Ethical Claims Research Articles

Human Rights, Social Choice and a Right to Development: Revisiting Sen

A discourse on human rights, is built on including such rights as part of a broader, universal framework (accommodating for moral, ethical claims) that go beyond any constitutionally derived claims and rights or any given set of legitimate laws that are defined by the sovereign of a country. In recent decades, invoking a discussion on safeguarding human rights has become a major way of challenging the level of inequities and oppression within and across countries today that are circumscribing the possibilities of realizing any form of developmental growth. For the purpose of this essay, I am interested in studying the basic formulation of rights, particularly human rights; and exploring its analytical affiliation with the discipline of social choice. A connection that Sen (1999, 2009) draws upon in detail, while arguing for a more inclusive, analytical process in the formulation, recognition of human rights. The social choice approach, as discussed in the essay, has something substantial to offer within the moral, ethical considerations involved in human right(s) formulation by offering a more systematic, non-arbitrary, analytical reasoning basis to the subject. Without getting into the mathematical details of the axioms involved in the theoretical construction of social choice, I draw a general linkage between the formal reasoning behind social choice theory (i.e. involving a diverse set of individual values and preferences in its social welfare function) and its operational connection with human rights.

Posthuman Ecologies and the More-than-Human World

Posthuman Ecologies and the More-than-Human World

The Technological Abyss: Heideggerian Ontology and Climate Change


 
 Whenever a decision is made in a social, political, or economic context, it is implicitly grounded in
 an ethical outlook. But where do these outlooks come from? To investigate this query, I examine
 the basis for ethical decisions regarding technology, focusing specifically on geoengineering
 responses to climate change. Subsequently, I argue that ethical considerations concerning climate
 change, and their corresponding practical decisions, cannot be reliably made without sufficient
 intelligibility regarding the objects and entities these decisions pertain to. To achieve this, I employ
 a Heideggerian phenomenological framework through which being affords intelligibility. Doing so
 elucidates fundamental inconsistencies in the way humans interact with technology. We are caught
 up in what Heidegger calls enframing, the representation of beings as energy reserves. This is the
 ground on which our ethical claims are based, but representation cannot afford actuality. When
 things are represented in this way, truth is set aside in favour of will, and intelligibility is lost. The
 goal, then—if we wish our ethical decisions to be legitimate—must be to gain intelligibility. We
 must therefore free ourselves from enframing and look toward being. We cannot, as Heidegger
 says, affect enframing’s removal, but we can prepare ourselves for such a change. Only once this
 change occurs, can our relationship to technology be intelligible.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Ethics of the Fall: Restoring the Divine Image through the Pursuit of Biblical Wisdom

God's displeasure with the primordial couple for seeking the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3 is often explained as the result of humanity's transgression of a divine boundary intended to restrict human understanding. For some, this reflects the tyranny of God's character. However, the encounter between God and Solomon in 1 Kings 3 suggests an alternative reading. There, God approvingly equates the “listening heart,” which is able “to discern between good and evil,” that Solomon requests with a “wise heart” (vv 9, 12). Taking an intertextual approach informed by A. Giddens' work on the nature of social power and by a relational interpretation of the imago Dei, I propose that Genesis 3 asserts that it is humanity's drive to take possession of knowledge in isolation and without a listening heart that results in the collapse of the divine image. Consequently, the creation narratives that introduce the Bible make an ethical claim regarding the wisdom of constructing social relations in the context of diverse, power-sharing communities that reflect God's own interactions with humanity in such texts as Genesis 18 and John 20.

Seize the Day or Save the World? The Importance of Ethical Claims and Product Nature Congruity

Consumers have shown increasing interest in products that reflect social and environmental concerns—so-called “sustainable products.” Although consumers typically view sustainability positively, the ethical attributes of products do not always drive their preferences, which implies a trade-off between ethical attributes and other valued attributes. In the current research, we examine how consumers implicitly judge products and services that are more or less congruent with social and environmental concerns and how incongruity between ethical claims and a product’s nature may influence consumers to behave responsibly. The results from two experimental studies show that increasing the strength of ethical claims impairs sophisticated products’ evaluation but enhances simple products’ evaluation. Additionally, the findings reveal that the strength of ethicality on sophisticated products may impair perceptions of product enjoyment to a point at which products are evaluated more favorably when less-ethical claims are used to promote them. For managers, the results highlight an important business consideration, as they reveal the circumstances under which it is worth emphasizing the strength of the sustainability appeal of products or services. Results show that not all consumers are willing to sacrifice taste or quality in their leisure time preferring to seize the day rather than saving the world.

