ABSTRACT. One what basis should corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions be made and evaluated? This is the research question that motivates this paper.

I argue that any normative framework for CSR decision making must be based primarily on ethical considerations, as opposed to considerations of firm financial performance.

Perhaps this seems obvious. However, as I show, it is in tension with a widely-accepted view in the literature on CSR: that a firm’s CSR activities ought to be closely linked to its core business capabilities, activities, and strategies (see, e.g., Battilana, Lee, Walker, & Dorsey, 2012; Dees & Anderson, 2003; Marquis & Park, 2014; Porter & Kramer, 2011). This view, I argue, is an implication of the resource-based view of the firm, a theoretical paradigm in the field of strategic management (Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984). However, as a theory of strategic management, the resource-based view is supposed to explain how firms achieve superior financial performance. The resource-based view is thus an inappropriate source for normative guidance about how managers should make decisions about CSR.

I introduce effective altruism as an alternative normative framework for CSR decision making. Effective altruism is a recent academic and social movement that advocates using strong evidence and rigorous analysis to increase the positive impact one makes through altruistic acts (Berkey, 2018; MacAskill, 2015; Singer, 2015). I argue that effective altruism is a much better source for normative guidance about CSR than frameworks that are based on theories from strategic management: effective altruism provides a plausible basis for making and evaluating CSR decisions whose main purpose is to benefit other people.

However, there are other types of CSR that implicate other moral considerations—related to harms, rights violations, moral reconciliation, and reciprocity—that effective altruism does not capture. Thus, while effective altruism can serve as one important element of a normative theory of CSR, it must be supplemented with other moral principles. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of what the content of some of these other moral principles would be.

ABSTRACT. There is currently pressure from governments on companies for transparent reporting of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals and performance. As a result, companies are increasing employee volunteerism and donations from their foundations for social and environmental projects. Some volunteer initiatives are not supported by employees because required time spent outside work hours is not compensated, or projects do not use employees work skills. In many cases the results of much volunteerism cannot be measured because employees can choose their own projects. Philanthropic donations by the companies’ foundations can also defy measurement of value when they are simply given to non-profits or NGOs for a myriad of purposes that do not connect with companies’ strategic goals. Additionally, a recent study of philanthropic contributions has uncovered that many companies use their foundations to make politically motivated donations. For example, they give to charities linked to members of Congress who have influence on business. There is definitely a need for an ethical approach of employee volunteerism and philanthropy. This paper analyzed the volunteer programs and the projects supported by Foundations of seventeen companies that rank highly in corporate social responsibility (CSR): 3M, Accenture, Coca Cola, Eli Lilly, Home Depot, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Kimberly Clark, Luxottica, Nestlé, Nike, Patagonia, PepsiCo, Procter and Gamble, Timberland, and Unilever, to study. The assumption was that a strong CSR commitment would mean the companies would focus their volunteering and philanthropy projects on social and environmental purposes that were connected to the strategic work of the companies. The analysis found that the volunteering and philanthropy efforts of these companies were directly connected to their products and services, for example. volunteers providing their companies’ products free to people in need, or using their expertise honed in their jobs to provide services, like building homes for veterans, or teaching young women the science and technology that volunteers used in their jobs. This model of strategic volunteerism and philanthropy allowed the companies to measure the results of both and to include them in their social/environmental materiality matrices, which assured they were used ethically to support CSR.

ABSTRACT. After years of teaching in biomedical ethics at the college level, recently I have also begun teaching in environmental ethics. I expected significant overlap between the two domains, both in subject matter (e.g., status of nonhuman animals, duties to future generations) and conceptual and methodological resources (cost-benefit analysis, the precautionary principle, etc.). Even so, I have been surprised by how frequently I reach into the bioethics domain to explain and illustrate ideas and arguments employed in the environmental ethics domain.

Salutary connections notwithstanding, however, I have come to think the two domains of inquiry also share a propensity toward conceptual confusion among three important and complexly interrelated general ethical concerns: complicity, collective responsibility, and expressivist objections (ethical worries about harmful or offensive messages an action or policy communicates to others). In this presentation, I will argue that mischaracterization of some bioethical and environmental issues under one or another of these labels has led to influential but unfruitful approaches to their resolution. For example, expressivist concerns about selective abortion for impairment lead to irresolvable questions about the motivation of decision makers, what meaning can reasonably be inferred from actions or policies, etc. Reframing the issue, instead, as a worry about potential complicity (with unjust social structures regarding disability) better captures the core concern, and also renders the analysis more tractable. Similarly, a common argument against carbon offsetting turns out to be a kind of expressivist objection that is more aptly and fruitfully conceptualized as (separable) concerns about complicity and collective responsibility. Alternatively, a conflation of complicity with collective responsibility seems to be at play in influential arguments about potential obligations to boycott states with restrictive abortion laws and about eating meat or (other) environmentally unsustainable foods. Drawing on the recent philosophical literature on each of these general ethical concepts – including the work of keynote speaker Alexis Shotwell – I will attempt to clarify some potential sources of confusion among these concepts, and how they may best illuminate a range of issues in biomedical ethics and environmental ethics that share a common reliance on them.

ABSTRACT. Sometimes, the truth hurts. When assessing medical feedback, a distinction between descriptive and normative claims is necessary to determine whether harm is warranted. Accounts of epistemic injustice focus on cases of harming someone by unfairly discrediting or diminishing their abilities as a knower. Given the way epistemic injustice affects one’s status as a knower, is there an even greater harm if that knowledge pertains to the self? In this paper, I explore the ethical norms of medical feedback when giving diagnoses to adolescents. While it’s important to give a patient feedback to make an informed decision, medical authorities are at risk for stigmatizing as seen in cases related to mental health and sexually transmitted infections. We must ensure a patient’s autonomy while allowing the doctor’s expertise to play the appropriate role. Cases of diagnosing adolescents raise a particular issue for epistemic injustice as they are learning to form a sense of identity. A positive outcome of diagnosing at an early age is that those patients can receive important care and support. For example, parents can give their children medication for a mental disorder or allow treatment like suppression of endogenous puberty for transgender teens. Yet controversy surrounds these medical interventions especially for younger patients due to the long-term nature of the technology against the fluid identities of the patients. Along with any stigma attached to the diagnosis, medical interventions can carry dangerous long-term effects that can harm adolescents in not only how they see themselves but also their future behavior. Therefore, an ethics of medical feedback between patients and medical professionals requires identifying who is most vulnerable to dangerous forms of feedback and what proper interventions should take place to protect those populations.

ABSTRACT. The rise of ancestry DNA testing services in the marketplace, such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, has increased interest in knowing one’s “DNA ancestry” far above what we have seen from traditional ancestry tracking services. In addition to tracking one’s ancestry through historical relationships, e.g. whom one’s great, great maternal grandmother was and where she lived, these new services offer the opportunity to trace one’s bio-geographical ancestry back centuries and even into one’s prehistoric past. Ancestry.com offers to “connect you to the places in the world where your story started” and provides the user with a “deeper family story.” 23andMe provides an “introduction to your genes” so that you can discover the 23 chromosomes that make for the “one unique you.” In effect, it is knowledge of one’s “racial ancestry” that is being marketed to a consumer as defining their identity, and defining it in very certain, science-based terms. This promotes further confusion about the social construction of race by treating it as a biological category reminiscent of the one-drop racial classification laws found in the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow south, which also leads to a personal adoption of the view that bloodlines define the self. Take the Ancestry.com commercial where “Kyle” discovers surprising results. The story begins with him recalling family traditions: “Growing up we were German. We danced in a German dance group. I wore lederhosen.” Upon learning his DNA results, Kyle decides to abandon that lived family experience and decides to trade in his “lederhosen for a kilt.” While this example may not seem egregiously problematic (although certainly disrespectful), research, primarily centered on the impact these tests have on indigenous communities when bio-geographical markers are viewed as cultural connection, illustrates the potential for significant harm. We argue that commercial ancestry DNA testing is built on profiting from the erroneous conflation of bio-geographic ancestry with race and individual and family identity during a socio-political time when much contentious national discourse centers on issues of race and “identity politics.” We contend that rather than bridging differences, this commercial venture more often results in co-opting, assimilating, and/or diluting cultural identity.

ABSTRACT. Philosophical practice is grounded in the idea that philosophical inquiry can be used as a therapeutic method to help people cultivate mature intellectual, emotional and ethical lives. It does this by harnessing a person’s ability to step back and rationally reflect upon her beliefs, desires and emotions in order to see whether she should modify, accept or reject them. Philosophical inquiry is used in the reflective process to help a person work though these inclinations and cultivate psychic health. Philosophical practitioners are an eclectic group with differing opinions on what counts as psychic health and on what methods should be used to help clients achieve it. In this paper, I explore Christine Korsgaard’s moral psychology of self-constitution and argue that it provides a substantive and defensible account of psychic health that can be used as a normative model for philosophical practitioners.

Korsgaard’s theory of self-constitution is based on her ideas about self-consciousness, agency, practical identities (e.g. social, familial, vocational, political, etc.) and the constitutional model of the self. I provide a general account of her theory, but I pay particular attention to her constitutional model of the self and her account of practical identities. For Korsgaard, we constitute ourselves through our actions and we attempt to unify our various practical identities into a coherent self. She argues that psychic health is when we do this well. She uses Plato’s and Kant’s constitutional models of the self to show what psychic health looks like, and in what ways we can and do fall short of this goal. I argue that Korsgaard’s theory, used within the therapeutic setting of philosophical practice, can be an effective way to construct a unified self and achieve psychic health. I also discuss how this model can provide practitioners with a better understanding of their practice and the clients that seek them out for help.

ABSTRACT. Women are not believed as much as men when they report pain to health care providers. The research on this is definitive. Yet while the research on the degree to which women are not believed is substantial, only recently has research been done on the ethics at stake in these cases. The growing subfield of epistemic injustice has provided a fruitful lens for reflecting on the kinds of wrongs—both moral and epistemic—common in health care contexts. Reflection has been done on the power dynamics that give rise to these injustices, as well as on solutions for health care providers to minimize the prevalence of epistemic injustice. Less has been done, however, to illuminate the precise nature of epistemic injustice. Is it strictly consequentialist, for example? Is the harm that there is simply more suffering that results when women are given less credence? Or are there other kinds of harm at play as well that consequentialist theories cannot account for? The answer to these questions is particularly at home when considered in health care settings. By considering epistemic injustice in this context, particular features come to the fore. In this paper, I call attention to these features of epistemic injustice in healthcare settings and argue on their basis that an action is not good merely because it benefits someone; or alternatively, an action is not wrong merely because it causes suffering. There are also dignitary harms. I argue in this paper that any satisfactory account of epistemic injustice must account for dignitary harm. To make this argument, I draw on Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, research on the credence (or lack thereof) given to women and minorities in health care settings, and Michael Rosen’s recent work on the concept of dignity in moral philosophy. I highlight the salient philosophical features of dignitary harm and locate this concept within the moral landscape of epistemic injustice.

ABSTRACT. The idea that future generations have rights is not particularly new in philosophy. Rights-based theories about future generations have gained more pace after the publication of Our Common Future in 1987. But none of these theories to date, to my knowledge, explicitly mention that sustainable development is our social commitment or responsibility. Even Amartya Sen, who famously announces that individual freedom is a social commitment and sustainable development is uncompromising freedoms of all generations, doesn’t mention for once that sustainable development is a social responsibility. However, the good news is that if we closely read different texts of Sen (e.g., 1992, 1993, 1998/1999, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2014) together, we get in him a rights-based argument that holds that sustainable development is a social commitment. That is, we have a responsibility to fulfill the rights of future generations concerning the natural environment. The central thesis of this paper is related to the unpacking of this rights-based approach tacit in Sen. That is, in this paper, I aim at exploring an original account of rights-based theory implicit in Sen’s literature that holds that ensuring the rights of future generations by taking sustainable development measures is a social responsibility. To defend my thesis, I discuss Sen’s ideas about individual freedom as a social responsibility, development as the expansion of freedom, the relationship of human rights and freedom, and sustainable development from which I extract a rights-based approach implicit in Sen’s various literature according to which sustainable development is our social responsibility. I also attempt to connect Sen’s rights-based approach with Brei’s (2013) rights-based approach that bases our duties toward nature on the human right to health to clarify how Sen’s idea of human rights of future generations can be justified by existing literature on the rights of future generations. Moreover, I argue that all generations belong to a trans-generational community similar to MacIntyre’s (2007) idea of narrative because of which we should take sustainable development initiatives regarding the natural environment that will meet our social responsibilities to future generations.

ABSTRACT. On May 2, 1967, thirty members of the Black Panther party, openly carrying guns of various kinds, entered the California state capitol building and made their way to the back of the Assembly Chamber, before being disarmed and led away by police. This collective action was in response to proposed California legislation that would forbid carrying a loaded weapon in public. The Black Panthers argued that this was a non-violent protest, while California Governor Ronald Reagan subsequently signed the bill, saying (in clear reference to the Black Panthers’ action) that it would prevent the kind of violence seen in the capitol building earlier that year. Was the Black Panthers’ action violent? Was it a form of political communication? Was it useful to their cause? Was it morally permissible, justified, or prohibited? Was it protest? Was it an act of revolution?

The current liberal conceptual landscape draws clear distinctions between conscientious objection, refusal, legal protest, civil disobedience, and revolution. However, such ideal theories of political protest cannot make sense of the Black Panthers’ action without falling prey to serious definitional problems and deep concerns about justice. I argue that we need a non-ideal theory of protest that can make sense of the Black Panthers’ action as a case of political protest, despite its ostensibly violent nature. Violence, as a theoretical construct, is often used to mark off the above categories; however, when we consider case studies like the Black Panthers’ action, and, more recently, the Serbian revolution and Antifa protests in the United States, we can see that violence in fact cuts across these categories (especially when we get more clear about what violence is). Once we recognize that protest in the contemporary political landscape does not fall neatly into the aforementioned categories, it becomes clear that a revisionary, politically engaged philosophy of protest is needed. Such a non-ideal theory will defend non-lethal violence as a sometimes-required tactic in protest, give an account of the communicative, pragmatic, and moral contours of cases that involve violence in protest, and contend that violent protest is only potentially permissible in response to actual injustice.

