Ethical Questions Research Articles

THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF LIFE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF MODERN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. It is impossible to imagine solving modern environmental problems without studying the problems of environmental ethics and moral philosophy. Publications on environmental ethics and ethics of responsibility are available from H. Jonas, O. Leopold, and A. Schweitzer. They create an ontological ethics of values, where existence and preservation of existence occupy a central place. The concept of preservation of existence is supported by: A. Schopenhauer, A. Schweitzer, T. Mayer. Problems of the interaction of environmental ethics and science are put forward by O. Geffe, R. Holfeld, Y. Rau, I. Vogel and others. Ukrainian philosophers explore the principles of responsible politics, environmental ethics, philosophical problems of environmental education, philosophy of education: T. Hardashuk, O. Bazaluk, V. Baranivskyi, H. Berehova, V. Gur, A. Yermolenko, Z. Samchuk, M. Kiselyov, V. Krysachenko, K. Korsak, T. Chornoshtan and others. But regardless the significant contribution of philosophers, questions of environmental ethics, ethics for environmental education always need consideration. The research objective. Show the necessity of the concept of ecovitalism for environmental ethics and its methodological foundations. Consider the formation of environmental ethics on the basis of the absolute value of life, which has an impact on the formation of life-value orientations of modern people, the implementation of the main values of environmental ethics in practice. Realize that the future of humanity depends on whether it realizes the need for environmental ethics, environmental responsibility, ecologically appropriate behavior to preserve life on our planet. The statement of basic materials. The article examines the concept of ecovitalism, which is the basis of environmental ethics, primarily as an ecological support for life, focused not simply on the preservation of its natural foundations, but on the historically formed social attitude to nature as a value. At the same time, human activity, as a morally regulated life activity, is not based on purely natural determinations, but in a new quality of the natural-historical process, the basis of which is not nature itself, but the value of nature as a derivative of social progress. This gives grounds for asserting that the absolute value of life has becomes the main basis of modern environmental ethics. It is shown that environmental ethics is an important aspect in the formation of environmental education and creates new values for the preservation of human existence.

Ethics and artificial intelligence

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into radiology promises to enhance efficiency and improve diagnostic accuracy, yet it also raises manifold ethical questions. These include data protection issues, the future role of radiologists, liability when using AI systems, and the avoidance of bias. To prevent data bias, the datasets need to be compiled carefully and to be representative of the target population. Accordingly, the upcoming European Union AI act sets particularly high requirements for the datasets used in training medical AI systems. Cognitive bias occurs when radiologists place too much trust in the results provided by AI systems (overreliance). So far, diagnostic AI systems are used almost exclusively as "second look" systems. If diagnostic AI systems are to be used in the future as "first look" systems or even as autonomous AI systems in order to enhance efficiency in radiology, the question of liability needs to be addressed, comparable to liability for autonomous driving. Such use of AI would also significantly change the role of radiologists.

Harmonizing Artificial Intelligence Governance; A Model for Regulating a High-risk Categories and Applications in Clinical Pathology: The Evidence and some Concerns

The Canadian healthcare system, grappling with issues like systemic and intelligently established structural anti-black racism, including indigenous nations; even within Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Communities: and deteriorating outcomes, sees potential in AI to address challenges, though concerns exist regarding exacerbating discriminatory practices. In clinical pathology, AI demonstrates superior diagnostic accuracy compared to pathologists in a study, emphasizing its potential to improve healthcare. However, AI governance is crucial to navigating ethical, legal, and societal concerns. The Royal College of Physicians of Canada acknowledges the transformative impact of AI in healthcare but stresses the need for responsible AI tools co-developed by diverse teams. Despite positive attitudes towards AI in healthcare, concerns about patient safety, privacy, and autonomy highlight the necessity for comprehensive education, engagement, and collaboration. Legal concerns, including liability and regulation, pose challenges, emphasizing the need for a robust regulatory framework. AI application in healthcare is categorized as high-risk, demanding stringent regulation to ensure safety, efficacy, and fairness. A parallel is drawn to drug regulation processes, suggesting a similar approach for AI. The lack of transparency in AI-based decision-making raises ethical questions, necessitating measures to address biases and ensure patient privacy. Social accountability is crucial to prevent AI from exacerbating health disparities and harming marginalized communities. In conclusion, while AI offers potential benefits in clinical pathology, a cautious approach with comprehensive governance measures is essential to mitigate risks and ensure ethical AI integration into healthcare.

