Applied Ethics Commons^™

Computer Ethics In Curriculum, Tiya Williams

Publications and Research

Ethics specifically in Computer Curriculum is a growing problem that has yet to be widely addressed. Although, start of computer ethics being taught has been traced back to the early 1940’s it has not been standardized or implemented in all computer curriculum. The objective of this research is to diagnose the reasons why ethics is so crucial in computer curriculum at all levels. I used surveys to investigate whether students were taught ethics in their computer curriculum. I also conducted surveys for professors at universities and colleges if they were taught ethics while obtaining their degree, as well as if …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

Computers And The Moral Imagination, James Addington

Augsburg Honors Review

In this paper I want to look more closely at the relationship between new tools and historical challenges that threaten social well being and see human responses. My focus will be the technology which has come to symbolize, most characteristically, the last third of the twentieth century: computer technology. In order to discuss the impact of this I technology and its application to present challenges, it will be necessary to explore briefly some secondary themes: 1) the common sense of our age; 2) the meaning of freedom and authentic selfhood; 3) social contradiction and the moral imagination; and, one of …

Introduction To Confronting Teacher Preparation Epistemicide: Art, Poetry, And Teacher Resistance, Richard D. Sawyer, Daniel Ness

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

In this special issue, we present different perspectives from a documentary project on curricular epistemicide. We view curriculum epistemicide —the annihilation of curriculum—as an embodied process. It limits ways of knowing, questioning, and envisioning the world, and it constricts multiplicity and erases identity and culture. Authors within this volume responded to two requests: 1) they examined some form of epistemicide; and 2) they did not reinforce current systems of power and inequity. Throughout the issue, poetry and photography weave through theoretical papers and empirical studies. A range of methodologies are considered within the articles.

Predictors Of College Student Support Toward Colin Kaepernick’S National Anthem Protests, Brooke Coursen, Nicole Peiffer, Sakira Coleman, Philip Lucius

VA Engage Journal

Racial discrimination and inequality have perpetuated within the U.S. since its inception. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick initiated the national anthem protests to oppose the oppression of people of color in America. This study was developed in 2018 to identify social determinants of health underlying discriminatory beliefs and behaviors. The objective was to investigate the impacts of college students’ race, gender, political ideology, socio-economic status [SES], NFL interest, patriotism, and general protest support on support for the national anthem protests. We administered paper-and-pencil surveys across locations on the James Madison University campus using a convenience sample. There were 408 participants included, …

A Virtue-Ethical Approach To Cultured Meat, Carlo Alvaro

Publications and Research

The proposed benefits of cultured meat fail to track our moral intuitions because they are focused on the practical aspect of cultured meat production and consumption. A virtue-oriented approach can show cultured meat in a different light.

Demons & Droids: Nonhuman Animals On Trial, Gerrit D. White

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Nonhuman animal trials are ridiculous to the modern sensibilities of the West. The concept of them is in opposition to the idea of nonhuman animals—entities without agency, incapable of guilt by nature of irrationality. This way of viewing nonhuman animals is relatively new to the Western mind. Putting nonhuman animals on trial has only become unacceptable in the past few centuries. Before this shift, nonhuman animal trials existed as methods of communities policing themselves. More than that, these trials were part of legal systems ensuring they provided justice for all. This shift happened because the relationship between Christian authorities and …

Ethics And Governance Of General Models: Challenges And Countermeasures, Yan Teng, Guoyu Wang, Yingchun Wang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

In recent years, the general model is one of the most important development trends of artificial intelligence. With the rapidly increasing research and deployment of general models, the social and ethical effects of general models have received extensive attention. Grounded in the characteristics of general models, this article analyzes the potential ethical challenges of the models at three levels:algorithm, data, and computing power. The detailed challenges include uncertainty, truthfulness, reliability, bias, toxicity, fairness, privacy, and environmental issues. Also, through the lens of philosophy of technology, it elaborates the important reasons for the ethical challenges:the "mirroring" effect and transparency problem caused …

Rethinking Ethical Questions In Life-History Interview Research, Anne Rothe

The Qualitative Report

Having interviewed Germans who emigrated to Israel and, in most cases, converted to Judaism, I experienced a paralyzing sense of ethical conflict when I began analyzing the first order discourse my participants and I had co-constructed to transform it into the second-order discourse of research publications. So, I set out to rethink the ethics of life-history interview research. My quest into our ethical responsibilities began with rule-based deontological and consequentialist ethics and the guidelines in the social sciences they inform. It led me to reconsider such core notions as informed consent, privacy, and risk-benefit analysis. I came to realize that …

“Be A Pattern For The World”: The Development Of A Dark Patterns Detection Tool To Prevent Online User Loss, Jordan Donnelly, Alan Downley, Yunpeng Liu, Yufei Su, Quanwei Sun, Lan Zeng, Andrea Curley, Damian Gordon, Paul Kelly, Dympna O'Sullivan, Anna Becevel

Articles

Dark Patterns are designed to trick users into sharing more information or spending more money than they had intended to do, by configuring online interactions to confuse or add pressure to the users. They are highly varied in their form, and are therefore difficult to classify and detect. Therefore, this research is designed to develop a framework for the automated detection of potential instances of web-based dark patterns, and from there to develop a software tool that will provide a highly useful defensive tool that helps detect and highlight these patterns.