ABSTRACT. Requirements from both federal and non-federal agencies for instruction in responsible conduct of research (RCR) have been an integral part of pre-doctoral training in the US for the last several years. University of Texas Southwestern has provided such instruction for pre-doctoral trainees for over two decades, following guidelines primarily from the NIH; recently we expanded our training to provide targeted instruction for all postdoctoral research trainees (postdocs), regardless of their funding source. In the development and subsequent implementation of this program, our goal has been to provide training that meets the unique needs and limitations of postdocs (e.g., variable disciplines, multiple cohorts with distinct on-boarding dates and term lengths, diverse sources and goals of funding, need for appropriate, just-in-time knowledge). From the start of the expanded program’s implementation, we wished to assess the effectiveness of the course, at least in terms of specific learning outcomes. As part of the course planning, we developed a pre-/post-course testing instrument to capture trainees’ prior knowledge and then measure knowledge and competencies gained over the program. In evaluating the resulting test data, we have utilized various analysis formats to assess both the learning taking place, as well as the effectiveness of the training approach and teaching to promote that learning. In our preliminary analysis of pre- and post- tests from 176 fellows who completed the training, we have developed an interesting adaptation of the “heat-map” model using ranked sum differences in individual scores that shows, for each individual topic, where the postdocs had gains in learning, maintained their knowledge, or in some cases, appeared to show particular confusion. With data from a total of three course cohorts, we believe this method can show how best to improve both the teaching of RCR and the questions used to assess trainees’ pre- and post-course knowledge.

ABSTRACT. When talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and social robots, we tend to characterize these entities as more or less intelligent, autonomous, decision-making agents – and by doing so use concepts usually applied to persons and their interactions. However, it is often not clear what these concepts really mean when applied to AI and robots. In particular, the question arises of how concepts of central relevance for human beings, human interaction, and moral theory, such as agency, autonomy, rationality, consciousness, accountability, ability to communicate, sentience or empathy, can be transferred to AI and human-AI-interaction. Focusing on the concepts of autonomy, rationality, communication and sentience, the presentation will analyze definitions given for these concepts in the fields of computer science, biomedicine, and philosophy, and compare how these concepts are being used with regard to human beings and AI, respectively. The presentation will then discuss how differences in the meaning and use of these terms in the two different fields may lead to beliefs and misconceptions that hinder a rational debate of human-robot interaction and the moral and legal status of robots and AI. The presentation will go on to argue that a better understanding of concepts such as artificial rationality and free will, artificial sentience, and artificial consciousness is necessary in order to allow for a better-informed debate on the moral and legal status of robots and AI.

ABSTRACT. There are several conflicting views about the issue of free will, such as; Are human actions free, or are they determined by constraints or emotions or situations over which they have no control? If all human activities are determined by scientific laws and forces which are entirely beyond our control, then what would be the point of making plans for the future? If we look from a legal perspective, could we hold an agent responsible for a crime, if their actions were merely the outcome of impersonal, mechanical forces? How could the legal machinery of the state punish the people if there were no freedom of choice to a criminal? Moreover, when coming from an ethical perspective, if human beings are not free, is ethical behaviour even possible? However, free will seems to be a central characteristic. To some extent (any form of deterministic approaches), like human agents, non-human agents (e.g., intelligent machines, computers, robots, games, autonomous cars, humanoids) are deterministic devices because someone who knows the programming can predict his or her behaviour in advance. The most debated questions about the nonhuman agent are still the worrisome issue for us, which I would like to discuss in my paper that ‘does the nonhuman agent, like the humanoid robot Sophia, exhibit free will?’ and if yes, ‘whether Sophia is (morally) responsible for her actions and consequences?’ and ‘does she exercise her subjective judgment for taking any choices during the decision procedures?’

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the anticipatory ethical and social issues associated with the lethality of emerging space-related capabilities in the age of Artificial Intelligence. The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 (H.R.5515), which was signed into law by the 115th Congress, directed the establishment of the United States Space Command as a subordinate unified command under the United States Strategic Command. The Space Policy Directive (SPD)-4, dated February 19, 2019, also directed the establishment of a Space Force as a new branch under the United States Armed Forces with a clear mandate “to enhance the lethality and effectiveness” of the Joint Space Command. We pose that in order to successfully implement its defensive and offensive mandates, and given the sensitivities and complex social ramifications of employing its capabilities, the United States Space Command will need to address ethical requirements—governing the jus ad vim (the just use of force) measures—beyond compliance with domestic and international law, the UN Charter, and applicable treaties.

ABSTRACT. Panel Presenters:

Presenter #1 will examine Iris Murdoch’s An Accidental Man and how it seeks to make philosophical claims about duties to self and duties to society. Along the way, the structure of society itself becomes a subject of scrutiny as problems that affect the privileged mirror those of the working class. These themes are effectively set out in the guise of stories.

Presenter #2 will begin with a brief synopsis of another novel that uses Buddhism as its driving philosophical force.

This is followed by analysis of the virtues of using literature as philosophy to expand learning opportunities.

Last, Presenter #2 will draw a number of parallels between Buddhist themes in the text and the work of Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron.

ABSTRACT. The professionalization of the Third Sector, along with increased scrutiny on nonprofit organizations, led to the development of codes of ethics, chief among them, the Independent Sector’s Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice: A Guide for Charities and Foundations (Independent Sector 2015). This set of principles were designed to guide the more than 12 million individuals (Salamon and Newhouse 2019) working in organizations that include art, health, human service, educational, environmental, advocacy nonprofits, and professional associations (McKeever 2018). The Council of Foundations (COF) and the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) have codes developed specifically for those working in philanthropies and fundraisers respectively. The Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice is built on declared values of commitment to the public good; accountability to the public; commitment beyond the law; respect for the worth and dignity of individuals; inclusiveness and social justice; respect for pluralism and diversity; transparency, integrity and honesty; responsible stewardship of resources; and commitment to excellence and to maintaining the public trust (Independent Sector 2004).

To build a sustainable framework through which one can view these values, we incorporate the overarching principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice, as well as a larger communitarian ethic. While these are largely borrowed from biomedical ethics, they are easily transferable to the nonprofit sector, highlighting a unique intersectionality between these disciplines. Couching the codes of ethics of the nonprofit sector in identifiable principles will guide organizations in aligning practices to a broad set of ethical values, and macroscopically retain a larger sense of purpose and focus.

In this paper, we seek to distill the Independent Sector’s values and principles to core ethical principles that guide nonprofit professionals. We also examine the COF’s and AFP’s ethical standards to identify imputed ethical principles. In addition, we intend to add core principles that are more global rather than US-centric. This research will contribute to the study and practice of applied ethics.

ABSTRACT. Most scholars agree that organizational or corporate culture affects employee behavior and corporate performance for better or for worse. To mention but a few effects: Corporate culture is positively correlated with levels of organizational commitment (Boon and Arumugam 2006). Corporate culture affects organizational performance and efficacy (Kotter and Heskett, 1992) and has the potential to impact a wide array of individual and organizational outcomes and traits such as loyalty and job satisfaction (Lund 2003; Li 2004; Chang and Lee 2007). It affects total quality initiatives (Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall 2001), IT governance (Rusu et al 2017), e-commerce adoption (Senarathna et al 2014), CEO turnover (Fiordelisi and Ricci 2014) and corporate reporting on sustainability (Soares et al 2018). Organizational culture also appears to mediate the relationship between leadership styles and corporate performance (Ogbanna and Harris 2000) and to moderate the relation between leadership and a firm’s knowledge management practices (Nguyen and Mohamed 2011). Yet, while many articles touch upon the importance and effects of corporate culture in general, fewer researchers have investigated in a systematic way corporate or organizational culture types and their relationship to ethics and leadership. In this paper, I draw upon one well-known systematic approach to culture assessment --OCAI--with a view to identifying the different ethical and leadership challenges faced by leaders within corporations characterized by various types of culture. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI-Online 2019) has been widely used by corporations and consultants to identify four dominant organizational culture types. Working through each of OCAI’s four dominant types, I identify distinctive ethical strengths and weaknesses and leadership opportunities and challenges arising in connection with each cultural type. Part 1 provides a brief overview of the four culture types in the OCAI 2x2 matrix. Part 2 delves more deeply into each culture type and specifies the associated ethical and leadership challenges arising in each type of culture. Part 3 identifies some limitations with the OCAI approach, limitations that point to areas for future research.

ABSTRACT. In his controversial paper, “Cynthia’s Dilemma: Consenting to Heroin Prescription,” Louis Charland (2002) argues that we should presume heroin users “have an impaired decisional capacity to make choices about heroin” such that they cannot consent to heroin prescription (37). His argument is that since those with substance use disorders (SUD) have a compulsion to seek and use the drug of their choice, their reasoning subcapacity is impaired. They cannot rationally weigh the risks and benefits of a treatment option, because they care about the drug too much.

This article explores his argument in a different context, represented by a patient with SUD wanting to leave the hospital before her treatment is complete. Presumably, Charland’s argument has relevancy here, since it could be argued that SUD sufficiently impairs a patient’s decision-making capacity (DMC) when it comes to refusing care. If it is the case that heroin users overweigh the benefits of using heroin and therefore cannot rationally weigh the risks and benefits of heroin prescription, then there is a case to be made that the patient in the hospital cannot rationally weigh the risks and benefits of refusing care, assuming that her motivation for leaving is her desire to seek her drug. This could give the medical team a reason to force treatment onto the patient.

In response to this situation, I will argue for a way to help determine whether a patient with SUD possesses DMC. I suggest that we have reason to think a person with SUD does possess the reasoning subcapacity, if it is the case that the patient endorses her condition. An endorsement, even a weak one, shows that the patient has accepted and incorporated her SUD into her wider value system, which gives us reason to think that she does not, in fact, care about her drug too much.

ABSTRACT. The human mind and behavior are the basic components of human society. Increasingly, knowledge of neuroscience, (that is, the study of the structure and function of the nervous system, especially the brain, and the foundations of behavior) is recognized as fundamental to understanding society. Further, the findings of neuroscience are seen as key to addressing societal problems. Yet appreciation of basic characteristics of the nervous system is largely lacking among the general public and policy makers, even though understanding these features should necessarily shape the application of neuroscience research to public policy. Four characteristics, in particular, (1) the complexity of the central nervous system, (2) its plasticity and malleability, (3) the dynamic, interactive interconnections among and between its many elements, and (4) the substantial and significant variability in structure and function among individuals, challenge the easy application of research findings to societal concerns. It is also important to recognize, acknowledge and address the fact that neuroscience research, like all research, is carried out by individuals who bring their own experience, assumptions and biases to their work. Unlike many areas of scientific research, mind and behavior are subjects with which researchers have early and continuing experience that consciously and unconsciously, appropriately and inappropriately, informs their thinking about their work. Neuroethics, a discipline at the intersection of neuroscience and ethics. Includes both the ethics of neuroscience research and the neuroscience of ethics. More particularly, the former considers the conduct of research that is uniquely or especially related to neuroscience (e.g., chronic pain research in animals, dementia research), while the latter focuses on research on the neurobiological underpinnings of such topics as ethical behavior and moral development. Of special relevance to this presentation is examination of the ethical issues associated with the neurobiology of ethics. The purpose of this presentation is to make explicit what is widely, but superficially, understood, and thereby lay the foundation for discussion of what citizens need to know about neuroscience as it relates to public policy, and consider the professional and social responsibilities of neuroscientists.

ABSTRACT. Research on student development has highlighted student attitudes regarding personal responsibility as well as the responsibility of their future profession (e.g., Delve et al. 1990). However, the linkage between the two forms of responsibility is not well understood, including how each promotes, reinforces, or constrains the other. Our research team is in the midst of an NSF-funded, multi-year, mixed methods study which aims to develop a better conceptual understanding of this issue. The quantitative portion of our study involves using surveys to gauge the professional responsibility attitudes of undergraduate students. The approach is adapted from the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) and its underlying theoretical framework, the Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM), developed by Canney and Bielefeldt (2015). Here the focus is on the qualitative component of our research, which adds depth to the quantitative portion through a series of semi-structured interviews of a subset of our primary undergraduate cohort (reference removed for review anonymity purposes).

In this session, the presenter will share the results from the first administration of the study’s interview protocol. The study population was 21 undergraduates at an engineering university; interviews took place during the spring of the students’ sophomore year. The presentation will discuss the study’s interview design, coding and analysis strategy, and primary themes identified. The presenter will discuss the main findings such as the role of a student’s upbringing, the importance of social and interpersonal interaction in college, key characteristics of coursework and community engagement activities, and the role of religious values on professional responsibility development. Through an analysis of both personal and structural influences that support or inhibit the formation of social responsibility attitudes, our study aims to offer guidance to instructors and others that seek to nurture student value development as well as insight regarding how individual student characteristics and disciplinary interests factor into the selection of possible educational strategies.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) material and substantial disruption standard for punishable student expression in the context of University of Wisconsin Board of Regents policy 4-21 “Commitment to Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression” adopted in October 2017 and recent allegations of student disruptions. Adopted amidst intense political pressure, 4-21 added several controversial provisions to existing System policy and identified the material and substantial disruption standard as a basis for mandatory suspensions and expulsions. The U.S. Supreme Court mentioned the Tinker disruption standard in two higher education cases from the 1970s and several lower courts have invoked it in case analysis. I argue it should apply to public higher education students only if it is narrowly tailored and then apply it to recent controversial incidents.

My argument will draw on case law and three lines of legal analysis. Three relevant cases are: Murakowski v. Delaware, 575 F.Supp.2d 571 (Del. 2008); McCauley v. University of the Virgin Islands, 618 F. 3d 232 (3rd Cir. 2010); and Tatro v. University of Minnesota, 816 N.W.2d 509 (Minn. 2012). One line of analysis examines these (and related) decisions, e.g., Tracey Wirmani, “Tinker Takes on Tatro: The Minnesota Supreme Court's Missed Opportunity,” 65 Oklahoma Law Review 769 (2017). A second line examines differences between K-12 and higher education, e.g., Kelly Sarabyn, “The Twenty-Sixth Amendment: Resolving the Federal Circuit Split Over College Students’ First Amendment Rights,” 14 Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights 28 (2008). A third line takes a broader look at a variety of university speech restrictions, e.g., Emily Gold Waldman, “University Imprimaturs on Student Speech: The Certification Cases,” 11 First Amendment Law Review 382 (2012-2013).