What's Wrong with this Picture? Image‐Ethics in Christian Petzold's Films

Through an analysis of Christian Petzold's films, this essay argues that there is an ethical dimension to images. The cinema of Christian Petzold is an important instance of the ethical function of images because it constantly negotiates and renegotiates the ethical intelligibility of the image and the ethical claims that images make on us. The essay's argument is developed in three stages: first, it outlines the theoretical concept of an image‐ethics of dilemma, centering on the essential ambiguity of images; second, it briefly considers the function of particular multistable images in Petzold's cinema and their role in ordering representation in his films; and, finally, it offers a close analysis of Petzold's recent film Barbara ().

Big data, small kids: Medico-scientific, familial and advocacy visions of human brains

On the basis of anthropological fieldwork in a US pediatric neuroscience laboratory, this article traces the recent move from studies of individual diagnostic pathologies like ADHD, Tourette or autism spectrum disorder to the rapid creation of innovative interdisciplinary research coalitions and collaborations that both produce and utilize big data techniques in order to map the human connectome. By analogy with the human genome, connectome studies require new ways to imagine and image complex and multivalent neuro-circuits in which brain scans of those with and without diagnoses provide data points, open to recombination with other forms of data. Emergent expert understandings of the connectome are only minimally related to what families who enroll their diagnosed children in fMRI studies understand. Likewise, young adult self-advocates with the same diagnoses on which the neuroscientists are now working use ‘brain talk’ to stake their own ethical claims. I argue that this epistemological gap among medico-scientific, familial and advocacy visions of human brains provides a mobile space of creativity as well as misunderstanding.

When Brain Death Belies Belief.

The case of Jahi McMath has reignited a discussion concerning how society should define death. Despite pronouncing McMath brain dead based on the American Academy of Neurology criteria, the court ordered continued mechanical ventilation to accommodate the family's religious beliefs. Recent case law suggests that the potential for a successful challenge to the neurologic criteria of death provisions of the Uniform Determination of Death Act are greater than ever in the majority of states that have passed religious freedom legislation. As well, because standard ethical claims regarding brain death are either patently untrue or subject to legitimate dispute, those whose beliefs do not comport with the brain death standard should be able to reject it.

Wanted Workers but Unwanted Mothers: Mobilizing Moral Claims on Migrant Care Workers’ Families in Israel

Literature on global care work deals with biopolitical tensions between care markets and exclusionary migration regimes leading to the formation of transnational families. Nevertheless, it disregards how these tensions produce “illegal” families within countries of destination, catalyzing the mobilization of moral claims over their recognition in the local civil society. To fill this lacuna, this article looks at the interface between migration policies controlling the reproductive lives of migrant care workers and the mobilization of ethical claims and moral constructions of care from below (i.e., movements and organizations advocating for care workers). Based on fieldwork in Israeli advocacy NGOs and the 2009 anti-deportation campaign, we suggest that the sociolegal position of migrant care workers’ families in destination countries is shaped not only by state policies and market dynamics but also by the types of social mobilizations, ethical evaluations, and pragmatic strategizing they spur in civil society. Findings show that while anti-deportation networks and NGO’s advocacy succeeded in achieving public recognition of the reproductive needs and lives of care workers, their forms of moral reasoning and strategizing reinforced definitions of care workers as primarily workers and of their children as humanitarian exceptions to the non-immigration regime. We conclude by arguing that the transformative power of the politics of ethical claims from below in stringent ethnonational regimes like the Israeli may be contingent on its not disrupting the tensions between wanted workers and unwanted families but rendering them manageable. As such, civil society’s social and moral agency broadens the range of actors and dynamics shaping the globalization of care as well as its contradictions.

‘In Quest of Narrative’: A Teacher’s Furore and Textual Returns

This paper explores a teacher’s furore− my own − by asking how such furores might be considered ‘in quest of narrative’. If so, which one? The answer, I suggest, lies in revisiting the source texts for such a furore, allowing the texts to illuminate the curricula and teaching, rather than the reverse. In so doing, the ethical claim of the texts in which such a furore originates might be recovered, in order to clarify one’s implication in webs of violence. Interspersed with an exploration of Katabatic narratives and curricula − the vehicle for my furore to teach about violence − are three narrative vignettes that emerged from revisiting the texts that inspired my teaching.

