Hydrogen Fuel‐Cell Vehicles,Energy Policy,and the Ethics of Expertise

Relatively few thinkers have attempted to develop a systematic ‘ethics of expertise’ (EOE) that can guide scientists and other technical experts in providing information to the public. This paper argues that the prima facie duty to disseminate information in a manner that does not damage the self‐determination of decision makers could fruitfully serve as one of the core principles of an EOE. Moreover, this duty can be fleshed out in promising ways by drawing on the concept of informed consent, which guides medical clinicians in preserving the self‐determination of their patients. The paper applies the resulting ethical framework to recent policy discussions about hydrogen fuel‐cell (HFC) vehicles, both because they have received a good deal of research funding and because their merits have been hotly debated. It concludes that technical experts providing information about HFC vehicles should be especially cognizant of three issues: (1) important alternatives to hydrogen technology that need to be addressed, (2) major false beliefs that should be prevented or corrected, and (3) significant framing effects that could influence the recipients of information.     

Molecular geneticists and moral responsibility: “maybe if we were working on the atom bomb I would have a different argument”

Senior molecular geneticists were interviewed about their perceptions of the ethical and social implications of genetic knowledge. Inductive analysis of these interviews identified a number of strategies through which the scientists negotiated their moral responsibilities as they participated in generating knowledge that presents difficult ethical questions. These strategies included: further analysis and application of scientific method; clarification of multiple roles; negotiation with the public through public debate, institutional processes of funding, ethics committees and legislation; and personal responsibility.     

Ethics Consultation and Autonomy

Services of ethics consultants are nowadays commonly used in such various spheres of life as engineering, public administration, business, law, health care, journalism, and scientific research. It has however been maintained that use of ethics consultants is incompatible with personal autonomy; in moral matters individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions. The problem this criticism refers to can be conceived of as a conflict between the professional autonomy of ethics experts and the autonomy of the persons they serve. This paper addresses this conflict and maintains that when the nature of both ethics consultation and individual autonomy is properly understood, the professional autonomy of ethics experts is compatible with the autonomy of the persons they assist.     

Social Responsibility and the Mental Health Professions

Summary

While mental health professionals tend to primarily focus on their professional responsibilities toward the specific members of the public whom they serve, many are also concerned about positively impacting the broader society or culture in which they live and work. This notion of social responsibility is addressed in the ethics codes of both psychologists and social workers. This article reviews how this notion is addressed for these two mental health professions and also examines the changes that have occurred for psychologists between the 1992 and 2002 ethics codes. Finally, some general issues regarding the role of mental health professionals in changing society are considered.     

生育健康的伦理学基础:个人本位还是社会本位

随着“以妇女为中心”生育健康概念的提出,女性的健康与他们在社会中享有权利的关系正引起人们的关注。然而,如何实现女性有生育过程中的主体地位,解决她们所面临的与社会选择的矛盾,在很大程度上取决于特有的社会伦理背景以及所遵循的价值原则。由于中国与西方的社会伦理发展轨迹的差异,构建生育健康的伦理框架和强调女性生育自主权的努力方向也应异于西方。     

Medical ethics in France: The latest great political debate

The American term Bioethics has been adopted over the last ten years and the development of Bioethics committees on the American model testifies this influence, even before the official appointment of a National Committee in 1983. This phenomenon acknowledged as the “emergence of French bioethics” is in fact the final outcome of a long-lasting crisis in the medical profession, in quest for a new style of ethics, breaking with the traditional professional ethics (French Déontologie, through the Ordre des Médecins). Among other factors of conceptual and institutional change, the increase of biomedical research comes first: a major consequence is the sharing of moral responsibilities in decision-making with outsider scientists and finally the involvement of the whole population as potential moral subjects. The designation of these events as the emergence of French bioethics is hardly appropriate for an account of this dramatic shift in ethical norms and roles in medicine. This paper attempts to review the intellectual roots of the recent evolution and to summarize present and prospective trends.     

Seeing by Feeling: Virtues,Skills, and Moral Perception

Champions of virtue ethics frequently appeal to moral perception: the notion that virtuous people can “see” what to do. According to a traditional account of virtue, the cultivation of proper feeling through imitation and habituation issues in a sensitivity to reasons to act. Thus, we learn to see what to do by coming to feel the demands of courage, kindness, and the like. But virtue ethics also claims superiority over other theories that adopt a perceptual moral epistemology, such as intuitionism – which John McDowell criticizes for illicitly “borrow[ing] the epistemological credentials” of perception. In this paper, I suggest that the most promising way for virtue ethics to use perceptual metaphors innocuously is by adopting a skill model of virtue, on which the virtues are modeled on forms of practical know-how. Yet I contend that this model is double-edged for virtue ethics. The skill model belies some central ambitions and dogmas of the traditional view, especially its most idealized claims about virtue and the virtuous. While this may be a cost that its champions are unprepared to pay, I suggest that virtue ethics would do well to embrace a more realistic moral psychology and a correspondingly less sublime conception of virtue.     

