Are All Rational Moralities Equivalent?

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
DARRYL GUNSON

Matti Häyry’s new book Rationality and the Genetic Challenge discusses the ethics of human genetic modification and the bioethical rationalities that inform the different ethical conclusions authors have advanced. It is aimed at correcting the belief that “only one rationality exists or one morality exists; that those that disagree [with them] are unreasonable or evil.” Häyry argues that there are multiple rationalities, and that even though ethical issues may have solutions within individual rationalities, disagreements that have their root in separate rational approaches cannot be universally solved by intellectual arguments. In debates about the ethics of using new biotechnologies to genetically modify human beings, the normal state is one of fundamental disagreement over almost all of the anticipated uses to which the technology could be put. Häyry’s point is that such a state of affairs is not necessarily due to a lack of reason because there are many, equally valid, ways of being reasonable.

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 97-111
Author(s):  
Abdulrazaq Kilani

The menace of cultism in Nigeria society in general and our educational institutions in particular has reached an alarming stage that requires affirmative actions from all stakeholders. The scourge of cultism has claimed many lives of our youths and no serious authority can fold its arms and allow it to continue. It appears that the various efforts at curbing the menace have yielded no result. The corruption in most facets of our national life has finally subdued the educational institutions, which used to be the pride of place in the past. Most families are astonished to find out that children sent to school to learn and become better human beings in the society have initiated themselves into cult groups. The emergency of secret cultism has been characterized by some violent activities which include, physical torture of new recruits, maiming and killing of rival cult members and elimination of real and perceived enemies. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is composed of more than 250 ethnic groups with 36 states and one federal territory (Abuja). There are three major religions namely Islam (50%), Christianity (40%), and Africa Indigenous Religions (10%). The effect of globalization is also making other new religious movements to be making inroads into Nigeria. Nigeria has a population of about 141 million people (2006 census). Nigeria which is rich in both human and material resources is a country that is facing a lot of developmental challenges in almost all sectors due to poor leadership. The menace of cultism especially among youths and some influential people in the society represents one of the distortion facing the popular ‘giant’ of Africa. The aim of this chapter is to bring into the fore the menace of cultism in modern Nigeria as a brand of terrorism mind not the fact that there are even religious cults in both the developed and developing societies. The paper also adopted an Islamic lens to provide an analysis of the terror of cultism in contemporary Nigeria.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Figà Talamanca

Abstract Joint action among human beings is characterized by using elaborate cognitive feats, such as representing the mental states of others about a certain state of affairs. It is still debated how these capacities evolved in the hominid lineage. I suggest that the consolidation of a shared practice over time can foster the predictability of other’s behavior. This might facilitate the evolutionary passage from inferring what others might know by simply seeing them and what they are viewing towards a mutual awareness of each other’s beliefs. I will examine the case for cooperative hunting in one chimpanzee community and argue that it is evidence that they have the potential to achieve common ground, suggesting that the consolidation of a practice might have supported the evolution of higher social cognition in the hominid lineage.


1983 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Peter Augustine Lawler

The serious study of the best examples of American political rhetoric can be used as the foundation for the introductory course in American government. The laws of most of our states understand the purpose of political education to be the creation of good citizens. Even at the college level, it makes sense to justify political education in terms of citizenship rather than with the benefits associated with a diffuse introduction to the technical discipline of political science.Citizenship, after all, is a quality shared by almost all human beings in our democratic regime, while only a very few of us ever will specialize in political science. The most cogent way of justifying the general requirement of study of a subject is by showing its universal utility, especially in a democracy, where utility is often the measure of worth.


Author(s):  
Jessica Morley ◽  
Anat Elhalal ◽  
Francesca Garcia ◽  
Libby Kinsey ◽  
Jakob Mökander ◽  
...  

AbstractAs the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular machine learning (ML), has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible (and thus vulnerable to ethics washing) or too strict (unresponsive to context). This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (spe2) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Paula Renata Miranda dos Santos ◽  
Elisangela Cerencovich ◽  
Laura Filomena Santos de Araújo ◽  
Roseney Bellato ◽  
Sonia Ayako Tao Maruyama

This study discusses ethical issues in research involving human beings and seeks to understand the relationship between qualitative research and the ethical care guidelines for Integrative Community Therapy (ICT) circles based on Resolution 466/12 of the National Health Council of the Ministry of Health of Brazil. This is documentary research, which analyzed Resolution 466/12 and ICT circles seeking to make a connection between the ethical guidelines contained in both. The analysis of the corpus was directed toward the construction of the following results: the person's perception, cultural diversity and community. It also brings in consideration of the influence of the ethical dimension of the ICT circles on qualitative research. We conclude that ICT circles are innovative in the sense of the diversity of participants and respect for cultural and social differences. Thus, ICT circles promote acquisition of quality information for social research as well as compliance with the ethical guidelines outlined in Resolution No. 466/12.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. e513
Author(s):  
Tomasz Piotrowski ◽  
Joanna Kazmierska ◽  
Mirosława Mocydlarz-Adamcewicz ◽  
Adam Ryczkowski

