ETHICS IN PROGRESS
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A Softwaremodule for an Ethical Elder Care Robot. Design and Implementation
Get PDFThe development of increasingly intelligent and autonomous technologies will eventually lead to these systems having to face morally problematic situations. This is particularly true of artificial systems that are used in geriatric care environments. The goal of this article is to describe how one can approach the design of an elder care robot which is capable of moral decision-making and moral learning. A conceptual design for the development of such a system is provided and the steps that are necessary to implement it are described
Reflection on the 12th International Moral Competence-Symposium in Chemnitz (11th to 13th October 2018)
Get PDFConflicts and Religions: The Case of Syria and Iraq
No full textReligion is at the heart of the lacerating conflicts in Iraq and Syria today. In both countries the matter at hand is the fracture between the two main branches of Islam. This fracture escalated into a religious war after the Arab Springs in 2011, even though the violent conflict between Shia and Sunni started in Iraq in 2003, after the American invasion of the ancient Mesopotamia. The reason for both the foreign occupation and the insurrection of the civil society leading to the same chaos is that, in both countries, the State does not raise enough legitimacy to open a public space able to welcome a unitary citizenship. Such a phenomenon calls back to the history of the two states and at the British (Iraq) and French (Syria) establishing mandates of the two institutions, which never succeeded in imposing their legitimacy for most people (Shia in Iraq and Sunni in Syria), left out of the ruling bodies for a long time. The Shia-Kurdish combination, which is the leading force in Iraq since 2003, conducted to the refusal of the Arab Sunni minority to live marginalized and powerless
The End of Life As “Non” Death
No full textTaking the cue from some verses of Rilke’s Duineser Elegien, where the poet talks about the distinction between life and death, a distinction which mortals perform too rigidly, in this paper I discuss the contrast just between life and death, in order to understand the conditions under which the first truly distinguishes itself from the latter. This happens to the extent that life is also distinguished from the denial of death because otherwise, being the negation a form of necation (nex = killing, murder), the presumed denial of death would reverse in a triumph of death.In the present age this circumstance is particularly evident and significant, since humanity aims at a technological realization of im‑mortality, understood as the denial of death. To the extent that this remains a negative operation, it takes the form of the scrapping of mortals. True liberation/salvation from death presupposes that the negation itself is called into question. Only on this condition, in fact, is possible a life free from any form of necation. This freedom presupposes, inter alia, a “non” education, intended as an education to be able to freely play with the negative of death and denial
Mis-Educative Martial Law – The Fate of Free Discourse and the Moral Judgment Competence of Polish University Students from 1977 to 1983
Get PDFThe reprinted paper refers to Georg Lind and his colleagues’ MCT-based FORM study conducted at several European universities in 1977-1983, including Polish ones. After a short phase of democratization, in 1981 Polish society suddenly faced martial law. That experience had an impact on Polish students moral-, discursiveand democratic competences, as measured by MCT. When Ewa Nowak started her Alexander von Humboldt Foundation supported research stay under the supervision of Professor Georg Lind (University of Konstanz, 2008-2010), they were inspired to revisit and discuss the puzzling Polish research findings of 1981/3. According to their main hypothesis, martial law restricted free speech at universities, and free speech is a key facilitator of the development of moral and democratic competence. In 2018, after a decade of collaborative research on moral and democratic competence, Lind, Nowak and colleagues started a new international MCT study in several Central- and East European countries to examine the impact of the contemporary constitutional crisis in Poland (and the institutional crisis within the European Union) on students’ moral and democratic competencies. In 2018/9 the 40th anniversary of the Moral Competence Test (MCT) and Konstanz Method of Dilemma Discussion (KMDD) will be celebrated. We would like to provide you with the most recent research findings soon
The Cartography of Childhood. A Parcours of Philosophy for Children / Community and Cartography
