The ethical dilemma of whether autonomous vehicles should protect the passengers or pedestrians when harm is unavoidable has been widely researched and debated. Several behavioral scientists have sought public opinion on this issue, based on the premise that EDs are critical to resolve for AV adoption. However, many scholars and industry participants have downplayed the importance of these edge cases. Policy makers also advocate a focus on higher level ethical principles rather than on a specific solution to EDs. But conspicuously (...) absent from this debate is the view of the consumers or potential adopters, who will be instrumental to the success of AVs. The current research investigated this issue both from a theoretical standpoint and through empirical research. The literature on innovation adoption and risk perception suggests that EDs will be heavily weighted by potential adopters of AVs. Two studies conducted with a broad sample of consumers verified this assertion. The results from these studies showed that people associated EDs with the highest risk and considered EDs as the most important issue to address as compared to the other technical, legal and ethical issues facing AVs. As such, EDs need to be addressed to ensure robustness in the design of AVs and to assure consumers of the safety of this promising technology. Some preliminary evidence is provided about interventions to resolve the social dilemma in EDs and about the ethical preferences of prospective early adopters of AVs. (shrink)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of key writers within sociology and anthropology criticised much of the existing research on children within the social sciences as 'adultist'. This has subsequently provoked attempts by academics to define new ways of working with , not on or for, children that have been characterised by a desire to define more mutuality between adult and children in research relationships and to identify new ways that researchers can engage with young people. This (...) paper aims to address some of the ethical complexities that this work has generated by focusing on five areas of ethical concern in relation to research with children in the environments of home and school: consent; access and structures of compliance; privacy and confidentiality; methodologies and issues of power; and dissemination and advocacy. While most of these issues are not necessarily unique to working with children, but underlie many research projects, they are refracted in particular ways in child-oriented research because of the unequal relationships of power between adults and children; the way that adults mediate access to children; the legal complexities of children's position as minors; and the particular nature of the environments—school and the parental home—in which researchers usually encounter young people. (shrink)

Why did Plato put his philosophical arguments into dialogues, rather than presenting them in a plain and readily understandable fashion? A group of distinguished scholars here offer answers to this question by studying the relation between form and argument in his late dialogues. These penetrating studies show that the literary structure of the dialogues is of vital importance in the ongoing interpretation of Plato.

This collection of essays explores analogous issues in classical and modern philosophy that relate to the concepts of person and human being. A primary focus is whether there are such analogous issues, and whether we can find in ancient philosophy a notion that is comparable to "person" as understood in modern philosophy. Essays on modern philosophy reappraise the validity of the notion of person, while essays on classical philosophy take up the related questions of what being "human" entails in ancient (...) ethics and psychology, and whether we should regard ourselves as, essentially, human or rational beings. (shrink)

Shaftesbury's philosophy combined a powerfully teleological approach, according to which all things are part of a harmonious cosmic order, with sharp observations of human nature (see section 2 below). Shaftesbury is often credited with originating the moral sense theory, although his own views of virtue are a mixture of rationalism and sentimentalism (section 3). While he argued that virtue leads to happiness (section 4), Shaftesbury was a fierce opponent of psychological and ethical egoism (section 5) and of the egoistic social (...) contract theory of Hobbes (section 6). Shaftesbury advanced a view of aesthetic judgment that was non-egoistic and objectivist, in that he thought that correct aesthetic judgment was disinterested and reflected accurately the harmonious cosmic order (section 7). Shaftesbury's belief in an harmonious cosmic order also dominated his view of religion, which was based on the idea that the universe clearly exhibits signs of perfect divine design (section 8). According to Shaftesbury, the ultimate end of religion, as well as of virtue, beauty, and philosophical understanding (all of which are turn out to be one and the same thing), is to identify completely with the universal system of which one is a part. (shrink)

The scene at the end of the Phaedo, in which Plato describes how Socrates dies by poisoning from hemlock, is moving and impressive. It gives us the sense of witnessing directly an actual event, accurately and vividly described, the death of the historical Socrates. There are, however, certain curious features in the scene, and in the effects of the hemlock on Socrates, as Plato presents them. In the Phaedo hemlock has only one primary effect: it produces first heaviness and then (...) numbness in the body. (shrink)