Ethical Dilemmas in the Use of Information Technology: An Aristotelian Perspective

As computer-based information systems start to have a great impact on people, organizations, and society as a whole, there is much debate about information technology in relation to social control and privacy, security and reliability, and ethics and professional responsibilities. However, more often than not, these debates reveal some fundamental disagreements, sometimes about first principles. In this article the authors suggest that a fruitful and interesting way to conceptualize some of these moral and ethical issues associated with the use of information technology is to apply the principles of Aristotle's ethics to this topic. They argue that framing the moral and ethical choices associated with information technology in Aristotelian terms draws attention to the fact that there are fundamental dilemmas to be addressed. These dilemmas are discussed in relation to the four areas suggested by Dejoie, Fowler, and Paradice (1991): (a) privacy, (b) information accuracy, (c) access to information, and (d) intellectual property rights. The dilemmas associated with all four areas are illustrated with references to recent legal developments in Australia and New Zealand.     

关于官德及其建设的思考

官德(即党政干部道德)既可从职业伦理的维度界定,也可从角色伦理的维度来把握;它既具政治伦理的特点,又具行政伦理的内涵。在现代法治社会,官德作为一种道德控制方式,它并不因为制约权力的法律制度体系建立健全而失去作用,它仍然是保障官员正确行使权力、实现政治和行政责任的重要机制。     

Scientific societies and whistleblowers: the relationship between the community and the individual

Formalizing shared ethical standards is an activity of scientific societies designed to achieve a collective goal of promoting ethical conduct. A scientist who is faced with the choice of becoming a “whistleblower” by exposing misconduct does so in the context of these ethical standards. Examination of ethics policies of scientific societies which are members of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) shows a breadth of purpose and scope in these policies. Among the CSSP member societies, some ethics policies chiefly present the ethical culture of the community in an educational context and do not have enforcement procedures. Other policies are more comprehensive and include standards for certification, procedures for addressing ethical issues, and established sanctions. Of the 36 member societies of CSSP that have developed a code or adopted a code of another professional society, 18 specifically identified a responsibility to expose ethical misconduct, demonstrating an acknowledgment of the possible critical role of the whistleblower in addressing ethical issues. Scientific societies may revise their ethics codes based upon experience gained in addressing cases of ethical misconduct. In most cases, the action of a whistleblower is the initial step in addressing an ethics violation; the whistleblower may either be in the position of an observer or a victim, such as in the case of someone who discovers that his or her own work has been plagiarized. The ethics committee of a scientific society is one of several possible outlets through which the whistleblower can voice a complaint or concern. Ethical violations can include falsification, fabrication, plagiarism and other authorship disputes, conflict of interest and other serious violations. Commonly, some of these violations may involve publication in the scientific literature. Thus addressing ethical issues may be intertwined with a scientific society’s role in the dissemination of new scientific results. For a journal published by a scientific society, the editor can refer at some point to the ethics committee of the society. Whereas, in the case of a journal published by a commercial publisher, the editor may be without direct support of the associated scientific community in handling the case. The association of a journal with a scientific society may thus direct a whistleblower towards addressing the issue within the scientific community rather than involving the press or talking to colleagues who may gossip. A formal procedure for handling ethics cases may also discourage false accusers. Another advantage of handling complaints through ethics committees is that decisions to contact home institutions or funding agencies can be made by the ethics committee and are not the responsibility of the whistleblower or the editor of the journal. The general assessment is that the establishment of ethics policies, especially policies covering publication in society journals, will promote a culture supportive of whistleblowers and discouraging to false accusers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium entitled “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: What the Scientific Community Can Do About Whistleblowing” held during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Seattle, Washington, 15 February, 1997.     

Getting scientists to think about what they are doing

Research scientists are trained to produce specialised bricks of knowledge, but not to look at the whole building. Increasing public concern about the social role of science is forcing science students to think about what they are actually learning to do. What sort of knowledge will they be producing, and how will it be used? Science education now requires serious consideration of these philosophical and ethical questions. But the many different forms of knowledge produced by modern science cannot be covered by any single philosophical principle. Sociology and cognitive psychology are also needed to understand what the sciences have in common and the significance of what they generate. Again, traditional modes of ethical analysis cannot deal adequately with the values, norms and interests activated by present-day technoscience without reference to its sociological, political and economic dimensions. What science education now requires is ‘metascience’, a discipline that extends beyond conventional philosophy and ethics to include the social and humanistic aspects of the scientific enterprise. For example, students need to learn about the practices, institutions, career choices, and societal responsibilities of research scientists, and to rehearse in advance some of the moral dilemmas that they are likely to meet. They need also to realise that science is changing rapidly, not only in its research techniques and organisational structures but also in its relationships with society at large.     