After using case law and legal analysis to defend a narrow interpretation of the Tinker disruption standard, I discuss examples to illustrate its application. Examples may include incidents at UC-Berkeley, the College of William and Mary, UC-Irvine, and UW-Madison.

ABSTRACT. This panel explores whether and how to justify property rights. Three panelists explore arguments that might vindicate any modern determinate right to own.

#1 is a political theorist. In "Why there can be no natural right to property," the author references Locke and Kant and argues a natural property right is conceptually impossible. The author argues both theories at such a high level of abstraction as to offer no concrete guidance for workable property laws. Any proposed right is not a right to ownership but a vague claim in defense of more basic rights such as to life, liberty, survival or expression. This raises an empirical question: what forms of ownership would, given local and contingent circumstances, best serve this more basic right? No right of ownership could effectively anticipate the local and contingent needs of all human societies.

#2 is a philosopher and bioethicist. In "Property, Democracy, and Public Justification," the author notes it is often supposed that property is a fundamental or natural right, and that property rights must be insulated from majoritarian democratic incursions. But it is less frequently recognized that standard theories of property include an important role for public justification. This paper considers the extent to which a requirement of public justification constitutes ground for limitation of rights to private property. The author gives special attention to works by Locke, Spencer, Mill, and Sidgwick.

#3 is a philosopher. In "May apologies vindicate original acquisition?", the author considers Lockean accounts that recognize property titles from creation, just transfer, charity, or as reparation. Critics warn unrequited historic injustice undermines contemporary property holdings. Nozick [in]famously left unspecified a principle of rectification. The author offers elements of an historic reparations principle that vindicate without redistribution some current holdings. This principle includes some form of apology or atonement as a type of reparation one might claim by right. Offering or demanding such repair is one way to realize a just distribution of holdings without running afoul of nonidentity concerns.

ABSTRACT. The goal of professional ethics, I believe, is to equip people to more reliably make (ethically) good decisions. In short, it aims to develop practical wisdom. Yet many approaches to teaching professional ethics focus nearly exclusively on one aspect of practical wisdom. As such, they fail to adequately encourage reliable decision-making. In this talk, I first articulate a rough picture of practical wisdom on the model of expert skill, drawing on the work of Jason Swartwood and on the psychology of skill. Then I turn to the case-based method of teaching professional ethics, which focuses on applying principles to ready-made dilemmas, analyzing the facts, and considering the best course of action, together with possible alternatives. This suggests that the key to better decision-making is the improvement of a deliberative procedure by which decisions can be reached. While excellence in this area is important for developing wisdom, it is not enough. For, first, deliberation is not always feasible or warranted and practical wisdom involves knowing when deliberation is called for and when it is not. Second, a wise person reliably foresees obstacles, in themselves or in the circumstances, that might derail the decision and takes steps to avoid them. And, third, wise people have a self-corrective capacity of reviewing and improving past decisions. Thus if we hope to encourage reliable decision-making, in short practical wisdom, we need to supplement such methods with methods that support these other component capacities. I will close with some suggestions of how, in our courses and professional development programs, we draw on work in behavioral ethics—focusing on patterns of faulty (and mostly non-conscious) decision-making—and on the importance of exemplars and dialogue in shoring up these gaps.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, a number of scholars—including Linda Zagzebski, Anne Colby, William Damon, Julia Annas, and Kristján Kristjánsson—have begun to reassert the claim, found in Aristotle and several other ancient philosophers, that exemplary individuals should serve as the basis for moral reflection and action. This work has proved fruitful, especially in the field of moral development and is applied most often by those working with children and adolescents. Any attempt to integrate an exemplar methodology into the field of professional ethics, however, would seem to face an obvious obstacle due to the ostensible difference between a "professional" on the one hand and an "exemplar" on the other. Exemplar methodology prizes what is "paradigmatically excellent" and "supremely admirable. If, as some claim, professional ethics aims only at competent, reliable conformity to established rules and goals, its aim would seem to be far more mundane than exemplar methodology. According to this view, exemplars would not serve moral development because our target decision differs so greatly from the exemplar's and also because we find it difficult to emulate acts we know we are not capable of. In its most extreme form, proponents of this view object that the introduction of moral exemplars will prove dispiriting rather than empowering. In this paper, I offer a defense of the use of exemplar methodology in professional ethics. I proceed in two parts. First, I show how and why exemplars are effective in shaping practical reasoning even when moral decisions are relatively "low stakes" and/or "mundane." I argue that all of moral life, even in its seemingly mundane aspects is ideal-seeking. I also demonstrate that individuals' ethical decision-making, moral motivation, and moral identity can suffer when professionals adopt a cynical view of professional ethics as too narrow to be ideal-seeking. Second, I consider the need for exemplars within the context of the future of work. I take stock of the ways automation is leading to porous professional identities, shifting job descriptions, and precarious work arrangements. I demonstrate ways in which exemplar methodology is uniquely well-suited for this new moral and professional landscape.

ABSTRACT. Countless public health agencies are trying to solve our most intractable public health problems—among them, the obesity and opioid epidemics—by partnering with corporations responsible for creating or exacerbating those problems. We are told industry must be part of the solution. But is it time to challenge the partnership paradigm and the popular narratives that sustain it?

The Perils of Partnership describes the ways in which public-private partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives create “webs of influence” that undermine the integrity of public health agencies; distort public health research and policy; and reinforce the framing of public health problems and their solutions in ways that are least threatening to the commercial interests of corporate “partners.” We should expect multinational corporations to develop strategies of influence—but public bodies can and should develop counter-strategies to insulate themselves from corporate influence in all its forms.

The book develops a robust account of institutional integrity, and folds this into a novel framework that can help public health agencies, schools of public health, and public health NGOs identify the systemic ethical implications of their current and proposed relationships with industry actors. Drawing on analogies from the law governing public-public interactions (separation of powers) and private-private interactions (antitrust), the book argues that the default public-private interaction should be at arm’s length: separation, not collaboration. The Perils of Partnership calls for a new paradigm that avoids the perils of corporate influence and more effectively protects and promotes public health.

Author: Jonathan H. Marks, Pennsylvania State University Critics: Lisa M. Lee, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Leonard Ortmann, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

ABSTRACT. As leaders in research administration/compliance, we work with researchers but all too often fail to recognize a basic principle of research: data matters. A high functioning office not only maintains it operations with integrity and efficiency, it also undergoes continuous and evidence-based quality improvement (QI). This session will present a discussion from a panel of speakers of how they have developed and implemented data-driven programs of QI in their institutions' research administration and research compliance offices. Specific topics will include methods for collecting, assessing and using data for: selection of Qi areas on which to focus; implementing QI activities; and assessing programmatic outcomes of QI efforts. Fundamentally, the panelist representing offices of research administration or compliance will describe and assess their experiences with data-driven QI activities.

ABSTRACT. This presentation will describe preliminary findings of a project that addresses protections for research misconduct whistleblowers and has two goals. The first is to establish an evidence base for research trainees’ views concerning optimal policy and practice around protections for research misconduct whistleblowers utilizing a structured deliberative process for eliciting informed and considered views and recommendations on this complex topic. The second goal of this project is to assess this same deliberative process as a technique for training in the responsible conduct of research. This investigation will produce key insights from those best positioned to witness research misconduct to inform advancements in policy and practice; shed light on factors that make it difficult for individuals to report allegations of research misconduct and on how research trainees think through ethical concerns; and serve as a demonstration project for participatory policy development and research integrity training. This project is conducted with funding support from the Office of Research Integrity, US Department of Health and Human Services.

ABSTRACT. With the discovery and adaptation of the CRISPr system for gene editing and progress in synthetic biology, the field of biotechnology seems poised for a new round of applications beyond human medicine. These include projects of de-extinction, helping threatened species adapt to climate change and gene drives to control invasive species. In addition, new biotechnologies will continue to be developed for agricultural applications, continuing a long-standing debate over the impact of gene technologies on biodiversity and ecological integrity. There is always a profound risk associated with our collective ignorance with respect both to the workings of the natural world and to the impacts of new technology. Nevertheless, I will argue that next generation biotechnology does not pose novel risks to the environment. I have written a recent paper that I will refer to which will review how known risks associated with agricultural genetic engineering can serve as a model for evaluating the unwanted consequences of the next generation of gene technology.

ABSTRACT. While engineering ethics is usually taught emphasizing the moral obligations of individual engineers, this paper aims to broaden this approach by developing the political dimension of engineering and a multifaceted concept of justice. Engineering is a profession, which entails institutional structures and legal relationship with the public. Unlike professions such as medicine and law that concentrate on the practitioner-client relationship, the paramount concern expressed in the National Society of Professional Engineers’ Code of Ethics is the protection of public “health, safety, and welfare.” Engineers also find themselves working in the midst of global supply chains, both as consumers and producers, which entails a political dimension, and similarly the products themselves, the energy they consume, the pollution they cause, and their disposal. Many engineers work on public works projects, and another sizeable number for defense industries. In addition to these physical concerns, engineers are knowledge workers who develop, share, and protect intellectual property.

These political aspects necessitate the development of a robust concept of justice that far exceeds Aristotle’s development of the virtue or W. D. Ross’s simple working definition of giving each his or her due. This working paper takes a philosophical-historical approach to this problem. It is a first pass at aggregating insights into engineering practice with ideas of justice from canonical philosophers such as Aristotle, Ross, and Immanuel Kant; recent political philosophers such as John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer; and insights from feminism, e.g., Allison Jaeger and Nancy Fraser, and environmental justice, such as the work done by Robert Melchior Figueroa and Kristin Shrader-Frechette.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I examine the question of when a human life begins. Critically assessing the conception view on when individual life begins shows there are a variety of problems. Viability, breathing, and quickening each are presented as providing a better answer to the question of when a human life begins than conception. One reason is symmetry - a theory of when life begins is also a theory about when death happens. Other reasons presented against the conception view include the various ways that a fertilized egg at conception can fail to implant, historical precedent theologically, philosophically, and legally answering this question with the feature of “quickening,” and several major seemingly insurmountable practical problems with defining conception as the answer to when a human being comes to exist.

ABSTRACT. As the Me Too movement continues to make headlines, debate over what constitutes sexual consent surges. The movement illuminates not only the frequency at which those I call “The Feminized” are raped, sexually assaulted, and sexually harassed, but also a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of men regarding what constitutes consent.* Reading Me Too accounts challenges men’s understanding of consent. Men are surprised to find that the other parties to many of their sexual encounters did not view them as consensual. Many men claim they worry that any well-intentioned interaction can now be misrepresented as an egregious assault. While this worry may seem disingenuous (and perhaps often is), it serves to illuminate a grave reality regarding consent between men and The Feminized: Legitimate consent cannot be assured in our current patriarchal society. Due to a gross power differential maintained by material and phenomenological means between men and The Feminized, reliably justifiable consent cannot exist. Even an explicit “yes” is not necessarily an expression of voluntary consent in the greater context of systemic sexist oppression. I offer three different lenses that illuminate this conclusion: social contract theory, Althusser’s understanding of repressive and ideological state apparatuses, and a phenomenological understanding of embodied femininity. By utilizing these perspectives, none of which address directly interpersonal sexual consent, I demonstrate multiple ways in which the greater context surrounding these interpersonal interactions can affect significantly the reliability of communication in relationships between men and The Feminized. I also explore the possibility of creating new foundations on which consent between men and The Feminized can stand, proposing three steps men should take in the short term to reduce harm in their own interpersonal relationships with The Feminized.

*“The Feminized” includes anyone deemed a non-man societally. This may include some transgender men who are not classified as men by others, as well as people who are assigned male at birth (AMAB) but identify as a non-binary gender (outside of man/woman dichotomy). Additionally, the term includes cisgender and transgender women, as well as non-binary people assigned female at birth (AFAB).

ABSTRACT. Bribery practices are widespread in developing country markets. This situation causes challenges for multinational companies (MNCs) operating in these settings. A review of the relevant literature on bribery in international business shows that MNCs have typically addressed this issue by focusing on the anti-bribery mechanisms of the firms. However, market actors in developing countries are not bound to follow the strict anti-bribery codes and policies of MNC but instead, they follow the prevailing bribery norms of their own society. It has become clear that extant research on bribery in international business has not fully addressed the social and dynamic nature of bribery and its control in developing countries. Consequently, this paper borrows the practice-based view (PBV) from the organization and social sciences, and also applications of PBV in strategy as practice literature (SAP). Based on three key elements to study practices i.e. practice, practitioners, and praxis, this conceptual paper proposes a practice-based strategic framework for MNCs to control prevailing bribery practices in developing countries. The framework offers a practice-oriented step-by-step process to control bribery. It extends the study of bribery from narrow organizational context to wider environment covering the social and dynamic nature of bribery practices along with MNCs’ practices to control them.

ABSTRACT. Connecting technology in an epoch to the arts, culture, society, and philosophy deepens understanding of humanity in a broad spectrum. Techne’, meaning art or artisan, is the root of technology. Teaching techne’ deepens students thinking across disciplines about techno-historical epochs and provides insight to emerging technologies. The zeitgeist methodology is a cross-disciplinary examination of ethics of technology, and its impact on society through the examination of policy, art, values, and philosophy. It gives a deeper view of what it means to be human in an age of technology. Does the zeitgeist methodology reshape and add multiple lens to a person’s thinking? Can technologists have a better understanding of the ethical impact of their innovations? Technology influences the humanities and defines culture for an epoch’s zeitgeist. Arts, culture, society, values, and philosophy have been shaped by innovation embraced by people throughout history. Technology’s impact has noticeably accelerated since the Middle Ages. Historically, the railroad, radio, and space are some technologies that have had significant impact on the arts, culture, policy, and philosophy. Currently, artificial intelligence and cyber technologies are reflected in social media, digital art, and self-learning moral machines.

Students are given an opportunity to critically think by applying depth and breadth in analysis capacity. By futurizing about a technology’s impact across disciplines, students ask new questions, investigate cause and effect, and discover unintended consequences. Using this methodology, Brown University Cybersecurity Executive Masters students independently completed the assignment. U.S. Naval War College National Security and Strategic Studies students collaborated as teams. Interestingly, there was notable differentiation between the two sets of students and learning outcomes. These results show the Zeitgeist methodology exposes a spirit of the time that is expressed through artistic styles and genres and challenges the norms of society.

