In recent years, there has been growing discussion amongst philosophers about “conceptual engineering”. Put roughly, conceptual engineering concerns the assessment and improvement of concepts, or of other devices we use in thought and talk (e.g., words). This often involves attempts to modify our existing concepts (or other representational devices), and/or our practices of using them. This paper explores the relation between conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, where conceptual ethics is taken to encompass normative and evaluative questions about concepts, words, and (...) other broadly “representational” and/or “inferential” devices we use in thought and talk. We take some of the central questions in conceptual ethics to concern which concepts we should use and what words should mean, and why. We put forward a view of conceptual engineering in terms of the following three activities: conceptual ethics, conceptual innovation, and conceptual implementation. On our view, conceptual engineering can be defined in terms of these three activities, but not in a straightforward, Boolean way. Conceptual engineering, we argue, is made up of mereologically complex activities whose parts fall into the categories associated with each of these three different activities. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT reflect, and can potentially perpetuate, social biases in language use. Conceptual engineering aims to revise our concepts to eliminate such bias. We show how machine learning and conceptual engineering can be fruitfully brought together to offer new insights to both conceptual engineers and LLM designers. Specifically, we suggest that LLMs can be used to detect and expose bias in the prototypes associated with concepts, and that LLM de-biasing can serve conceptual engineering projects (...) that aim to revise such conceptual prototypes. At present, these de-biasing techniques primarily involve approaches requiring bespoke interventions based on choices of the algorithm’s designers. Thus, conceptual engineering through de-biasing will include making choices about what kind of normative training an LLM should receive, especially with respect to different notions of bias. This offers a new perspective on what conceptual engineering involves and how it can be implemented. And our conceptual engineering approach also offers insight, to those engaged in LLM de-biasing, into the normative distinctions that are needed for that work. (shrink)

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a (...) practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri’s social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics are branches of philosophy concerned with questions about how to assess and ameliorate our representational devices (such as concepts and words). It's a part of philosophy concerned with questions about which concepts we should use (and why), how concepts can be improved, when concepts should be abandoned, and how proposals for amelioration can be implemented. Central parts of the history of philosophy have engaged with these issues, but the focus of this volume is on applications (...) to work in contemporary philosophy of language and mind, epistemology, gender and race theory, ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophical logic. This is the first volume devoted entirely to conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics. The volume explores the possibilities, benefits, problems, and applications of conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics. It consists of twenty chapters written by leading philosophers. (shrink)

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by 'right' and 'wrong.' Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their (...) understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual's reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about 'oughts' and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming. Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

In today’s society, models of God are challenged to account for more than the postmodern context in which Western Christianity finds itself; they should also consider the reality of religious pluralism. Non-monotheistic religions present a particular challenge to Western theological and philosophical God-modeling because they require a model of Gods. This paper uses an African traditional religion as a case study to problematize the effects of monotheism on philosophical models of God. The desire to uphold the image of a singular (...) God tends to invalidate religious experiences that deviate from a given scientifically-verifiable norm. It also mischaracterizes the concept of divinity in religions that maintain divine multiplicity. That is, scholars of African traditional religions affirm that “polytheism” is not an accurate naming of their traditions; rather these religions affirm a community of gods. I propose a Whiteheadian process model that describes a community of gods that has active interaction with the temporal world. Such a model not only broadens conversations of religious pluralism for Western-trained religious scholars, but also acknowledges the Western context in which many practitioners of African traditional religions live. (shrink)

The complexity of industrial reality, the plurality of legitimate perspectives on risks and the role of emotions in decision-making raise important ethical issues in risk management that are usually overlooked in engineering. Using a questionnaire answered by 200 engineering students from a major engineering school in Canada, the purpose of this study was to assess how their training has influenced their perceptions toward these issues. While our results challenge the stereotypical portrait of the engineer, they also suggest that the (...) current engineering education might fail to empower engineers to engage in ethical risk management. We therefore propose an active-learning method to help in this matter. Carried out through workshops with 34 students in chemical engineering, the effectiveness of this method has been evaluated using group interviews and questionnaires. Our results suggest that such an approach is effective, at least in the short run, to motivate students to engage in ethical risk management and to trigger reflectivity on what it means to be an engineer today. (shrink)

Appropriate language use is essential to ensure inclusion of diverse populations in research. We aimed to identify possible language-related barriers regarding the informed consent process and propose interventions to improve clarity and understanding of pregnant and breastfeeding women participating in research. A cross-sectional qualitative study employing focus group discussions (FGD) was conducted in Uganda from August 2023 to September 2023, involving a diverse group of stakeholders from the community, including community members, research participants, and Community Advisory Board members. 19 FGD (...) comprised adult participants representing at least six different mother tongues (Luganda, Acholi, Runyankole, Runyoro, Lugbara and English). An inductive thematic approach was utilized for data analysis using NVivo version 12 software to identify language factors that influence informed consent. A series of community validation workshops ensured concurrence. At the individual level, language barriers, and low levels of literacy contributed to poor comprehension, thus hindering ability to achieve genuine informed consent. At the health facility level, participants reported that there was use of inappropriate, unclear language including inaccurate translations, with poor and complicated grammar in some consent forms. Participants reported that complex medical terminologies are difficult to translate to local languages. Community members highlighted that social/cultural norms in language use affected cultural perceptions of informed consent. To enhance understanding for individuals without education in science, participants suggested simplification of terminologies and avoidance of complex medical jargon. Researchers should identify participants’ preferred languages and communicate in those languages whenever possible. If researchers are not fluent, trained interpreters should be identified. Informed consent documents must be translated into local languages to ensure participants comprehend the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits. Involving community members during development and translation of these documents can provide valuable insights into local dialects and culturally specific concepts, ensuring that study tools like surveys and consent forms are accurate and respectful. Language barriers influence the informed consent process within communities in Uganda. These can potentially be resolved at individual, health system and community levels. Consideration of locally understandable terms in community-facing study documentation is likely to enhance understanding and could improve research participation, although further studies are needed to assess these. The use of appropriate language ensures that informed consent is genuine in keeping with principles of Good Clinical Practice, and developing a research communication strategy should be part of inclusive research design. (shrink)