The Ethics Inside the Monetary Circuit: How Bank’s Social Responsibility Affects Money Creation

<p>The paper aims to introduce ethical remarks into the monetary circuit (or monetary theory of production)<br />approach in order to study the mechanism of money creation when banks discriminate production on an ethical<br />plane. By the micro-foundation of the banks’ and firms’ behaviour, it will be shown that the ethical<br />discrimination of firms by banks is implemented by the differentiation of the mark-ups on the loan rate and how<br />this discrimination leads the system to create different credit markets according to the capacity (or willingness)<br />of firms to satisfy (or not) the ethical claims of the banks.</p>

Networked learning and problem and project based learning – how they complement each other

Networked learning is both a pedagogy and a philosophy, and so is problem and project-based learning. Both approaches have been greatly influenced by the traditions of open learning and other radical pedagogies and humanistic educational ideas of Dewey, Freire, Giroux, Rogers, Negt and others. However, despite similarities in their educational ideas and pedagogies, the two approaches differ considerably. From the beginning, networked learning has focused on the integration of information and communication technologies as well as the promotion of connections – between learners, between learners and tutors and between the learning community and learning resources. On the other hand, problem and project-based learning has been characterised by a number of combined pedagogical principles: problem formulation and enquiry of exemplary problems (anomalies), participant control, interdisciplinarity, joint collaborative projects and action learning stressing the interdependencies among learners and their engagement in the research of ill-structured and open societal problems. Building on Nicolajsen and Ryberg (2014) and Tambouris et al. (2012), the overall changes and potential in the educational digital landscape and in NL can be summarised as follows: (1) a move from hierarchical structures based on courses and topics toward more student-centred networks; (2) a change from dissemination toward horizontal patterns of knowledge exchange and peer learning; (3) a change from learning management systems (LMSs) toward personal learning environments (PLEs); (4) a move toward encouraging exchange, sharing and students’ production of knowledge and artefacts; and (5) a shift from classical curriculum toward 21st-century skills and networked digital scholarship. Within this landscape of change, the paper discusses the core principles of networked learning and problem based learning design, respectively, addressing the ethical claim of dialogue as an I-You relation, omnipresent digital technologies and social media as connecting the learner, Castells’ concept of “space of flows” as the material arrangements of simultaneity of social practices without territorial contiguity, personal learning environments, and the positive means of interdependencies in project work. The aim of this paper is to examine the two approaches and discuss on a conceptual level how they may complement each other in the endeavour to further develop a critical pedagogy while still providing guiding principles for a practical approach to university teaching and learning.

Ethics and ‘fracking’: a review of (the limited) moral thought on shale gas development

Whilst claims about the ethicality of shale gas development via hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’, are commonplace in everyday discourse, little scholarly attention has been afforded explicitly to this aspect of unconventional fossil fuel extraction. The limited research that speaks to ethical considerations largely describes ethical concerns associated with development—extremely few claims in research literature make an ethical case for development. The most common ethical concerns cited in research stem from issues of distributive justice, with procedural justice, the precautionary principle, exposure to involuntary risks, rights‐based arguments, and changes in community character and way of life as the next most common. Additional research hints implicitly at ethical dilemmas associated with shale gas development but does not openly identify these issues as having moral implications. Many ethical considerations relate closely to concerns about water quality and the volume/supply of water available for other purposes. The limited scholarship in this area reveals the importance of understanding the ways in which ethics permeate thoughts about shale gas development for designing policy that responds to constituent needs and concerns. Even more limited than research on ethical claims in association with shale gas development is well‐reasoned scholarship that analyzes the extent to which ethical claims about development are well justified and philosophically justifiable. A comprehensive and systematic analysis of the range of ethical claims potentially relevant to shale gas development and their usefulness for informing policy on this topic would contribute greatly to informed decision making on this controversial issue—something that science alone cannot achieve. WIREs Water 2016, 3:575–586. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1152This article is categorized under: Human Water > Rights to Water Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of Water Human Water > Water Governance