ABSTRACT. Public-Private Partnerships: Mitigating the Risks This panel presentation will explore practical considerations and best practices for fostering public-private partnerships based on ethical principles, such as transparency and accountability. Partners provide complementary skills, resources, and capabilities but often have different goals and priorities. These differences can create conflicts between their respective missions, goals or financial interests. Conflicts of interest can increase the risk of unethical behavior, but even the appearance of such conflicts can undermine trust in public institutions, thus reducing their effectiveness. Despite these risks, public-private partnerships are often crucial for the success of public health institutions. Thus, it is important for public health professionals to develop a strategy for assessing risks and benefits and to build safeguards when forming partnerships.

The first presenter, a federal health official, will offer practical considerations learned from systematic reviews of potential public-private partnerships in her agency. Some of the topics she will discuss include how to assess the risks and benefits of partnerships, considerations relating to building public trust in health recommendations, and how lessons learned at the federal level can be applied at the local or state level. She will provide guidance on how to build successful partnerships, including a series of questions that should be answered before moving forward with the partnership.

The second speaker, a federal official and ethicist, will address objections that ethicists have raised about government partnering with private industry. It troubles some ethicists that recipients of industry funding consistently ignore the well-documented favorable bias toward the donor that accepting gifts creates. Others object to the very idea of government partnering with private industries whose products and activities contradict the mission of public agencies. While acknowledging these concerns, the second speaker will articulate an ethical rationale for evaluating potential partnerships applicable to other organizations. It includes strategies for reducing risks, such as creating degrees of separation between donor and recipient.

Ample time will be allotted for questions and discussion. Time permitting, the panel will solicit audience input through the discussion of a case study that will illustrate some of the risks, benefits, and ethical considerations for establishing partnerships.

ABSTRACT. We report ongoing efforts, since 2016, to incorporate a minimodule on moral reasoning theories prior to offering teamwork training to upper level students in Computing and Engineering. We use video lectures by world class philosopher Michael Sandel and others and follow the lectures with guided discussions. The discussion questions aim to explore students experiences and perspectives and place students in situations they may face as young professionals. For lessons in animal collaboration, their sense of equity and fairness, reciprocity and empathy we use a TED lecture by eminent primatologist, ethologist, Frans de Waal. We also explore the students understanding of ethical and societal issues related to technology by holding a university-wide competition in which students depict through art works, short essays or app conceptualization and design how ethical behavior, communication and empathy can lead to conflict avoidance, conflict resolution and peacemaking in small or big ways.

ABSTRACT. Social media companies are able to create precise profiles of their users. Every movement on the internet, whatever you see and click, is recorded and analyzed to create a profile of you. These data are sold to companies that want to sell stuff and to political campaigns. They use these profiles for micro-targeting: messages that you will see on your platform and that are tailored to your personal interests, values, and beliefs. Those who engage in micro-targeting argue that surveying customers and voters is nothing new and that data which describe people can be owned just as anything else. Users transfer property rights to social media companies when they accept their terms of service. Opponents, however, argue that people have a right to privacy on the internet; that micro-targeting opens the door to manipulation and propaganda; that people’s prejudices and biases are reinforced, and that political micro-targeting drives people into political extremes. Rittel and Webber called problems like this one “wicked problems.” Wicked problems are framed differently, depending on the interests, values, and beliefs of those who are looking at them. They pose ethical challenges that have scarcely been recognized as such. Most importantly, we might overlook people who will be harmed by a decision that we make based on a too limited perception of the problem, or we are unable to understand the legitimacy of other’s perspectives. Preparing students to cope with wicked problem is difficult. They have to work on them to acquire necessary skills. However, working on wicked problems poses risks such as confusion, frustration, and conflicts. All this is hard to manage in educational settings. The Reflect! platform has been designed as an answer to these challenges. It allows to practice certain strategies to cope with wicked problems and to develop the skills that are needed for building consensus in teams. Students learn how to overcome disagreements about fundamental rights and how to reconcile conflicting values and interests. The presentation will, first, introduce this educational innovation, and will then walk the audience through an exemplary student project. At the end, there will be a Q&A section.

ABSTRACT. Japan has been slow in adopting Western animal welfare measures, such as the 3R principle in animal experimentation and five freedom for captive animals. There are multiple factors for this, and a peculiar view on human-animal relationship, which I call "Ethics of Kuyo" seem to play an important role. Understanding this view is important if you want to talk with Japanese people on matters of animal ethics. The core of ethics of Kuyo is the view that when you sacrifice animal's life for your purpose, that places certain responsibilities on you to show your thankfulness to the animal. One of the responsibilities is to conduct an appropriate ritual to console the animal spirit, which is called Dobutsu Kuyo. Another is 'not wasting the sacrifice', that is, to make the best use of animal's death. The ritual of Dobutsu Kuyo is ubiquitous among animal related activities in Japan: animal experimentation facilities, farmers' cooperative, fishers' cooperative, meat processing facilities, zoos, etc. The ritual stems from a medieval religious view, but after it became obsolete, the ritual acquired a new meaning of showing gratefulness. 'Not wasting the sacrifice' means different things for different activities. For meat industries, this means not throwing away animal body parts. A peculiar example of this idea appears in Japanese justification of whaling. Japanese are proud of the tradition of utilizing all body parts of a whale, including baleen, and this fact is supposed to justify killing whales. I interpret the ethics of Kuyo as a kind of relational ethics. In relational ethics, a responsibility stems not from who we are, but from what the relationship is. A typical relational ethics is a version of ethics of care, in which caring-cared relationship itself is the source of the responsibility of caring. Similarly, in ethics of Kuyo, the killing-killed relationship is the source of responsibility afterward. Ethics of Kuyo is currently functioning as an obstacle to the introduction of Western style animal welfare measures. But the idea of 'not wasting the sacrifice' seems to be made compatible with some of animal welfare ideas.

ABSTRACT. The thesis of this presentation is that, when an organization employs a professional, this brings with it a set of obligations that businesses and other kinds of organizations can easily overlook. For every employed professional brings with him or her a set of ethical commitments that are not a product of his or her own making and not a product of that person’s contractual relationship with the hiring organization. The background for this claim is a particular view of professions and their ethics. Admittedly, other views have been offered. But viewed from the widely accepted perspective of professions’ social function, the reason a society has a particular profession is to make available to the members of the society who need access to it a certain valued kind of expertise that depends on specialized knowledge and specialized training in its application (and which is therefore unavoidably exclusive to a particular group of practitioners). Since history tells us that exclusive possession of valued expertise can be exploited, societies grant professions their special authority only on the condition that the profession as a group and each of its members practice their expertise according to mutually established ethical standards and principally for the benefit of the persons they serve rather than principally to serve their own goals. The obligations that employed professionals bring with them are thus the product of an ongoing dialogue between the profession of which this person is a member and the larger society about how the members of the profession will conduct themselves in employing their expertise for the people of the society. This “social contract” between a profession, its individual members, and the larger community not only precedes the organization’s contract with the individual member of the profession in time but, I will argue, has greater moral weight than any conditions of employment or work-orders that the organization might attempt to impose on the employed professional. Therefore organizations – business organizations or organizations of any other kind – that try to motivate their professionals to violate their professions’ ethical standards are acting unethically themselves.

ABSTRACT. This paper will argue that the way admonishment was embedded in human memory in Nietzsche’s historical description of slave morality expressed in his time, is similar to the practice of pathologization of sexual “deviants” which is embedded in our time in an equally violent way. This is a result of the current positivist worldview that mirrors the Christian thought that Nietzsche writes about. This is reductionist and an affront to the human flourishing that Nietzsche so fervently advocates for. I argue, when sexuality does not breathe freedom, the individual does not flourish. This lack of flourishing results from the taxonomization, and pathologization of their sexuality. These individuals, “deviants” face this, as a result of the bio-medical model of assessing and treating paraphilia (i.e. sexual disorders). These treatment(s) will be assessed within this paper. That is, this paper tracks, and compares the reduction of human sexual attributes and characteristics to taxonomical moral failures in Christian ideology, that worried Nietzsche.

ABSTRACT. Some suggest that laughter at malicious, or phthonic, jokes is indicative of moral failings in those who laugh at such jokes (de Sousa 1987). The object of the present paper will be to demonstrate that laughter is not something for which individuals are culpable because laughter is an involuntary phenomenon that results from the a priori detection of incongruity relevant to humor. In the Meno, Plato demonstrates how knowledge of mathematical concepts is recollective in nature. Similarly, I contend that the knowledge of humorous concepts is recollective, meaning that we simply come to recognize something as funny because there are intuitions and bases for this kind of knowledge hardwired into us that incline us to believe that something is funny. In this sense, the detection of humor shall be treated in this paper as more of an epistemic concern than an aesthetic concern. It is, in this way, that laughter can be understood as an involuntary phenomenon. Furthermore, I contend that laughter is not itself harmful because the harm produced after the telling of a joke can best be attributed to the joke itself––not the laughter that occurs in response to it. While laughter may compel an individual to reflect on harm instantiated by a phthonic joke, the laughter itself does not create additional harm. Because laughter is involuntary and not itself harmful, I argue that people cannot be held accountable for it, even in the aftermath of phthonic joking. A major implication of my view is that individuals are divested of the responsibility to attempt to control their laughter when they find humor in a particularly offensive joke. If it is the case that laughter is a reflexive impulse to the involuntary detection of humorous demonstrations and that laughter is furthermore not itself harmful, then it would be improper to suggest that stifling laughter in certain circumstances is indicative of moral fortitude.

ABSTRACT. The current refugee crisis is unparalleled in history in its size and severity. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are roughly 67 million refugees worldwide, the vast majority of whom are refugees as the result of wars and other military actions. This social and political crisis—1 in every 122 humans is a refugee—cries out for normative explanation and analysis. Morally and politically, how should we understand this crisis? How should we respond to it, and why?

I argue that war refugees have suffered, and continue to suffer, a series of harms, wrongs, and oppressions, and so are owed recompense, restitution, and aid—as a matter of justice—by socio-political institutions around the world. I make the case that war refugees should be viewed and treated differently than migrants, due to their particular circumstances, but that their circumstances do not wholly alleviate their own moral responsibilities. We must stop treating refugees as objects to be moved around on the global stage, I contend, and instead see them as people, with their own subjective experiences of the world, who might surprise us with their words and works.

ABSTRACT. Much of research ethics takes clinical research to be largely comprised of interactions between research sponsors, investigators, and research participants and thus assesses research primarily via the ethics of free and fair transactions. A proposed alternative claims that clinical research as an enterprise plays such a fundamental social role that it should be considered part of what John Rawls called “the basic structure of society.” On this view, the primary ethical lens for evaluating research should be that of justice. In this presentation, I explore the implications of this shift for the ethics of health research priority-setting (HRPS).

I briefly motivate a turn towards the “basic structure” orientation. I then show how recent approaches to HRPS that have framed obligations in terms of procedural fairness, role-related obligations, public attestations, and beneficence are insufficient on this basic structure approach. Finally, I outline a set of desiderata for an ethics of HRPS that satisfies the basic structure model, including decision-making procedures constrained by substantive principles of justice; the need to conduct HRPS in coordination with, rather than in isolation from, health resource allocation; and the need for broad coordination of HRPS both within and between research portfolios addressing particular diseases and conditions. Importantly, these desiderata apply to both public and private research funders.

The basic structure model presents an important supplement to so-called “transactional” approaches to research ethics. While the latter seek to identify norms appropriate to the design and conduct of individual trials, the basic structure orientation refocuses on norms appropriate to governing the research enterprise as a whole. It is this latter orientation that is most appropriate for the ethics of HRPS, an exercise with social impacts stretching well beyond the stakeholders of any given study, and which can only be optimized when considered comprehensively. Where existing approaches to HRPS have focused on responsibilities indexed to the roles and stated commitments of individual parties, they have taken the existing structure of clinical research institutions for granted. An account of justice in HRPS must go farther, and provide a template for a more just division of epistemic labor.

ABSTRACT. Ethics related to scientific and technological research can be usefully categorized into three broad areas: Research Ethics; Social Responsibilities; and Responsible Innovation. Research Ethics (often known as RCR or RI) focuses on the most basic ethical obligations inherent to actually conducting research, including avoiding research misconduct, managing conflicts of interest, apportioning authorship credit and observing human research subject protections. This is generally the only required ethics training for science and engineering researchers. Social Responsibilities expands this scope considerably to include not just the process but the products of research, and the societal impacts these stand to make. For example, social responsibilities may include research communication to the public, or engagement with stakeholders, or an awareness of policy implications. Relevant training is offered only sporadically, and is always voluntary.

Yet some research endeavors – particularly those engaged in developing innovations for near-term societal application – carry more acute, more substantial and more specific ethical risks and opportunities than others. And there is no guarantee that researchers with a social responsibilities training will be found on such projects. For such scenarios, we must consider not merely the ethics of the researchers but the broader ethics of the research process itself. Within the past several years, this has become the focus of a new frontier in STEM ethics known as Responsible Innovation, or RI. Stilgoe et al., for example, prescribe four principles to be integrated into the research process: Anticipation, Reflexivity, Inclusion and Responsiveness (Stilgoe, 2013). Generally, no training yet exists in this area.

The University of Notre Dame has recently been awarded an NSF grant to refine and apply the concept of Responsible Innovation, while also developing training in it. Small teams of 3-4 graduate students and postdocs will first critically survey the literature of Responsible Innovation and receive training in the skills necessary to engage in it. Second, the teams will apply their findings to a local research project as a test of their articulation of Responsible Innovation. Finally, the interdisciplinary teams will compose their findings in publishable form as a contribution to the growing RI literature.