What do we Want from a Theory of Happiness?

I defend a methodology for theorizing about happiness. I reject three methods: conceptual analysis; scientific naturalism; and the “pure normative adequacy” approach, where the best conception of happiness is the one that best fills a role in moral theory. The concept of happiness is a folk notion employed by laypersons who have various practical interests in the matter, and theories of happiness should respect this fact. I identify four such interests in broad terms and then argue for a set of desiderata that theories of happiness ought to satisfy. The theory of happiness falls within the province of ethics. It should, however, be viewed as autonomous and not merely secondary to moral theory.     

Roles for scientific societies in promoting integrity in publication ethics

Scientific societies can have a powerful influence on the professional lives of scientists. Using this influence, they have a responsibility to make long-term commitments and investments in promoting integrity in publication, just as in other areas of research ethics. Concepts that can inform the thinking and activities of scientific societies with regard to publication ethics are: the “hidden curriculum” (the message of actions rather than formal statements), a fresh look at the components of acting with integrity, deviancy as a normally occurring phenomenon in human society, and the scientific community as an actual community. A society’s first step is to decide what values it will promote, within the framework of present-day standards of good conduct of science and given the society’s history and traditions. The society then must create educational programs that serve members across their careers. Scientific societies must take seriously the implications of the problem; set policies and standards for publication ethics for their members; educate about and enforce the standards; bring the issues before the members early and often; and maintain continuing dialogue with editors. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AAAS-Office of Research Integrity (ORI) meeting in Washington DC on the theme: “The Role and Activities of Scientific Societies in Promoting Research Integrity” held on April 10–11, 2000.     

The Chinese Moral Ethos and the Concept of Individual Rights

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the contrast in views between traditional mainstream Chinese philosophy and Western liberal individualism on the importance of the concept of individual rights in social and political thought. The contrast is striking because, whereas individual and political rights have long featured in public discourse in the West, in China, mainstream social and political thought has developed without a notion of individual rights. In search of the significance of this major difference, the paper traces ideas of the self in China through Confucian ethics, and compares the Confucian conception of the self with the deontological liberal conception of the subject as a bearer of rights in the West. Having established that the Chinese way of thinking about the self and about moral agency is in stark contrast to the image of the self as a bearer of rights in the deontological conception, the paper goes on to discuss the inadequacy of the moral individualism of a rights-based morality and argues for an alternative view of morality which places importance on the intrinsic value of collective goods and on membership in a society.     

Ethical Modernization: Research Misconduct and Research Ethics Reforms in Korea Following the Hwang Affair

The Hwang affair, a dramatic and far reaching instance of scientific fraud, shocked the world. This collective national failure prompted various organizations in Korea, including universities, regulatory agencies, and research associations, to engage in self-criticism and research ethics reforms. This paper aims, first, to document and review research misconduct perpetrated by Hwang and members of his research team, with particular attention to the agencies that failed to regulate and then supervise Hwang’s research. The paper then examines the research ethics reforms introduced in the wake of this international scandal. After reviewing American and European research governance structures and policies, policy makers developed a mixed model mindful of its Korean context. The third part of the paper examines how research ethics reform is proactive (a response to shocking scientific misconduct and ensuing external criticism from the press and society) as well as reactive (identification of and adherence to national or international ethics standards). The last part deals with Korean society’s response to the Hwang affair, which had the effect of a moral atomic bomb and has led to broad ethical reform in Korean society. We conceptualize this change as ethical modernization, through which the Korean public corrects the failures of a growth-oriented economic model for social progress, and attempts to create a more trustworthy and ethical society.     

The vocation of motherhood: Husserl and feminist ethics

In this paper, I explore a confrontation between Husserl’s ethical position of vocation and its absolute ought with a feminist ethical position. I argue that Husserl’s ethics has a great deal to offer a feminist ethics by providing for the possibility of an ethics that is particular rather than universal, that recognizes the role of the social through tradition in establishing values and norms without conceding the ethical responsibility of the individual, and that acknowledges the role of both reason and desire in establishing moral values that has the consequence of breaking down the public/private distinction that has reigned in so many ethical theories. In order to make this case, I proceed with a review of Husserl’s position of the absolute ought, some typical criticisms that might be leveled at his position, and finally, responses to those criticisms that show ways in which Husserl’s position can be beneficial to the formulation of a feminist ethics that is inclusive of the emotional aspect of moral valuation, and the particularity of ethical commitments, while providing for a different way of evaluating thinking that accommodates what are usually understood to be “feminine” concerns. In addition to describing Husserl’s position, I show how that position meets some of the expectations for a feminist ethics as put forth by Iris Marion Young and Sara Ruddick.     