In the past few years, calls for integrating ethics modules in engineering curricula have multiplied. Despite this positive trend, a number of issues with these ‘embedded’ programs remains. First, learning goals are underspecified. A second limitation is the conflation of different dimensions under the same banner, in particular confusion between ethics curricula geared towards addressing the ethics of individual conduct and curricula geared towards addressing ethics at the societal level. In this article, we propose a tripartite framework to overcome these (...) difficulties. Our framework analytically decomposes an ethics module into three dimensions. First, there is the ethical dimension, which pertains to the learning goals. Second, there is the moral dimension, which addresses the moral relevance of engineers’ conduct. Finally, there is the political dimension, which scales up issues of moral relevance at the civic level. All in all, our framework has two advantages. First, it provides analytic clarity, i.e. it enables course instructors to locate ethical dilemmas in either the moral or political realm and to make use of the tools and resources from moral and/or political philosophy. Second, it depicts a comprehensive ethical training, which enables students to both reason about moral issues in the abstract, and to socially contextualize potential solutions. (shrink)

Ethics education has become essential in modern engineering. Ethics education in engineering has been increasingly implemented worldwide. It can improve ethical behaviors in technology and engineering design under the guidance of the philosophy of technology. Hence, this study aims to compare China-US engineering ethics education in Sino-Western philosophies of technology by using literature studies, online surveys, observational researches, textual analyses, and comparative methods. In my original theoretical framework and model of input and output for education, six primary variables emerge in (...) the pedagogy: disciplinary statuses, educational goals, instructional contents, didactic models, teaching methods, and edificatory effects. I focus on the similarities and differences of engineering ethics educations between China and the US in Chinese and Western philosophies of technology. In the field of engineering, the US tends toward applied ethics training, whereas China inclines toward practical moral education. The US is the leader, particularly in the amount of money invested and engineering results. China has quickened its pace, focusing specifically on engineering labor input and output. Engineering ethics is a multiplayer game effected at various levels among lower level technicians and engineers, engineering associations, and stockholders; middle ranking engineering ethics education, the ministry of education, the academy of engineering, and the philosophy of technology; and top national and international technological policies. I propose that professional engineering ethics education can play many important roles in reforming engineering social responsibility by international cooperation in societies that are becoming increasingly reliant on engineered devices and systems. Significantly, my proposals contribute to improving engineering ethics education and better-solving engineering ethics issues, thereby maximizing engineering sustainability. (shrink)

Social objects have become common subjects of interest to both social ontologists and conceptual engineers, but up to this point much of the philosophical work from these two fields has surprisingly been done in isolation from each field. I show how these prolific research fields—social ontology, conceptual engineering, and conceptual ethics—can mutually benefit each other through a unifying model I propose called the 2D-CE model that shows the dependence relations between a given concept, its instantiation conditions, and whatever language represents (...) such devices. This model combines a model from social ontology with insights from conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics into a powerful metaphilosophical tool that highlights the role of social agents for metaphysical and metalinguistic explanation. A major benefit of the model is its utility for not only social philosophy, but for other areas of research beyond the social world. (shrink)

In recent years, concerns over the risks posed by artificial intelligence have mounted. In response, international organizations have begun to translate the emerging consensus on the need for ethical AI into concrete international rules and standards. While the path toward effective AI governance faces many challenges, this essay shifts attention to an obstacle that has received little attention so far: the growing illiberal backlash in IOs. Prompted by Poland's recent rejection of a European position on AI due to the document's (...) mention of “gender equality,” we argue that Poland followed a strategy that illiberal actors now regularly employ in IOs. To combat gender norms and women's rights across issue areas, illiberal contesters first identify the progressive language in international documents and then threaten to veto those documents—unless such language is watered down or removed. This spoiling strategy, we argue, may not only lead to the compromising of fundamental human rights norms but may also prevent much needed rules for AI from being adopted altogether. Against this background, we urge scholars and practitioners concerned with AI ethics to pay closer attention to illiberal backlash politics. IOs are emerging as spaces where progressive AI rules and standards are increasingly contested—and where they need to be defended to safeguard fundamental rights in an age of rapid technological change. (shrink)

Prior’s arguments for and against seeing ‘ought’ as a copula and his considerations about normative negation are applied to the case of responsibility judgments. My thesis will be that responsibility judgments, even though often expressed by using the verb ‘to be’, are in fact normative judgments. This is shown by analyzing their negation, which parallels the behavior of ought negation.

BackgroundAs Canadian global health researchers who conducted a qualitative study with adults with and without disabilities in Uganda, we obtained ethics approval from four institutional research ethics boards (two in Canada and two in Uganda). In Canada, research ethics boards and researchers follow the research ethics norms of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2), and the National Guidelines for Research Involving Humans as Research Participants of Uganda (NGRU) in Uganda. The preparation and implementation of (...) this qualitative research raised specific ethical issues related to research participant privacy and the importance of availability and management of financial resources.Main bodyOur field experience highlights three main issues for reflection. First, we demonstrate that, in a global health research context, methodological and logistic adjustments were necessary throughout the research implementation process to ensure the protection of study participants’ privacy, especially that of people with disabilities, despite having followed the prescribed Canadian and Ugandan ethics norms. Data collection and management plans were adapted iteratively based on local realities. Second, securing financial support as a key aspect of financial management was critical to ensure privacy through disability-sensitive data collection strategies. Without adequate funding, the recruitment of research participants based on disability type, sex, and region or the hiring of local sign language interpreters would not have been possible. Third, although the TCPS2 and NGRU underscore the significance of participants’ privacy, none of these normative documents clearly express this issue in the context of global health research and disability, nor broadly discuss the ethical issue related to financial availability and management.ConclusionsConducting research in resource limited settings and with study participants with different needs calls for a nuanced and respectful implementation of research ethics in a global health context. We recommend a greater integration in both the TCPS2 and NGRU of global health research, disability, and responsible conduct of research. This integration should also be accompanied by adequate training which can further guide researchers, be they senior, junior, or students, and funding agencies. (shrink)

