Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Powering Justice: Sketches For A New Ethos In Energy Policy, Erin Rizzato Devlin

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Energy politics lie at the heart of human activity. In a time of ecological and energy crisis, it is fundamental to realise that our reality systems are always open to change and that, in order to respond to the challenges of a changing energy landscape, we must explore the full possibilities of technology in a radical way. This research aims to consider the ethical implications of energy and technology, presenting an urgent case for cosmotechnical pluralism, that is the diversification of world-views, knowledges, technologies in the pursuit of energy justice in global politics. To reconstruct the world and its politics …

Murder On The Vr Express: Studying The Impact Of Thought Experiments At A Distance In Virtual Reality, Andrew Kissel, Krzysztof J. Rechowicz, John B. Shull

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hypothetical thought experiments allow researchers to gain insights into widespread moral intuitions and provide opportunities for individuals to explore their moral commitments. Previous thought experiment studies in virtual reality (VR) required participants to come to an on-site laboratory, which possibly restricted the study population, introduced an observer effect, and made internal reflection on the participants’ part more difficult. These shortcomings are particularly crucial today, as results from such studies are increasingly impacting the development of artificial intelligence systems, self-driving cars, and other technologies. This paper explores the viability of deploying thought experiments in commercially available in-home VR headsets. We conducted …

Unraveling Controversies Over Civic Honesty Measurement: An Extended Field Replication In China, Qian Yang, Weiwei Zhang, Shiyong Liu, Wenjin Gong, Youli Han, Jun Lu, Donghong Jiang, Jingchun Nie, Xiaokang Lyu, Rugang Liu, Mingli Jiao, Chen Qu, Mingji Zhang, Yacheng Sun, Xinyue Zhou, Qi Zhang

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Cohn et al. (2019) conducted a wallet drop experiment in 40 countries to measure "civic honesty around the globe," which has received worldwide attention but also sparked controversies over using the email response rate as the sole metric of civic honesty. Relying on the lone measurement may overlook cultural differences in behaviors that demonstrate civic honesty. To investigate this issue, we conducted an extended replication study in China, utilizing email response and wallet recovery to assess civic honesty. We found a significantly higher level of civic honesty in China, as measured by the wallet recovery rate, than reported in the …

Reply To Tannenbaum Et Al.: Constructive Dialogue Advancing Research On Civic Honesty, Weiwei Zhang, Yacheng Sun, Shiyong Liu, Xinyue Zhou, Qian Yang, Qi Zhang

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Abraham Lincoln: Thoughts On Slavery And Racial Equality, Abraham Scofield

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Looking at the political thought of Abraham Lincoln, two major themes arise: slavery and racial equality. Development of his thought on these subjects spanned his entire life and is revealed through his speeches, public statements, and written works. With the sheer amount of thought that Lincoln dedicated to these subjects, it can be difficult to decipher where he truly stood on these issues. To come to a more concrete understanding of Lincoln’s thought regarding these subjects, this article offers multiple interpretations of each of these themes. Concerning Lincoln’s thought on slavery, three interpretations arise: the Anti-Expansion interpretation, the Moral Opposition …

African Environmental Ethics: Keys To Sustainable Development Through Agroecological Villages, Charles Verharen, Flordeliz Bugarin, John Tharakan, Enrico Wensing, Bekele Gutema, Joseph Fortunak, George Middendorf

Center for Global Health Publications

This essay proposes African-based ethical solutions to profound human problems and a working African model to address those problems. The model promotes sustainability through advanced agroecological and information communication technologies. The essay's first section reviews the ethical ground of that model in the work of the Senegalese scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop. The essay's second section examines an applied African model for translating African ethical speculation into practice. Deeply immersed in European and African ethics, Godfrey Nzamujo developed the Songhaï Centers to solve the problem of rural poverty in seventeen African countries. Harnessing advanced technologies within a holistic agroecological ecosystem, Nzamujo's …

Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shift to interact with new domains and populations, so does AI ethics: a relatively nascent subdiscipline that frequently concerns itself with questions of “fairness” and “accountability.” This fairness-centred approach has been criticized for (amongst other things) lacking the ability to address discursive, rather than distributional, injustices. In this paper I simultaneously validate these concerns, and work to correct the relative silence of both conventional and critical AI ethicists around disability, by exploring the narratives deployed by AI researchers in discussing and designing systems around autism. Demonstrating that these narratives frequently perpetuate a dangerously dehumanizing model …

“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of ethics and public policy. Posthumanism is the historical situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on animal studies, critical posthumanism, and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the appeal to human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis identifies a specific risk posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, namely the classification of …

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a …

Big Data And The Reference Class Problem. What Can We Legitimately Infer About Individuals?, Catherine Greene

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Big data increasingly enables prediction of the behaviour and characteristics of individuals. This is ethically concerning on privacy grounds. However, this article discusses other reasons for concern. These predictions usually rely on generalisations about what certain sorts of people tend to do. Generalisations of this sort are often under scrutiny in legal cases, where, for example, lawyers argue that people with prior convictions are more likely to be guilty of the crime they are currently on trial for. This article applies criteria for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable generalisations in legal cases to a number of big data examples. It argues …

Difference Between Algorithmic Processing And The Process Of Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), Domenico Schneider

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The following article compares the temporality of the life-world with the digital processing. The temporality of the life-world is determined to be stretched and spontaneous. The temporality of the digital is given by discrete step-by-step points of time. Most ethical issues can be traced back to a mismatch of these two ways of processing. This creates a foundation for the ethics of the digital processing. Methodologically, phenomenological considerations are merged with media-philosophical considerations in the article.

