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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates
This book is for people who work in the tech industry-computer and
data scientists, software developers and engineers, designers, and
people in business, marketing or management roles. It is also for
people who are involved in the procurement and deployment of
advanced applications, algorithms, and AI systems, and in policy
making. Together, they create the digital products, services, and
systems that shape our societies and daily lives. The book's aim is
to empower people to take responsibility, to 'upgrade' their skills
for ethical reflection, inquiry, and deliberation. It introduces
ethics in an accessible manner with practical examples, outlines of
different ethical traditions, and practice-oriented methods.
Additional online resources are available at:
ethicsforpeoplewhoworkintech.com.
A personal story of almost forty years debating abortion on radio,
television, and univeristy campuses that also shapes up as an
anecdotal history of the pro-life movement and a handbook for
debating against abortion.
This book starts from the discussion of a pornography, but does not
end with pornography. Rather, it suggests that a pornographic star
can be treated as a cultural product which obtains rich cultural
meanings. It contributes to the debate between the global
homogenization paradigm and the creolization paradigm which
predominates in multiple disciplines, through a thorough
examination of the entire process of the cross-cultural migration
of Aoi Sola, a Japanese adult video (AV) actress who has achieved
amazing popularity in mainland China since 2010. Through
fifteen-month participant observation inside the two Chinese
agencies of Sola, this study reveals that the transformative
intermediaries play a significant role in the transformation of the
cultural product in the Chinese context, even though their
operations are usually invisible to outsiders. The findings
challenge the conventional scholarly assumption that foreign
products produced by global producers are consumed "directly" by
local consumers or that the significance of these intermediaries
can be ignored. This study further extends the participant
observation inside the realistic field to the virtual space of
media in different countries, which can be called the second field.
It demonstrates that multiple local groups, including
intermediaries, Chinese commercial news portals, Party media, and
Chinese Internet users, respond to the dominant ideologies in
Chinese society by reinterpreting Sola in different, even
contradictory, ways. Thus, this research refutes the presumption
that a local society is a coherent monolith in the acceptance of
foreign cultural products. The book also deepens the reader's
understanding of Chinese Internet usage.
Institutional review boards (IRBs) are panels charged with
protecting the rights of humans who participate in research studies
ranging from biomedicine to social science. Regulating Human
Research provides a fresh look at these influential and sometimes
controversial boards, tracing their historic transformation from
academic committees to compliance bureaucracies: non-governmental
offices where specialized staff define and apply federal
regulations. In opening the black box of contemporary IRB
decision-making, author Sarah Babb argues that compliance
bureaucracy is an adaptive response to the dynamics and
dysfunctions of American governance. Yet this solution has had
unforeseen consequences, including the rise of a profitable ethics
review industry.
A major new study of Robert Musil by one of the world's leading
Musil scholars. Musil's extraordinary works, the study reveals,
emerged from the problem of the "two cultures." The modern era is
marked by the separate life of two cultures of understanding, one
derived from art and its discourses, the other from science and its
practices. This "problem of the two cultures" (as coined by C.P.
Snow) describes the difficulty of bringing these distinct ways of
understanding the world together. The works of the Austrian author
Robert Musil (1930-33) represent the most distinguished treatment
of this problem in the modern era. Nevertheless, doubts persist
about Musil's true intentions. Did he maintain that the separation
between art and science could be resolved? Or did he rise above the
problem by advocating a new order of being or "other condition"
that would dispense with it altogether? Mehigan's study moves these
questions to center stage. He lends new clarity to the debate about
Musil's position in regard to the two cultures by shining a light
on ethical questions the author ultimately wished to clarify. It is
the shape of a hard-won ethics, Mehigan argues, that provides the
key to an effective response to the problem of the two cultures -
an ethics, in the end, that can only be put forward as a new kind
of art. Tim Mehigan is Professor of German and Deputy Director of
the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the
University of Queensland, Australia.
Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is about
sex work and prostitution third sector organizations (TSOs):
non-governmental and non-profit organizations that provide support
services to, and advocate for the well-being of people operating in
the sex industries. With a focus on three vast and extremely
diverse regions, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, this book
provides a unique vantage point that shows how interlinked these
organizations' histories and configurations are. TSOs are
fascinating research sites because they operate as zones of
contestation which translate their understandings of sex work and
prostitution into different support practices and advocacy
initiatives. This book reveals that these organizations are not
external to normative power but participate in it and are subject
to it, conditioning how they can exist, who they can reach out to,
where, and what they can achieve. Third Sector Organizations in Sex
Work and Prostitution is a resource for scholars, policymakers, and
activists involved in research on, and work with third sector
organizations in the fields of sex work and prostitution, gender
and sexuality, and human rights among others.
Abortion is a contentious issue in social life but it has rarely
been subjected to careful scrutiny in the social sciences. While
the legalization of abortion has brought it into the public domain,
it still remains a sensitive topic in many cultures, often hidden
from view and rarely spoken about, consigned to a shadowy
existence. Drawing on reports gathered from hospital settings and
in-depth interviews with women who have had abortions, Luc
Boltanski sets out to explain the ambiguous status of this social
practice. Abortion, he argues, has to remain in the shadows, for it
reveals a contradiction at the heart of the social contract: the
principle of the uniqueness of beings conflicts with the postulate
of their replaceable nature, a postulate without which no society
would achieve demographic renewal. This leads Boltanski to explore
the way human beings are engendered and to analyze the symbolic
constraints that preside over their entry into society. What makes
a human being is not the foetus as such, ensconced within the body,
but rather the process by which it is taken up symbolically in
speech - that is, its symbolic adoption. But this symbolic adoption
presupposes the possibility of discriminating among embryos that
are indistinguishable. For society, and sometimes for individuals,
the arbitrary character of this discrimination is hard to tolerate.
The contradiction is made bearable, Boltanski shows, by a
grammatical categorization: the "project" foetus - adopted by its
parents, who use speech to welcome the new being and give it a name
- is juxtaposed to the "tumoral" foetus, an accidental embryo that
will not be the object of a life-forming project. Bringing together
grammar, narrations of life experience and an historical
perspective, this highly original book sheds fresh light on a
social phenomenon that is widely practised but poorly understood.
The book provides a detailed introduction to a major debate in
bioethics, as well as a rigorous account of the role of conscience
in professional decision-making. Exploring the role of conscience
in healthcare practice, this book offers fresh counterpoints to
recent calls to ban or severely restrict conscience objection. It
provides a detailed philosophical account of the nature and moral
import of conscience, and defends a prima facie right to
conscientious objection for healthcare professionals. The book also
has relevance to broader debates about religious liberty and civil
rights, such as debates about the rights and duties of persons and
institutions who refuse services to clients on the basis of a
religious objection. The book concludes with a discussion of how to
regulate individual and institutional conscientious objection, and
presents general principles for the accommodation of individual
conscientious objectors in the healthcare system. This book will be
of value to students and scholars in the fields of moral
philosophy, bioethics and health law.
Very little in the American way of life functions adequately under
surveillance. Democracy itself may be at mortal risk due to the
loss of privacy and the increase in surveillance. Examining
challenges in a wide range of contexts, this book investigates and
critically examines our systems of data management, including the
ways that data are collected, exchanged, analyzed, and re-purposed.
The volume calls for re-establishing personal privacy as a societal
norm and priority, requiring action on the part of everyone at
personal, societal, business, and governmental levels. Because new
media products and services are professionally designed and
implemented to be frictionless and highly rewarding, change is
difficult and solutions are not easy. This volume provides insight
into challenges and recommended solutions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to
society in ways that can't be fixed. Instead of helping to address
our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people's life
chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems.
This book provides an analysis of AI's deep learning technology and
its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with
contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity
to the rise of the far right. Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist
AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good
over algorithmic optimisation. He sets out an anti-fascist approach
to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people's
councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines
new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting
collective freedom. Academically rigorous, yet accessible to a
socially engaged readership, this unique book will be of interest
to all who wish to challenge the social logic of AI by reasserting
the importance of the common good.
"Ball's arguments are concise, compelling, and backed with
considerable case law. This volume is highly recommended for
upper-level undergraduates and above in law, philosophy, and the
medical humanities interested in the 'right to die' debates.