Reconciling economics with naturalist ethical theory

The exclusive use of evolutionary explanations and game theory to justify moral claims has led economists to an impasse. Our discussion of this problem is focused on arguments made by Kenneth Binmore and Herbert Gintis, two vocal and notable economists behind these efforts. We begin by pointing out the false dilemma they present between ethical theories involving dubious non-naturalist metaphysics and their versions of naturalized game-theoretic ethics. We do so by, first, discussing alternative naturalist accounts, namely, those of Peter Railton and Richard Boyd. Second, we argue that their descriptive and explanatory theories are in fact committed to substantive normative claims. Our hypothesis is that their attempts to avoid ethical arguments are responsible for their mistaken belief that theirs is a scientific disagreement, whereas it is in fact one about human nature. Binmore and Gintis’s disagreement about ethical claims requires acknowledging and engaging with substantive normative arguments such as those of what is good and what ought to be done. The alternative would be a never-ending disagreement on the fundamental view of human nature. This path, we worry, may be a road to nowhere.

"Ist die Schwarze Köchin da? Jajaja . . .": Mimesis and Günter Grass's Die Blechtrommel

Die Blechtrommel (1959) has inspired widely divergent readings, not least in respect of the aesthetic grounds that the novel offered for the social hope in the wake of Auschwitz. This article re-visits it against the backdrop of Grass’s own recognition of the post-war author’s—personal and collective—sense of complicity; and in that connection it considers how Die Blechtrommel embodies the dialectic of hope and despair more broadly characteristic of Grass’s sense of post-war literary and political engagement. Its contention is that Theodor W. Adorno’s conception of “Mimesis,” as it is developed in Dialektik der Aufklarung (1944) and Asthetische Theorie (1970), can provide a compelling account for Grass’s aesthetic and ethical achievement. The article examines the senses in which Oskar embodies the dynamic of Mimesis, staking as he does a subversive ethical claim for his notorious drumming and sing-shattering. It then turns to showing how Grass’s portrayal of the “bodily” reveals it as a meeting point of complicity, shame, and guilt—but also a faintly utopian site for a new social order. By thinking through these insights precisely with Mimesis in mind, we might begin to do justice to the elusive moment of hope in Grass’s work.

Why Has the Ethics of Care Become an Issue of Global Concern?

Since Carol Gilligan published her masterpiece, In a Different Voice, many scholars, especially feminist scholars in various fields, including moral theory, philosophy, and political and legal theory, have been inspired to establish a more inclusive approach to social injustice as well as sexual inequality. The purpose of this article is to explore the depth and expanse of the ethics of care for its potential as a political philosophy. To pursue this end, the article analyzes first the main claims of care ethics by responding to its typical counterarguments, which criticize the ethics of care as being too dependent on gender differences, particularism, and essentialism. The second section examines three challenges that care ethics poses to the male‐oriented mainstream of political philosophy, especially the theory of justice. The ethics of care provides us with a new approach to moral and political issues because it focuses responsively on social injustice, proposes a new idea of relational self and takes the social connection model to justice. With these three perspectives proposed by the ethics of care in mind, the article turns its eyes to global implications of care ethics by referring to the issue of the “comfort women” of Japanese troops during the Second World War.

An Ethical Reading of the UK Modern Slavery Act and its Implications for Firms

This paper is an initial analysis of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and some of its implications for firms. Further work is required on the arguments used and on the full range of issues arising from the Act. The paper may also be seen as part of a wider attempt to work out how best to engage in an ethical analysis of a firm’s activities. The Act has implications for all parties that are affected by, or that have an interest in, the problems arising from modern slavery and human trafficking, including firms. The paper makes a distinction between a legal reading and an ethical reading of the Act. A legal reading sets out what the Act requires of parties, including firms, as a matter of law. An ethical reading considers the ethical claims in the Act. The paper addresses some of the implications of these ethical claims for firms, for example implications for the responsibilities of firms. An ethical reading is based on the text of the Act, but does not provide a legal interpretation of this text. In this sense, the analysis in the paper is similar to the analysis of any citizen who is seeking to understand the Act, but is not attempting a legal reading of the Act.

