BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

This editorial to the special issue addresses the often overlooked question of the ethical nature of social enterprises. The emerging social entrepreneurship literature has previously been dominated by enthusiasts who fail to critique the social enterprise, focusing instead on its distinction from economic entrepreneurship and potential in solving social problems. In this respect, we have found through the work presented herein that the relation between social entrepreneurship and ethics needs to be problematized. Further, we find that a range of conceptual (...) lenses and methodological approaches is valuable as the social entrepreneurship field matures. (shrink)

Abstract:This article argues that the important organizational values to study are organizational moral values. It identifies five moral values (honest communication, respect for property, respect for life, respect for religion, and justice), which allow parallel constructs at individual and organizational levels of analysis. It also identifies dimensions used in differentiating organizations’ moral values. These are the act, actor, person affected, intention, and expected result. Finally, the article addresses measurement issues associated with organizational moral values, proposing that content analysis is the (...) appropriate measurement technique to be used for an organization-level conception of moral values. (shrink)

'Free will skepticism' refers to a family of views that all take seriously the possibility that human beings lack the control in action - i.e. the free will - required for an agent to be truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. Critics fear that adopting this view would have harmful consequences for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and laws. Optimistic free will skeptics, on the other hand, respond by arguing that life without free will and so-called (...) basic desert moral responsibility would not be harmful in these ways, and might even be beneficial. This collection addresses the practical implications of free will skepticism for law and society. It contains eleven original essays that provide alternatives to retributive punishment, explore what changes are needed for the criminal justice system, and ask whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the real-world implications of free will skepticism. (shrink)

The practice of communicating research findings to participants has been identified as important in the research ethics literature, but little research has examined empirically how this occurs and...

In typical statistical learning studies, researchers define sequences in terms of the probability of the next item in the sequence given the current item (or items), and they show that high probability sequences are treated as more familiar than low probability sequences. Existing accounts of these phenomena all assume that participants represent statistical regularities more or less as they are defined by the experimenters—as sequential probabilities of symbols in a string. Here we offer an alternative, or possibly supplementary, hypothesis. Specifically, (...) rather than identifying or labeling individual stimuli discretely in order to predict the next item in a sequence, we need only assume that the participant is able to represent the stimuli as evincing particular similarity relations to one another, with sequences represented as trajectories through this similarity space. We present experiments in which this hypothesis makes sharply different predictions from hypotheses based on the assumption that sequences are learned over discrete, labeled stimuli. We also present a series of simulation models that encode stimuli as positions in a continuous two‐dimensional space, and predict the next location from the current location. Although no model captures all of the data presented here, the results of three critical experiments are more consistent with the view that participants represent trajectories through similarity space rather than sequences of discrete labels under particular conditions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, although Alvin Plantinga’s Felix Culpa theodicy appears on only two pages of his recent book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism (2011) (i.e. 58-59), it is of pivotal importance for the book as a whole. Plantinga argues that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and monotheism, and that there is superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism. I contend that the weakness of the Felix Culpa theodicy (...) lends support to the view that there is more than superficial conflict between science and monotheism, and offer an alternative response to the challenge of evil which suggests that there might be, after all, concord between science and (religious) naturalism. (shrink)

“Ancient DNA Research” is the practice of extracting, sequencing, and analyzing degraded DNA from dead organisms that are hundreds to thousands of years old. Today, many researchers are interested in adapting state-of-the-art molecular biological techniques and high-throughput sequencing technologies to optimize the recovery of DNA from fossils, then use it for studying evolutionary history. However, the recovery of DNA from fossils has also fueled the idea of resurrecting extinct species, especially as its emergence corresponded with the book and movie Jurassic (...) Park in the 1990s. In this paper, I use historical material, interviews with scientists, and philosophical literature to argue that the search for DNA from fossils can be characterized as a data-driven and celebrity-driven practice. Philosophers have recently argued the need to seriously consider the role of data-driven inquiry in the sciences, and likewise, this history highlights the need to seriously consider the role of celebrity in shaping the kind of research that gets pursued, funded, and ultimately completed. On this point, this history highlights that the traditional philosophical and scientific distinctions between data-driven and hypothesis-driven research are not always useful for understanding the process and practice of science. Consequently, I argue that the celebrity status of a particular research practice can be considered as a “serious epistemic strategy” that researchers, as well as editors and funders, employ when making choices about their research and publication processes. This interplay between celebrity and methodology matters for the epistemology of science. (shrink)

An examination of crucial questions about the relationship between rationality and femininity.

