scholarly journals Cultivating Moral Attention: a Virtue-Oriented Approach to Responsible Data Science in Healthcare

Author(s):  
Emanuele Ratti ◽  
Mark Graves

AbstractIn the past few years, the ethical ramifications of AI technologies (in particular data science) have been at the center of intense debates. Considerable attention has been devoted to understanding how a morally responsible practice of data science can be promoted and which values have to shape it. In this context, ethics and moral responsibility have been mainly conceptualized as compliance to widely shared principles. However, several scholars have highlighted the limitations of such a principled approach. Drawing from microethics and the virtue theory tradition, in this paper, we formulate a different approach to ethics in data science which is based on a different conception of “being ethical” and, ultimately, of what it means to promote a morally responsible data science. First, we develop the idea that, rather than only compliance, ethical decision-making consists in using certain moral abilities (e.g., virtues), which are cultivated by practicing and exercising them in the data science process. An aspect of virtue development that we discuss here is moral attention, which is the ability of data scientists to identify the ethical relevance of their own technical decisions in data science activities. Next, by elaborating on the capability approach, we define a technical act as ethically relevant when it impacts one or more of the basic human capabilities of data subjects. Therefore, rather than “applying ethics” (which can be mindless), data scientists should cultivate ethics as a form of reflection on how technical choices and ethical impacts shape one another. Finally, we show how this microethical framework concretely works, by dissecting the ethical dimension of the technical procedures involved in data understanding and preparation of electronic health records.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Pinurba Parama Pratiyudha

This paper departs from the discourse of the paradigm of social development in third world countries. The first discourse reviews the critics of the broad state in social development. It supports the non-state actors to take a part in development through corporate social responsibility (CSR). The second discourse departs from economic development which weakens the capability of the individual in achieving development itself. The concept of the capability approach in human development emerged as a solution to create inclusive welfare. This paper itself raises these two things in one discussion related to the role of CSR in relation to the development of human capabilities. Taking an analysis of the Program Desa Mandiri Energi by PJB UP Paiton, the study examines the role of CSR activities in supporting community capabilities. This paper argues that the existence of CSR provides a strong contribution to strengthening the capabilities of the community that has developed from the past. However, in the subsequent findings, there are several aspects of CSR programs that still several actions to be developed and improved human capabilities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle K. Westermann-Behaylo ◽  
Harry J. Van Buren ◽  
Shawn L. Berman

ABSTRACT:Promoting dignity is at the heart of the human capability approach to development. We introduce the concept of stakeholder capability enhancement, beginning with a discussion of the capability approach to development proposed by Sen (1985) and further advanced by Nussbaum (1990) to incorporate notions of dignity. Thereafter follows a review of the literature on value creation stakeholder management and convergent stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984; Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Palmer, & DeColle, 2010; Harrison & Wicks, 2013; Jones & Wicks, 1999), as the foundation for our concept of stakeholder capability enhancement. The remainder of this article develops a model that integrates stakeholder management with the human capability approach to detail the cooperative advantage that accrues to business and its stakeholders, as well as the gains in social wellbeing and dignity, when stakeholder capability enhancement becomes a common enterprise strategy. The model also explores the risks and boundary conditions firms face when seeking to profit from stakeholder capability tradeoffs. In explaining the model, we explore normative responsibilities and consequences with regard to human capabilities and dignity. We conclude with implications for future research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Arnold ◽  
James C. Lampe ◽  
Steve G. Sutton

<span>Over the past decade, issues surrounding corporate ethics and the ethical decision making of individuals in business have been a major focus in the popular press, academic research and curriculum revision efforts in business schools. One of the quandaries faced throughout these efforts is how to enable an individual to make ethical decisions In this paper, a model is proposed that focuses on organizational culture as the means by which to provide an environment that fosters ethical decision making by the organizations members. A four-stage model for understanding the current ethical state of organizations is formulated. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the underlying factors and situations that may intentionally or unintentionally exist and that may cause an organization to progress to a higher stage or regress to a lower stage.</span>


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Lesley Powell

In this article, I build on critiques of the dominant skills orthodoxies that underpin National Skills Planning Systems (NSPS). I respond to calls for a broader conceptualisation of skills planning by discussing the contribution that the capability approach brings to the reconceptualisation of the role, purpose, and orientation of NSPS. Applying the capability approach as a thinking tool for building a broader approach to skills planning led to the identification of seven dimensions that frame an emancipatory approach to skills planning. My core argument is that COVID-19 has laid bare the urgent need for new approaches to skills planning that are informed by a different set of assumptions, driven by a different set of indicators, inclusive of different voices, undertaken through different processes, and, importantly, driven by a different set of goals. Responding to the call for a broader approach to skills planning and taking seriously the seven dimensions of an emancipatory skills planning system will require an alternative vision not only of skills and of work, but of society as a whole.


Author(s):  
Carol Ting

For more than a decade, the Chinese government has poured copious resources into rural informatization as a means to increase agricultural productivity and rural economic growth. Such efforts so far have not produced definite results in rural areas, but increasing economic inequality and rising environmental threats have already forced the government to rethink its growth-centered development policy. Indeed, recent government releases clearly state the resolve to departure from the “GDP obsession” of the past. Meanwhile, the past three decades saw the rise of a powerful alternative development approach—the Capability Approach (CA), which focuses on empowering individuals and sees economic growth as one element of well-being. Given that the CA can potentially help devising a more coherent and holistic framework for Information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D), this paper examines the compatibility between the Capability Approach and the top-down socialist approach towards rural informatization in China. Built on two case studies of rural informatization in rural China, the present paper identifies potential obstacles to the adoption of the Capability Approach and discusses policy implications and suggestions.