The Incorporation Of Moral-Development Language For Machine-Learning Companion Robots, Patrick Lee Plaisance, Joe Cruz

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Among the ongoing debates over ethical implications of artificial-intelligence development and applications, AI morality, and the nature of autonomous agency for robots, how to think about the moral assumptions implicit in machine-learning capacities for so-called companion robots is arguably an urgent one. This project links the development of machine-learning algorithmic design with moral-development theory language. It argues that robotic algorithmic responses should incorporate language linked to higher-order moral reasoning, reflecting notions of universal respect, community obligation and justice to encourage similar deliberation among human subjects.

A Ulysses Pact With Artificial Systems. How To Deliberately Change The Objective Spirit With Cultured Ai, Bruno Gransche

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The article introduces a concept of cultured technology, i.e. intelligent systems capable of interacting with humans and showing (or simulating) manners, of following customs and of socio-sensitive considerations. Such technologies might, when deployed on a large scale, influence and change the realm of human customs, traditions, standards of acceptable behavior, etc. This realm is known as the "objective spirit" (Hegel), which usually is thought of as being historically changing but not subject to deliberate human design. The article investigates the question of whether the purposeful design of interactive technologies (as cultured technologies) could enable us to shape modes of …

The Right To Human Intervention: Law, Ethics And Artificial Intelligence, Maria Kanellopoulou - Botti, Fereniki Panagopoulou, Maria Nikita, Anastasia Michailaki

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The paper analyses the new right of human intervention in use of information technology, automatization processes and advanced algorithms in individual decision-making activities. Art. 22 of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides that the data subject has the right not to be subject to a fully automated decision on matters of legal importance to her interests, hence the data subject has a right to human intervention in this kind of decisions.

Standard Forms Of Power: Biopower And Sovereign Power In The Technology Of The Us Birth Certificate, 1903-1935, Colin Koopman, Bonnie Sheehey, Patrick Jones, Laura Smithers, Sarah Hamid, Claire Pickard, Critical Genealogies Collaboratory

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) One of the central analytical insights of Michel Foucault's enormously influential political philosophy is that power is not unitary. Power does not always take the same form. Power has long been assumed to issue simply in the sovereign power's mandating tactics of prohibition and permission. Foucault argued that, in addition to sovereign power, there also exists a disciplinary power of normalization and a biopower of regulation, each of which operates through techniques that are irreducible to classical sovereign strategies of unimpeachable authority, military violence, and legal mandate.

Mill's Act Utilitarian Interpreters On Chapter V Paragraph 14, Dale E. Miller

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In the fourteenth paragraph of the fifth chapter of Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill writes that ‘We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow-creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience.’ I criticize the attempts of three commentators who have recently presented act-utilitarian readings of Mill – Roger Crisp, David Brink, and Piers Norris Turner – to accommodate this passage.

Why Legally Downloading Music Is Morally Wrong, Tim Anderson, D. E. Wittkower

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) We've all done it. We certainly have, and we will again. But paying for and legally downloading music is morally wrong.

Consuming Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Tests: The Role Of Genetic Literacy And Knowledge Calibration, Yvette E. Pearson, Yuping Liu-Thompkins

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As direct-to-consumer marketing of medical genetic tests grows in popularity, there is an increasing need to better understand the ethical and public policy implications of such products. The complexity of genetic tests raises serious concerns about whether consumers possess the knowledge to make sound decisions about their use. This research examines the effects of educational intervention and feedback on consumers' genetic literacy and calibration -- the gap between consumers' actual knowledge and how much they think they know. The authors find that consumers' genetic knowledge was generally low and that people tended to underestimate their knowledge level. Furthermore, consumers' perceived …

Making Parents: Conventions, Intentions, And Biological Connections, Yvette Pearson, Stephen Scales (Ed.), Linda Oravecz (Ed.), Adam Potthast (Ed.)

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Playing Politics With Bioethics: Now That's Repugnant, Yvette E. Pearson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In a recent Washington Post editorial, Leon Kass claimed that neither he nor the President's Council on Bioethics (PCB) is "playing politics with science." At this point, it is clear that nobody really buys this claim. Nonetheless, even if they are not playing politics with science, someone certainly is playing politics with bioethics, which is just as unacceptable, if not worse.

The Status Of Ethics In Technology Education, Philip A. Reed, Susan Presley, Angela Hughes, Diane Irwin Stephens, Roger B. Hill (Ed.)

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Ethics is not a new concept within technology education. The inclusion of ethics evolved naturally from the progression of technological activity in the latter part of the twentieth century. During this shift to a postindustrial society, people started to look at technology from a more humanistic view than they previously had. To keep pace with these changes, a "new ethic" was suggested to help advance technological literacy by highlighting the relationship between humans, the environment, and technology (DeVore, 1980, 1991).

How far have we come? This chapter reviews the current state of ethics within technology education. In the first two …