The central question of this conference is whether the media can contribute to high quality social dialogue. The prospects for resolving that question positively in the “sound and fury” depend on recovering the idea of truth. At present the news media are lurching along from one crisis to another with an empty centre. We need to articulate a believable concept of truth as communication's master principle. As the norm of healing is to medicine, justice to politics, critical thinking to education, (...) craftsmanship to engineering, and stewardship to business, so truth-telling is the news profession's occupational norm. Truth-telling is the ethical framework that fundamentally reorders the media's professional culture and enables them to enrich social dialogue rather than undermine it.Historically the mainstream press has defined itself in terms of an objectivist worldview. Centred on human rationality and armed with the scientific method, the facts in news have been said to mirror reality. The aim has been true and incontrovertible accounts of a domain separate from human consciousness. In Bertrand Russell's formula, “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact” . In the received view, truth is defined in elementary epistemological terms as accurate representation. News corresponds to context-free neutral algorithms, and ethics is equated with impartiality.The attacks on this misguided view of human knowledge had already originated in Giambattista Vico's fantasia and Wilhelm Dilthey's verstehen in the counter-Enlightenment of the 18th century. They have continued with hermeneutics, critical theory in the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy, Gramsci, and in their own way, Lyotard's denial of master narratives and Derrida's sliding signifiers; until the anti-foundationalism of our own day indicates a crisis in correspondence views of truth. Institutional structures remain Enlightenment-driven, but in principle the tide has turned currently toward restricting objectivism to the territory of mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences. In reporting, objectivity has become increasingly controversial as the working press' professional standard, though it will remain entrenched in our ordinary practices of news production and dissemination until an alternative mission for the press is convincingly formulated.The demise of correspondence views of truth has created a predicament for the notion of truth altogether. However, instead of appealing to coherence versions or abandoning the concept, truth needs to be relocated in the moral sphere. Truth is a problem of axiology rather than epistemology. With the dominant scheme no longer tenable, truth should become the province of ethicists who can reconstruct it as the news media's contribution to social dialogue.When truth is articulated in terms of a moral framework, we can mold its richly textured meaning around the Hebrew emeth , the Greek aletheia . In Serbo-Croatian the true is justified as with plumbline in carpentry. In the powerful wheel imagery of the Buddhist tradition, truth is the immovable axle. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa presumes that sufferings from apartheid can be healed through truthful testimony. In Ghandhi's “satyagrapha,” the power of truth through the human spirit eventually wins over force . Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics contends correctly that a truthful account lays hold of the context, motives, and presuppositions involved .Telling the truth depends on the quality of discernment so that penultimates do not gain ultimacy. Truth means, in other words, to strike gold, to get at “the core, the essence, the nub, the heart of the matter” . For Henry David Thoreau – though addressing a different issue – when we are truthful, we attempt to “drive life into a corner and¼if it proves to be mean, why then to get the genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by personal experience and be able to give a true account of the encounter” . For the former secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, “the most dangerous of all moral dilemmas is when we are obliged to conceal truth in order to help the truth be victorious” . In the Talmud, the liar's punishment is that no one believes him.Augustine , professor of rhetoric at Milan and later Bishop of Hippo, illustrates a non-correspondence view of truth. His rhetorical theory is a major contribution to the philosophy of communication, contradicting the highly secular and linear view of the ancient Greeks. As with Aristotle, rhetoric entails reasoned judgement for Augustine; however, he “break[s] away from Graeco-Roman rhetoric, moving instead toward ¼rhetoric as aletheiac act” . Rhetoric for him is not knowledge-producing or opinion-producing but truth-producing . The Epistolae Doctrina Christiana scourges the value-neutral, technical language of “word merchants” without wisdom.Truth is not fundamentally a prescriptive statement. The aletheiac act in Augustine “tends to be more relational than propositional, a dialogically interpersonal, sacramentally charitable act rather than a statement¼taking into account and being motivated by [the cardinal virtues] faith, hope, and charity” . The truth for him does not merely make things clear, but motivates us to belief and action. In truthful communication for Augustine, “it is not enough to seek to move men's minds, merely for the sake of power; instead, the power to move is to be used to lead men to truth”. (shrink)

Concept formation has recently become a widely discussed topic in philosophy under the headings of “conceptual engineering”, “conceptual ethics”, and “ameliorative analysis”. Much of this work has been inspired either by the method of explication or by ameliorative projects. In the former case, concept formation is usually seen as a tool of the sciences, of formal disciplines, and of philosophy. In the latter case, concept formation is seen as a tool in the service of social progress. While recent philosophical discussions (...) on concept formation have addressed natural sciences such as physics as well as various life sciences, so far there is only little direct engagement with the social sciences. To address this shortcoming is important because many debates about socially relevant concepts such as power, gender, democracy, risk, justice, or rationality, may best be understood as engaging in conceptual engineering. This topical collection addresses the nature and structure of concept formation in the natural, the life, and the social sciences alike, both as a process taking place within science and as an activity that aims at a broader impact in society. This helps to understand how concept formation proceeds not only in the natural sciences but also in disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, political science, sociology and economics. (shrink)

Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining an uncertain high-tech future, but by examining a well-documented past--a history of instruction and media that extends from Gilgamesh to Google. Norm Friesen looks to the combination and reconfiguration of oral, textual, and more recent media forms to understand the longevity of so many educational arrangements and (...) practices. Friesen examines the interrelationship of reading, writing, and pedagogy in the case of the lecture and the textbook--from their premodern to their postmodern incarnations. Over hundreds of years, these two forms have integrated textual, oral, and (more recently) digital media and connected them with changing pedagogical and cultural priorities. The Textbook and the Lecture opens new possibilities for understanding not only mediated pedagogical practices and their reform but also gradual changes in our conceptions of the knowing subject and of knowledge itself. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship in fields as diverse as media ecology and German-language media studies, Foucauldian historiography, and even archaeological research, The Textbook and the Lecture is a fascinating investigation of educational media. (shrink)

The use of role-playing (“active learning”) as a teaching tool has been reported in areas as diverse as social psychology, history and analytical chemistry. Its use as a tool in the teaching of engineering ethics and professionalism is also not new, but the approach develops new perspectives when used in a college class of exceptionally wide cultural diversity. York University is a large urban university (40,000 undergraduates) that draws its enrolment primarily from the Greater Toronto Area, arguably one of the (...) most culturally diverse cities in the world, embracing the largest percentage of Canada’s immigration. Among the area’s five million inhabitants, 50% identify themselves as a visible minority born outside Canada, while over 100 languages and dialects are spoken daily. Although students admitted from this international pool have usually been exposed to western attitudes during secondary education and are rapidly assimilated into Canadian culture, responses to specific ethical issues are strongly influenced by their prior culture. Two and three-part scripts for case studies based on NSF or original scenarios were written to illustrate issues such as gifts, attitudes towards women and ethnic minorities, conflict of interest, whistle-blowing, sexual harassment, individual rights, privacy, environment, intellectual property, and others. Following the presentation, the actors lead group discussion based on previously specified questions. Once the initial shyness and reluctance of some cultures has been overcome through the building of rapport, students have written original scripts based on hypothetical or prior personal situations. The method is now being adopted in a short course format to assist the professional integration of foreign trained engineers. (shrink)