Abstract:This article suggests that there are individual differences in how people define important moral values, and that these differences are made manifest in differences in the situations. It identifies five dimensions along which individuals can differ in their understandings of values: 1)value category(where the value lies in the hierarchy), 2)agent(how voluntary the action is and whether it is morally required of the agent), 3)object(how close the self is to the object of the action; whether the action offends God) 4)effect(whether the (...) effect of the action is to harm or help), and 5)intention(whether the intention of the action is to harm or help). It then addresses four important values entailing moral dimensions: respect for life, respect for property, honest communication, and respect for religion. The article suggests that empirical research, classroom teaching, and business practice can be strengthened by considering these dimensions. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

Feminist philosophers of religion such as Grace Jantzen and Pamela Sue Anderson have endeavoured, firstly, to identify masculine bias in the concepts of God found in the scriptures of the world’s religions and in the philosophical writings in which religious beliefs are assessed and proposed and, secondly, to transform the philosophy of religion, and thereby the lives of women, by recommending new or expanded epistemologies and using these to revision a concept of the divine which will inspire both women and (...) men to work for the flourishing of the whole of humankind. It is argued, firstly, that the philosophies of Jantzen and Anderson are by no means as different from each other as they might, at first, appear. Secondly, it is suggested that their epistemologies are not distinctively feminist, and that the classical divine attributes of the Abrahamic faiths do not necessarily privilege the masculine. Perhaps the only way in which a philosophy of religion might be distinctively feminist is by emphasising the inclusion of women. This might mean being more open to concepts of the divine which are not, even in a metaphorical sense, masculine, and enhancing awareness of the ways in which abstract arguments about the divine could be relevant to the practical aspects of human life which have traditionally been the preserve of women. Insofar as these are increasingly also the responsibility of men, however, a feminist philosophy of religion might now be more appropriately characterised as an inclusivist philosophy of religion. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism continues to serve as a rich source of moral and theoretical insight. This collection of articles by top scholars offers fresh interpretations of Mill's ideas about happiness, moral obligation, justice, and rights. Applying contemporary philosophical insights, the articles challenge the conventional readings of Mill, and, in the process, contribute to a deeper understanding of utilitarian theory as well as the complexity of moral life.

This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both ‘God the World’ and ‘God the Good’. ‘God the World’ captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is ‘in’ God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is ‘of’ God. ‘God the Good’ encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato’s Form of the Good as developed by Iris Murdoch, which (...) is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of ‘conjoined’ panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better. (shrink)

Dans l’aube qui succéda à l’éruption du 26 octobre 2010, Bu Pujo succomba à ses brûlures. À cette nouvelle, le volcan disparut. Il ne restait plus, au nord, qu’un écran de nuages figés dans l’épouvante. Cela faisait un grand vide, un immense courant d’air froid dans lequel la montagne de feu avait été emportée. Au petit matin, le Merapi avait disparu parce que celle qui le portait était morte. Oui, Bu Pujo portait le volcan comme ces lourds paniers d’offrandes qu’elle (...) chargeait sur son dos le jour de la procession. Elle en portait la responsabilité, comme son propre enfant, avec ses prodiges et ses tares. Voilà pourquoi Bu Pujo avait l’air d’une géante. (shrink)

