Resolving conflicts among principles: ranking, balancing, and specifying.

While much attention has been given to the use of principles in biomedical ethics and increasing attention is given to alternative theoretical approaches, relatively little attention has been devoted to the critical task of how one resolves conflicts among competing principles. After summarizing the system of principles and some problems in conceptualizing the principles, several strategies for reconciling conflicts among principles are examined including the use of single-principle theories (pure libertarianism, pure utilitarianism, and pure Hippocratism), balancing theories, conflicting appeals theories, and lexical ordering. Then a mixed strategy is proposed in which consequentialist principles are balanced between themselves as are nonconsequentialist principles, after which the result of balancing the nonconsequentialist principles is lexically ranked over the result of balancing the consequentialist ones. Finally, strategies involving specifying and rule generation are discussed concluding that most current specification and rule-generating theories must involve some degree of lexical ordering of principles.     

Deference and Uniqueness

Philosophical Studies - Deference principles are principles that describe when, and to what extent, it’s rational to defer to others. Recently, some authors have used such principles to argue...     

Thinking animals, disagreement, and skepticism

According to Eric Olson, the Thinking Animal Argument (TAA) is the best reason to accept animalism, the view that we are identical to animals. A novel criticism has been advanced against TAA, suggesting that it implicitly employs a dubious epistemological principle. I will argue that other epistemological principles can do the trick of saving the TAA, principles that appeal to recent issues regarding disagreement with peers and experts. I conclude with some remarks about the consequence of accepting these modified principles, drawing out some general morals in defending animalism.     

Experts in science: a view from the trenches

In this paper I analyze four so-called “principles of expertise”; that is, good epistemic practices that are normatively motivated by the epistemological literature on expert judgment. I highlight some of the problems that the four principles of expertise run into, when we try to implement them in concrete contexts of application (e.g. in science committees). I suggest some possible alternatives and adjustments to the principles, arguing in general that the epistemology of expertise should be informed both by case studies and by the literature on the use of experts in science practice.     

Boundaries in the practice of humanistic counselling

The multifaceted concept of boundary is used to describe the ground rules, quality and type of therapeutic relationship in a humanistic form of counselling that develops some of the principles of Carl Rogers and blends them with principles from psychodynamic practice. The concept of boundaries is first discussed in relation to its usages and practical consequences. An analysis of some core principles and assumptions about boundaries that guide the communicative psychotherapy approach of Robert Langs leads into a comparison with person-centred counselling. The aim is to develop a middle path for humanistic practice along more formal lines, involving a more fluid understanding of relationships and precise use of counselling principles. This also involves finding aspects of agreement between the psychodynamic and humanistic styles of working, by omitting some concepts and practices and identifying areas of common ground. Several comments on practice are made by comparing the two perspectives. The concept of boundary enables counsellors of all schools to think about points of similarity and difference. Finally, the notion of boundary itself is critiqued, and intersubjectivity is proposed as a potentially more meaningful term.     

Character-Principlism and the Particularity Objection

This paper is a response to particularist critics of the normative force of moral principles. The particularist critique, as I understand it, is a rejection not only of principle-based accounts of moral deliberation and justification, but also of accounts of character in which principles play a central role. I focus on the latter challenge and counter it with a view I call character-principlism .
I begin by discussing in a general way what motivates the particularity objection to principles and then contrast two views – both of which insist on the importance of attentiveness to particularity – about the relative normative status of principles and particular cases. I present some reasons for believing that we need a more normatively robust conception of the role of moral principles than the particularists provide. In the main portion of the paper, I discuss how character-principlism sees principles functioning in our lives and the lives we lead with others. I contrast this with some other accounts of desirable character that particularists can embrace, and argue that these are seriously flawed because, unlike character-principlism, they cannot satisfactorily explain how a person could possess the constancy of character that moral integrity requires.     

Fuzzy-Trace Theory and False Memory

A key problem confronting theories of false memory is that false-memory phenomena are so diverse: Some are characteristic of controlled laboratory tasks, others of everyday life; some occur for traumatic events with legal consequences, others for innocuous events; some are characteristic of one developmental level, others of another developmental level. Fuzzy-trace theory explains false memories via a small set of principles that implement a single representational distinction. Those principles generate new predictions, some of which are counterintuitive.     

Five-month-old infants know humans are solid, like inanimate objects

Infants know that humans are exempt from some of the principles that govern the motion of inanimate objects: for instance, humans can be caused to move without being struck. In the current study, we report that infants nevertheless do apply some of the same principles to both humans and objects, where appropriate. Five-month-old infants expect humans, like all material objects, to be solid.     

Role of theoretical bias in therapeutic interventions: to see or not to see?

Considering the role of theory in child psychosocial treatment, it is important to acknowledge some of its associated problems. Among the shortcomings of theory discussed in this article are its potential for biasing what we see and do clinically, the arbitrary nature of some theoretical explanations, and the way that theory-based jargon can interfere with communication. A bottom-up approach to the development of clinical principles is advocated instead, especially when these principles are derived from the convergence of clinical observation and research findings.     

Agreement and Updating For Self-Locating Belief

In this paper, I argue that some plausible principles concerning which credences are rationally permissible for agents given information about one another’s epistemic and credal states have some surprising consequences for which credences an agent ought to have in light of self-locating information. I provide a framework that allows us to state these constraints and draw out these consequences precisely. I then consider and assess the prospects for rejecting these prima facie plausible principles.     