ABSTRACT. Numerous examples suggest that when Innovative Technologies (IT) are introduced into the marketplace they may face moral objections or impose an unforeseen moral burden upon customers. To date, innovators lack a comprehensive methodology for conducting a preemptive assessment of future ethical obstacles their product may face. We claim that if such an assessment is exercised during the design stages, future ethical impediments will be significantly reduced. Thus, we present a step-by-step protocol for this purpose. Our procedure is based on accepted norms and practices in ethics discussions, expanding the dimensions of Ethics in Design and providing IT entrepreneurs with a step-by-step focused procedure. The process requires the participation of both a professional ethicist and the innovator, inviting key players to the discussion. The first step requires that the ethicist and the innovator(s) jointly define the precise technological novelty of the future artifact and its manifestation within the technological design. This primary step promotes the invitation of only relevant stakeholders, the creation of a realistic scenario and the framing of a very focused discussion in the second step. The participants deliberate regarding the definitions, thereby articulating and addressing ethical challenges which are direct derivatives of the first step and relate only to ethical outcomes that may arise from the specific IT artifact. The process eliminates issues which had been discussed through other technological products or former incidents. The ethical outcomes from the second step deliberations are transmitted to the innovator or technologists who will design the appropriate technological adjustments. In the talk we present a simulation of the suggested protocol on the “Timer”, an IT artifact envisioned by a professional multidisciplinary committee to be implemented at a dying patient's bedside. We show that with precise follow-through of the protocol we were able to predict the unique moral burdens on future stakeholders, which in turn led to relevant technological responses. Therefore, we conclude that the proposed protocol has the potential to create a relevant, specific and methodological ethical conversation among relevant key players, thus promoting preemptive ethical preparedness toward upcoming IT innovations.

ABSTRACT. Artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous in contemporary societies, and it is used increasingly to perform complex decision-making tasks that were once reserved for human beings. For example, AI is now used to decide whether or not to approve mortgage loan applications, to evaluate the performance of teachers, and to predict the likelihood of criminality – decisions that can have life-changing impacts (e.g., O’Neil 2016). The use of AI for such tasks is sometimes justified by the supposed neutrality of algorithms—or, more modestly, on the grounds that algorithms could be less biased than human beings. On this account, for example, algorithms that assess risk of recidivism might not be value neutral, but they could be less influenced by racial and ethnic biases than human judges. Recent scholarship in philosophy of science and technology has shown that scientific and technological decision making—including decisions about the validation of hypotheses—is laden with values, including values of an ethical character. However, philosophical work in this area has largely neglected questions of bias and values in AI. This paper draws upon recent work on the role of values in science and technology, as well as interdisciplinary scholarship in AI, to argue that decisions about the design and implementation of AI systems is value laden in ways similar to human decision making. AI decision making is just as capable of bias as is human decision making. To argue for this, I examine recent work on the development and implementation of risk assessment algorithms in criminal justice systems—in particular, algorithms that predict the risk of recidivism. I argue that the design of these predictive algorithms involves ineliminable value judgments in the following three areas: concept operationalization, choices of data inputs, and choices of data outputs. The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world, and a disproportionate number of these are people of color (Alexander 2012); I argue that the widespread adoption of criminal prediction algorithms will likely to exacerbate existing inequalities, and I will explore possibilities for using AI in ways that do not do this.

ABSTRACT. While states scramble to respond to scandals at colleges and universities over sexual misconduct and violence victimization, legislation at the federal level has shifted focus to the rights of respondents, or those accused of sexual misconduct. This presentation will discuss and critically analyze recent federal changes to policies like Title IX, as well as Texas legislation aimed at preventing colleges and universities from turning a blind eye, so to speak, to the past misconduct of students or employees. Cases from Baylor University, Michigan State, and the University of Utah will be discussed as a starting point and the confounding issues of Greek organizations, college athletics, and professionalism will be discussed. On a more basic level, the conflict between enacting policies and laws to protect students while maintaining a focus on the autonomy and the right to choose of those who have experienced violence victimization will be discussed. The importance of confidential resources, the challenge of bystander intervention programming, and the needs of marginalized populations will also be addressed, including the rise in both perpetration and victimization in members of marginalized populations.

ABSTRACT. Opening note: In this paper, I engage APPE’s special call inviting proposals that focus on “individual and collective responses to social and political injustices.” I develop an account of epistemic refusal as an example of epistemic boycotting of and protest against the social and political injustices of sexual violence. Sexual violence survivors enact epistemic refusal when they strategically withdrawal from epistemic and related social relations as a means of rejecting dominant forms of knowing that frequently and systemically cast doubt on their claims of assault and violation.

Abstract: Some injustices of the #MeToo era are epistemic: they harm sexual violence survivors specifically as knowers by questioning whether they can give serve as reliable witnesses to and provide credible testimony about the events of their own lives. The Kavanaugh confirmation process evidenced the current prevalence of such harms by showcasing both an unwillingness to believe survivors and a predilection to automatically accord the accused greater credibility. This and other recent examples amply demonstrate the importance of concepts that feminist and social epistemologists engage—such as testimonial injustice (Fricker 2007), circumscribed subjectivity (Pohlhaus 2014), derivatization (Cahill 2011), and epistemic gaslighting (Abramson 2014, Manne 2017)—for understanding our contemporary social and political landscape.

In the face of such extensive epistemic injustice, an urgent question arises: How should we respond? While some philosophers have argued for the importance of resisting the wrongs of epistemic injustice (Medina 2013) and while recognizing the importance of epistemic resistance for any comprehensive plan to mitigate epistemic oppression, I argue for a different approach: epistemic refusal. Epistemic refusal represents a wholesale rejection of dominant forms of knowing through a repudiation of the need for others’ belief in and recognition of one’s status as a survivor. Epistemic refusal eschews reliance on the recognition of the credibility of one’s testimony from those least likely to provide it. The case of mass, informal disclosure of survivorhood through social media provides one potent example of how epistemic refusal works in practice and demonstrates how it has the power to open new vistas of knowing by fostering greater empathy and solidarity between survivors.

ABSTRACT. Presentation 1: "Ethics and Responsible Research (ER2) at the National Science Foundation (NSF)" Presenter: John Parker Presentation 2: Funding Programs at the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Presenter: Benyamin Margolis, PhD, MPH, CHES, CPH

A representative from the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) will provide an overview of the HHS Office of Research Integrity. This overview will describe the foci of the Division of Investigative Oversight (DIO) and the Division of Education and Integrity (DEI). The presentation will focus on evolving efforts to emphasize prevention, expand data-driven decision-making, and broaden the DEI grant program.

ABSTRACT. Our Center strives to be at the forefront for exploring fresh and relevant professional responsibility topics with our business students. So when our college’s study abroad office solicited proposals for new short-term courses, we developed a Professional Responsibility trip that was launched in May 2019.

During this panel presentation, we will share our experiences in creating this Study Abroad course from conceptualization to implementation, and why it serves as a powerful tool for enhanced learning about professional responsibility issues. We will also provide ideas and encourage audience input for how to create a study abroad course, organize site visits, successfully travel with students, and make thoughtful itinerary updates while being away from the support and familiarity of your home campus.

Our class, comprised of a diverse group of 20 undergraduate students from a spectrum of business disciplines, focused specifically on three related themes: Global Corporate Ethics and Compliance Programs; Whistleblowing and Issue-raising and Contemporary Business/Professional Responsibility Challenges in Europe.

Paris, France was the first location for this experience; the second half was held in Brussels, Belgium. Site visits included large, well-known global companies; Transparency International-France; and interactive sessions at the Sorbonne and UCLouvain. Our trip concluded with a visit to the Parlamentarium in Brussels, which provided a deeply rich context for understanding the interplay of history and professional responsibility in the unification of Europe.

An overarching goal of this trip was to encourage students to cultivate a capacity for self-evaluation and lifelong learning, and become proficient at building upon and leveraging their previous academic experiences to analyze professional responsibility challenges in meaningful ways. An edited sampling of students’ reflections are below:

"I’ve learned that being a successful leader is to not only listen and recognize what is not ethical, but to have the courage to implement change where needed."

"Ethics is not always a choice between door number one and door number two."

"I never thought I could have learned as much as I did in ten short days. I will use all the knowledge acquired on the critical topic of professional responsibility for the rest of my life."

ABSTRACT. This paper examines a debate in African bioethics involving questions about the place of traditional medicine (TM) in the African mainstream scientific health care systems. There seems to be a paradox about the health care systems in African societies. Officially, African societies have adopted Western-style biomedical science as their mainstream health care system. However, non-scientific traditional medicine is the major system of health care which is directly accessible to, and widely used by, many people in African societies. More than 80% of Africans use traditional medicine (e.g. for the treatment of HIV/AIDS) (Nyika 2007; Tangwa 2007). For example, it is estimated that over 70% of South Africans consult traditional healers before consulting any other type of healthcare professional (Bogaert 2007). Examples of African traditional medical practices include “the physical or mental preparation of an individual for puberty, adulthood, pregnancy, childbirth, and death” (ibid.). Practitioners include herbalists, diviners, traditional surgeons (who mainly do circumcisions), and traditional birth attendants. Currently, suggestions and efforts are being made to integrate traditional medicine into the mainstream bio-scientific medicine. But besides the epistemological questions regarding how to consistently balance and reconcile “scientific” and “traditional” knowledge, we also face fundamental bioethical questions. One such question relates to intellectual property rights. The unwritten formulas of traditional medicine are not usually protected by patents. So, researchers and scientists who may succeed in decoding and formalizing the traditional formulas may be unfairly credited for discovering the medicine therefore be awarded the rights and benefits which may actually belong to the traditional healers. We also face ethical questions about the Westernization of African traditional medicine. Additionally, disclosure in order to satisfy the requirements of informed consent may compromise the secrecy that characterizes traditional medical knowledge. The power of the traditional healer lies in holding secret powers and knowledge that ordinary persons do not possess. This paper examines these and many more basic bio-epistemological and bioethical questions and concludes that indigenous African holistic worldviews about the world, personhood, and healing actually support an integrated traditional-scientific health care system.

ABSTRACT. Early detection of breast cancer is typically seen as the most favorable condition of its successful treatment. Systematic screening mammography has, thus, been established as a standard diagnostic tool for the earliest possible detection. Consequently, detection rates of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) – the most common type and earliest stage of breast cancer – have dramatically increased at tremendous expense for both society (medical resources) and patients (physical and emotional travail). However, population studies show mortality rates due to breast cancer to be virtually unchanged, thereby indicating that DCIS’s early detection and treatment save very few lives and leave the pool of tumors that will eventually cause illness and death practically unaffected. Thus, DCIS is ‘overdiagnosed’ in the sense of not being fatal even if left undetected and untreated. To address the problems of unnecessarily costly and harmful overdetection and overtreatment of DCIS, some medical experts call for reduced mammography screenings and a stop to labeling DCIS as cancer. This has raised the issue of disputed disease status of DCIS, which may not qualify as a disease.

This paper argues that, when in view of great differences of expert opinion about the risk that a condition may cause patients irreversible harm (death), detection of such conditions and relevant treatments are justifiable and should be made reasonably available.

The early detection of breast cancer is justified on the grounds that we can never be certain of a tumor’s overdiagnosis unless we know how a patient's life fares until death. To avoid potentially irreversible harm to patients, we should forsake a strict consequentialist approach to resource allocation, and abide by the precautionary principle for the potential benefit of the individual.

This paper draws on epidemiological studies on cancer detection, publications on the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and a specific theory against consequentialism. The paper can contribute to a better understanding of the ethical issues involved in the early detection and treatment of breast cancer – a major cause of death for women. In this regard, these issues have tremendous professional and applied impact on women’s health care.

ABSTRACT. Ethics Education. Understood. This is the vision for the National Ethics Project, an evolving multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, multi-funded project that examines ethics education from a variety of perspectives. The NEP goal is for researchers to work together to create a more comprehensive view of ethics education across the nation, to foreground successes, and to find ways of creating high impact initiatives and interventions where they are needed. Our work so far has focused on higher education and has involved institutional landscape studies that illuminate institutional messaging, course offerings, extra-curricular opportunities for ethics education, close analysis of instructor goals and assessments from instructors’ own perspectives paired with student experiences of the courses studied, and a study of student perspectives about ethics curriculum and campus life at their institution. 

We invite you to join us for an informational meeting to learn more about the project and how you can become involved in the following ways:  • Enroll your institution as a member of the NEP network and contribute to our collection, organization and analysis of thousands of data points; • Explore with the NEP team about how an audit of ethics education could help your campus;  • Expand the scope of NEP to apply our research techniques to K-12, corporations, public education and other learning communities; • Extend the reach of NEP research by funding or sponsoring our work.  
Check out the National Ethics Project website for further information.

ABSTRACT. A recent review of the scholarly literature examining moral rationalization has identified twelve different ways in which individuals rationalize their immoral behavior (see Agle, Miller, & O'Rourke, 2016). Some of these rationalizations come out of the criminology literature (e.g. Sykes and Matza, 1957) and are referred to as "ethical neutralization", some come out of the psychology literature and are referred to as "moral disengagement" (e.g. Bandura, 1999), and some come out of newer work in psychology and business and are referred to as "blind spots" (e.g. Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012). Some of these concepts overlap and some are distinct in their own literature. They share the common thread of a cognitive process that allows an individual to commit an unethical act while keeping their self-identity intact as a moral person.

In order to teach students these techniques, I have identified dozens of videoclips from popular movies, televisions shows, documentaries, and television newsmagazines that illustrate these various rationalization techniques. I have labeled these techniques where they are occurring in the videoclip. I also have all of the videoclips without the labeling, allowing students the opportunity to see if they can pick out the techniques without the labels. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how to use these clips to teach students to be able to identify each of the 12 rationalization techniques.

I have used these videoclips in my classes for years and the students find them to be both entertaining and effective. After watching several clips where the rationalization technique being used is labeled they then are able to watch other clips without the labeling and pick out the type of rationalization technique being used. This day of class is also noted as a highlight in the course evaluations at the end of the semester.

ABSTRACT. As an instructor who is charged with teaching public health ethics as well as responsible conduct of research, both online and in person (and hybrid), I have developed a well-received approach to course design that works in different areas and is amenable to face-to-face as well as online presentations. I will present the "toolbox" approach of having a set of activities (cases, exercises, debates, games, online engagements, etc.) that can be done individually or as a group, online or in person. This toolbox can then be utilized to design a class that intersperses short lectures and applied work (both individual and group) that can meet the needs of many types of ethics courses. I would like to present this approach and receive feedback and suggestions for how it can be improved.