Psychedelic Therapy as Form of Life

In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism.

Ethical considerations in the use of RhD-positive blood products in trauma.

Prehospital and early in-hospital use of low titer group O whole blood (LTOWB) for life-threatening bleeding has been independently associated with improved survival compared to component therapy. However, when RhD-positive blood products are administered to RhD-negative females of childbearing potential (FCP), there is a small future risk of hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (HDFN). This raises important ethical questions that must be explored in order to justify the use of RhD-positive blood products, including LTOWB, both in clinical practice and research. This essay explores the ethical challenges related to RhD-positive blood product administration to RhD-negative or RhD-unknown FCPs as a first-line resuscitation fluid in the trauma setting. These ethical issues include: issues related to decision-making, ethical analysis based on the doctrine of double effect (DDE), and attendant obligations incurred by hospitals that administer RhD-positive blood to FCPs. Ethical analysis through the use of the DDE demonstrates that utilization of RhD-positive blood products, including LTOWB, in the early resuscitation of FCPs is an ethically appropriate approach. By accepting the risk of HDFN, hospitals generate obligations to promote blood donation, evaluate for alloimmunization and counsel patients on the future risk of HDFN, and maintain an understanding of the ethical rationale for RhD-positive blood transfusion.

In search of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy in teacher education: A scoping review

Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy has recently emerged on the educational agenda raising expectations on teachers’ and teacher educators’ professional knowledge. This scoping review examines how the scientific literature conceptualises AI literacy in relation to teachers’ different forms of professional knowledge relevant for Teacher Education (TE). The search strategy included papers and proceedings from 2000 to 2023 related to AI literacy and TE as well as the intersection of AI and teaching. Thirty-four papers were included in the analysis. The Aristotelian concepts episteme (theoretical-scientific knowledge), techne (practical-productive knowledge), and phronesis (professional judgement) were used as a lens to capture implicit and explicit dimensions of teachers’ professional knowledge. Results indicate that AI literacy is a globally emerging research topic in education but almost absent in the context of TE. The literature covers many different topics and draws on different methodological approaches. Computer science and exploratory teaching approaches influence the type of epistemic, practical, and ethical knowledge. Currently, teachers’ professional knowledge is not broadly addressed or captured in the research. Questions of ethics are predominantly addressed as a matter of understanding technical configurations of data-driven AI technologies. Teachers’ practical knowledge tends to translate into the adoption of digital resources for teaching about AI or the integration of AI EdTech into teaching. By identifying several research gaps, particularly concerning teachers' practical and ethical knowledge, this paper adds to a more comprehensive understanding of AI literacy in teaching and can contribute to a more well-informed AI literacy education in TE as well as laying the ground for future research related to teachers’ professional knowledge.

Le médecin confronté à l’IA (Intelligence artificielle) : Éthique et responsabilité

Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing at an impressive speed in the field of health. AI paves the way for new practices in diagnostic assistance, preventive medicine, individualized patient follow-up, support in choosing a therapy, assistance in interpreting the results of additional examinations, etc. Far from being a magic bullet, delegating tasks to AI raises many ethical questions relating in particular to the supervision of algorithms, equal access to innovation and the use of patient data. It is still difficult to predict whether AI will remain a “safety net” for the doctor or if it will supplant him. France and Europe have laid down the principle of “human guarantee” in the interpretation of diagnostic and therapeutic results, implying that the machine cannot act alone and enshrining the responsibility of the health professional. This article aims to understand how complex AI is to regulate legally at the risk of neglecting its secrecy, whether at the individual or collective level.