Ethical principles of the American Psychological Association: an argument for philosophical and practical ranking

Unlike the American Psychological Association (APA), the Canadian Psychological Association has adopted a code of ethics in which principles are organized in order of importance. The validity of this hierarchical organization has received some empirical and theoretical support. We conducted a theoretical analysis that revealed conceptual justification for a ranking of the 6 principles in the APA code. Such a ranking could assist psychologists in making more informed and consistent moral choices when confronted with ethical dilemmas that involve conflicts among principles.     

Counselling and well-being: on the road to realities

This article aims to discuss the rationale and some guiding principles for the realm of counselling in the fostering of well-being. After some brief observations of a theoretical nature, the principles analysed are: the revitalisation of counselling; the reflection on the concept of dialogue, including the notion of context; the perspective of counselling as social activity; understanding counselling and how it adjusts on the road to realities. From this perspective, practitioners view counselling as a social activity aimed at self-construction and life designing. In following that view, the idea of counselling as being socially produced is also examined. At the end, some considerations on the future of counselling are discussed.     

The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgment: testing three principles of harm

Is moral judgment accomplished by intuition or conscious reasoning? An answer demands a detailed account of the moral principles in question. We investigated three principles that guide moral judgments: (a) Harm caused by action is worse than harm caused by omission, (b) harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal, and (c) harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm involving no physical contact. Asking whether these principles are invoked to explain moral judgments, we found that subjects generally appealed to the first and third principles in their justifications, but not to the second. This finding has significance for methods and theories of moral psychology: The moral principles used in judgment must be directly compared with those articulated in justification, and doing so shows that some moral principles are available to conscious reasoning whereas others are not.     

Kantian Themes in Contemporary Philosophy: Graham Bird

Michael Friedman criticises some recent accounts of Kant which 'detach' his transcendental principles from the sciences, and do so in order to evade naturalism. I argue that Friedman's rejection of that 'detachment' is ambiguous. In its strong form, which I claim Kant rejects, the principles of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are represented as transcendental principles. In its weak form, which I believe Kant accepts, it treats those latter principles as higher order conditions of the possibility of both science and ordinary experience. I argue also that the appeal to naturalism is unhelpful because that doctrine is seriously unclear, and because the accounts Friedman criticises are open to objections independent of any appeal to naturalism.     

程序公正的测量及研究操纵

程序公正是指处理管理事务所依据的原则是否公正。普遍认可的程序公正原则包括一致性、避免偏见、准确性、可修正、代表性、道德与伦理原则。程序公正研究主要有测量和实验操纵两种研究范式。对程序公正的测量主要以单维为主,亦有少数多维测量量表;对程序公正的实验操纵主要以发言权为主,有少数研究对准确性、无偏性或综合几项原则进行操纵。未来研究应考虑程序公正的结构问题,对程序公正的操纵范围进行扩展、操纵方法考虑情景性,还需关注程序公正与程序不公正的差异。     

Evidence-Based Ethical Problem Solving (EBEPS)

ABSTRACT— Although there is usually agreement about the ethical principles that should govern human research, there may be little agreement on how those principles should be interpreted into research procedures in some instances. Empirical research on ethical issues can often elucidate ways to improve on existing research practices and resolve debates with one's institutional review board.     

辩证思维在心脏外科疾病诊治中的应用

辩证思维是最普遍适用,最重要的科学思维方法之一.介绍尝试将辩证思维应用于心脏外科工作中的心得,并用具体案例介绍了在心脏外科疾病的诊断与治疗中辩证思维常用的基本原则.     

Six principles for biologically based computational models of cortical cognition

This review describes and motivates six principles for computational cognitive neuroscience models: biological realism, distributed representations, inhibitory competition, bidirectional activation propagation, error-driven task learning, and Hebbian model learning. Although these principles are supported by a number of cognitive, computational and biological motivations, the prototypical neural-network model (a feedforward back-propagation network) incorporates only two of them, and no widely used model incorporates all of them. It is argued here that these principles should be integrated into a coherent overall framework, and some potential synergies and conflicts in doing so are discussed.     

Killing by Autonomous Vehicles and the Legal Doctrine of Necessity

How should autonomous vehicles (aka self-driving cars) be programmed to behave in the event of an unavoidable accident in which the only choice open is one between causing different damages or losses to different objects or persons? This paper addresses this ethical question starting from the normative principles elaborated in the law to regulate difficult choices in other emergency scenarios. In particular, the paper offers a rational reconstruction of some major principles and norms embedded in the Anglo-American jurisprudence and case law on the “doctrine of necessity”; and assesses which, if any, of these principles and norms can be utilized to find reasonable guidelines for solving the ethical issue of the regulation of the programming of autonomous vehicles in emergency situations. The paper covers the following topics: the distinction between “justification” and “excuse”, the legal prohibition of intentional killing outside self-defence, the incommensurability of goods, and the legal constrains to the use of lethal force set by normative positions: obligations, responsibility, rights, and authority. For each of these principles and constrains the possible application to the programming of autonomous vehicles is discussed. Based on the analysis, some practical suggestions are offered.     

Axiomatic summary and deductions from Hering’s principles of visual direction

Hering’s principles of visual direction are summarized axiomatically, and deductions are presented. The deductions allow one to predict when veridical or nonveridical judgments of visual direction should occur and when apparent movement should be seen. These predictions agree with the results obtained in special viewing conditions. However, one of the limitations of the principles is that some of the predictions fail in “normal” viewing conditions.