ABSTRACT. In an effort to increase the salience of their comprehensive learning courses for undergraduates, many universities have added courses with applied ethics and cross-cultural learning objectives. Although hiring for faculty whose primary expertise is in applied ethics or applied cultural competence is steady, whether the number of faculty hired matches the number of courses for which ethics is a component is unknown (see aerodatalab trends in philosophy hiring 2019). This trend of mission expansion alongside stable faculty numbers has meant that faculty teaching courses with learning objectives related to ethical applications are doing so without a regularized way of learning applied ethics. The purpose of this article is to answer the question: How do faculty learn to teach in areas outside of their initial training, such as ethics?

Based on a qualitative content analysis of 20+ interviews of faculty at a large, comprehensive, university in the United States, we find evidence that faculty learn to teach ethics through self-education, unstructured exploration, reliance on personal and professional intuition, and a mixed-scanning approach to use of limited university resources. While the expectation is that they learn via a “root” method, complete with courses, professional development, examinations, and other more “rational” tools of education, we find that faculty are learning by “branching” and “muddling through”. Charles Lindblom described the task of making policy decisions as an art of “muddling through”. Muddling through, or making decisions that are sufficient for the task but may not showcase the most rational or technically sound methods, is what individuals in environments of resource constraints do in order to accomplish difficult tasks. Within the context of university teaching, wherein faculty are asked to teach beyond their initial expertise in order to satisfy departmental, university, or accreditation objectives, faculty behave in much the same way as do Lindblom’s harried public administrators. Even when faculty have received some coordinated training at the university level, “muddling through” seems to be a consistent pattern of behavior among this sample of faculty interviewees.

ABSTRACT. In June of 2017, Alex Honnold executed a remarkable free solo climb of Freerider on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Honnold’s climb was a stunning athletic achievement, surpassing most of what we typically observe in professional sports. The four hour ascent demanded strength, endurance, skill, daring, and tremendous mental focus, precisely the qualities that are celebrated in athleticism. The climb was also incredibly dangerous. Had Honnold lost his grip at nearly any point, he would have surely fallen to his death. Thanks to the acclaimed film, Free Solo, millions have born witness to Honnold’s achievement, and many of us find ourselves simultaneously astonished, horrified, and at least a little morally confused. How should we respond to another’s risky behavior in the context of the pursuit of athletic excellence? On the one hand, the value of respecting autonomy suggests that we should acknowledge another’s authority to determine which risks are acceptable in pursuit of desired ends. Some individuals are more risk tolerant than others, and it is difficult to identify any objective account of morally objectionable risk when the only one put at risk by the behavior is the one electing to engage in the behavior. Moreover, many typical behaviors such as driving an automobile, pregnancy/child-birth, and surgery come with significant risks. On the other hand, valuing persons appropriately suggests that we should, at the very least, be a little uncomfortable with others engaging in seriously risky activities. Indifference to another’s risk-taking seems to suggest that we value persons too little. I use Honnold’s free solo climb as a springboard to think about the appropriate moral response to those who engage is risky behaviors, especially in pursuit of athletic excellence. This analysis has application to sports in general, as well as questions regarding whether athletes should be allowed to use performance-enhancing substances in training or competition.

ABSTRACT. I wish to present the moral theory that I develop in a book-in-progress, along with parts of one its chapters. The chapter examines several moral questions that harmful sports, those that cause significant harm to participants, raise.

I advocate a form of moral liberalism with these basic commitments:

• to individuals’ liberty of internal states; • to individuals’ liberty of external acts; and, • despite the preceding liberties, to individuals having many moral obligations that frequently restrict, or even prohibit, their acts.

Internal states comprise both mental states on which individuals do not act, and bodily states that do not affect others. Individuals have complete moral freedom with respect to internal states. Such freedom is necessary in order for individuals to have the autonomy to determine both the kinds of people they wish to be, and the kinds of lives they wish to live. Individuals’ liberty of external acts is robust, but more limited. Individuals are not free morally to violate their obligations, many of which are derived from the overarching obligation not to commit undue burdens for others.

The presentation would address questions such as these:

1) Do sports leagues and team owners act immorally when they provide venues through which individuals participate in harmful sports? 2) Do state and local governments act immorally when they recruit, and participate financially in the construction of stadia for, teams that are parts of harmful sports? 3) Are media organizations obligated morally not to broadcast harmful sports? 4) Are sports fans obligated morally not to support harmful sports?

Perhaps surprisingly given my advocacy of moral liberalism, I argue that the mentioned parties often violate the obligation not to create undue burdens for others. For example, although adults are free morally to participate in harmful sports, governments are obligated morally not to contribute to such sports. When governments recruit teams and fund stadia construction, they help create undue burdens for those who are harmed significantly through their sports participation. Governments and others should recognize the harms as undue burdens even if the participants who suffer them do not.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I apply a Kantian insight into the nature of the relationship between law and ethics to resolve moral conflicts such as those in the (in)famous “trolley problem.” Kant argues that in a society where everyone is morally equal, the determinations of legitimate public institutions as to our respective rights and obligations generally take normative priority over private ethical judgments in cases of conflict. This is known as the “priority of right” and its application rationally vindicates popular intuitions in the original trolley problem posed by Phillipa Foot. The Kantian rationale for the priority of right also illuminates the resolution of intractable conflicts between narrow obligations (i.e., dilemmas). Since no one can consent to be subject to the enforcement of contradictory obligations, the prescriptive system of obligations defined in public law must be made consistent, whether tragic moral conflicts are possible or not.

ABSTRACT. The prohibition against lying is a notorious feature of Kant’s moral theory. Kant even claims that lying is the greatest violation of a human’s duty to oneself. Since Kant’s moral philosophy focuses on overt cases of lying, in which a person tells an intentional untruth, it is difficult to apply his moral theory to today’s more sophisticated epistemic landscape, replete with cases of deception. In addition to lying, deception includes attempts to misrepresent and mislead by concealing or withholding information, but without providing false information. For example, farm protection legislature has been passed criminalizing the documentation and/or distribution of information about the conditions and practices of animal agriculture. Deterring journalism, these laws are referred to as “Ag-Gag” laws. It is unclear how Kant’s Formula of Humanity would handle such laws since they do not technically involve lying. This opaqueness is partially due to the notorious ambiguity of treating someone merely as a means. While Christine Korsgaard and Onora O’Neill explain the Formula of Humanity in terms of end sharing and consent, there is still ambiguity surrounding why these accounts entail someone is being treated merely as a means and how they would apply to cases of deception such as Ag-Gag laws. To address these concerns, this paper develops a sufficient condition for treating someone merely as a means by drawing on Kant’s views on rhetoric as well as Samuel Kerstein’s actual consent account. In particular, I will focus on the part of this account that stipulates that an agent impermissibly uses another if it is reasonable for them to believe that had the the other been informed of the intended use of them they would have dissented. Since Kerstein is concerned with issues within bioethics he builds informed conditions to reflect future concerns such as likely effects on the other being used and the agent’s purpose. For analogous reasons, this paper argues for expanding these informed conditions to include effects on others not directly being used, unlikely but deleterious effects, and the historical background conditions and events preceding the actual use. This sufficient condition is then applied to Ag-Gag laws.

ABSTRACT. It is widely recognized that professionals, such as doctors, nurses, engineers, and teachers have duties that go far beyond those of ordinary citizens, but there is much disagreement as to why they have such duties. In Professional Ethics: A Trust-Based Approach, Terrence Kelly argues that these duties come from the unique trust that professionals must invite, develop, and honor from those they serve. Without trust, professional practices would be significantly impoverished—both ethically and instrumentally—and the autonomy enjoyed by many professions would evaporate. Professionals, therefore, have good reasons to be “effectively trustworthy,” that is, to develop the virtues necessary to be responsive to the vulnerability of those they serve, and effectively communicate that responsiveness to others. Being effectively trustworthy requires a commitment by professionals as individual practitioners and as members of ethical communities committed to building a culture of trust. Such communities can, and should, both design virtue-based professional education that promotes trustworthy character formation and articulate an ethical vision of the trustworthy professional that has real credibility in the practical conditions of their profession. Because of the importance of trust, professional communities also have good reasons to develop conduct standards, such as those regarding conflict of interest, that promote professional trustworthiness in both fact and appearance.

ABSTRACT. Crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Figure Eight, Clickworker, etc.) have recently become powerful tools for researchers in the social, psychological, behavioral, and computer sciences. Proponents of using these platforms claim that they possess certain strengths compared to existing tools for data collection. For example, crowdsourcing platforms can help researchers quickly recruit enough human subjects with diverse cultural backgrounds at a low cost that generate significant statistical power. However, critical computing scholars have also expressed serious concerns about the use of crowdsourcing platforms in research such as data privacy violation. To better understand these concerns, this paper starts with a brief introduction to the history of crowdsourcing as a tool for research. It then summarizes the alleged strengths of crowdsourcing as suggested by its proponents. This paper then conceptualizes the concerns about crowdsourcing as a data collection tool in three different dimensions: ethical (e.g., workers are not paid fairly, workers are treated as “cogs in a machine” rather than digital citizens, crowdsourcing platforms become “digital sweatshops”), political (e.g., unbalanced power dynamic between job requesters and workers), and methodological (e.g., different researchers are likely reaching many of the same participants and many of them are poor or disabled, participants may have previously been exposed to a similar experimental manipulation). Finally, this paper examines the possible resolutions proposed by critical computing scholars to address the concerns about crowdsourcing as a research tool, and discusses potential challenges with implementing these resolutions.

ABSTRACT. This presentation concerns faculty and administrators' promotion of academic integrity for international and domestic students. The focus is on decision-making and the use of electronic assessment tools. The aim is to establish best practices in decision-making without overreliance on electronic assessment tools (Safe Aware/iThenticate/Turnitin).

ABSTRACT. At the time of its 2012 founding at UNC’s Parr Center for Ethics, the National High School Ethics Bowl served around 1,000 students from 89 schools in 11 states. In recent years, though the Parr Center has undergone transitions in leadership, the program has maintained its status as a top annual priority. In 2019, the NHSEB served over 4,000 students from 327 schools. As the program’s constituencies have changed, so too has its organizational structure. From its headquarters at the Parr Center, a full-time Director (with the advice and support of an executive committee) currently oversees 40 regionals in 32 states, as well as directly administering the largest of those, the North Carolina High School Ethics Bowl. Today, the NHSEB is the largest program in the Center’s portfolio, and one of the most wide-ranging and impactful public philosophy programs in the country, according to a recent external review.

Our proposed presentation will serve as an update for our partners and supporters—where the NHSEB has been, its current state, emerging from leadership changes at the program level and at the Parr Center, and, finally, a discussion of how we hope to keep up with the prodigious growth and spread of the program in the future. First, we’ll introduce our newly appointed Director, who will give an overview of the program as it exists today, detailing its scope, structure, and reach, as well as some of its substantive benefits for participating students and teachers. Our Outreach Director will then detail some of the program’s benefits for universities, departments, and students, as well as some ways session participants can get involved. Here, we’ll feature outreach efforts on the part of UNC students (both undergraduate and graduate) which are indispensable to the NHSEB, particularly in its priority to reach out to underserved students and communities. Finally, we’ll turn to some of the future challenges and opportunities the program presents, and detail some proposals scheduled to roll out in the coming years in order to build upon our previous successes to build an NHSEB that is larger, more inclusive, and more impactful than ever.

ABSTRACT. On the internet, fake-threats are an effective way to intimidate one’s enemies. Fake threats are expressions that have as their purpose to frighten the recipient, without possessing the elements traditionally assigned to threats. These fake threats often take the form of a warning, incitement or an informational statement.

Examples of these types of statements include web sites that contain the names and addresses of “snitches,” abortion doctors or blasphemists. Other examples are social media posts to start a “Twitter storm” against a targeted individual. All these examples, which will be described in-depth in the article, aim to put fear in their targets.

However, while threats generally express an intention from the speakers to hurt or harm their recipient either directly or through agents under their control, in these instances this intention to produce harm is not explicitly stated. In most cases, speakers will actually call upon their audiences not to harm their targets. And unlike traditional threats, these fake-threats are not directly communicated to the targets, who usually are made aware by third parties that they are the target of the fake-threat.

The jurisprudence on threats in this country has little to offer to clarify this issue. Mainly because it has muddled the distinction between intimidation and threats (Virginia v. Black (538 U.S. 343 (2002)). By making intimidation a type of threat, rather than the intended effect of a threat, the court has created confusion that philosophy of language can clarify.

Using a philosophy of language framework, this paper tackles the question whether or not statements that have the intent and effect of putting their targets in danger but lack the formal characteristics of a threat can be distinguished from morally less susceptible statements such as warnings, or equally morally susceptible but different categories of speech such as incitement or intimidation. Can the fake-threat be defined as a separate class of statement that then can be morally evaluated or is such an endeavor doomed to fail?

ABSTRACT. Obtaining information is crucial for deliberating, making decisions and performing actions. Accurate information and intelligence are at the center of political and military strategy and have to be a focus of security. Intelligence occupies an important role in military strategy and it now seems that Information accuracy, confusion, and distortion played an important role in the 2016 presidential election. Active campaigns of disinformation had an influence upon voters and potentially upon the outcome of the 2016 election. This campaign of disinformation has also been true of the upcoming European elections. From these activities the issues of the active information security must now include instruction in being able to differentiate between information and disinformation, and fake and real news, as well as knowledge of how fake news is disseminated through social media including the use of ‘bots’. It is important for informed citizens as well as security professionals to be able to differentiate between true information, false statements projected as true information and confused statements that express misinformation. The history of political and military propaganda, misinformation and disinformation has a series of precedents in the cyber activities and aggression involving, Estonia, Georgia and the Ukraine. In these cases we find the beginnings of cyber warfare, where cyber aggression and cyber attacks are used as a prelude to kinetic warfare as well as a prelude to how cyber warfare can be extended to the domain of social media. In this analysis a discussion of social and ethical issues with fake news and information deception will be the bases for an anticipatory ethical and social analysis of fake news which will in turn be the foundation for policy recommendations involving political and military security that must include an account of how fake news and information deception can be used as the basis of cyber warfare. This analysis also depends upon analyzing information deception from the perspective of instrumental reasoning.

