Ethical Frame Research Articles

The Spiral of Attention, Arousal, and Release: A Comparative Phenomenology of Jhāna Meditation and Speaking in Tongues.

Buddhist Jhāna meditation and the Christian practice of speaking in tongues appear wildly distinct. These spiritual techniques differ in their ethical, theological, and historical frames and seem, from the outside, to produce markedly different states of consciousness-one a state of utter calm and the other of high emotional arousal. Yet, our phenomenological interviews with experienced practitioners in the USA found significant points of convergence. Practitioners in both traditions describe a dynamic relationship between focused attention, aroused joy, and a sense of letting go or release that they describe as crucial to their practice. This paper highlights these shared phenomenological features and theorizes possible underlying mechanisms. Analyzing our phenomenological data through the lens of various theories of brain function, including sensory gating and predictive processing, we propose that these practices both engage an autonomic field built through a spiral between attention, arousal, and release (AAR).

Older People’s Ethical Framing of Autonomy in Relation to Current and Future Consumer Technologies: The Case of Socially Assistive Robots

Older People’s Ethical Framing of Autonomy in Relation to Current and Future Consumer Technologies: The Case of Socially Assistive Robots

Out of sight, out of mind: How high-level construals can decrease the ethical framing of risk-mitigating behavior.

Organizational failures often cause significant harm to employees, the organization itself, and the environment. Investigations of failures consistently highlight how key employees behaved in (perhaps unintentionally) unethical ways that de-prioritized safety, such as investing fewer resources in safety (vs. other priorities) over time. Drawing on these investigations, we suggest a previously underexplored theme could explain why organizational failures persist and why employees did not "see" the potential for their behaviors to cause harm to others: Employees were distanced from where the harm eventually occurred, either in terms of space (e.g., being located miles away from the job site) or time (e.g., making decisions that would not have impacts for months or years). We use construal level theory to investigate how the way employees construe where work occurs-defined as work context construal-influences perceptions of harm and the ethical framing of risk-mitigating behaviors. We hypothesize that high-level (abstract) work context construals (vs. low-level, concrete ones) reduce perceptions of potential harm which, in turn, leads to framing risk-mitigating behaviors as less of an ethical obligation. Six studies-a correlational survey of aviation employees (Study 1), field experiments with offshore drilling employees (Study 2A) and health care workers (Study 2B), a preregistered experiment with nurses (Study 3), and two supplemental studies (Studies 4A/B)-support our hypotheses. We discuss implications of this research for understanding organizational failures, particularly in a world where technology increasingly enables employees to monitor complex and high-risk work occurring many miles away, or on the other side of the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Making valuable energy: Public forums, municipal futures, and infrastructural pathways

This article analyzes public discussions and engagements with Philadelphia’s energy system to highlight the degrees of tension between diverse ethical frames and energy-based strategies of value production. Looking at three different instances and genres of energy-transition planning and expression, we argue that any such tensions or alignments turn on the specific units, categories, and scales of analysis used to construct and understand them. Our first section investigates the spatial and temporal frames of “energy security” embedded in Philadelphia’s infrastructure improvement plan, showing how the meaning and political purchase of the concept of “security” changes across quotidian and infrastructural timescales and across the spatial scale of the household, city, state, and the nation. Section two considers the categories with which the City framed its study of potential decarbonization scenarios, pointing towards the way this schema produced its own seemingly intractable ethical and economic impasses. The third and final section looks at the way diverse members of the public successfully de- and re-constructed the study’s categories, scales, and units of analysis, successfully undermining the study’s “grid of intelligibility” and replacing it with their own more equity-centered alternative. Across these three ethnographic engagements, this article brings the anthropologies of ethics and value together in a novel way, showing their mediated entanglement with and within the sphere of public knowledge production. This, we argue, illustrates the seemingly mundane scalar choices that deeply inform our ethical frames and that, in the end, ultimately allow us to make energy valuable.

Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism, Local Ethical Supervenience, and the Beneficial Character of Virtue

This article explores the ambivalent relationship of neo-Aristotelian naturalism to ethical supervenience. One of the main proponents of this approach, Michael Thompson, holds a position that leads to a rejection of local ethical supervenience. It is argued that this rejection implicitly undermines a premise held by other prominent neo-Aristotelian naturalists, such as Philippa Foot or Rosalind Hursthouse, who implemented Thompson’s species-relative logic of ethical evaluations into their theories. This premise—that there is a systematic connection between the virtuous life and the benefit of the individual—could be re-established if neo-Aristotelian naturalism abandoned the species-essentialist understanding of life-forms and instead accepted local ethical supervenience as an ethical frame of reference. Although this article derives its problem from the main works of the aforementioned authors, its interest lies not mainly in exegesis, but in the systematic discussion of the logical status and the functionality of the concept of life-form in neo-Aristotelian naturalism. This discussion will be enriched by the inclusion of the logical distinctions and insights from modern philosophical biology.