What is the proper content of a course in professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, or medical ethics? Though courses in professional ethics have been present in colleges and universities for decades, the question remains largely unsettled, even among philosophers. This state of affairs helps to sustain and even exacerbate public misconceptions about ethics and professional ethical training in higher education. I argue that the proper content of such courses remains a potential source of confusion because the (...) term ‘ethics’ is ambiguous between philosophical and nonphilosophical forms of normative inquiry into behavior, where the former involves broad, context-sensitive reflection on moral obligation, and the latter involves the narrower analysis and codification of behavioral norms with less sensitivity to context. Failure to distinguish between these two senses of ethics can result in conflicting conceptions of and expectations for training and courses in professional ethics. I sketch some of the specific problems generated by the ambiguity. I conclude by proposing an initial step toward a solution, one which focuses on making more explicit the distinction between courses that aim to teach professional policy and “best practices” and those that encourage genuine philosophical inquiry into morality and the good life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Environmental PhilosophyBen A. Minteer (bio)I think we should be deeply concerned about the future of environmental philosophy. It is the most marginalized of the applied ethics fields (which are often marginalized as a whole within traditional philosophy departments) and with few exceptions, it still has not made significant inroads into neighboring territories—including schools of public policy, natural resources/environment, planning, life sciences, and so on. In my (...) opinion, this is partly due to the general ideological pitch of the field and its narrow methodological orientation, at least historically. The neglect of alternative methods of inquiry, especially qualitative and quantitative work in the social sciences, is particularly troubling.Environmental ethics also has an image problem. In my experience, most natural resource professionals, policy scholars, engineers, and life scientists view our field with considerable skepticism, shaking their heads at what they see as arcane debates that do not touch upon the issues and challenges that motivate their own work. Many of our colleagues in the natural and environmental social sciences, for example, have little patience for the kind of metaethical discussions about intrinsic value, moral pluralism, etc., that have captured much of our attention in the past. They do not see what these kinds of arguments contribute to the scientific, policy, and management curricula, or what they add to their graduate students' training, or to their own research proposals. Typically, if a role for an environmental ethicist is recognized in such settings, it is often just to plug a personnel hole in an National Science Foundation proposal or to serve as a third or fourth reader on a graduate studies committee. Environmental ethics is at best an elective pursuit, it is not seen as essential.I'll be the first to admit that I have blood on my hands here (as do all of us, at least to the extent we have spent time and energy on debates over metaphilosophical issues in the field). And, of course, just because our environmental science and policy colleagues often do not see the true value of the field does not mean that it has no value. Still, I worry that the field seems to be falling into the chasm between traditional philosophy departments and environmental science, policy, and management programs. It is frequently deemed too applied and practical by many [End Page 132] philosophy departments, and too esoteric for schools of public policy, life sciences, and so on. This is not a good situation.How can we fix the image problem? Perhaps one approach would be to develop more solid links with our bioethics cousins (both philosophically and institutionally). There is a revealing story here about the different fortunes of bio- and environmental ethics, and I think we might learn from the success of the former. There will be barriers to such an alliance, however, some of which are intellectual (e.g., the rejection of conventional ethical categories and theories by many environmental ethicists is not shared by most bioethicists) while others are institutional (e.g., What practical shape would a "clinical" model of environmental ethics take? What is the market for this service? and so on).Another route would be to provide more organized and systematic attention to emerging, large-scale environmental science and policy issues—climate change, sustainability, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity loss, to name a few—that are (unfortunately, given their seriousness) viewed as "growth areas" in environmental science and policy studies. At my own institution (Arizona State University) we are moving away from an older departmental and disciplinary model to a more integrative institutional form and a transdisciplinary research culture. So, for example, we have a new school of global studies, a new school of sustainability, and so on. These are composed of a range of disciplines cutting across the natural, technical, and social sciences. There is certainly room in these initiatives and programs for a practical and progressive environmental ethics, but it must be conversant in subjects such as intergenerational equity, conservation science, economic valuation, environmental justice, and the normative dimensions of environmental science policy. I think there is an important role for us to play in these sorts of endeavors (which are popping... (shrink)

The use of role-playing (“active learning”) as a teaching tool has been reported in areas as diverse as social psychology, history and analytical chemistry. Its use as a tool in the teaching of engineering ethics and professionalism is also not new, but the approach develops new perspectives when used in a college class of exceptionally wide cultural diversity. York University is a large urban university (40,000 undergraduates) that draws its enrolment primarily from the Greater Toronto Area, arguably one of the (...) most culturally diverse cities in the world, embracing the largest percentage of Canada’s immigration. Among the area’s five million inhabitants, 50% identify themselves as a visible minority born outside Canada, while over 100 languages and dialects are spoken daily. Although students admitted from this international pool have usually been exposed to western attitudes during secondary education and are rapidly assimilated into Canadian culture, responses to specific ethical issues are strongly influenced by their prior culture. Two and three-part scripts for case studies based on NSF or original scenarios were written to illustrate issues such as gifts, attitudes towards women and ethnic minorities, conflict of interest, whistle-blowing, sexual harassment, individual rights, privacy, environment, intellectual property, and others. Following the presentation, the actors lead group discussion based on previously specified questions. Once the initial shyness and reluctance of some cultures has been overcome through the building of rapport, students have written original scripts based on hypothetical or prior personal situations. The method is now being adopted in a short course format to assist the professional integration of foreign trained engineers. (shrink)

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of (...) their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR. (shrink)

Philosophy of language, according to Hare, contributes significantly to ethics, because it provides a logical structure for moral thinking. Referring to J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Hare distinguishes two kinds or genera of speech acts, the descriptive and the prescriptive; and he also discusses Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Moral judgements, e.g. those judgements expressed by ‘ought’, are prescriptive speech acts, but they also have a descriptive meaning. This is because moral judgements share with normative judgements (...) the logical feature Hare calls universalizability. Alongside prescriptivity and universalizability, a third element of Hare's account of moral judgement is the identification of one's will with that of another moral agent's will in hypothetical situations. (shrink)

In his classic work on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Erik Stenius described Wittgenstein’s study as a critique of pure language, thus pointing to a connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and Kant’s critique of pure reason. Besides similarities, there also seems be important differences between the two philosophers. In Kant’s critique, one discerns a subject who does something, namely, constructs the world of experience, while Wittgenstein draws a picture in which neither an agent nor an act is visible. Like Kant and Wittgenstein, contemporary normative (...) theories of assertion are also interested in limits, although in limits set to assertions. They appear to pay special attention to the one who asserts and to the act of asserting. This paper is an effort to search for the traces of normative theories of assertion in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus by focusing on the one who uses language and on the limits of that use. It is shown that both in Wittgenstein and in normative theories of assertion, there is an important ethical dimension, which, however, plays different roles in the two approaches. It is argued that despite the differences in the ways of construing the limits of language, Tractatus and normative theories of assertion share similar ethical concerns. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