Dans la première partie duParménide, Socrate présente une théorie des Formes qui explique la comprésence d’opposés dans les choses ordinaires et soutient que les Formes ne peuvent avoir des caractéristiques opposées. Dans la deuxième partie, Parménide s’appuie sur les propos de Socrate; il en dérive des conséquences inacceptables — que la Forme de l’Un n’existe pas, et ainsi, que rien n’existe. Cette conclusion est indéniablement fausse. Pour éviter ceci, Socrate doit abandonner la thèse exposée dans la première partie et trouver (...) une manière de préserver la fonction explicative des Formes. Cet article expose la structure de l’exercice qui occupe la deuxième partie du dialogue. (shrink)

Drawing on interviews with 140 young British males, this article explores the ways in which men talk about their own bodies and bodily practices, and those of other men. The specific focus of interest is a variety of body modification practices. We argue, however, that the significance of this analysis extends beyond the topic of body modification. In discussing the appearance of their bodies, the men we interviewed talked less about muscle and skin than about their own selves located within (...) particular social, cultural and moral universes. This article shows that, in talking about seemingly trivial questions such as whether to have one’s nose pierced or join a gym, men are actively engaged in regulating normative masculinity. Our analysis lends support to the claim that the body has become a new (identity) project in high/late/post-modernity, but shows how fraught with difficulties this project is for young men who must simultaneously work on and discipline their bodies while disavowing any (inappropriate) interest in their own appearance. The analysis highlights the pervasive individualism of young men’s discourses, and the absence of alternative ways of making sense of embodied experiences. (shrink)

This volume of new essays by an international group of scholars examines the response of Hans-Georg Gadamer to Plato, especially to the Philebus. The book studies Gadamer's interpretative approach to the dialogues and unwritten doctrines of Plato. It also shows how, for Gadamer, reading Plato was intimately interconnected with formulating his own philosophical views. The volume also brings out how Gadamer influenced Donald Davidson in his reading of Plato and his philosophical thought. The volume thus explores a fascinating case-study of (...) the creative reception of Plato by two major twentieth-century philosophers, Gadamer and Davidson, while also clarifying Gadamer's relationship to Heidegger. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Plato, especially on the Philebus, and also to scholars of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

What role do general principles play in our moral judgment? This question has been much contested among moral theorists of the last fifteen years. When we turn to the British moralists of the eighteenth century, we find that the same question was equally pressing. In this paper, I show that while many of the British moralists thought that general principles could conclusively determine our moral duties, David Hume and Adam Smith were ambivalent about the role of moral principles, not only (...) giving expression to the common view of principles’ power but also exploring the possibility that principles could not fill the justificatory space typically allotted them. Hume and Smith, I show, constitute fascinating transitional figures in our thinking about the role of general moral principles. (shrink)

The human-centred debate in Britain focuses on the idea of human-machine symbiosis, and the “Dialogue” debate in Scandinavia focuses on the deep understanding of human communication, through a process of inner reflection. Both of these debates provide a framework for the participatory design of AI systems.The emergence of “social Europe” creates the desirability for a sharing of social and cultural knowledge and resources among the citizens of Europe. This raises the possibility of exploiting the potential of new technology for the (...) distribution and transfer of knowledge and skill among the citizens of Europe whilst retaining the diversity of their cultures and languages. These issues of transfer have been the focus of many AI researchers who have been concerned with the design of AI systems for the education, training and welfare of disadvantaged citizens. It is suggested that central to such a transfer is the design of participatory learning systems which focus on the mediation and distribution of knowledge in diverse socio-cultural contexts.In this paper, the SEAKE Centre's projects, especially “Brighton Parosi”, and “Adult Literacy” are discussed to provide an insight into the concepts and practice of designing such participatory systems. The philosophy of these projects was rooted in the sharing of social and cultural experiences, through participatory learning. The development of the projects involved a process of exchange of language and culture in both formal and informal learning environments. For the Parosi Project social interaction was the central core for the exchange of cultural experiences and the language acquisition process. The Adult Literacy project built on the exchange process, and used the idea of the mediation of knowledge for the design of a knowledge based system. The design process developed by the above two projects could be described as a participatory design approach which builds upon and extends the human-machine symbiosis and dialogue approaches. (shrink)

There are themes in Wittgenstein's later work which are extremely radical. By ‘radical’ I mean both that they cut to the very root of crucial philosophical issues, and that they tend to be ignored by the established philosophical positions of the day. More specifically, these themes focus on the understanding of epistemological bedrock, and they lead in directions about which it is difficult to get a hearing in major philosophical circles.