ABSTRACT. This panel addresses some issues about the ways in which the missions of Catholic institutions bear upon the ways in which faculty relate to these missions and how these missions should inform the work of faculty.

One area of tension in Catholic higher education is mission-centered hiring. Does this mean hiring people who are aware of the mission? Invested in it? “Practice” it in their own lives? How much “fidelity” is required? This tension also calls into question in what ways the mission of a Catholic institution is distinctively “Catholic” and what it means to participate in this as a shared enterprise. “The Relationship Between ‘Practicing’ and ‘Preaching’” argues that teaching at a Catholic institution requires at least investment in the mission, and that such investment can come in many forms: practicing, preaching, and/or a couplet of both.

It is a common adage among professors of ethics that we teach our students how to think, not what to think. For some who see mission as integral, however, religious institutions that are mission-driven impose an obligation on ethics professors to defend those moral truths that the religious institution considers settled (such as, e.g., the evil of abortion). “Should Ethics Professors Be Telling Students What to Think?” responds to this way of thinking, arguing that one of the main goals of ethics professors is to engender understanding in their students, which is inconsistent with an authoritarian approach to teaching.

There is a national push in higher education to offer more service-learning courses. This is prevalent in Catholic universities, where it is justified by appeal to the college mission. At the same time, there is considerable debate among faculty and administrators as to whether such courses ought to be required of all students. “Service-Learning as a Mission Imperative” makes a case for requiring service learning courses as part of the core, arguing that the standard objection to requiring such courses fails due to faulty ethical and pedagogical assumptions about the significance of motive and the role service plays in such courses.

ABSTRACT. The political turn in animal rights theory is now fully underway, as is widely recognized in the relevant academic literatures. Thus far, the focus has largely been on domesticated animals’ political status and what rights, if any, animals have in the polity. Wild animals are seldom discussed, and what little discussion there has been concerns whether animals have property rights (habitat). Whether animals have a right to privacy is largely unexplored, despite this being a time of unprecedented challenges to privacy due to technological developments such as mass surveillance and social media. From zoo live streams and surveillance cameras at doggy day care to GPS-enabled “crittercams” in the most remote corners of the earth, these new technologies have also penetrated the lives of animals. In this paper, I explore the theoretical justification behind whether animals have a right to privacy and argue that, with some possible exceptions for highly sentient animals, animals do not have a right to privacy. While the two primary accounts of what rights defend – interest-protecting and choice-protecting theories – do entail that some animals have some rights, I argue that a right to privacy is not generally amongst them. While some animals do have interests in concealment and solitude, I defend a reductionist view that privacy rights are not basic for all or nearly all nonhuman animals, and are instead better understood as defending other rights such as self-determination, property, and welfare. While there are legitimate reasons to surveil animals, such as veterinary hospital monitoring and animal tracking for animal welfare, scientific understanding, and biodiversity conservation, there are very real harms, intended and unintended, that befall animals as a result of our tracking them in the digital age. For such reasons, we ought to better respect animals’ interests through more judicious use of animal surveillance technologies rather than ban them. I conclude by suggesting that we should be concerned about voyeurism even in perfect voyeur cases, not because it violates an animal’s right, but because of what it reflects about ourselves and our attitudes towards nonhuman animals as mere things for visual consumption.

ABSTRACT. A recent study on “child animal cruelty” (CAC) asked children to describe times when they had harmed animals (McDonald et al., 2018). The researchers identified themes in the children’s narratives that deepen our understanding of this behavior. Here I discuss the nature of cruelty and ask if, given the themes identified, all of the reported behavior is “cruel.”

Here is one fairly representative definition of “cruelty”: “the deliberate infliction of physical or psychological pain on a living creature; its most repugnant and puzzling feature is the frequently evident delight of the perpetrators” (Nell, 2006). On accounts like this, some of the behavior reported in McDonald et al. may not be cruel. For instance, several children described the animals they had harmed as intelligent and capable of making correct decisions, but as choosing to make bad decisions instead. In this context, the children used pain/harm to punish, in an effort to modify or correct the behavior of the animals. We should prevent behavior like this, but it is not clear we should regard it as cruel. Punishment can be cruel, but it is not necessarily so. Similar things might be said about harm that results from unrestrained curiosity.

I do not mean to diminish the seriousness of child animal harm. We should prevent this behavior as much as we can, and be cognizant of what it suggests about possible domestic violence and other problems a child might be experiencing. Nor do I mean that children cannot be cruel to animals. Of course, they can. My goals are to discuss the nature of cruelty and to identify whether the label “cruel” is appropriately applied to children in cases like those described in McDonald et al., given the children’s narratives.

Select References:

McDonald, Shelby Elaine, Cody, Anna M., Booth, Laura J., Peers, Jennifer R., Luce, Claire O’Connor, Williams, James Herbert, and Frank R. Ascione. 2018. “Animal Cruelty among Children in Violent Households: Children’s Explanations of their Behavior.” Journal of Family Violence, 33:469–480.

Nell, Victor. 2006. “Cruelty’s rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators.” Behavioral and Brain Science, 29:211-224.

ABSTRACT. This presentation, which builds on earlier coauthored work examining child-robot interaction (CRI) in therapeutic, educational, and social contexts, focuses primarily on ethical issues related to the collection and use of data acquired through CRI. The use of robots in several different types of experimental settings suggests children may benefit from CRI with robots designed as playmates or to assist them in learning skills like reading or writing. Other robots are designed to help children manage health issues, including type 1 diabetes, cancer, or hospitalization. Despite preliminary evidence that CRI in a variety of settings may benefit children, many are concerned about the potential problems with CRI, including risks to children’s welfare and loss of privacy.

As robots interact with people, they collect data that can inform robots’ ability to interface successfully with its environment and people. The context of CRI raises questions about what kind of information robots should collect, how that information should be used, and by whom. There is a risk of loss of privacy not only for children interacting directly with the robot, but also for other people with whom the child lives and interacts (e.g., parents, peers). Recent examples of robotic toys that have raised concerns about children’s privacy include Mattel’s Hello Barbie and Genesis’ My Friend Cayla doll, which were designed to record their environment and had the potential to access and send information via home wireless networks.

An issue unique to CRI is that children can only assent or agree to CRI while their parents presumably give informed consent children’s behalf. Parents typically determine what and with whom information about their children is shared (e.g., doctors, teachers, caregivers). It remains unclear whether parental consent to CRI can adequately protect children’s long-term interests and preserve a measure of privacy for them. The relative newness of robotic technology, its ever-expanding abilities, and most users’ lack of understanding of the consequences of interacting with robots, raise doubts about whether parents understand what they are permitting when they allow their children to interact with robots that have the ability to collect, store, and share information about them.

ABSTRACT. I will be addressing the conditions of paid parental leave in the United States and argue, through philosophical justifications and empirical evidence, that the United States is both justified in and obligated to mandate paid parental leave in the workplace. I draw significantly on the philosophy of Harry Brighouse, Adam Swift, and Mianna Lotz to describe the social and political institution of the family and its value, as well as its value in a liberal state such as the United States. I also draw from empirical evidence to support my arguments.

The main question motivating this project could be accurately summed up by this question: Why, given other federal policies and mandates which already exist to support the institution of the family, has the United States government decided to not enforce paid parental leave?

Each section will play an essential role in setting up the debate and highlighting my main question. In Section I, I will be explaining why, given philosophical justifications, the social and political institution of the family is valuable. I will also discuss why a liberal state is justified in taking an interest in the family through public policies which support families and family-making. In Section II, I will be discussing the policies which the United States already has in place which support the institution of the family. In Section III, I will be sketching the current condition of paid parental leave policies in the workplace in the United States, emphasizing the inconsistency between existing US policies and its refusal to support paid parental leave for parents in the workforce. Essentially, I will argue that if we can establish that the family is valuable, and we already have policies in place which support the family, then it isn’t clear why we should restrict this particular policy which is essential for families with working parents. It might also be the case that providing this particular policy could correct for particular social injustices. In Section IV, I will address possible objections. In Section V, I will present the final takeaways from my responses to objections and conclude.

ABSTRACT. Population ethics asks, “How many people should there be?” According to the Total Principle (TP) the answer is that the number of people should be whatever produces the greatest total amount of well-being. As long as adding another person increases to the total amount of net well-being, the population should continue to increase.

TP has much to be said for it, but, as Derek Parfit pointed out, it appears open to a strong objection, which he calls the Repugnant Conclusion. Consider two possible worlds, wA in which 10 billion people live exceedingly good lives and wZ in which an arbitrarily large number of people lead lives barely worth living. TP tells us that, if the population of wZ is sufficiently large, we should prefer it to wA since the total amount of well being in that would is greater than in wA. That seems wrong - repugnant even - to many.

Over the last few decades, no subject in population ethics has received more attention than the Repugnant Conclusion. One of the most popular styles of response has been to reject TP in favor of a lexical superiority approach to value, according to which the value of lives that are sufficiently good is greater than the value of lives that are far less good, regardless of how many lives are at stake. In this paper, I present a dilemma for lexical superiority approaches to value. I argue that, on the one hand, versions of the lexical superiority approach that are strong enough to prevent us from falling into the Repugnant Conclusion give rise to a number of number of serious counterexamples, which cannot be avoided through minor tweaks to the theory. And I contend that, on the other hand, versions of the lexical superiority approach that are weak enough to avoid most of the counterexamples collapse back into TP and leave us unable to evade the Repugnant Conclusion. I conclude that if population ethicists hope to escape the Repugnant Conclusion, then the lexical superiority approach will not be able to help them.

ABSTRACT. Recent contributions to the environmental assessment literature have brought forward relational values as especially salient to decision making, as part of an effort to make explicit values that have been implicit in decision making processes and to expand the range of values that may be considered. Conventionally, environmental assessment tools seek to quantify multiple types of outcomes, in the hope of weighing otherwise incommensurable values against one another, which tends to favor more narrowly utilitarian considerations. Relational values may serve as a counterpoint to this tendency. There is some conceptual confusion in this appeal to relational values, however, not least in that the term is used in two divergent senses: 1) abstract and even quantifiable values in human-nature relationships and 2) concrete and irreducibly qualitative values in the lived experience of particular relationships. Early attempts to develop taxonomies of values add to the confusion. We propose an approach to describing and distinguishing values, and to characterizing relational values, that is simpler, clearer and perhaps more useful in practice, drawing from recent work in practical ethics. Modern ethical theories, which inform much of the discourse concerning values in policy, attempt to capture values in principles and in formulae as part of a foundational approach that can be powerful and useful, but necessarily incomplete. More recent work in practical ethics, including work on relational values, takes a more dialectical approach: starting with what is familiar but obscure and working toward greater clarity without sacrificing the richness of experience. Following the latter approach, we suggest that bringing relational values into environmental assessment will not be a matter of capturing the richness of relationships in abstract principles or in calculations, but of recognizing the limits of principles and calculations in attending to what matters in decision making. What may be called for is a change in the procedures and even the structures of authority for decision making, or at least modesty on the part of decision makers who might recognize that some basic values will elude the tools they have at hand.

ABSTRACT. In October 2018 and March 2019, two Boeing 737 Max passenger jets crashed after takeoff, in total claiming nearly 350 lives. After the second incident the troubled jet was grounded worldwide. The accidents were precipitated by a failure of a sensor and subsequent activation of new flight control software (known as MCAS). The software was supposed to compensate for changes in the size and placement of the engines on the 737 Max, a new version of the 737 workhorse that began flying in the 1960s. The existence of the software, designed to prevent a stall due to the reconfigured engines, was not disclosed to pilots until after the first accident; even then pilots were not required to undergo simulation training on the 737 Max.

In the wake of the accidents at least two narratives have emerged. Travis (2019) argues that Boeing’s design for the 737 Max violated industry norms, that they used software to compensate for inadequacies in the hardware design, and that the existence of MCAS was not disclosed to pilots in order to preserve the fiction that the 737 Max was just an update of earlier 737 models that did not require FAA certification as a new airplane. Langewiesche (2019), while not denying Boeing made serious mistakes, places ultimate blame on the use of inexperienced pilots by the airlines involved in the crashes, due to the cost-cutting practices of the airlines and the lax regulatory environments in which they operated. He concludes that more experienced pilots, despite lack of information on MCAS, should have been able to take corrective action to control the planes using customary stall prevention procedures. Little to date, however, has been written on the ethical significance of the accidents.

In this presentation we will examine: 1) the moral responsibilities of 737 Max design engineers (Fielder and Birsch 1992); 2) internal production pressure and external industry factors affecting Boeing’s design criteria for the 737 Max (Shvindina 2019); and 3) the growing trend in the airline industry and other industries such as autonomous vehicles (Borenstein et al. 2019) to substitute artificial machine intelligence for human operators.

ABSTRACT. When there is wrongdoing in our society, an individual, group of individuals or an organization is often singled out for blames, and commonly it is assumed that the so-called culprits engaged in deliberate misdeeds. But sometimes, at least, these misdeeds occur not because of deliberate malfeasance, but rather because of complex circumstances that produced these negative outcomes. In this paper, using the Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashes as examples, we will study two of these kinds of circumstances that are particularly acute in organizations: what we will call “silo mentalities” and an organizational culture or an organizational dominant such that this thinking or sets of practices preclude self-examination.

Silo mentality is a widely occurring phenomenon wherein a profession, a particular division of an organization or an organization itself is so focused on their priorities or their expertise that they neglect or fail to perceive how those priorities affect or are affected by other professions, divisions in the organization or others in their industry

The term ‘dominant logic’ defines another kind of phenomenon. A dominant logic refers to an organizational culture, a set of practices and habits that help frame the organizations goals and modes of operation. Dominant logics are vital for the coherent functioning of an organization as an organization. However sometimes a dominant logic can become so ingrained that it creates blind spots or hinders change. These two phenomena, silo mentalities and dominant logics, (and there are other, can result in organizational failures. In the 737 Max crashes it will turn out that pilot error as well as mechanical malfunctions were responsible, and siloed mentalities and the outdated dominant logic at Boeing were key contributing factors as well. These two phenomena, if unnoticed, create ethical issues: both because they were unnoticed or neglected despite the fact that they could have been, and because of the resulting untoward consequences that were outcomes of this neglect. We shall conclude by suggesting how silo mentalities and dominant logics can play havoc in complex organizations such as Boeing and,by appealing to the notion of moral imagination, offer some suggested remedies..