Dementia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Le Galès ◽  
Martine Bungener

Using the capability approach initially developed by A Sen as a theoretical framework, this paper analyses both what people with dementia and their families do in response to difficulties in their daily life brought about by the disease, and the reasons they give for acting as they do. Individual and collective interviews and ethnographic observations with 15 persons with dementia and one or more of their family members were conducted. Follow-up interviews were possible for nine families. Results highlight a great diversity in ways of doing things and in accompaniment by family members. Daily adjustments are often hidden or minimized, at least at the onset of the dementia. Later, they become more frequent, repetitive and indispensable but remain influenced by the social and gender roles that existed prior to the illness. The inventiveness of families, in a context marked by various kinds of constraints, is primarily motivated by their desire to maintain the apparently intact abilities of the person with dementia but especially to preserve forms of liberty and what counted for the person, what that person valued before the disease. There are some ways of living with dementia, even when accompanied, which may long remain preferable to others, which better answer to the past and present aspirations of persons with dementia and the purposes of the accompanying persons. It is thus essential that health professionals, as well as society in general, recognize and address this issue.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-303
Author(s):  
Dawn M. Cornelio

Abstract Pioneered by feminist ethicist and psychologist Carol Gilligan in her 1982 work In a Different Voice, care theory rests, according to philosopher Rita Manning, on four key elements: Moral Attention, Sympathetic Understanding, Relationship Awareness, and Harmony. Combined with the notion of voice present in Gilligan’s title, each of these components represents a key portion of the translator-text-author relationship, particularly when translation is seen as negotiation. In this contribution, after examining the notion of translation as negotiation as Eco describes it, I will offer an overview of the psycho-sociological theory of care, with the aim of presenting it as a framework for ethical decision-making in negotiating the act of translation. The importance of translaboration will become evident through the theories of Ricoeur and an emphasis on the cooperative nature of ethically negotiated decisions; i.e., ‘trans’ and its insistence on moving across, beyond, through; and ‘laboration’ and its insistence on the continuing and ongoing process of working.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Gloss ◽  
Stuart C. Carr ◽  
Walter Reichman ◽  
Inusah Abdul-Nasiru ◽  
W. Trevor Oestereich

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology has begun to shed its reputation as a handmaiden to corporate and managerial interests, in part, through its engagement with humanitarian concerns. However, as highlighted by recent commentary, I-O psychology still has a decidedly POSH perspective on the world; that is, it has focused on Professionals who hold Official jobs in a formal economy and who enjoy relative Safety from discrimination while also living in High-income countries. This POSH perspective reflects an underlying bias away from people living in multidimensional poverty. We empirically illustrate some of the connections between a POSH perspective and poverty by reviewing 100 years of research in I-O psychology, and then we make a case for why a neglect of people living in poverty undermines the discipline's science, its practice, and its humanist charge. As moral justification for greater engagement with humanitarian concerns and as a guide to navigate the difficult ethical quandaries involved in doing so, we suggest that I-O psychologists should consider the capability approach. We discuss the concept of human capabilities, relate it to I-O psychology, and demonstrate its utility in the form of three hypothetical scenarios. Perhaps our most controversial claim is that there is a moral imperative for I-O psychology to overrepresent people living in the deepest forms of poverty in both its science and practice.


2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Hanna Schneider

Abstract Technology bears the potential to empower people – to help them tackle challenges they would otherwise give up on or not even try, to make experiences possible that they did not have access to before. One type of such technologies – the application area of the thesis presented here – is health and wellbeing technology (HWT), such as digital health records, physical activity trackers, or digital fitness coach applications. Researchers and companies alike often claim that HWTs empower people to live healthier and happier lives. However, there is reason to challenge and critically reflect on these claims and underlying assumptions as more and more researchers are finding that technologies described as empowering turn out to be “disempowering”. This critical reflection is the starting point of the thesis presented here: Can HWTs really empower people in their everyday lives? If so, how can we design for empowerment? In my cumulative dissertation, I combine studies on existing HWTs, such as patient-controlled electronic health records and personalized mobile fitness coaches with the development of novel prototypes such as transparent digital fitness coaches that communicate their rationale to the user. By reflecting on these case studies, I come to revisit the sometimes washed-out meaning of “empowerment” in “empowering technologies”; I introduce a framework to establish conceptual clarity; and I suggest three principles to design for empowerment based on my own work and the Capability Approach by Sen and Nussbaum that aim to inform and inspire research on HWTs and beyond.


Author(s):  
JoAnn Danelo Barbour

The past and the future influence the present, for decision makers are persuaded by historical patterns and styles of decision making based on social, political, and economic context, with an eye to planning, predicting, forecasting, in a sense, “futuring.” From the middle to the late 20th century, four models (rational-bureaucratic, participatory, political, and organized anarchy) embody ways of decision making that provide an historical grounding for decision makers in the first quarter of the 21st century. From the late 20th through the first two decades of the 21st century, decision makers have focused on ethical decision making, social justice, and decision making within communities. After the first two decades of the 21st century, decision making and its associative research is about holding tensions, crossing boundaries, and intersections. Decision makers will continually hold the tension between intuition and evidence as drivers of decisions. Promising research possibilities may include understanding metacognition and its role in decision making, between individual approaches to decision making and the group dynamic, stakeholders’ engagement in communicating and executing decisions, and studying the control of who has what information or who should have it. Furthermore, decision making most likely will continue to evolve towards an adaptive approach with an abundance of tools and techniques to improve both the praxis and the practice of decision making dynamics. Accordingly, trends in future research in decision making will span disciplines and emphases, encompassing transdisciplinary approaches wherein investigators work collaboratively to understand and possibly create new conceptual, theoretical, and methodological models or ways of thinking about and making decisions.


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