Background. This paper evaluates the status of reporting information related to the usage and ethical issues of artificial intelligence (AI) procedures in clinical trial (CT) papers focussed on radiology issues as well as other (non-trial) original radiology articles (OA). Material and Methods. The evaluation was performed by three independent observers who were, respectively physicist, physician and computer scientist. The analysis was performed for two groups of publications, i.e., for CT and OA. Each group included 30 papers published from 2018 to 2020, published before guidelines proposed by Liu et al. (Nat Med. 2020; 26:1364-1374). The set of items used to catalogue and to verify the ethical status of the AI reporting was developed using the above-mentioned guidelines. Results. Most of the reviewed studies, clearly stated their use of AI methods and more importantly, almost all tried to address relevant clinical questions. Although in most of the studies, patient inclusion and exclusion criteria were presented, the widespread lack of rigorous descriptions of the study design apart from a detailed explanation of the AI approach itself is noticeable. Few of the chosen studies provided information about anonymization of data and the process of secure data sharing. Only a few studies explore the patterns of incorrect predictions by the proposed AI tools and their possible reasons. Conclusion. Results of review support idea of implementation of uniform guidelines for designing and reporting studies with use of AI tools. Such guidelines help to design robust, transparent and reproducible tools for use in real life.


Author(s):  
Patricia Larres ◽  
Martin Kelly

AbstractThis paper contributes to the contemporary business ethics narrative by proposing an approach to corporate ethical decision making (EDM) which serves as an alternative to the imposition of codes and standards to address the ethical consequences of grand challenges, like COVID-19, which are impacting today’s society. Our alternative approach to EDM embraces the concept of reflexive thinking and ethical consciousness among the individual agents who collectively are the corporation and who make ethical decisions, often in isolation, removed from the collocated corporate setting. We draw on the teachings of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, to conceptualize an approach to EDM which focuses on the ethics of the corporate agent by nurturing the universal and invariant structure that is operational in all human beings. Embracing Lonergan’s dynamic cognitive structure of human knowing, and the structure of the human good, we advance a paradigm of EDM in business which emboldens authentic ethical thought, decision making, and action commensurate with virtuous living and germane to human flourishing. Lonergan’s philosophy guides us away from the imposition of over-arching corporate codes of ethics and inspires us, as individual agents, to attend to the data of our own consciousness in our ethical decision making. Such cognitional endowment leads us out of the ethics of the ‘timeless present’ (Islam and Greenwood in Journal of Business Ethics 170: 1–4, 2021) towards ethical authenticity in business, leaving us better placed to reflect upon and address the ethical issues emanating from grand challenges like COVID-19.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Jawad

The role of religion in social welfare provision, and more broadly in shaping the development of state social policy in the UK, has become an issue of increasing prominence in the last decade raising both new challenges and opportunities. This article brings together new and existing research in the field of religion and social action/welfare in the British context to present a preliminary discussion of how and why religion, as a source of social identity and moral values, matters for social policy. The key argument is that religious welfare provision goes beyond the mixed economy of welfare paradigm and has the capacity to challenge the Utilitarian underpinnings of mainstream social policy thinking by giving more relative importance to ethical issues such as self-knowledge and morality, in addition to the more conventional concepts of wellbeing or happiness. The article proposes the concept of ways of being in order to bring together these moral ideational factors that underpin social welfare.


Author(s):  
Poonam Bharat Mandhare ◽  
Deepa R. Kale

Background: Our health and overall well-being mainly depends on our eating habits, physical activities, sleep patterns etc. Human beings, in order to adjust themselves in the modern era, have been compiled to become fast and mechanical. Due to this they can’t give proper attention to diet and exercise. Due to this Aaharpachan Kriya gets affected leading to Agnimandya (low or decreased digestive power). According to Ayurveda Agnimandya is responsible for almost all diseases. Objectives: Objective is to study importance of Takrasevan in Agnimandya.  Material and methods: Ayurvedic / modern texts and literature, research paper. Discussion: Grahani, Atisar, Arsh etc. are the commonest diseases seen in today’s life.  These diseases are not life threatening but can cause great distress to patient.  Ayurveda gave an amount of treatment modalities; one of them is Takrasevan i. e. consumption of buttermilk. Takra having ushna virya, kashaya rasa, madhur vipak and ruksha guna properties which pacifies Vata, Pitta, Kapha and potentiate the Agni and digests as well as absorbs the food articles and treats the disease in generous way. Conclusion: By this study it can be conclude that Takra (Buttermilk) can use on daily basis as dietary product. As it contains Probiotics which facilitates proper digestion and absorption process, it maintains proper metabolism to keep person free from diseases.   


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