ABSTRACT. Argument maps visually represent the structure of arguments. A growing body of evidence from top universities shows that practice with argument mapping significantly improves critical thinking skills compared to other methods. In fact, meta-analyses find that courses that incorporate argument mapping yield nearly double the gains of standard critical thinking courses, and 5 or 6 times the gains of a standard semester at college. This session, intended for instructors who teach ethics—and especially those who use case studies to do so—and Ethics Bowl coaches, will demonstrate how to map case studies in ethics.

The session will begin with a brief overview of argument mapping and its impact on student learning. Next, facilitators will demonstrate how to map an ethics bowl case study, providing participants tips on how to help students develop mapping skills. The session will conclude with a discussion of the benefits of argument mapping for students of ethics: understanding deeply complex ethical issues, engaging civilly with controversial topics, evaluating comprehensively arguments for and against a moral claim, etc.

ABSTRACT. In a short piece, in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Dr. Robert Sade presents a fictitious case involving what he calls “noninformed consent” (hereafter NIC). According to Sade, NIC is “a special case of uninformed consent” that occurs in a situation most surgeons have encountered, viz., a situation where “a patient wants a procedure done but refuses to hear the information that will ensure that the patient’s decision is informed.” For consent to be valid, “medical ethics requires and the law demands” that a patient be informed about the procedure and the risks involved. However, the patient, R.E. Fyooznik, doesn’t want to know about the procedure; he says that “he knows he needs an operation, does not want to hear or read anything more”; he will sign the consent document. “The patient is asymptomatic and the operation is not urgent, so Dr. Marcats tells the patient that he will not commit to taking care of him, thanks him for coming, and asks his nurse to show the patient out.” Four years later Fyooznik has developed signs of heart failure and is once again referred to Marcats. The drill plays out in the same way: NIC. Marcat’s question is whether he should operate on Fyooznik.

The case presents an ethical dilemma the prongs of which involve algorithmic and conscientious concepts of professional responsibility. The former is legalistic, focusing on the conditions of valid consent; the latter is thoroughly ethical calling for a decision based on consideration of, for example, the reasons that consent is sought (e.g., to be sure one would be acting in accord with rather than against the will of the patient), and the related questions of whether a decision to decline information deserves respect as an exercise of autonomy, and whether it’s possible that the desiderata of ethically efficacious consent are satisfied by a patient’s having “consented while refusing all relevant information.” The paper argues for the conscientious concept of professional responsibility and an affirmative answer to Dr. Marcats’ question.

Citation: Sade RM, A Noninformed Patient Consents to Cardiac Surgery, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.athoracsur.2019.06.009.

ABSTRACT. "Major problems in medicine are also problems of society; the health system is so intimately tied to the broader society that attempts to study one without the other are misleading. … Too narrow an analysis not only overlooks the dynamics that create and reinforce specific problems but also obscures directions of meaningful reform" (Waitzken, 1983, 4, 7).

Waitzken’s reference to “problems of medicine” includes ethical problems. Yet the clinical ethics literature – and daily practice – is almost devoid of structural analyses. That absence can be partly explained through disagreement about the role of ethicists (Watson and Guidry-Grimes, 2018; Rasmussen, 2012), practitioners’ worry that they lack the relevant political skills, and their fear about how activism will impact their institutional standing. The result, however, is that because causal structures are not addressed, clinical ethics problems repeatedly recur.

Clinical ethicists should, I argue, overcome this reluctance. Granting abundant qualifiers, clinical ethicists should be much more aggressive activists, certainly at the institutional level and sometimes at the social. That is, they should, first, give due attention to how institutional and social structures engender routine clinical ethics problems and then engage in the political work necessary to amend those structures.

I start with examples of structural problems, showing their direct link to common clinical ethics cases. I then argue that clinical ethicists, because of their expertise in ethics advocacy (briefly defended) and their assumed organizational cachet, are well-situated to motivate institutional change. Further, ethicists’ repeated experiences with recurring ethics problems makes them especially knowledgeable about those problems’ connection to macro-level structures and thereby – maybe with the aid of better equipped political allies – well-suited to promote institutional and social change. I then consider some objections and close with a call to pick at least some fights.

References

Rasmussen, Lisa. 2012. “Patient Advocacy in Clinical Ethics Consultation,” American Journal of Bioethics, Vol. 12 No. 8: 1-9.

Waitzken. Howard. 1983. The Second Sickness, New York: The Free Press.

Watson, Jamie Carlin and Guidry-Grimes, Laura (Eds.). 2018. Moral Expertise: New Essays from Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives, New York: Springer.

ABSTRACT. The ethical justifiability of accommodating conscientious refusals in health care has become a hotly contested issue. This debate has been fueled recently by expanded legalization of physician-assisted death, public health crises that impact reproduction (e.g., Zika), and greater recognition of the rights of LGBT patients. This debate has become particularly acute in the developing world, where access to health care services may be severely limited and thus conscientious refusals on the part of a few providers may have a tremendous impact. Between absolutist defenses of a right to conscientious refusal in any case in which a health care provider (whether individual or institution) considers their conscience/mission to be implicated, and calls to abolish any legal protection of conscientious refusals, lie various “compromise” proposals that seek to safeguard health care providers’ exercise of conscience as well as patients’ access to legal, but morally contentious, medical services. This presentation will explicate and defend a compromise view in which respect for conscientious refusal claims is based on the adjudication of publicly defensible reasons articulated by providers, or a general consensus that such services are morally contestable on reasonable grounds. This defense will include response to critiques of similar proposals by Robert Card and others, particularly involving conscience claims that are premised upon defensible, if defeasible, metaphysical premises. Typically, compromise views require health care professionals to be transparent in their refusals, offer unbiased information regarding available health care services, and provide referrals or transfers of care when necessary to ensure access. Such compromises raise the specter of moral complicity and potential moral scandal by virtue of seemingly approving of such services. This presentation will thus elucidate various criteria by which degrees of moral complicity may be assessed, as well as operative distinctions within the concept of scandal, which subserve a nuanced analysis of complicity and scandal with respect to transparency, information, and referral/transfer.

ABSTRACT. This panel explores the emerging ethical questions that arise with the development of the modern surveillance economy and open-source intelligence gathering (OSI). With the advent of the internet and widespread social media use, people share ever more information about themselves and their preferences. This previously private data is collected and put to various uses. Corporations use OSI to target advertising. Political campaigns micro target voters with messages likely to motivate people to turn out on Election Day. State agencies use social media and other means to gather evidence of crimes. Other organizations use OSI to identify threats in real time.

This topic addresses a crucial current issue in professional and practical ethics. The proper use of open-source information is one of the most important emerging ethical issues of our time. The implications for privacy in the internet era bear on everybody in this connected age. This panel will advance the debates surrounding the ethical, social and legal implication of OSI by exploring the role of local governments in protecting public data, examining consent in this context and discussing how to deal with incidental research findings in this area.

Our panel will draw on researchers from a federally funded, OSI research project. The panel will consist of three presentations and a discussion session. The first presentation, “Legality and consent and the ethics of public information,” looks to develop an ethical framework to guide local governments in their protection of public data from bad actors. The second, “Consent by a thousand cuts,” questions the quality and nature of the consent solicited to procure open-source information in contrast to the understanding of consent found in biomedical ethics. The third, “Incidental findings in OSI research,” discusses the ethical and moral dilemmas of incidental research findings, such as encountering links to child pornography on the dark web when looking to study ISIS propaganda techniques.

Each presentation will run for 12 minutes, immediately followed by a short three-minute discussion period. The remaining 15 minutes at the end of the session will be used for general discussion.

ABSTRACT. Engineering has been criticized for its technical/social dualism (D. M. Riley & Lambrinidou, 2015), in which “real” engineering consists of technical calculations, while social considerations are considered “extra”. This dualistic culture is manifested in the distinction between so-called “hard” and “soft” skills. Technical (“hard”) skills form the core of engineering, while professional (“soft”) skills comprise all the “extra” stuff: ethics, communication, teamwork, societal impact, etc. In this formulation, professional skills are “easy”, and perhaps require little or no formal education, while technical skills are “difficult” and must be continually reinforced in multiple classes.

Engineering education creates these mindsets through its separation of the technical “important” topics from the non-technical “unimportant” topics. Examination of almost any engineering curriculum will reveal a distinct lack of social considerations, except in some first-year courses and some capstone design courses. While students initially value the social component of engineering, they experience cognitive dissonance between this value and the technocentric approach to engineering education, resulting in a “culture of disengagement” from seeing engineering as supporting public welfare (Cech, 2014; Niles, Contreras, Roudbari, Kaminsky, & Harrison, 2018).

In order to overcome this cultural divide, we need to rethink engineering ethics education, giving students more opportunities to understand the social impact of engineering. This panel discusses the design of an engineering ethics class around the notion of social justice. We focus on the concept and practice of listening as a way of sensitizing engineering students to issues of social justice. We argue that focusing on social justice is more effective than focusing on engineer’s professional responsibilities, and that focusing on listening will help raise students’ sensitivity to social justice. Presenters will describe the role of ethics and social justice in engineering, the format and content of the class, and the planned approach to measure impact on students’ understanding of ethics. Each presenter will speak for 10 minutes, followed by open discussion with the audience. This session will be of interest to educators who seek to expand considerations of engineering ethics in their classes beyond normative approaches that focus on codes of ethics to broader considerations of social justice.

ABSTRACT. The National Institutes of Health issued the “Update on the Requirement for Instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research” (NOT-OD-10-019) in 2009. The notice to institutions provided mandates on instruction in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to all trainees, fellows, participants and scholars receiving support on specified NIH grant mechanisms. The notice also created the instructional components for RCR instruction, stating that suitable instruction should be delivered face-to-face, include small group discussions, include faculty participation, and consist of at least 8 hours of instruction. While there were no specific curricular requirements, the notice listed nine topics that were found in “most acceptable plans for instruction,” namely conflicts of interests; animal and human subjects and lab safety; mentor/mentee relationships; collaborative research; peer review; data acquisition, management, sharing and ownership; research misconduct; responsible authorship and publication, and social responsibility. These topics are often referred to as the “nine core competencies of RCR instruction.” Academic institutions have spent the last decade implementing these requirements, as well as the similar RCR instruction requirements from the National Science Foundation. Multiple studies have assessed the efficacy of such RCR instruction, comparing different modes of delivery and pedagogical approaches. A scan of institutional RCR syllabi reveals a heavy reliance on organizing courses around the nine core competencies. However, there has been limited discussion of the value of the nine core competencies, and their relevance today. Notable omissions include explicit discussions of rigor and reproducibility; absence of an explicit requirement for training on ethical decision-making; omission about the impact of the workplace environment on facilitating an inclusive science community; and more. We purpose this presentation to challenge the use of The Nine competencies as the basis of organizing RCR instruction, and to ask whether it is time to reassess the subject matter content of RCR courses. Alternative models will be considered, and we will argue that revised content could lead to a greater positive impact of RCR instruction on research trainees.

ABSTRACT. Research with human participants is governed by formal oversight systems mandated by human subjects regulations. Many activities similar to research, such as program evaluation or public health activities, fall outside this oversight system. In practical terms, the boundary between research and non-research activities is often unclear. This creates two kinds of problems: first, the lack of conceptual clarity leads to difficulties in determining which activities require oversight; and second, some activities may be over- or under-regulated due a system that lacks flexibility. As an example, controversies have arisen when regulators challenged academic investigators conducting quality improvement studies without human subjects oversight; many bioethics scholars alleged that the attempt to demarcate a clear boundary between quality improvement and research was flawed. Some regulatory guidance focuses on the definition of research found in the Common Rule to determine whether a given activity requires research oversight: “Research means a systematic investigation…..designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” A key factor is that research findings are intended to be generalizable beyond the study population itself. However, generalizability does not provide a conceptually sound rationale for requiring oversight. In fact, the notion of generalizability is derived from the distinction made by the National Commission between clinical care and clinical research; in that setting, generalizability is a distinction relevant to the welfare of individual patients. In other settings, the generalizability distinction lacks moral force and does not provide a coherent rationale for oversight. Using a heuristic approach, I will focus on the desired outcomes regarding level and type of oversight of different activities, such as program evaluation, health policy evaluation, and quality improvement, and then work inductively towards governing principles. Because the level and type of oversight has implications for whether informed consent is required, this analysis brings up broader questions about the role of individual choice within the context of evidence based policy-making, and the role of privacy protections in a world dominated by widespread digital data collection. I will formulate an ethical framework to address these challenges in the context of oversight of research-like activities.

ABSTRACT. The ethics of the research enterprise depends critically on trust, especially trust in the reliability of data and trust that the research has been conducted ethically. Yet we do not depend merely on interpersonal trust; instead, we rely on systems, or architectures, of trust that can be discussed, challenged, evaluated, and, with greater and lesser degrees of difficulty, changed. This ability to change the “trust architecture” is fortunate, because in a variety of ways, new research methods – such as citizen science, DIY biology, biohacking, or corporate research – do not fit into the old architecture of trust in research ethics. By drawing on new mechanisms of funding, dissemination, and conduct of research, these methods may be subject to no oversight whatsoever, raising the question about how these methods might erect their own trust architecture. The predominant trust architecture in the United States comes through regulations attached to federal funding. This is true for a variety of historical reasons, most importantly the success of Vannevar Bush’s argument during World War II that the federal government should direct resources to research institutions to benefit the public. This having been done, it was straightforward to attach regulations governing research ethics to the federal funds. Other mechanisms, such as peer and editorial review of publications, also provide a trust architecture for research. New research challenges the predominant trust architecture in two broad ways. First, much of the new work can escape regulation or other coverage (e.g., journal editorial control) for a variety of reasons, challenging the oversight sufficiency of the existing model. Second, new research often prioritizes values not currently enshrined in the trust architecture, challenging the moral sufficiency of the existing model for new research approaches. For example, citizen science often values impact of research on the community of concern, which is not captured in the current regulations. In this presentation, I outline the dilemma sketched above, suggests some necessary elements of a trust architecture, and use citizen science as a case study to illustrate how idiosyncratic yet meaningful trust architectures could be built for purpose.