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are widely offered in public accounting as a tool to retain valued professional staff. Previous research has shown that participants in FWAs are perceived to be less likely to succeed in their careers in public accounting than individuals in public accounting who do not participate in FWAs (Cohen and Single, 2001). Research has also documented an increasing backlash against family–friendly policies in the workplace as placing unfair burdens on individuals without children. Building directly on a previous (...) study in this journal (Cohen and Single, 2001), this study addresses the issue of whether the documented perceptions toward FWA participants are the result of electing to take part in the FWA or the result of bias against employees with children. The research questions are addressed in a 3 × 2 experimental setting in which we manipulate FWA participation, along with family status and gender of a hypothetical manager in a public accounting firm. Our findings indicate that FWA participants are viewed as less likely to advance and as less committed than individuals without children or individuals who had children but who were not taking part in a FWA. Male FWA participants are viewed as less likely to succeed than female FWA participants. This effect appears to arise from a perception that FWA participants are willing to make sacrifices in their careers to accommodate family needs and thus may not be as committed to making the sacrifices perceived as necessary to meet the rigorous demands of the public accounting environment. This raises the ethical question of what could be done to change the culture in public accounting to foster a substantive support system for individuals who want to balance a family and a career. (shrink)

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and (...) this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument. (shrink)

The call has been made for global bioethics. In an age of pandemics, international drug trials, and genetic technology, health has gone global, and bioethics must follow suit. George Annas is one among a number of thinkers to recommend that bioethics expand beyond its traditional domain of patient–physician interactions to encompass a broader range of health-related matters. Medicine, Annas argues, must “develop a global language and a global strategy that can help to improve the health of all of the world's (...) citizens.” Individual countries cannot address global health issues, and culturally specific principles are inadequate for addressing global bioethics concerns. We will need a language and moral framework grounded in a foundation of universally shared, transcultural judgments about humankind that will also recognize moral pluralism. The claim has been made that such a foundation already exists in human rights, and that human rights should, therefore, be the new lingua franca of bioethics. (shrink)

Constructing an intuitive theory from data confronts learners with a “chicken‐and‐egg” problem: The laws can only be expressed in terms of the theory's core concepts, but these concepts are only meaningful in terms of the role they play in the theory's laws; how can a learner discover appropriate concepts and laws simultaneously, knowing neither to begin with? We explore how children can solve this chicken‐and‐egg problem in the domain of magnetism, drawing on perspectives from computational modeling and behavioral experiments. We (...) present 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds with two different simplified magnet‐learning tasks. Children appropriately constrain their beliefs to two hypotheses following ambiguous but informative evidence. Following a critical intervention, they learn the correct theory. In the second study, children infer the correct number of categories given no information about the possible causal laws. Children's hypotheses in these tasks are explained as rational inferences within a Bayesian computational framework. (shrink)

& Visual object representation was studied in free-ranging rhesus monkeys. To facilitate comparison with humans, and to provide a new tool for neurophysiologists, we used a looking time procedure originally developed for studies of human infants. Monkeys’ looking times were measured to displays with one or two distinct objects, separated or together, stationary or moving. Results indicate that rhesus monkeys..

We argue that concentration of power in religious hospitals threatens disestablishment values. When hospitals deny care for religious reasons, they dominate patients’ bodies and convictions. Health law should — and to some extent already does — constrain such religious domination.

Although the buying, selling, and trading of fossils has been a principle part of paleontological practice over the centuries, the commercial collection of fossils today has re-emerged into a pervasive and lucrative industry. In the United States, the number of commercial companies driving the legal, and sometimes illegal, selling of fossils is estimated to have doubled since the 1980s, and worries from academic paleontologists over this issue has increased accordingly. Indeed, some view the commercialization of fossils as one of the (...) greatest threats to paleontology today. In this article, I address the story of “Sue”—the largest, most complete, and most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex ever excavated—whose discovery incited a series of high-profile legal battles throughout the 1990s over the question of “Who owns Sue?” Over the course of a decade, various stakeholders from academic paleontologists and fossil dealers to Native Americans, private citizens, and government officials all laid claim to Sue. In exploring this case, I argue that assumptions of authority are responsible for initiating and sustaining debates over fossil access. Here, assumptions of authority are understood as assumptions of ownership, or expertise, or in some cases both. Viewing the story from this perspective illuminates the significance of fossils as boundary objects. It also highlights the process of boundary-work by which individuals and groups constructed or deconstructed borders around Sue and fossil access to establish their own authority. I draw on science studies scholarship as well as literature in the professionalization, commercialization, and valuation of science to examine how assumptions of authority facilitated one of the most divisive episodes in recent paleontological history and the broader debate on the commercial collection of vertebrate fossil material in the United Sates. (shrink)