Using social networking evidence to examine the impact of environmental factors on social Followings: An innovative Machine learning method

Social media platforms have changed the way of communication. They are making the world more connected and provide information more quickly, which has resulted in beneficial and harmful effects on society. Analyzing data from multiple social media platforms to spot patterns and trends in user behavior in response to environmental changes is part of using social networking evidence to investigate the effects of environmental variables.The infinite collection of personal data generates privacy issues and ethical questions about data security and utilization.We present a novel framework called meta-heuristic atom search optimized dynamic artificial neural network (MASO-DANN) method for examining the impact of environmental factors using social networking evidence and the complementary abilities between MASO as well as DANN. The study aims to determine the connections between the dynamics of users' social relationships and involvement by examining the data from various online social platforms. We collected a Twitter dataset and preprocessed the data using the stop word removal preprocessing method.With the use of MASO-DANN, extensive social networking data analysis has been rendered achievable, which offers an exhaustive overview of the complex dynamics influencing online communities. The result findings examined various metrics, such as accuracy (95.07%), precision (89%), recall (88%), F1-score (90%) and RMSE (1.6).These metrics demonstrate the robustness along with the dependability of MASO-DANN and its capacity to provide more accurate predictions that evaluate the effects of environmental factors based on social networking evidence.

Living ethics: a stance and its implications in health ethics

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process.

Violence and Power of the Modern British Monarch

Violence and Power of the Modern British Monarch

Consciously Choosing Unconsciousness

Consciously Choosing Unconsciousness

Sexuality education for disabled children and youth in Ontario, Canada: Addressing epistemic injustice through school‐based sexuality education

AbstractWhile conversations pertaining to school‐based sexuality education are becoming more prominent, the experiences of disabled children and youth are still under‐discussed in research. Despite disabled childhood studies emerging as a field of inquiry, there is still a lack of critical conversation pertaining to disabled students' sexuality education within their respective schooling. This article draws from Fricker's theory of epistemic injustice to describe some of the ethical questions that arise in the denial of disabled children and youth's access to sexuality education in school contexts. By engaging with relevant literature on sexuality education and disabled students in schooling, this article puts forward that the continual exclusion of disabled students from accessing school‐based sexuality education promotes a form of epistemic injustice and silencing of the voices, perspectives and experiences of disabled students.

Religion, Ethics, and Academic Community Engagement: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

This article introduces the issues, histories, and questions at stake in a special issue of Religion & Education on Religion, Ethics, and Academic Community Engagement. We begin by pointing to the absence of community engagement in the recent turn toward the ethics of higher education among religious ethicists. In response, we call for more robust interdisciplinary engagement between religious ethicists and academic community engagement scholars and practitioners. To lay the groundwork, we offer an account of the historical intersections between religion and academic community engagement in U.S. higher education. We then highlight pressing ethical questions emerging from this history related to the mission and purpose of higher education, the influence of neoliberalism, and underexamined biases in academic community engagement connected to white Christian hegemony. We touch on how each of these issues emerge from the history of religion and academic community engagement in the U.S., and detail how articles in this special issue respond to these challenges by drawing on a variety of religious traditions and resources.

Exploring Ethical Considerations in AI-driven Autonomous Vehicles: Balancing Safety and Privacy

The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) raises profound ethical questions regarding the balance between safety and privacy. While AI-driven AVs promise to revolutionize transportation by potentially reducing accidents and increasing efficiency, concerns regarding data privacy, liability, and decision-making algorithms persist. This paper explores the ethical considerations surrounding AI-driven AVs, focusing particularly on the delicate equilibrium required to ensure both safety and privacy. Drawing upon existing literature and case studies, the paper examines the ethical dilemmas inherent in AV technology, including issues of consent, data collection, and algorithmic bias. Additionally, it delves into the regulatory frameworks and industry standards aimed at addressing these concerns. By highlighting the complexities of navigating safety and privacy in AI-driven AVs, this research contributes to the ongoing discourse on ethical AI development and deployment.

The digital operating room : Chances and risks of artificial intelligence

At the central workplace of the surgeon the digitalization of the operating room has particular consequences for the surgical work. Starting with intraoperative cross-sectional imaging and sonography, through functional imaging, minimally invasive and robot-assisted surgery up to digital surgical and anesthesiological documentation, the vast majority of operating rooms are now at least partially digitalized. The increasing digitalization of the whole process chain enables not only for the collection but also the analysis of big data. Current research focuses on artificial intelligence for the analysis of intraoperative data as the prerequisite for assistance systems that support surgical decision making or warn of risks; however, these technologies raise new ethical questions for the surgical community that affect the core of surgical work.