We live in a time of moral confusion: many believe there are no overarching moral norms, and we have lost an accepted body of moral knowledge. Alasdair MacIntyre addresses this problem in his much-heralded restatement of Aristotelian and Thomistic virtue ethics; Stanley Hauerwas does so through his highly influential work in Christian ethics. Both recast virtue ethics in light of their interpretations of the later Wittgenstein's views of language. This book systematically assesses the underlying presuppositions of MacIntyre and Hauerwas, (...) finding that their attempts to secure moral knowledge and restate virtue ethics, both philosophical and theological, fail. Scott Smith proposes alternative indications as to how we can secure moral knowledge, and how we should proceed in virtue ethics. (shrink)

The use of Big Data—however the term is defined—involves a wide array of issues and stakeholders, thereby increasing numbers of complex decisions around issues including data acquisition, use, and sharing. Big Data is becoming a significant component of practice in an ever-increasing range of disciplines; however, since it is not a coherent “discipline” itself, specific codes of conduct for Big Data users and researchers do not exist. While many institutions have created, or will create, training opportunities to prepare people (...) to work in and around Big Data, insufficient time, space, and thought have been dedicated to training these people to engage with the ethical, legal, and social issues in this new domain. Since Big Data practitioners come from, and work in, diverse contexts, neither a relevant professional code of conduct nor specific formal ethics training are likely to be readily available. This normative paper describes an approach to conceptualizing ethical reasoning and integrating it into training for Big Data use and research. Our approach is based on a published framework that emphasizes ethical reasoning rather than topical knowledge. We describe the formation of professional community norms from two key disciplines that contribute to the emergent field of Big Data: computer science and statistics. Historical analogies from these professions suggest strategies for introducing trainees and orienting practitioners both to ethical reasoning and to a code of professional conduct itself. We include two semester course syllabi to strengthen our thesis that codes of conduct can be harnessed to support the development of ethical reasoning in, and a sense of professional identity among, Big Data practitioners. (shrink)

There is growing need for hybrid curricula that integrate constructivist methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS) into both engineering and policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, institutional and disciplinary barriers have made implementing such curricula difficult at many institutions. While several programs have recently been launched that mix technical training with consideration of “societal” or “ethical issues,” these programs often lack a constructivist element, leaving newly-minted practitioners entering practical fields ill-equipped to unpack the politics of (...) knowledge and technology or engage with skeptical publics. This paper presents a novel format for designing interdisciplinary coursework that combines conceptual content from STS with training in engineering and policy. Courses following this format would ideally be team taught by instructors with advanced training in diverse fields, and hence co-learning between instructors and disciplines is a key element of the format. Several instruments for facilitating both student and instructor collaborative learning are introduced. The format is also designed for versatility: in addition to being adaptable to both technical and policy training environments, topics are modularized around a conceptual core so that issues ranging from biotech to nuclear security can be incorporated to fit programmatic needs and resources. (shrink)

Jennifer Nado has recently argued that conceptual engineers should focus on (re-)designing representations and may safely ignore issues of implementation. I make a general case for the methodological importance of implementation to conceptual engineering. Using the Social Norms Account as a foil, I argue for three claims. (1) Inquiring into methods of implementation is a theoretically challenging and philosophically worthwhile project in and of itself. (2) A sound theoretical understanding of implementation is imperative for theorists of conceptual engineering. It (...) proves vital for their assessment of the prospects for engineering interventions and the political risks inherent in them. (3) A sound theoretical understanding of implementation is imperative for practitioners of conceptual engineering. The usefulness of their representational (re-)designs depends on respecting broadly cognitive and social constraints on the part of the target population. I conclude that conceptual engineers have very good reasons to seriously engage with issues of implementation. (shrink)

Can normative words like "good," "ought," and "reason" be defined in non-normative terms? Stephen Finlay argues that they can, advancing a new theory of the meaning of this language and providing pragmatic explanations of the specially problematic features of its moral and deliberative uses which comprise the puzzles of metaethics.

It is crucial for engineers to anticipate the socio-ethical impacts of emerging technologies. Such acts of anticipation are thoroughly normative and should be cultivated in engineering ethics education. In this paper we ask: ‘ how do we anticipate the socio-ethical implications of emerging technologies responsibly? ’ And ‘ how can such responsible anticipation be taught? ’ We o ff er a conceptual answer, building upon the framework of Responsible Innovation and its four core practices: anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness. We (...) forge a more explicit link between the practices of anticipation, reflexivity, and inclusion, while also enriching them with insights from disability studies, STS, design theory, and philosophy. On this basis we present responsible anticipation as an activity of reflective problem framing grounded in epistemic humility. Via the RI-practice of responsiveness we present responsible anticipation as a creative approach to engineering ethics, offering engineering students a critical yet productive perspective on how ethics may inform innovation. (shrink)

This volume sets out to discuss the role of norms and normativity in both language and linguistics from a multiplicity of perspectives. These concepts are centrally important to the philosophy and methodology of linguistics, and their role and nature need to be investigated in detail. The chapters address a range of issues from general questions about ontology, epistemology and methodology to aspects of particular subfields (such as semantics and historical linguistics) or phenomena (such as construal and code-switching). The volume (...) aims to further our understanding of language and linguistics as well as to encourage further discussion on the metatheory of linguistics. Due to the fundamental nature of the issues under discussion, this volume will be of interest to all linguists regardless of their background or fields of expertise and to philosophers concerned with language or other normative domains. (shrink)

Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations in (...) real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice. (shrink)

This volume, the result of an ongoing bridge building effort among engineers and humanists, addresses a variety of philosophical, ethical, and policy issues emanating from engineering and technology. Interwoven through its chapters are two themes, often held in tension with one another: “Exploring Boundaries” and “Expanding Connections.” “Expanding Connections” highlights contributions that look to philosophy for insight into some of the challenges engineers face in working with policy makers, lay designers, and other members of the public. It also speaks to (...) reflections included in this volume on the connections between fact and value, reason and emotion, engineering practice and the social good, and, of course, between engineering and philosophy. “Exploring Boundaries” highlights contributions that focus on some type of demarcation. Public policy sets a boundary between what is regulated from what is not, academic disciplines delimit themselves by their subjects and methods of inquiry, and professions approach problems with unique goals and by using concepts and language in particular ways that create potential obstacles to collaboration with other fields. These and other forms of boundary setting are also addressed in this volume. Contributors explore these two themes in a variety of specific contexts, including engineering epistemology, engineers’ social responsibilities, engineering and public policy-making, engineering innovation, and the affective dimensions of engineering work. The book also includes analyses of social and ethical issues with emerging technologies such as 3-D printing and its use in medical applications, as well as social robots. Initial versions of the invited papers included in this book were first presented at the 2014 meeting of the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. The volume furthers fPET’s intent of extending and developing the philosophy of engineering as an academic field, and encouraging conversation, promoting a sense of shared enterprise, and building community among philosophers and engineers across a diversity of cultural backgrounds and approaches to inquiry. (shrink)