In this paper, we construct a parallel image of the conventional Maxwell theory by replacing the observer-time by the proper-time of the source. This formulation is mathematically, but not physically, equivalent to the conventional form. The change induces a new symmetry group which is distinct from, but closely related to the Lorentz group, and fixes the clock of the source for all observers. The new wave equation contains an additional term (dissipative), which arises instantaneously with acceleration. This shows that the (...) origin of radiation reaction is not the action of a “charge” on itself but arises from inertial resistance to changes in motion. This dissipative term is equivalent to an effective mass so that classical radiation has both a massless and a massive part. Hence, at the local level the theory is one of particles and fields but there is no self-energy divergence (nor any of the other problems). We also show that, for any closed system of particles, there is a global inertial frame and unique (invariant) global proper-time (for each observer) from which to observe the system. This global clock is intrinsically related to the proper clocks of the individual particles and provides a unique definition of simultaneity for all events associated with the system. We suggest that this clock is the historical clock of Horwitz, Piron, and Fanchi. At this level, the theory is of the action-at-a-distance type and the absorption hypothesis of Wheeler and Feynman follows from global conservation of energy. (shrink)

Jasper Griffin, in his recent book on Homer, has suggested that modern critics would do well to pay more attention to the localized insights and the general critical framework of the ancient Greek commentators. In a previous article, ‘Homeric Pathos and Objectivity’, he claimed to show, by careful study of those passages in which the scholiasts found λεος, οκτος or πάθος, that ‘the ancient scholars were right to regard pathos as one of the most important elements in the Iliad’. also (...) think this is a potentially fruitful and underdeveloped approach to the criticism of Homer and other ancient authors; and that the term pathos, together with ēthos, with which it is often coupled or contrasted, is one of the most suggestive, though also confusing, of ancient critical terms. I want to begin the story further back in time than the scholia, in the treatises on rhetoric and poetics from which the scholiasts’ critical vocabulary was largely derived. I propose to survey the use of ēthos and pathos as contrasted terms in these treatises from Aristotle to Longinus, in the hope that such a survey will not only clarify the various meanings and associations attached to these terms but will also throw a more general light on ancient critical presuppositions. Both Aristotle and Longinus used the ethos/pathos distinction to contrast the Odyssey and theIliad; and a clearer understanding of the significance they gave to these words may help us to appraise the critical usefulness of their comments. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between Wittgenstein (both early and late) andWhitehead, specifically regarding the different views of the relationship between language and reality in these two thinkers.

Studies of economic decision-making have revealed the existence of consistent contributors, who always make contributions to the collective good. It is difficult to understand such behavior in terms of mutualistic motives. Furthermore, consistent contributors can elicit apparently altruistic behavior from others. Therefore, although mutualistic motives are likely an important contributor to moral action, there is more to morality than mutualism.

Replacing animal procedures with methods such as cells and tissues in vitro, volunteer studies, physicochemical techniques and computer modelling, is driven by legislative, scientific and moral imperatives. Non‐animal approaches are now considered as advanced methods that can overcome many of the limitations of animal experiments. In testing medicines and chemicals, in vitro assays have spared hundreds of thousands of animals. In contrast, academic animal use continues to rise and the concept of replacement seems less well accepted in university research. Even (...) so, some animal procedures have been replaced in neurological, reproductive and dentistry research and progress is being made in fields such as respiratory illnesses, pain and sepsis. Systematic reviews of the transferability of animal data to the clinical setting may encourage a fresh look for novel non‐animal methods and, as mainstream funding becomes available, more advances in replacement are expected. BioEssays 29:918–926, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This essay argues that the reigning medical and scientific understanding of the endocrine system, which insists on its fundamental biological plasticity, was historically constructed through a dual child–animal metaphor. The work accomplished by such organic metaphors, as Donna Haraway terms them, returns us to the endocrine laboratories and clinics in which they were built in Europe and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The child and animal metaphors implanted the concept of plasticity into the human (...) body to the effect of bringing sexed and gendered life under the jurisdiction of science and medicine, where it could not only be normalized in a sense long appreciated by transgender studies but also cultivated towards the ostensible “improvement” and “perfection” of the human. This is also, then, a history of the eugenic heritage of modern endocrinology, which has been largely ignored in recent discussions of plasticity and the body’s materiality. To interrogate the role of foundational organic metaphors in endocrinology is to open up plasticity not only to its historical context but also to radical contestation, making the contemporary assumptions of transgender medicine untimely, particularly the medicalization of the transgender child. (shrink)

A new, updated third edition of the most successful and widely used textbook on Christian ethics.