The Poetics of (Un)Mournability: Emma Donoghue’s Hood (1995) as an Elegy in Invisible Ink

Abstract Emma Donoghue’s Hood is an Irish tale of closeted lesbian love in which the narrator cannot mourn the death of her partner publicly because of the compulsory social invisibility of their relationship. While in her monograph Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Judith Butler correlates the (un)grievability of certain lives (their ability to be grieved over) with ethical frames of perception, this paper focuses on the invisibilisation of public mourning. Since the term “mourning” is often used to evoke public displays and rituals of grief, I propose to confront Butler’s concept of “(un)grievability” with what I call “(un)mournability,” in order to investigate the three metaphors of (in)visibility that shape the aesthetics of Donoghue’s contemporary narrative elegy. The images of the closet, the hood, and the invisible ink, which are instrumental to Donoghue’s narrative strategies of linguistic invisibility, map out the evolving representation of lesbian invisibility in the novel.

Pressure to Plagiarize and the Choice to Cheat: Toward a Pragmatic Reframing of the Ethics of Academic Integrity

In light of the burgeoning influence of LLM AI programs like ChatGPT in a variety of academic contexts and the COVID-19 pandemic’s expansion of virtual classrooms and coursework, the philosophical framing of academic integrity and plagiarism is being re-examined. In concert with these technological changes, students are also facing increasing pressure to succeed in their academic pursuits. Inasmuch as the consequences of failure in these contexts are often dire academically, socially, and financially, we argue that students often weigh the choice to plagiarize not as an ethical issue but as a pragmatic mitigation of risk. Using three salient examples of plagiarism and cheating from higher education in North America as case studies, we explore the pressures and contexts that have influenced the choice to engage in plagiarism and cheating through this pragmatic lens. As an ethical framing of the issue of academic integrity has been less effective in ameliorating plagiarism in this pressurized climate, we propose a way in which educators, administrators and policy makers might approach the issue in this same pragmatic frame. In short, rather than combat plagiarism by teaching its moral repugnance, we propose educators could argue instead that plagiarism and cheating are pragmatically untenable simply because they are detrimental to learning.

The ethical assessment of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in wildlife conservation

The application of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in breeding programs to save wild animal species is a relatively new approach to conservation and their ethical implications seem still to be underestimated. However, the ethical evaluation is a decisive step for conservation projects employing ART to address crucial questions like the welfare and life of the animals involved, the survival of the targeted species, the quality and safety of the procedures and the very idea of biodiversity conservation we want to pursue. Balancing the potential benefits of ART with the risks involved requires careful ethical analysis. This paper highlights the increasing role of ART in species conservation and emphasizes the need to address their ethical implications. After discussing the lack of ethical discussion in ART application to wildlife, the contribution outlines an ethical frame to address this gap and introduces an ETHical ASsessment tool (ETHAS) for the ethical self-assessment of ART procedures in vertebrate conservation. The tool allows respondents to highlight ethical aspects to be improved and risks related to the procedure, from its design to each application. The ethical approach to the ART application, relatively novel to wildlife conservation, can contribute to assure the ethical acceptability of conservation programs while favoring discussion and communication among project partners and the integration of ethical aspects in conservation programs.

Values-Based Medicine Is an Ethical Concept for Implementing the Ethical Principles in Daily Practice.

Values-based medicine (VsBM) is an ethical concept, and bioethical framework has been developed to ensure that medical ethics and values are implemented, pervasive, and powerful parameters influencing decisions about health, clinical practice, teaching, medical industry, career development, malpractice, and research. Neurosurgeons tend to adopt ethics according to their own values and to what they see and learn from teachers. Neurosurgeons, in general, are aware about ethical codes and the patient's rights. However, the philosophy, concept, and principles of medical ethics are rarely included in the training programs or in training courses. The impact of implementing, observing the medical ethics and the patients' value and culture on the course, and outcome of patients' management should not underestimate. The main principles of medical ethics are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, dignity, and honesty, which should be strictly observed in every step of medical practice, research, teaching, and publication. Evidence-based medicine has been popularized in the last 40-50years in order to raise up the standard of medical practice. Medical ethics and values have been associated with the medical practice for thousands of years since patients felt a need for treatment. There is no conflict between evidence-based medicine and values-based medicine, as a medical practice should always be performed within a frame of ethics and respect for patients' values. Observing the principles of values-based medicine became very relevant as multicultural societies are dominant in some countries and hospitals in different corners of the world.