In March 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that humanity was entering a global pandemic phase. This unforeseen situation caught everyone unprepared and had a major impact on several professional categories that found themselves facing important ethical dilemmas. The article revolves around the category of biomedical and clinical engineers, which were among those most involved in dealing with and finding solutions to the pandemic. In hindsight, the major issues brought to the attention of biomedical engineers have raised important ethical (...) implications, such as the allocation of resources, the responsibilities of science and the inadequacy and non-universality of the norms and regulations on biomedical devices and personal protective equipment. These issues, analyzed one year after the first wave of the pandemic, come together in the appeal for responsibility for thought, action and, sometimes, even silence. This highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity and the definitive collapse of the Cartesian fragmentation of knowledge, calling for the creation of more fora, where this kind of discussions can be promoted. (shrink)

Engineering, as a complex and multidimensional practice of technology development, has long been a source of ethical concerns. These concerns have been approached from various perspectives. There are ongoing debates in the literature of the philosophy of engineering/technology about how to organize an optimized view of the values entailed in technology development processes. However, these debates deliver little in the way of a concrete rationale or framework that could comprehensively describe different types of engineering values and their multi-aspect interrelations in (...) real engineering practices. Approaching engineering values from a meaning-based perspective, as in this paper, can be a reliable method of tackling such a controversial problem. This paper therefore proposes that technology development be considered a systemic normative practice and attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various built-in values, their different origins and features, and a way of prioritizing them in real engineering processes. Studying two cases of the Zayandeh Rood Dam and the Abbasi Dam will lead to practical insights into how to understand norms in technology development and incorporate them into engineering practice. (shrink)

This survey was conducted in 2017 to investigate factors influencing social risk perception of biotechnologists and plant breeders in training toward GM food based on a conceptual model. A random sample of 210 biotechnologists and plant breeders in training was studied. Confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability tests have been used to verify the uni-dimensionality of the measurement scale, SEM also was carried out to determine the most parsimonious models with the best fit for social risk perception of (...) GM foods and path analysis was conducted to understand the exogenous variables introduced in the research model. The findings revealed that the engineers in training had moderate social risk perception regarding GM foods. Moreover, the results of structural equation modeling showed the capability of the model in predicting the social risk perceptions of engineers in training. The psychological attributes of risks, social benefit perception, attitude toward using technology, level of religiosity, and moral and ethical beliefs emerged as the most powerful predictors of the social risk perception. The social benefit perception and attitude toward using technology also mediated the effects of psychological attributes of risks, level of religiosity, and moral and ethical beliefs. The social benefit perception also had an indirect influence on the engineers in training’s social risk perception of GM foods. Finally, we recommend the application of the model developed by this study for better understanding of social risk perception of stakeholders to have a more informed view of the development and promotion of GM foods. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the design, evaluation and implementation of concepts. Despite its popularity, some have argued that the methodology is not worthwhile, because the implementation of new concepts is both inscrutable and beyond our control. In the recent literature we see different responses to this worry. Some have argued that it is for political reasons just as well that implementation is such a difficult task, while others have challenged the metasemantic and social assumptions that underlie this skepticism about implementation. In (...) this paper, I argue that even if implementation is as difficult as critics maintain, there is at least one context in which conceptual engineering is extremely impactful and demonstrably so: the design of new technology. Different conceptions of control, freedom, trust, etc. lead to different designs and implementations of systems that are built to embed those concepts. This means that if we want to design for control, freedom, trust, etc., we have to decide which conception we ought to use. When we determine what the appropriate conception of a concept is in a technological context and use this conception to operationalize a norm or value, we generate requirements which have real-world effects. This not only shows that conceptual engineering can be extremely impactful, the fact that it leads to different design requirements means that we have a way to evaluate our conceptual choices and that we can use this feedback loop to improve upon our conceptual work By illustrating the direct impacts of different conceptions on technology design, this paper underscores the practical applicability and value of conceptual engineering, demonstrating how it serves as a crucial bridge between abstract philosophical analysis and concrete technological innovation. (shrink)

This paper is a prolegomenon to an ethics of conceptual engineering. Ethics is construed as primarily concerned with reasons for action, not belief, and it is argued that most such reasons are to be understood in terms of their connection with well-being. In the case of conceptual engineering, this is the well-being of the engineer and of others. There are alethic reasons for conceptual engineering, but they are derivative, as are many of the philosophical norms applying within conceptual engineering (...) itself, such as parsimony and respect for the history of a concept. There are moral reasons for conceptual engineering, and practical wisdom will be a core virtue for conceptual engineers. Reaching agreement should be a key aim of conceptual engineers, and this is likely to be achieved most effectively by philosophers working together in research groups in close collaboration with other groups. The largely isolationist model dominant in contemporary philosophy itself needs engineering. (shrink)

This thesis explores the ethical challenges that a potential research program for solar climate engineering via Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) could incur. These ethical challenges are comprised of epistemic hurdles in relation to the research process, as well as societal questions of justice and the value of nature. The thesis proposes a variety of tools and approaches to assess and possibly govern the risks and uncertainties invoked by the research of SAI and its societal implications. The methodological approach is based (...) mainly on ethical and philosophical analysis and reflection and the main findings take the form of discursive argumentation and normative reflection. (shrink)

Normative Ethical theory underwent a period of refinement in some areas and proliferation in others during the 20th century. Theories prominent in the 19th century, such as Utilitarianism, underwent refinement in light of criticisms; other approaches, such as normative intuitionism and virtue ethics, were developed in new directions, ones that reflected the sophistication of analytical techniques developed by philosophers in the 20th century, particularly in ordinary language philosophy. The middle of the 20th century was marked by an interest in conceptual (...) analysis and what could be revealed about our concepts in the analysis of ‘ordinary’ language appeals to those concepts. For example, Gilbert Ryle argued that the hope of clearing up our concepts via formalizing them was futile, and instead the task of philosophy was to clear up confusions present in the ordinary use of concepts, concepts employed by ordinary people as well as specialists in a given area. Normative ethicists in the very early part of the 20th century had not yet adopted a ‘scientizing’ attitude to philosophy. They believed, for example, that one could rely on intuition in formulating ethical theories.1 Theorists in the early part of the century were also optimistic about the prospects of systematizing normative ethics in a way that would be faithful to our common sense normative judgments. This began, largely, with a critical look at Utilitarianism. (shrink)

