural rationality acknowledges daily patterns of interaction and meaning. (shrink)

In order to study whether there exist a period of activity in the human early visual cortex that contributes exclusively to visual awareness, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation over the early visual cortex and measured subjective visual awareness during visual forced-choice symbol or orientation discrimination tasks. TMS produced one dip in awareness 60–120 ms after stimulus onset, while forced-choice orientation discrimination was suppressed between 60 and 90 ms and symbol discrimination between 60 and 120 ms. Thus, a time window specific (...) to visual awareness was found only in the orientation condition at 120 ms. The results imply that both conscious and unconscious perception depend on activity in early visual areas. On the basis of previous estimates of neural processing speed, we suggest that the late part of the activity period most likely involve local extrastriate–striate interactions which provide the contents for visual awareness but are not themselves sufficient for awareness to arise. (shrink)

This article analyzes the distribution of benefits from Fair Trade between producing and consuming countries. Fair Trade and conventional coffee production and trade were examined in Nicaragua in 2005-2006 and 2008. Consumption of the respective coffees was assessed in Finland in 2006-2009. The results indicate that consumers paid considerably more for Fair Trade-certified coffee than for the other alternatives available. Although Fair Trade provided price premiums to producer organizations, a larger share of the retail prices remained in the consuming country (...) relative to conventional coffee trade. Paradoxically, along with the certified farmers and cooperatives, Fair Trade empowers roasters and retailers. (shrink)

Background Student selection is the first step in recruiting future social and healthcare professionals. Ethically competent professionals are needed in social and healthcare. It is important to select applicants who have the best possible abilities to develop their ethical competence in the future. Values-based recruitment has been used to inform the recruitment and selection of higher education applicants. However, objective and valid tests in student selection are needed. Aim To assess social and healthcare applicants’ success and related factors in the (...) ethics section of the universities of applied sciences digital entrance examination (UAS Exam) to undergraduate degree programmes. Research design A cross-sectional design was used. Participants and research context Social and healthcare applicants needed to identify ethical situations in the ethics section of a national digital entrance examination (UAS Exam) in autumn 2019 (between 29 October and 1 November) in 20 Finnish universities of applied sciences. Ethical considerations The process for the responsible conduct of research was followed in the study. Ethics committee approval was obtained from the Human Sciences Ethics Committee in the Satakunta region (27 September 2019). Approval to undertake the study was obtained from the participating universities of applied sciences. Participation to the study was voluntary and based on informed consent. Results The applicants’ ( n = 8971) mean scores were 7.1/20 (standard deviation 6.5), and 22.7% of the applicants failed the ethics section. Age, previous education, and place of birth (own/parent) explained the applicants’ success in the ethics section (total score and failed exam results). Conclusion(s) Applicants’ success in the ethics section varied indicating that future students may have a different basis to develop their ethical competence. This may impact on (new) students’ learning, especially in practical studies. (shrink)