No full textThe following reflections are born from some practical and theoretical trajectories undertook by the writer – already since a few years in my research scope – around philosophy for children/community and philosophical practices. The experience of some activities proposed at the Liceo Vasco/Beccaria/Govone in Mondovì during the Cespec Summer School 2017 around the issue of Humanitas in the contemporary society was recently added to these reflections. It is a theme that engaged us in several experiences of Philosophy for Community. Throughout these gatherings, we proposed a cartographic writing and philosophical approach. In particular, this contribution will explore the concept of children cartography (cartografia d’infanzia), as an occasion of translating the philosophical discourse into a map of a philosophical debate, also mutuating the concept of philosophical confluence considered by Pierpaolo Casarin. The adopted perspective is the transdisciplinary border where human geography, philosophy, and writing, as disciplinary subjects, can confound their identities and boundaries in a space of immanence in the making. Summarizing, we intend to highlight the themes, concepts, and practical propositions around some practical and theoretical research trajectories, current and future, which hold implications for all of us (and for humanity). Such practices allow again – and still – the possibility of orienting and losing oneself thanks to the Humanitas
Can Online College Education Make Students Smarter and More Moral? A Preliminary Study of the Effects of Two Online College Course Assignments on Students’ Moral Competence
Get PDFHigher education institutions in the United States have historically been tasked with the responsibility of scaffolding the moral development of students. Although empirical evidence suggests that attending colleges and universities can foster students’ moral development and reasoning, the effect of online higher education remains mainly unknown. The current study has examined the effect of two online psychology courses, Developmental Psychology and Research Methods Lab, and their respective assignments on students’ moral competence. The findings revealed that students’ moral competence in both courses was improved; this improvement was partly attributed to online group discussions in the Developmental psychology course. No other assignments were found to be significant contributors of students’ moral competence. Limitations and implications of the findings were discussed
University Students’ vs. Lay People’s Perspectives on Organ Donation and Improving Health Communication in Poland
Get PDFGiven that organ transplant is a standard medical technology admitted in medical practice, and taking into consideration that Polish transplantology is regarded among the most advanced in the world one should expect to find similarly high levels of acceptance in interviewees asked for their opinion on vital organ transplantation and their willingness to donate a paired organ ex vivo, or a vital organ ex mortuo in order to rescue the life of a recipient with a missing vital organ. The paper presents research build on the societal assessment of vital organ donation and transplant policies in Poland with the focus on students. Data have been collected at three different universities (Boratyński et al., Questionnaire on the Bases of Transplantation Medicine 2016/7). Various assessments concerning a vital organ donation have been observed. The authors discuss educational factors contributing to these variety including factual knowledge and ethical issues
Wittgenstein: od etyki do ślepego stosowania reguł i z powrotem
Get PDFThe paper discusses Wittgenstein’s approaches to ethics within two contrastive contexts, e.g., pragmatism and cooperative-discursive normative practice. The first section revisits the fiasco of his early “negative” ethics. The second section subsequently shows how Wittgenstein’s mature concept of blind rule-following displaces normativity but simultaneously becomes the key predictor for discourse ethics (or, rather, a specific kind of it). The final section discusses the pros and cons of finitism in the light of contemporary philosophy of mind. As a conclusion, the author provides evidence for her hypothesis that there is no normative (embodied) mind without a manifest normative competence, which includes moral judgment and discursive competence.The paper discusses Wittgenstein’s approaches to ethics within two contrastive contexts, e.g., pragmatism and cooperative-discursive normative practice. The first section revisits the fiasco of his early “negative” ethics. The second section subsequently shows how Wittgenstein’s mature concept of blind rule-following displaces normativity but simultaneously becomes the key predictor for discourse ethics (or, rather, a specific kind of it). The final section discusses the pros and cons of finitism in the light of contemporary philosophy of mind. As a conclusion, the author provides evidence for her hypothesis that there is no normative (embodied) mind without a manifest normative competence, which includes moral judgment and discursive competence
Sisyphus Cannot Rest. Ethical Challenges of Artificial Intelligence
No full textThe use of machines with artificial intelligence in different areas of life and the trend to develop a „homunculus“ makes ethical rating necessary. Starting with early rules of behavior and moral norms, traditions in the occidental ethic history will be presented and faced with the question, whether they can be of any help to understand artificial intelligence, and which conclusions should be considered while developing and using machines with (strong) artifical intelligence by individuals, states, and finally, the whole world