This article presents an integrative, analytic, and interactive approach to explaining corruption. We find that extant research, while empirically rich, often lacks grounding on the micro level of analysis, operates on unspecified or implausible decision-making models, does not clearly distinguish between proximal and distal causes, and does not attempt to study the interactions between individual propensities and corruption-conducive settings (situational analysis). The theoretical traditions of rational choice and culture provide insight into some but not all corrupt acts, and are limited (...) in the extent to which they explain why and how an individual chooses to act corruptly. Drawing on analytic criminology, we propose situational action theory (SAT) as an alternative explanation of corruption as moral action that forefronts rule guidance, conditional relevance of controls, and the interplay of people and settings. This conceptual framework will allow researchers to build on existing empirical work while distinguishing causes of corruption from its mere correlates. The article concludes with some reflections on bridging the gap between situational theory and empirical research into corruption. (shrink)

Teaching experiments are valuable when it comes to sensitizing students for business ethics that addresses the behavior of agents in modern societies. Many students are coined by the often predominantly individualistic ethical reasoning that they are accustomed to from their living environments. In our classes, we confront them with the volatility of their own ethical behavior by the use of experiments that ideally work with real incentives. We believe experiments to be a powerful tool not only to illustrate theoretical concepts, (...) but also to make students experience the compulsion of economic incentives first-hand. This may lead to the insight that one is more prone to the contingencies of the situation than expected. Experiments may make students question their own behavior and re-evaluate the implementability of their moral ideals - as consumers, citizens and managers. (shrink)

La multiplication sur Internet des dispositifs « interactifs » interroge les enjeux et les principes des nouvelles formes de communication qui envahissent les systèmes techniques contemporains. La banalisation et la généralisation de ces agencements machiniques remettent en question les frontières traditionnelles entre l’image et le réel, le regard et l’écran, le sens et le message, le sujet et le monde, le public et le privé, le pouvoir et la captation, la présence et l’absence, le désir et le manque...The increasing number (...) of « interactive » devices on Internet addresses the question of the stakes and principles linked to the new forms of communication invading contemporary technical systems. The trivialization and extension of these tools are a challenge to the standard boundary line between images and reality, the viewer and the screen, meaning and message, the individual and the world, the public and private spheres, power and addiction, presence and absence, desire and need.. (shrink)

In this paper, I present some preliminary reconsiderations on the interconnection between Nishida Kitarō’s later logic and his political philosophy. These reconsiderations will form the core of an essay in which I intend to use Karatani Kōjin’s remarks concerning a certain “Leibniz-syndrome” in twentieth-century political thought as a starting point for a more in-depth inquiry into Nishida’s philosophy, as an expression of the contradictions and aporias of global capitalist modernity.

We explore aversion to the use of algorithms in moral decision-making. So far, this aversion has been explained mainly by the fear of opaque decisions that are potentially biased. Using incentivized experiments, we study which role the desire for human discretion in moral decision-making plays. This seems justified in light of evidence suggesting that people might not doubt the quality of algorithmic decisions, but still reject them. In our first study, we found that people prefer humans with decision-making discretion to (...) algorithms that rigidly apply exogenously given human-created fairness principles to specific cases. In the second study, we found that people do not prefer humans to algorithms because they appreciate flesh-and-blood decision-makers per se, but because they appreciate humans’ freedom to transcend fairness principles at will. Our results contribute to a deeper understanding of algorithm aversion. They indicate that emphasizing the transparency of algorithms that clearly follow fairness principles might not be the only element for fostering societal algorithm acceptance and suggest reconsidering certain features of the decision-making process. (shrink)

Departing from the claim that AI needs to be trustworthy, we find that ethical advice from an AI-powered algorithm is trusted even when its users know nothing about its training data and when they learn information about it that warrants distrust. We conducted online experiments where the subjects took the role of decision-makers who received advice from an algorithm on how to deal with an ethical dilemma. We manipulated the information about the algorithm and studied its influence. Our findings suggest (...) that AI is overtrusted rather than distrusted. We suggest digital literacy as a potential remedy to ensure the responsible use of AI. (shrink)

This volume gives an overview of the rising field of Experimental Ethics. It is organized into five main parts: PART I – Introduction: An Experimental Philosophy of Ethics? // PART II – Applied Experimental Ethics: Case studies // PART III – On Methodology // PART IV – Critical Reflections // PART V – Future Perspectives. Among the contributors: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Eric Schwitzgebel, Ezio di Nucci, Jacob Rosenthal, and Fernando Aguiar.

The transfer of tasks with sometimes far-reaching implications to autonomous systems raises a number of ethical questions. In addition to fundamental questions about the moral agency of these systems, behavioral issues arise. We investigate the empirically accessible question of whether the imposition of harm by an agent is systematically judged differently when the agent is artificial and not human. The results of a laboratory experiment suggest that decision-makers can actually avoid punishment more easily by delegating to machines than by delegating (...) to other people. Our results imply that the availability of artificial agents could provide stronger incentives for decision-makers to delegate sensitive decisions. (shrink)