Traditional engineering courses typically approach teaching and problem solving by focusing on the physical dimensions of those problems without consideration of dynamic social and ethical dimensions. As such, projects can fail to consider human rights, community questions and concerns, broader impacts upon society, or otherwise result in inequitable outcomes. And, despite the fact that students in engineering receive training on the Professional Code of Ethics for Engineers, to which they are expected to adhere in practice, many students are unable (...) to recognize and analyze real-life ethical challenges as they arise. Indeed, research has found that students are typically less engaged with ethics—defined as the sensitivity and judgment of microethics and macroethics, sensitivity to diversity, and interest in promoting organizational ethical culture—at the end of their engineering studies than they were at the beginning. As such, many studies have focused on developing and improving the curriculum surrounding ethics through, for instance, exposing students to ethics case studies. However, such ethics courses often present a narrow and simplified view of ethics that students may struggle to integrate with their broader experience as engineers. Thus, there is a critical need to unpack the complexity of ethical behavior amongst engineering students in order to determine how to better foster ethical judgment and behavior. Promoting ethical behavior among engineering students and developing a culture of ethical behavior within institutions have become goals of many engineering programs. Towards this goal, we would like to present an overview of the current scholarship of engineering ethics and propose a theoretical framework of ethical behavior using a review of articles related to engineering ethics from 1997-2020. The review engages in theories across disciplines including philosophy, education, and psychology. In this work-in-progress paper, we present a subset of initial results based on a review of the first 50 articles out of the systematically selected 409 articles from Springer, Engineering Village, and EBSCO-Education Full Text. Preliminary results identify two major kinds of drivers of ethical behavior, namely individual level ethical behavior drivers and institutional drivers. Our preliminary results indicate that a sensitivity to both microethics and macroethics as well as the implicit and explicit understanding of ethics are essential in promoting ethical behavior amongst students. Furthermore, while drivers of ethical behavior at the individual level is important, one should not ignore the roles of the drivers of ethical behavior at the institutional level in promoting a collective ethical culture within organizations. The review also points to a need to focus on increasing students’ macroethical sensitivity to topics such as sustainability and protection of human rights. This research thus addresses the need, driven by existing scholarship, 2 to identify a conceptual framework for explaining how ethical judgment and behavior in engineering can be further promoted. (shrink)

Emotions are part of our culture ; particular emotions like resentment andguilt are part of specific cultural heritages. On the other hand, moral judgementsand imperatives have the appearance of objectivity. There lies - or so it seems -a conflict, even a contradiction. Statements like "Slavery is unjust" may beasserted, agreements may be reached concerning what they claim or express,and they may occur as antecedents in conditionals such as "If slavery is unjust,then it must be abolished". When it is claimed that (...) slavery is unjust or that it iswrong to harm others, it is thereby claimed that it is so objectively. We mean bythis (among other things) that it is so independently of the moral emotionsanyone may feel with respect to slavery or the infliction of pain.It will be argued here that there are grounds to believe that emotions must beevaluated cognitively and that they do have cognitive significance, value andcontent. In this cognitive or quasi-cognitive perspective, the appropriatecharacter of an emotion is akin to the truth of a proposition : just as the truth of aproposition may be evaluated in terms of the justifications we are able toprovide in its favour, the correctness of emotions may be evaluated relatively tocognitive bases and classes of available warrants. Some emotions may be ruledout as incorrect or inapproriate, just as some propositions may be rejected asunjustified or in need of a warrant. The parallel relies on the controversial notionof non-propositional forms of moral justification. The notion may be construedin a variety of ways, the most promising construals being, I believe, thoseprovided by the perceptual model.I shall focus on the following point. Moral judgements and imperatives areexpressed with the usual resources of natural languages. These typically includepredicates like "unjust" and "wrong", and deontic sentential operators like"must" and "should". Moral emotions, on the other hand, may be expressed bybodily movements and facial expressions. Although it may be argued thatemotions do not bear the cognitive marks of objectivity when expressed in thisway, there is no reason to think that a reformed language of ethics, i.e. a purelanguage of emotions, free of all the linguistic or symbolic marks of truth,assertability and objectivity, would thereby be free of normative input, or evenbe inadequate to express normative claims. I shall argue that once nonpropositionalforms of justifications are taken into account, the reformingstrategy of emotivists and neo-emotivists is indeed ineffective. (shrink)

The present study, a result of exploratory qualitative field research roughly made between 2018 and 2022 is concerned with critical remembering (revisiting or revising) of the past in the indigenous philosophical traditions of Ethics of the Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage peoples of Ethiopia. Consequently, using a critical hermeneutics interpretation of the notion of ‘remembering’ found to be depicted in two Ethiopian aphorisms: kan darbe yaadatani, issa gara fuula dura itti yaaddu (in remembering the past, the future is remembered) and/or yȅhuwǝlaw (...) kǝlele yȁlam yȁfitu (the future cannot exist without the past), as a normative analytical guide, the present study sought to achieve two major and highly interrelated objectives. The first objective is to make a critical rediscovery, and/or remembering of the moral and humanistic foundations and features of Ethiopian indigenous ethics by taking anecdotes from the ethical thinking and moral languages of the Oromo, Amhara, and the Gurage people. The second objective seeks to determine whether these living Ethiopian indigenous philosophical traditions, if examined in terms of the “remembered future,” could reveal some emancipatory ‘surplus meanings and/or principles’ and might in turn provide answers to some of the essential questions of inter-cultural dialogue, peacebuilding and democracy in Ethiopia. The study found out that, the indigenous moral values in the study areas are complex and largely connected to humanness (the strong quality of human beings), cooperation, a healthy sense of community, generosity, and respect for others, which are highly meaningful in the above regards, i.e., intercultural dialogue for peacebuilding in the country. (shrink)

By a logical theory I mean a formal system together with its semantics, meta-theory, and rules for translating ordinary language into its notation. Logical theories can be used descriptively (for example, to represent particular arguments or to depict the logical form of certain sentences). Here the logician uses the usual methods of empirical science to assess the correctness of his descriptions. However, the most important applications of logical theories are normative, and here, I argue, the epistemology is that of wide (...) reflective equilibrium. The result is that logic not only assesses our inferential practice but also changes it. I tie my discussion to Thagard's views concerning the relationship between psychology and logic, arguing against him that psychology has and should have only a peripheral role in normative (and most descriptive) applications of logic. (shrink)