Does change in ethical education influence core moral values? Towards history- and culture-aware morality model with application in automatic moral reasoning

In this study, we focus on ethical education as a means to improve artificial companion’s conceptualization of moral decision-making process in human users. In particular, we focus on automatically determining whether changes in ethical education influenced core moral values in humans throughout the century. We analyze ethics as taught in Japan before WWII and today to verify how much the pre-WWII moral attitudes have in common with those of contemporary Japanese, to what degree what is taught as ethics in school overlaps with the general population’s understanding of ethics, as well as to verify whether a major reform of the guidelines for teaching the school subject of “ethics” at school after 1946 has changed the way common people approach core moral questions (such as those concerning the sacredness of human life). We selected textbooks used in teaching ethics at school from between 1935 and 1937, and those used in junior high schools today (2019) and analyzed what emotional and moral associations such contents generated. The analysis was performed with an automatic moral and emotional reasoning agent and based on the largest available text corpus in Japanese as well as on the resources of a Japanese digital library. As a result, we found out that, despite changes in stereotypical view on Japan’s moral sentiments, especially due to historical events, past and contemporary Japanese share a similar moral evaluation of certain basic moral concepts, although there is a large discrepancy between how they perceive some actions to be beneficial to the society as a whole while at the same time being inconclusive when it comes to assessing the same action’s outcome on the individual performing them and in terms of emotional consequences. Some ethical categories, assessed positively before the war, while being associated with a nationalistic trend in education have also disappeared from the scope of interest of post- war society. The findings of this study support suggestions proposed by others that the development of personal AI systems requires supplementation with moral reasoning. Moreover, the paper builds upon this idea and further suggests that AI systems need to be aware of ethics not as a constant, but as a function with a correction on historical and cultural changes in moral reasoning.     

The Rationality of Ultimate Concern: Moral Exemplars,Theological Ethics,and the Science of Moral Cognition

This paper argues that consideration of moral exemplars may provide a means for integrating insights across philosophical ethics, theological ethics, and the scientific study of moral cognition. Key to this endeavor is an understanding of the relation of cognition and emotion in ethical decision-making, a relation that is usually understood to be oppositional but which in proper circumstances may be understood to be quite the opposite. Indeed, a distinctive feature of moral exemplarity may consist in the ability to properly integrate the emotions into the moral life, and reference to and imitation of exemplars may involve a referencing and imitating of the emotions of the exemplar.     

Expert Trespassing Testimony and the Ethics of Science Communication

Scientific expert testimony is crucial to public deliberation, but it is associated with many pitfalls. This article identifies one—namely, expert trespassing testimony—which may be characterized, crudely, as the phenomenon of experts testifying outside their domain of expertise. My agenda is to provide a more precise characterization of this phenomenon and consider its ramifications for the role of science in society. I argue that expert trespassing testimony is both epistemically problematic and morally problematic. Specifically, I will argue that scientific experts are subject to a particular obligation. Roughly, this is the obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of scientific expertise in certain contexts. Thus, I argue that scientists who possess expert knowledge are confronted with hard questions about when and how to testify and, therefore, that being a scientific expert comes with great responsibility. Consequently, I provide a concrete “expert guideline” according to which scientific experts, in certain contexts, face an obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of expertise. Furthermore, I consider a number of the conditions in which the guideline is waived or overridden. On this basis, I consider the broader aspects of the roles of scientific experts in a society with a high division of cognitive labor that calls for trust in scientific expert testimony.     

Is Mozi a utilitarian philosopher?

In this essay I argue that Mozi’s philosophy is anything but utilitarianism by way of analysing four ethical theories. Utilitarianism is an ethics in which the moral subject is an atomic individual human being, and its concern is how to fulfill the interests of the individual self and the social majority. Confucian ethics is centered on the notion of the family and its basic question is that of priority in the relationship between the small self and the enlarged or collective self. Opposite to these two moral theories is Mozi’s ethics: The interests that Mozi is primarily concerned with are not the interests of my individual self or my collective self, but the interests of the other. The fulfillment of the material needs of the other is my moral obligation. The arguments are centered on the three basic concepts, “the I,” “the we,” and “the other.” The significance of Mozi’s thought in modern or postmodern context lies in its striking resemblance to the philosophy of a contemporary western philosopher, Levinas. In both Mozi and Levinas, there is a suspension of utilitarianism. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Zhexue Shi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), 2005 (1)