This entry offers a critical overview of the contemporary literature on understanding, especially in epistemology and the philosophy of science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Does It Mean to "Speak Truth to Power"?Christian UhlPolitical Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co-Prosperity. By Christopher S. Goto-Jones. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. 192.Ever since the end of the "Great East Asian War" in Japan a debate has been smoldering over the contamination of philosophy by politics. This debate was sparked by a series of writings through which the "father of Japanese (...) philosophy," Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), and some thinkers affiliated with him—the so-called Kyoto School—became involved in the politics connected with the war to establish a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." The debate over Nishida and the Kyoto School has repeatedly been overshadowed by the debate over Heidegger. Aside from the strategic considerations of those engaged in the prosecution of the Kyoto School, one reason for the "Heidegger factor"1 may have something to do with the fact that philosophical parallels can indeed be drawn between Nishida and Heidegger, and that there are also direct links between Nishida and some of his disciples who studied in Germany. Questions concerning Heidegger's political engagement are still explosive, even twenty years after Farias' attempt to prove Heidegger's entanglement with National Socialism. The publication of Emmanuel Faye's book Heidegger—L'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie has fired up the debate in French philosophical circles.2 And in the debate concerning Nishida and the Kyoto School there is also recent news: the publication of Christopher S. Goto-Jones' ambitious study Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co Prosperity."Every inquiry," Heidegger says, "is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought for."3 Goto-Jones' inquiry seeks to explain the nature of Nishida's political engagement in the 1930s and 1940s, and his inquiry is guided by the conviction that Nishida should be exonerated from the charges regarding his alleged complicity with a Japanese wartime regime that was at least militarist if not "fascist." However, the declared intention of Goto-Jones' study is not just another exoneration of Nishida. Goto-Jones contends that Nishida, influenced "particularly [by] Kant" (p. 7), has left behind a still relevant political philosophy that, as some other authors have argued,4 is not only not tainted by any form of narrow-minded nationalism but also provides a philosophical framework for a theory of a globalizing, multicentered, intercultural world:Hence, for Nishida, the nation should not be a rigid institutional structure or an artificially... constructed culture, but rather a moral personality formed through the mutual self-determination [End Page 469] determination of its constituents and in a dynamic relationship with other nations. International relations should be characterized by the development of greater levels of unity, as nations creatively interact with each other, producing public goods and increasing the similarities in their personalities, thus decreasing the salience of their national boundaries. In this model, nationalism, like egoism, becomes a nonsense.(p. 134 n)This political model is what Goto-Jones seeks to recover in Nishida, and this recovery is "what is really intended" (Heidegger) by his book.5Nishida's political philosophy needs to be recovered, because it is buried under false accusations and misunderstandings, produced primarily by Nishida's detractors, whose criticism, as Goto-Jones suggests, is in most cases at best based on a rough selection of citations, torn out of the coherence of their original context. Nishida's defenders, on the other hand, have attempted to safeguard the philosopher against the arguments of his critics by simply calling him a "liberal," a seemingly agreeable but in fact rather misleading label. Furthermore, Nishida's defenders have based their arguments only on biographical material, diary entries, letters, and so on. While the apologists "are right to observe a contradiction between... [Nishida's] private condemnation of the regime and his apparent public complicity, this is not in itself enough to conclude that his public writings meant the opposite of what they seem to say" (p. 4).In fact, this conclusion by Nishida's apologists does raise certain questions. Why did Nishida never give vent to his divergent opinions? Should he not rather have remained... (shrink)

"Growing Moral engages its readers to reflect on and to practice the teachings of Confucianism in the contemporary world. It draws on the whole history of Confucianism, focusing on three thinkers from the classical era and two from the Neo-Confucian era (Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. In addition to laying out the fundamental teachings of Confucianism, it highlights the enduring and strikingly relevant lessons that Confucianism offers contemporary readers. At its core, this book builds a case for modern Confucianism as (...) a practical way to grow toward more harmonious lives together through reflection, ritual, and compassion; it can help us find balance and joy within our complex and too-often frenetic modern lives. Individual chapter explain how and why to be filial, follow rituals, and cultivate our sprouts of morality; as well as exploring Confucian approaches to reading, music-making, reflection, and socio-political engagement. Overall, the book presents a progressive vision of Confucianism that addresses historical shortcomings within the tradition concerning gender and other forms of hierarchy"--. (shrink)

Imagine that you are given access to an AI chatbot that compellingly mimics the personality and speech of a deceased loved one. If you start having regular interactions with this “thanabot,” could this new relationship be a continuation of the relationship you had with your loved one? And could a relationship with a thanabot preserve or replicate the value of a close human relationship? To the first question, we argue that a relationship with a thanabot cannot be a true continuation (...) of your relationship with a deceased loved one, though it might support one’s continuing bonds with the dead. To the second question, we argue that, in and of themselves, relationships with thanabots cannot benefit us as much as rewarding and healthy intimate relationships with other humans, though we explain why it is difficult to make reliable comparative generalizations about the instrumental value of these relationships. (shrink)

In this chapter, we present supporting arguments for the claim that Order Ethics is a school of thought within ethics which is especially open to empirical evidence. With its focus on order frameworks, i.e., incentive structures, Order Ethical advice automatically raises questions on implementability, efficacy, and efficiency of such recommended institutions, all of which are empirical questions to a good extent. We illustrate our arguments by presenting a small selection of experiments from economics that we consider highly informative for Order (...) Ethics. These experiments vary in their details but share one common theme: individual decision-making and its aggregate results are tested against the background of incentive structures. In particular, these studies provide first insights on how unregulated markets influence moral behavior over time, how trial-and-error experiences convince subjects to migrate to more efficient institutions, and how default rules can influence fundamental choices of people. We argue that Order Ethics, for which implementability of any moral claim is an essential requirement, can largely benefit from the use of such experimental methods. Finally, we suggest the provision of self-commitment devices as one example of smart policy design that avoids paternalistic intrusions into individual liberty. (shrink)