Summing up: Highly recommended." -Choice Over the past hundred
years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due
largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a
consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened awareness of
the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while
longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization,
the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to
chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy
was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to
influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the
average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many
people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou
Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them,
came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often
independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book,
noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it
appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to
have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a
terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a
competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms
with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates
about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics,
and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the
media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others
like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all
the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the
opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance.
Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current
events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven
the right to die debate.
This foundational text examines the intersection of AI, psychology,
and ethics, laying the groundwork for the importance of ethical
considerations in the design and implementation of technologically
supported education, decision support, and leadership training. AI
already affects our lives profoundly, in ways both mundane and
sensational, obvious and opaque. Much academic and industrial
effort has considered the implications of this AI revolution from
technical and economic perspectives, but the more personal,
humanistic impact of these changes has often been relegated to
anecdotal evidence in service to a broader frame of reference.
Offering a unique perspective on the emerging social relationships
between people and AI agents and systems, Hampton and DeFalco
present cutting-edge research from leading academics,
professionals, and policy standards advocates on the psychological
impact of the AI revolution. Structured into three parts, the book
explores the history of data science, technology in education, and
combatting machine learning bias, as well as future directions for
the emerging field, bringing the research into the active
consideration of those in positions of authority. Exploring how AI
can support expert, creative, and ethical decision making in both
people and virtual human agents, this is essential reading for
students, researchers, and professionals in AI, psychology, ethics,
engineering education, and leadership, particularly military
leadership.
This foundational text examines the intersection of AI, psychology,
and ethics, laying the groundwork for the importance of ethical
considerations in the design and implementation of technologically
supported education, decision support, and leadership training. AI
already affects our lives profoundly, in ways both mundane and
sensational, obvious and opaque. Much academic and industrial
effort has considered the implications of this AI revolution from
technical and economic perspectives, but the more personal,
humanistic impact of these changes has often been relegated to
anecdotal evidence in service to a broader frame of reference.
Offering a unique perspective on the emerging social relationships
between people and AI agents and systems, Hampton and DeFalco
present cutting-edge research from leading academics,
professionals, and policy standards advocates on the psychological
impact of the AI revolution. Structured into three parts, the book
explores the history of data science, technology in education, and
combatting machine learning bias, as well as future directions for
the emerging field, bringing the research into the active
consideration of those in positions of authority. Exploring how AI
can support expert, creative, and ethical decision making in both
people and virtual human agents, this is essential reading for
students, researchers, and professionals in AI, psychology, ethics,
engineering education, and leadership, particularly military
leadership.
Building on the work of Elinor Ostrom (Governing the Commons) the
author examines how the different shared goods of a democratic
society are shaped by technology and demonstrates how club goods,
common pool resources, and public goods are supported, enhanced,
and disrupted by technology. He further argues that as the common
good is undermined by different interests, it should be possible to
reclaim technology, if the members of the society conclude that
they have something in common.
The field of ethics in science aims to improve the way the audience
perceives science, and this unique workbook discusses the areas of
ethics and scientific misconduct. It provides assessments and
exercises for learners to work through in groups or alone.
Completion of the workbook but especially the assessment and tests
will earn the learner a certificate for scientific misconduct
training compiled by the author, and the certificate is available
from the author's own website. This volume is a companion to the
author's published volume, Ethics in Science: Ethical Misconduct in
Scientific Research, Second Edition and will appeal to
undergraduates, graduates and even high school students. Features:
A unique training workbook in ethics and good conduct, easliy
accessible and user friendly Unlike books in this area which mostly
cover the theoretical foundations of ethics in science, here the
author provides a practical workbook and ancillaries Case studies
and a PowerPoint presentation are provided and readers will receive
a certificate of completion There is a wealth of instructor
resources available from the homepage A knowledge of scientific
misconduct is of utmost importance in an era of mass higher
education
Why do we think ourselves superior to all other animals? Are we
right to think so? In this book, Michael Ruse explores these
questions in religion, science and philosophy. Some people think
that the world is an organism - and that humans, as its highest
part, have a natural value (this view appeals particularly to
people of religion). Others think that the world is a machine - and
that we therefore have responsibility for making our own value
judgements (including judgements about ourselves). Ruse provides a
compelling analysis of these two rival views and the age-old
conflict between them. In a wide-ranging and fascinating
discussion, he draws on Darwinism and existentialism to argue that
only the view that the world is a machine does justice to our
humanity. This new series offers short and personal perspectives by
expert thinkers on topics that we all encounter in our everyday
lives.