Arwa Salih’s Gendered Critique

Abstract This article seeks to clarify the stakes of Arwa Salih’s critical methodology by reading her project—specifically, her development of Milan Kundera’s notion of kitsch, her analytic use of gender, and her formal and political concern with legacy and inheritance—alongside the literary history of iltizam. The article contends that Salih’s critical method and search for ethical knowledge frame iltizam as a form of militant kitsch that prized dogma and readymade answers over ethical and political curiosity. By reading Salih’s historical-political critique in terms of gendered literary symbolism and aesthetics, the article attempts to make clear the resonance of her analytic method in the field of modern Arabic literature—especially Egyptian literature—and to point out how literature and critique are implicated in the social and political changes that forged and solidified Egypt’s neoliberal era.

Moving between doing and being-Meanings of person-centredness as narrated by nursing home managers. Aphenomenological hermeneutical study.

This study aimed to illuminate meanings of person-centredness as narrated by nursing home managers in nursing homes rated as highly person-centred. A phenomenological hermeneutical approach was used. Twelve nursing home managers in 11 highly person-centred nursing homes in 7 municipalities in Sweden were included in this interview study. The findings were interpreted, reflected and discussed through the lens of Ricoeur. Meanings of person-centredness could be understand as moving between doing and being through knowing, sensing, sharing and giving for person-centredness. These aspects contributed via knowledge, understanding, interaction and action that involved doing for and being with older persons through these caring dimensions. By moving between doing for, being with and being part of the overall nursing home narrative, knowing, sensing, sharing and giving could support the persons' identity in different ways. This may also contribute to sense-making, preserving dignity and promoting self-esteem when aiming to provide a good life for older persons in nursing homes, within an ever-present ethical frame. This study illuminated meanings of person-centredness as narrated by nursing home managers. No patient of public contribution was investigated.

Understanding Consumer Attitudes toward Cultured Meat: The Role of Online Media Framing

The widespread commercialization of cultured meat, produced from animal stem cells grown in vitro, faces significant challenges related to technical, regulatory, and social acceptability constraints. Despite advancements in knowledge, the acceptance of this innovation remains uncertain. Understanding individuals’ decision-making processes and interpretative patterns is crucial, with media framing playing a key role in shaping attitudes toward cultured meat adoption. This research, focusing on Twitter as a social media platform, examines the impact of media framing on consumer attitudes (cognitive, affective, and conative) regarding cultured meat. Qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative (MANOVA) analyses were conducted on 23,020 posts and 38,531 comments, selected based on media framing or containing relevant attitude components. This study reveals that media-framed posts significantly influence consumer attitudes compared to non-media-framed posts. While different types of media framing (ethical, intrinsic, informational, and belief) exhibit varying impacts on attitude components, posts combining ethical, intrinsic, and informational frames have a more substantial effect on cultured meat acceptability. The belief frame, particularly for the behavioral component, is equally influential. Consumer attitudes toward cultured meat are found to be ambivalent, considering the associated benefits and risks. Nevertheless, the affective component of attitude is notably influenced by posts featuring informational and ethical media frames. This study suggests implications for authorities and businesses, emphasizing the importance of differentiated education and marketing strategies. Advertising messages that combine ethical, intrinsic, and informational frames are recommended. Additionally, this study advocates for regulatory measures governing the production, marketing, and consumption of cultured meat to instill consumer confidence in the industry. By highlighting the significance of beliefs in cultured meat consumption behavior, this research points toward potential exploration of cultural and religious influences in future studies.

Exploring business students’ views of the use of generative AI in assignment writing

The rise of generative AI, particularly over the past few years, has raised notable issues about its use. This has been possibly most pronounced in academia, where there has been strong debate on the potential value of generative AI to augment learning outcomes versus the potential for academic dishonesty and devalued education. Whilst some papers have looked at students’ perspectives on the use of generative AI, there has been less focus exploring through what ethical perspectives or frames students see using generative AI in their tertiary education. We interviewed and conducted focus groups and interviews with students enrolled in an Australian university business school, to explore the ethical frames through which they saw the use of generative AI. Focussing on three specific perspectives: Deontological, Consequentialism and Virtue Ethics, it emerged that no single perspective dominated, with students having a complex mix and latticework of ethical perspectives on its use, even within the same individual. We explore some potential implications for practice that emerged from the data, one of which is the role of the academic as moral exemplar.