Technical Debt Is An Ethical Issue, Paul John Gibson, Yannis Stavrakakis, Massamaesso Narouwa, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan, Jonathan Turner, Michael Collins

Conference Papers

We introduce the problem of technical debt, with particular focus on critical infrastructure, and put forward our view that this is a digital ethics issue. We propose that the software engineering process must adapt its current notion of technical debt – focusing on technical costs – to include the potential cost to society if the technical debt is not addressed, and the cost of analysing, modelling and understanding this ethical debt. Finally, we provide an overview of the development of educational material – based on a collection of technical debt case studies - in order to teach about technical debt …

Epistemic Priors, Social Justice, And The Ethics Of Humor, Paul Butterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I set out a theory of humor ethics and, in particular, I establish what difference humorousness makes to an instance of speech’s moral value. I set out by making the case for this approach to the topic, demonstrating that focusing on how humorous speech differs, morally, from non-humorous speech allows us to avoid getting caught up in prior ethical debates that are not strictly about humor itself – a shortcoming that is common to many treatments of humor ethics in the existing literature. I show that, in cases of humorous speech, we typically do not assert the …

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Dignifying Decisions: The Role Of Dignity In Surrogate Decision-Making, Jeffrey Pannekoek

Doctoral Dissertations

Dignity refers, broadly speaking, to a kind of status that is intrinsically connected to certain norms. Often, we think of dignity as the status of having inherent value, which entails that certain kinds of treatment are morally impermissible. References to dignity are pervasive in clinical ethics, where the concept is called on to do a broad variety of work, including bolstering claims about patient-focused health care, advocating in favor of and against euthanasia, and supporting an infinite number of particular medical decisions. In stark contrast to its pervasiveness, the conceptualization of dignity is still an unsettled issue, in particular in …

Modern American Propaganda: An Institutional History, Douglas Morrow

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy is the primary government institution in charge of overt, foreign-directed propaganda. This paper argues that the institutional culture of this institution was born and came to fruition in the period 1941-1953, and has not significantly changed since. That institutional culture includes a fierce adherence to a “strategy of truth,” with aesthetic norms being reserved and largely unemotional as a result of positioning themselves in moral and aesthetic opposition to Nazi and early Cold War Communist propaganda. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to staff these nascent institutions with artists, poets, …

Unraveling Dna And Identity: A Humanistic Perspective On Epistemologies And Ethics Of Genetic Ancestry Testing., Eve Carlisle Polley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advent of DNA ancestry testing motivated a burst of human activities that constitute a scientific-technological-industrial-personal-social movement of immense scale, infused with epistemological and ethical questions of great and important variety. This movement has motivated many discourses in the social sciences, with study subjects ranging from the language usage of geneticists, to moral conundrums faced by test-takers, to potential ramifications in global structures of political power. At the same time, and especially in recent decades, the discourses of the comparative humanities have included with increasing frequency and urgency research and theorization about concepts and consequences of human social identities, alongside …

Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy, Maurice Hamington, Maggie Fitzgerald

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Editorial for the Special Issue "Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy"

This Special Issue of Philosophies is devoted to dialogue between feminist care ethics and mainstream philosophical figures and concepts. As care ethics has evolved from its origins in the 1980s, it is clear that it does not always fit neatly within traditional philosophical categories. Yet, the philosophical implications of the ethics of care are robust and extend beyond ethics as such, with care theorists positing ontological, epistemological, and political significance to its approach. Despite these implications, and the growing acceptance of care ethics in a variety of academic literatures, …

Unpacking Personal Identity And Necessary Decision Properties To Improve Medical Decision-Making On Behalf Of Cognitively Declined Patients Without Capacity, Dakotah Marie Kinsella

Masters Theses

What does it mean to understand another person? Suppose physical information alone is insufficient for fully understanding another person. Suppose further that John Locke’s theory of continuity of consciousness (if a person can extend into the past and still be conscious of past experiences and be conscious of what is happening in their present life, then they are the same person) being necessary for maintaining personal identity is correct. In applying these theories to my argument regarding how “no individual can possess all the same conscious experiences as another” due to the private, subjectivity of the self resulting in “no …

A Case For Ethics In The Mathematics Major Curriculum, Feryal Alayont

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

When our students enter the workforce, be it in academia or in business, industry, government, they will be forced to make decisions about various ethical dilemmas. Once in a while, the scandalous stories like that of Enron, the three German auto-makers’ diesel fuel pact, and the Equifax data breach make the headlines. However, employees at every workplace are faced with small to large-scale ethical situations almost daily. In our majors’ future careers, a manager can be using an inappropriate graphic to display data to make the numbers look better, or the data collection processes used in a large public policy …

Foundational Mathematical Beliefs And Ethics In Mathematical Practice And Education, Richard Spindler

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Foundational philosophical beliefs about mathematics in the mathematical community may have an unappreciated yet profound impact on ethics in mathematical practice and mathematics education, which also affects practice. A philosophical and historical basis of the dominant platonic and formalist views of mathematics are described and evaluated, after which an alternative evidence-based foundation for mathematical thought is outlined. The dualistic nature of the platonic view based on intuition is then compared to parallel historical developments of universalizing ethics in Western thought. These background ideas set the stage for a discussion of the impact of traditional mathematical beliefs on ethics in the …