Overview of Ethical Approaches (DRAFT)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Macauley
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Multiple Viewpoints ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Significant Disagreement ◽  
Ethical Approaches

While there exists significant disagreement among bioethicists as to the appropriate course of action in specific cases, there is actually general agreement about how to approach ethical dilemmas. This involves classifying the nature of the dilemma, reviewing existing information, acquiring additional information, analyzing the issue from multiple viewpoints, and formulating a response in light of potential criticisms. Potential analytic viewpoints include principlism, consequentialism, virtue ethics, casuistry, narrative ethics, and the ethics of care. When a clear resolution is not possible, ideally the situation can be temporized or clearly unacceptable options—including rationing at the bedside—eliminated, in the hopes of further resolution eventually occurring.

Overview of Psychiatric Ethics II: Virtue Ethics and the Ethics of Care

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Robertson ◽  
Garry Walter
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Ethics Of Care

Virtue Ethics and/or Virtue Epistemology: A Response to Anton Froeyman

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-446
Author(s):  
Herman Paul
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Intellectual Courage ◽  
Virtuous Behavior ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Ethical Approaches

Abstract In response to Anton Froeyman’s paper, “Virtues of Historiography,” this article argues that philosophers of history interested in why historians cherish such virtues as carefulness, impartiality, and intellectual courage would do wise not to classify these virtues unequivocally as either epistemic or moral virtues. Likewise, in trying to grasp the roles that virtues play in the historian’s professional practice, philosophers of history would be best advised to avoid adopting either an epistemological or an ethical perspective. Assuming that the historian’s virtuous behavior has epistemic and moral dimensions (as well as aesthetic, political, and other dimensions), this article advocates a non-reductionist account of historical scholarship, which acknowledges that the virtues cherished by historians usually play a variety of roles, depending on the goals they are supposed to serve. Given that not the least important of these goals are epistemic ones, the articles concludes that virtue ethical approaches, to the extent that they are focused on the acquisition of moral instead of epistemic goods, insufficiently recognize the role of virtue in the pursuit of such epistemic aims as knowledge and understanding.

Why Perfect Tests May Not Be Worth Waiting For: Information as a Commodity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Drakopoulos ◽  
R. S. Randhawa
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Heterogeneous Agents ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Social Planner ◽  
Test Accuracy ◽  
Medical Testing ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Information Products ◽  
Limited Supply

Information products provide agents with additional information that can be used to update actions. In many situations, access to such products can be quite limited. For instance, in epidemics, there tends to be a limited supply of medical testing kits, or tests. These tests are information products because their output of a positive or a negative answer informs individuals and authorities on the underlying state and the appropriate course of action. In this paper, using an analytical model, we show how the accuracy of a test in detecting the underlying state affects the demand for the information product differentially across heterogeneous agents. Correspondingly, the test accuracy can serve as a rationing device to ensure that the limited supply of information products is appropriately allocated to the heterogeneous agents. When test availability is low and the social planner is unable to allocate tests in a targeted manner to the agents, we find that moderately good tests can outperform perfect tests in terms of social outcome. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management.

Toward an Empirically Informed Approach to Medical Virtues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Limited Impact ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Medical Role ◽  
The Impact

Several philosophers have developed accounts of virtue ethics that are more empirically informed than previous versions of this approach; however, such accounts have had only a limited impact on virtue ethical approaches to medical ethics. This chapter demonstrates how empirical research can help in the development of a strong evidence-based moral psychology of medical virtue. It draws out some general desiderata for an adequate moral psychology of medical virtue, and shows how empirical research is crucial for devising well-grounded accounts of medical role virtues, such as medical beneficence and medical courage. It also explains how research into the impact of policy changes on medical practice and doctors’ medical virtues can help with deriving defensible policy applications from medical virtue ethics.