Teaching Anthropogenic Climate Change Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Helping Students Think Critically About Science and Ethics in Dialogue

ABSTRACTAnthropogenic climate change is a complicated issue involving scientific data and analyses as well as political, economic, and ethical issues. In order to capture this complexity, we developed an interdisciplinary student and faculty collaboration by (1) offering introductory lectures on scientific and ethical methods to two classes, (2) assigning the same technical and opinion texts about anthropogenic climate change to both classes, and (3) coordinating multidiscipline discussions with students about their common reading assignments. Student learning was documented using identical pre- and postcollaboration surveys. We hypothesized that students would be better prepared to understand and engage in public debate about anthropogenic climate change if they were first taught to distinguish clearly between scientific and ethical claims. Our results from pre- and postcollaboration surveys support our hypothesis; as students showed an increased understanding of the distinction between science and ethics, they were better able to critically analyze popular articles and to develop their own questions about anthropogenic climate change. The results also suggest that our students were more prepared to think critically about scientific inquiry than about ethical inquiry regarding anthropogenic climate change.

Sustainable Wine Labeling: A Framework for Definition and Consumers’ Perception

In the last twenty years there has been a large interest in sustainable winegrowing initiatives worldwide. As a consequence, the wine sector has seen the growth of “environmentally-friendly” and ethical claims according to specific eco-certification schemes and labelling programs. Thus, sustainable claims are becoming credence attributes that compete with other quality indications on a wine label and might influence the choice, the quality perception and willingness to pay (WTP). The objective of this study is twofold: first, to explore the concept of consumers’ perception of sustainable wine and second, to investigate different cluster groups based on three factors identified (belief about environmental protection, beliefs about sustainable wine certification and attitude towards sustainable labelled wine) and WTP.

Intermental Thought and Mutual Focalization: Narrative Sympathy in <em>North and South</em>

A fierce debate took place within nineteenth-century novel in particular on nature of social minds. It had two sides. One was epistemological: To what extent is it possible to have knowledge of workings of other minds? The other side of debate was ethical: To what purposes should our knowledge of other be put? (Alan Palmer, Social Minds in Fiction 197-98) An ethical dilemma that Victorians faced was desire and yet impossibility of knowing mind of another. The inability, or impossibility, for characters to read other characters' and actually know their thoughts is a situation that realist novel explores as access to mind of another was access to their identity. The use of different techniques to portray fictional links to ethical deliberation that such access offers. Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South explores instabilities created by this impossibility for characters to know each other's minds, and yet through a combination of focalization and consciousness representation attempts to overcome this impossibility. North and South makes claim that focalization and knowledge are connected, or at least should be connected. Both techniques of fictional and focalization are crucial for understanding ethical claims of realist novel, which Mary-Catherine Harrison explores as including possibility of creating empathy across difference (How Narrative 283) and translation of reader's emotional response into real-life action (The Paradox 259). These ethical claims are central to social problem novel and specifically in North and South are grounded in shared thought. Ultimately, this article follows Alan Palmer's recognition of the need for a rhetorical and ethical perspective on analyses of social minds (Social Minds in Fiction 234). The Victorians' desire for sympathy between characters, and between authors and readers, is ultimately a desire for what Palmer has defined as or shared, thought. Thus, situations of intermental thought become a crossover for narrative theory and ethics. In North and South, Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton experience frequent misunderstandings and differences of thought. Their interpretations of each other are frequently incorrect or misleading, or one character's mind is privileged over another. These instabilities and tensions arise when extensive inside views of Mr. Thornton are revealed through psychonarration and free indirect discourse while Margaret's thoughts remain strangely silent in response. This gap in exposure to their fictional is combined with an inequality of focalization. Their inability to achieve intermental thought is reflected by their misperception and misinterpretation of each other. The perception through focalization that narrator of North and South prizes is more than just accurate looking; it is unity between seeing and knowing, or knowing because one sees. Thus, narrator's attention to gaze of one character upon another reveals an emphasis on knowledge that can be gained from body, and possibility of accurate knowledge and mutual understanding. Palmer states, Part of work of decoding action statements involves readers following attempts of characters to read other characters' minds (Social Minds in Novel 137). This mediated mind-reading makes use of a character's actions and dispositions with understanding that mind is embodied, and therefore can be known through observing a character's body and physicality. In North and South, characters look at each other to read their bodies, and have their own bodies read. Significantly, face watching and face reading, with their link to focalization, are key ways in which perception and thought are linked in novel. Comments about seeing, watching, and observing create a platform for character-character communication that relies on how one character's bodily reaction demonstrates his or her interior thoughts, and how that message is read through another character's focalization. …