The Implementation of Keenious at Carnegie Mellon University

In the fall of 2022, the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries began investigating Keenious—an artificial intelligence (AI)-based article recommender tool—for a possible trial implementation to improve pathways to resource discovery and assist researchers in more effectively searching for relevant research. This process led to numerous discussions within the library regarding the unique nature of AI-based tools when compared with traditional library resources, including ethical questions surrounding data privacy, algorithmic transparency, and the impact on the research process. This case study explores these topics and how they were negotiated up to and immediately following CMU’s implementation of Keenious in January, 2023, and highlights the need for more frameworks for evaluating AI-based tools in academic settings.

Charting the future of patient care: A strategic leadership guide to harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications have the potential to revolutionize conventional healthcare practices, creating a more efficient and patient-centred approach with improved outcomes. This guide discuses eighteen AI-based applications in clinical decision-making, precision medicine, operational efficiency, and predictive analytics, including a real-world example of AI's role in public health during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we address ethical questions, transparency, data privacy, bias, consent, accountability, and liability, and the strategic measures that must be taken to align AI with ethical principles, legal frameworks, legacy information technology systems, and employee skills and knowledge. We emphasize the importance of informed and strategic approaches to harness AI's potential and manage its challenges. Moreover, this guide underscores the importance of evaluating and integrating new skills and competencies to navigate and use AI-based technologies in healthcare management, such as technological literacy, long-term strategic vision, change management skills, ethical decision-making, and alignment with patient needs.

Spreading the “smog of war”: the impact of propaganda, social media, and OSINT on U.S. civil-intelligence relations

ABSTRACT Propaganda, more politely called ‘information operations’ these days, has been a prominent feature of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Both the Russians and Ukrainians have used propaganda to court global public opinion, shape military operations, and secure or destabilize alliances. However, although they have each tried to control the war’s narrative through propaganda, they cannot control social media – the enormous, entangled web of technology, actors, and interests that allows billions of users to interact, argue, and influence. This article will explain how the combination of propaganda and social media in the Russo-Ukrainian War has destabilized American civil-intelligence relations and raised political, social, and ethical questions concerning the role of citizens, both individually and collectively, in foreign wars.

The Ethics of Rearing Animals for Meat: Can Sentience Provide a Meaningful Threshold for Moral Concern? A Defence of Compassionate Speciesism

Rearing and killing animals for meat poses a few ethical questions. Sentientism holds that a being has moral status if and only if it is sentient. The philosopher Peter Singer considers that the suffering of a sentient being should count equally with the like suffering of any other being and thus prioritising human interests over those of non-human animals amounts to an unjustifiable speciesism. I argue that sentientism is false and that suffering and sentience are separate considerations. Prioritising human interests may be justifiable since species relativism but, a fortiori, I argue that we have ample reasons for endorsing and embracing speciesism. I present the case for conscientious omnivorism and compassionate speciesism.

Producing international students: Migration management and the making of population categories

AbstractInternational student mobilities (ISM) is an important but increasingly complex and controversial topic. Politically, the contested nature of international student mobilities is driven by the confluence of immigration policies, increasing demand for global education, and new higher education funding imperatives. Academically, international student mobilities is a key field of study which intersects with three subdisciplines of geography: political, population and social. Our intervention reveals, for the first time, how current UK migration management policies are actively ‘producing’ the international student as a population category. We illustrate the effects of this production through its operationalisation into universities and everyday student lives. We achieve this by developing an analytical framework informed by theorisations of ‘dynamic nominalism’, which is complemented by data from semi‐structured interviews and policy documents. Our findings uncover the existence of multiple populations within the international student category, exposing the inherent complexities, hierarchies of privilege and contradictions therein. Notably, we identify a conceptual and empirical distinction between those produced as ‘international students’ based on their visa, and those produced as ‘international students’ via their tuition fee status. The implications of this intervention are important for the contentious landscape of higher education and immigration policy because the paper challenges assumptions about, and raises ethical questions regarding the treatment of, the ‘international student’. Our analytical framework also has wider applicability beyond the subject of ISM, through its potential to aid geographers, and those in cognate disciplines, concerned with addressing fundamental questions about how and why categories are produced and the consequences of this production.