scholarly journals Understanding responsibility in Responsible AI. Dianoetic virtues and the hard problem of context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihaela Constantinescu ◽  
Cristina Voinea ◽  
Radu Uszkai ◽  
Constantin Vică
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Design Ethics ◽  
Ethical Approaches ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractDuring the last decade there has been burgeoning research concerning the ways in which we should think of and apply the concept of responsibility for Artificial Intelligence. Despite this conceptual richness, there is still a lack of consensus regarding what Responsible AI entails on both conceptual and practical levels. The aim of this paper is to connect the ethical dimension of responsibility in Responsible AI with Aristotelian virtue ethics, where notions of context and dianoetic virtues play a grounding role for the concept of moral responsibility. The paper starts by highlighting the important difficulties in assigning responsibility to either technologies themselves or to their developers. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to moral responsibility are then contrasted, as we explore how they could inform debates about Responsible AI. We highlight the limits of the former ethical approaches and build the case for classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. We show that two building blocks of Aristotle’s ethics, dianoetic virtues and the context of actions, although largely ignored in the literature, can shed light on how we could think of moral responsibility for both AI and humans. We end by exploring the practical implications of this particular understanding of moral responsibility along the triadic dimensions of ethics by design, ethics in design and ethics for designers.

scholarly journals GenEth: a general ethical dilemma analyzer

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Anderson ◽  
Susan Leigh Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Ethical Dilemma ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Autonomous Systems ◽  
Inductive Logic ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Right

Abstract We argue that ethically significant behavior of autonomous systems should be guided by explicit ethical principles determined through a consensus of ethicists. Such a consensus is likely to emerge in many areas in which intelligent autonomous systems are apt to be deployed and for the actions they are liable to undertake, as we are more likely to agree on how machines ought to treat us than on how human beings ought to treat one another. Given such a consensus, particular cases of ethical dilemmas where ethicists agree on the ethically relevant features and the right course of action can be used to help discover principles needed for ethical guidance of the behavior of autonomous systems. Such principles help ensure the ethical behavior of complex and dynamic systems and further serve as a basis for justification of this behavior. To provide assistance in discovering ethical principles, we have developed GenEth, a general ethical dilemma analyzer that, through a dialog with ethicists, uses inductive logic programming to codify ethical principles in any given domain. GenEth has been used to codify principles in a number of domains pertinent to the behavior of autonomous systems and these principles have been verified using an Ethical Turing Test, a test devised to compare the judgments of codified principles with that of ethicists.

scholarly journals A Rapprochement between Feminist Ethics of Care and Contemporary Theology

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Helenka Mannering
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Nel Noddings ◽  
Benedict Xvi ◽  
Moral Philosophies ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Liberal Individualism

Ethics of care is a relatively new approach to morality, first developed as a feminist ethical theory in the 1980s by Carol Gilligan, Sara Ruddick, and Nel Noddings. It is based on the experience and responsibility of providing care and is distinct from other popular moral philosophies including Kantian moral theory, utilitarianism, or virtue ethics, although it has some similarities to virtue ethics. Founded on a relational ontology, it offers a deeply incisive critique of liberal individualism through ethical reflection. It is also committed to a particularism which recognises the importance of addressing moral problems in the context of lived experience. In this article, after an analysis of the foundational perspectives of care ethics, it will be contended that its central tenets tie in with contemporary approaches in theology, particularly those expressed in the writings of St John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Furthermore, it will be suggested that the anthropological and moral insights of these theologians can offer the ethics of care a deeper ontological and epistemological grounding, hence strengthening its viability and existential appeal.

Relation, Virtue, and Relational Virtue: Three Concepts of Caring

Hypatia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirong Luo
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Confucian Ethics ◽  
Agent Based

This essay breaks new ground in defending the view that contemporary care-based ethics and early Confucian ethics share some important common ground. Luo also introduces the notion of relational virtue in an attempt to bridge a conceptual gap between relational caring ethics and agent-based virtue ethics, and to make the connections between the ethics of care and Confucian ethics philosophically clearer and more defensible.

Ethics of Information in Distributed Business Environment

2010 ◽  
pp. 301-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Schiopoiu Burlea
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issue ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Approaches

The aim of this chapter is to examine some of the issues of ethics related to information in DBE. The ethical issue of what is moral to do in order to optimize the use of information in DBE is dealt with. The varied ways of integrating and putting into the practice information in DBE is discussed as well as the great variety of ethical approaches. In the field of ethics of information in DBE we are no longer confronted with “policy vacuum”; we are facing dissipation of ethical responsibility (DER) and this phenomenon leads to difficult and usually late localisation and solving of ethical dilemmas within the system.

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