Contemporary engineering education recognises the need for engineering ethics content in undergraduate programmes to extend beyond concepts that form the basis of professional codes to consider relationality and context of engineering practice. Yet there is debate on how this might be done, and we argue that the design and pedagogy for engineering ethics has to consider what and to whom ethics is taught in a particular context. Our interest is in the possibilities and challenges of pursuing the dual imperatives of (...) socialization and critique. Socialization involves creating opportunities for all, in a diverse cohort of students, to access and engage with the dominant professional engineering ethics knowledge, while critique involves engaging with a range of ways of knowing, valuing, being and using language as relevant in contemporary engineering practice. We identify conceptual tools from engineering ethics and ethical pedagogy in education scholarship for our context. We illustrate how we use these tools systematically to strengthen our reflective practice in a first-year university engineering ethics module to a deeper form of reflexivity. Specifically, we explore the ways in which we attend to the dual imperatives and also highlight opportunities that we miss. We identify as key opportunities design choices such as how we formulated questions and prompts, and how we attended to content, context and language in selecting classroom texts. Other key opportunities were pedagogical choices of when and how to use student contributions in discussion, and what was made explicit in the classroom and assessment. We share our plans to take our learnings forward in our practice and consider the generative possibilities of these learnings and the concepts in other contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores, from a phenomenological perspective, the conditions necessary for the possession of intentional content, i.e., for being intentionally directed toward the world. It argues that Levinas's concept of ethics as first philosophy makes an important contribution to this task. Intentional directedness, as understood here, is normatively structured. Levinas's ‘ethics’ can be understood as a phenomenological account of how our experience of the other subject as another subject takes place in the recognition of the normative force of a command. (...) This supplies a condition that—as the paper shows by examining Husserl and Sartre on how our experience of the Other constitutes an ‘objective’ world—earlier phenomenologists have misunderstood, because they have treated ethical experience as ‘founded’ on a prior theory of representation (‘ontology’ in Levinas's language). Ethics is first philosophy because it is only by acknowledging the command in the ‘face’ of the Other that we can account for the sensitivity to the normative distinctions that structure intentional content. Throughout, the paper shows how Levinas's analyses, in Totality and Infinity, draw upon and develop the analyses of Husserl and Sartre. (shrink)

Mazisgives us a new reading of Merleau-Ponty’s overall writings, a monumental work of vast scope with an original thematic reading of Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Its overall structure is revealed by its subtitle: elucidating the depth of silence, taking it as normative for ethics, reformulating perception as imaginal, concluding with a poetics of philosophy. The book offers us a Merleau-Ponteanethics of “felt solidarity” and “lateral unity” through developing a sharp opposition between the ethics of Merleau-Ponty and Levinasregarding the “face” and the face-to-face, (...) and a new understanding of the inspiration Merleau-Ponty received from the novels of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.By “face of the world,” Mazismeans to highlight the “physiognomic character” of perception, which means perceiving the overall form or shape of things that is suggestive and invites further attention. Merleau-Ponty’s French term, translated as “face,” is the word figure. In other words, to speak of the “face of the world” is new way of speaking of the “flesh of the world,”with a particularly poignant ethical edge about attentiveness and respect.Ultimately, what is at stake is the whole way of entering into and conducting the philosophical enterprise. Philosophy requires a qualitative language to articulate a qualitative world. This is poetic language and poetic phenomenology. This work commands our attention in a world that is increasingly “face blind” to the expressiveness of the world, not only of persons, but also of other living organisms, even the physiognomy of institutions and nature itself.Mazis nous offre une nouvelle lecture de l’oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty. Il s’agit d’un ouvrage monumental et ambitieux offrant une lecture originale de la pensée merleau-pontienne. La structure d’ensemble s’annonce dans le sous-titre : éclairer la profondeur du silence, l’assumer en tant que norme pour une éthique, reformuler la perception en tant qu’imaginale, conclure avec une poétique de la philosophie. Le livre esquisse ainsi une éthique merleau-pontienne de la « solidarité sentie » et de l’« unité latérale » en développant une opposition nette entre l’éthique de Merleau-Ponty et de Levinas, par rapport à la question du « visage » et du « face-à-face », ainsi qu’une nouvelle compréhension de l’inspiration que Merleau-Ponty a reçu des romans d’Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.Par « visage du monde », Mazis nomme le « caractère physionomique » de la perception, c’est-à-dire le fait de percevoir l’ensemble ou la forme des choses en tant qu’elle est allusive et nous invite à une attention ultérieure. Mazis traduit ainsi le terme figure. Parler d’un « visage du monde » est une manière nouvelle pour parler d’une « chair du monde », avec une insistance particulière sur l’attention et le respect. Enfin, ce qui est en jeu est un nouveau moyen d’entrer et de conduire l’entreprise philosophique. La philosophie demande un langage qualitatif afin de pouvoir articuler un monde qualitatif : un langage poétique et une phénoménologie poétique. Un tel travail demande notre attention par rapport à un monde qui est en train de devenir de plus en plus insensible vis-à-vis de l’expressivité du monde, non seulement des personnes, mais aussi des autres organismes vivants, de la physionomie des institutions et de la nature elle-même.Mazis offre una nuova lettura degli scritti di Merleau-Ponty nel loro complesso, in un lavoro monumentale e dall’orizzonte ampio che ripercorre il pensiero del filosofo secondo un taglio tematico originale. La struttura globale dell’opera si annuncia nel suo sottotitolo: essa esplora la profondità del silenzio, assume quest’ultimo come normativo in termini etici, riformula la percezione come immaginale, e si conclude con una poetica della filosofia. Il libro tratteggia un’etica merleau-pontiana della “solidarietà percepita” e dell’“unità laterale” che viene ricostruita attraverso una contrapposizione netta tra l’etica di Merleau-Ponty e quella di Lévinas in riferimento al “volto” e al “faccia a faccia con l’altro”; offre inoltre un’interpretazione nuova degli spunti ricavati da Merleau-Ponty dai romanzi di Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.Attraverso la formula “volto del mondo”, Mazis intende evidenziare il “carattere fisiognomico” della percezione, che significa percepire i contorni o la forma complessiva delle cose in quanto suggestiva e in grado di suscitare l’attenzione. Il termine francese di Merleau-Ponty tradotto come “volto” è figure. In altri termini, parlare di “volto del mondo” è un nuovo modo per riferirsi alla “carne del mondo”, con un richiamo etico particolarmente marcato al riguardo e al rispetto.In ultima analisi, ciò che è in gioco è un modo completamente nuovo di accedere e imprimere una direzione all’impresa della filosofia. Questa richiede un linguaggio qualitativo per articolare un mondo qualitativo. Ovvero un linguaggio poetico e una fenomenologia poetica. Questo volume si impone alla nostra attenzione in un mondo sempre più affetto da “cecità” nei confronti del volto e dunque sempre più insensibile all’espressività del mondo, non soltanto nei confronti delle persone, ma anche degli organismi viventi e persino della fisiognomica delle istituzioni e della natura stessa. (shrink)