Traditionally, the university or college is thought to be the
ultimate location for the discovery and sharing of knowledge. After
all, on these campuses are some of the great minds across all
fields, as well as students who are not only eager to learn, but
who often contribute to our shared wisdom. For those ideals to be
achieved, however, ideas require access to some kind of virtual
marketplace from which people can sample and consider them, discuss
and debate them. Restricting the expression of those ideas for
whatever reason is the enemy of not only this process, but also of
knowledge discovery. Speech freedom on our college and university
campuses, like everywhere else, is fragile. There are those who
wish to suppress it, more often than not when the words express
ideas, opinions, and even facts that conflict with their beliefs.
Why does an effort so completely at odds with the foundational
values of this country happen? This topic explored in Speech
Freedom on Campus: Past, Present and Future is multi-layered, and
its analysis is best accomplished through multiple perspectives.
Joseph Russomanno's edited collection does precisely that,
utilizing 10 different scholars to examine various aspects and
issues related to speech freedom on campus.
This book provides guidance for structuring ethical reflection as
well as analytical tools to get to the heart of issues quickly. It
is designed to help practitioners engage ethically in applied
peacebuilding and conflict transformation and to help students
aspiring to be peacebuilders think about ethics. It discusses
ethics and morality, significant barriers to ethical deliberations
in applied work, moral theories, creative problem-solving for
situations when moral values conflict, and the need for healthy
ethical organizations. Throughout, concrete examples, scenarios,
and discussion questions help draw out key issues to improve
peacebuilding practices. Detailed case studies include
peacebuilding initiatives in East Timor, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone,
and more. Written by an experienced practitioner, the book will
help identify and analyze ethical problems and resolve moral value
conflicts to create healthy practices. It will provide valuable
guidance for thinking ethically about peacebuilding work and
handling the specific dilemmas related to it.
The issue of abortion forces a confrontation with the effects of
poverty and economic inequalities, local moral worlds, and the
cultural and social perceptions of the female body, gender, and
reproduction. Based on extensive original field research, this
provocative collection presents case studies from Thailand,
Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and India. It
includes powerful insight into the conditions and hard choices
faced by women and the circumstances surrounding unplanned
pregnancies. It explores the connections among poverty, violence,
barriers to access, and the politics and strategies involved in
abortion law reform. The contributors analyze these issues within
the broader conflicts surrounding women's status, gender roles,
religion, nationalism and modernity, as well as the global politics
of reproductive health.
Bioethics tells a heroic story about its origins and purpose. The
impetus for its contemporary development can be traced to concern
about widespread paternalism in medicine, mistreatment of research
subjects used in medical experimentation, and questions about the
implication of technological developments in medical practice.
Bioethics, then, began as a defender of the interests of patients
and the rights of research participants, and understood itself to
play an important role as a critic of powerful interests in
medicine and medical practice. Autonomy and the Situated Self
argues that, as bioethics has become successful, it no longer
clearly lives up to these founding ideals, and it offers a critique
of the way in which contemporary bioethics has been co-opted by the
very institutions it once sought (with good reason) to criticize
and transform. In the process, it has become mainstream, moved from
occupying the perspective of a critical outsider to enjoying the
status of a respected insider, whose primary role is to defend
existing institutional arrangements and its own privileged
position. The mainstreaming of bioethics has resulted in its
domestication: it is at home in the institutions it would once have
viewed with skepticism, and a central part of practices it would
once have challenged. Contemporary bioethics is increasingly
dominated by a conception of autonomy that detaches the value of
choice from the value of the things chosen, and the central role
occupied by this conception makes it difficult for the bioethicist
to make ethical judgments. Consequently, despite its very public
successes, contemporary bioethics is largely failing to offer the
ethical guidance it purports to be able to provide. In addition to
providing a critique, this book offers an alternative framework
that is designed to allow bioethicists to address the concerns that
led to the creation of bioethics in the first place. This
alternative framework is oriented around a conception of autonomy
that works within the ethical guidelines provided by a contemporary
form of virtue ethics, and which connects the value of autonomous
choice to a conception of human flourishing.
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