Design of a future scenarios toolkit for an ethical implementation of artificial intelligence in education

In the 1970s, research on artificial intelligence in education emerged with the aim of acknowledging and accommodating the psychological aspects of the learning process. Since then, its applications have evolved and it is now used for student learning and assessment, teachers’ pedagogical practice, management of educational institutions, and lifelong learning. Nevertheless, the ethical challenges of educational programmes using these systems have not been thoroughly studied. Anchored on the theoretical frame of dialogic ethics, this paper presents a section of a participatory futures research project. The goal of the research is to develop a toolkit that educators can use to ensure a smooth and ethical transition to artificial intelligence-based education while preserving the interests of educational development. This paper emphasises the need for an informed and participatory process that involves all stakeholders and begins with an expert consultation through the Delphi method, the results of which allowed the construction of eight hypothetical futures scenarios. These scenarios provide evidence that examining the ethics of using artificial intelligence systems presents an opportunity to reflect on the ethics of education as a whole. They highlight the challenge of balancing the benefits and drawbacks of such systems, especially concerning educational goals and the interplay between diverse educational actors and personal development in educational settings. The study outcomes are intended to encourage discussions on the integration of ethical artificial intelligence in education and facilitate the continuing professional development of teachers by equipping them with scenarios that can be used as a resource for training purposes.

Examining the ethics of school-based mindfulness programs

ABSTRACT School-based mindfulness programs (SBMPs) are gaining prevalence in K-12 schools, yet little is known about how they foster students’ ethical development. Using a qualitative content analysis this study examined how three SBMP curricula promoted ethical literacy. The primary ethical frame was Care/Compassion with little evidence of Justice/Fairness and Rights. The main Prosocial Motivation was Perspective-Taking. The primary curricular tool used was Reflection, with Skills and Knowledge used to a lesser extent. Social-emotional learning domains differed across the curricula, but Responsible Decision-Making was least prevalent across all. Explicit terms related to morals/ethics were scarce. The emphasis on relational-related ethical frames and motivations represents a shift toward a more nuanced view of moral development that represents a dynamic interplay between self and other marked by compassion and empathy.

Narratives and expert information in agenda‐setting: Experimental evidence on state legislator engagement with artificial intelligence policy

AbstractAre narratives as influential in gaining the attention of policymakers as expert information, including for complex, technical policy domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) policy? This pre‐registered study uses a field experiment to evaluate legislator responsiveness to policy entrepreneur outreach. In partnership with a leading AI think tank, we send more than 7300 U.S. state legislative offices emails about AI policy containing an influence strategy (providing a narrative, expert information, or the organization's background), along with a prominent issue frame about AI (emphasizing technological competition or ethical implications). To assess engagement, we measure link clicks to further resources and webinar registration and attendance. Although AI policy is a highly technical domain, we find that narratives are just as effective as expert information in engaging legislators. Compared to control, expert information and narratives led to 28 and 34 percent increases in policymaker engagement, respectively. Furthermore, higher legislature professionalism and lower state‐level prior AI experience are associated with greater engagement with both narratives and expert information. Finally, we find that policymakers are equally engaged by an ethical framing of AI policy as they are with an economic one. The findings advance efforts to bridge scholarship on policy narratives, policy entrepreneurship, and agenda‐setting.

Can A/The History of “World Civilization” Be Re-Written in a Pluralist Ethical Frame?

ABSTRACT Rewriting a/the History of “World Civilization” in a pluralist ethical frame is proposed as an alternative to the Eurocentricity and cultural imperialism of earlier such attempts, which assumed a single focus. A plural relational focalisation can replace a grand or master narrative with a conversation between different perspectives. More than tolerance, pluralism is an active quest for understanding across differences, making engagement with alterity an ethical and epistemological imperative. Moving beyond homogenizing mind-sets confined to a single perspective, pluralism enables us to perceive difference as a relation with an Other. This relational pluralist perspective stems from the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of Indian civilization and literatures. The Jain philosophy of Anekantavada posits a pluralist theory of being. Epistemologically grounded in Nayavada and Syadvada, Anekantavada advocates willing engagement with alterities and dialogue between different views, making “ahimsa” or non-violence the ethical goal of human interaction. Hence, in the age of global virtual connectivity and uneven technological advancement, a pluralist narrative of world civilisation(s),“rewritten” in this philosophical frame, is proposed.

Minding Rights: Mapping Ethical and Legal Foundations of 'Neurorights'.

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty - often framed as "neurorights" in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and governance guidelines on this issue. However, in many discussions of neurorights the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation are either not made explicit or conflict with each other. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to provide conceptual, ethical, and legal foundations that allow for facilitating a common minimalist conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty to facilitate scholarly, legal, and policy discussions.

Sirens, Narrative Ethics, and Christina Rosenvinge's ‘Mi vida bajo el agua’

This article examines the historical representation of the Siren myth and how it is employed by Spanish musician Christina Rosenvinge in her song ‘Mi vida bajo el agua’ (2011) (‘My life under water’) and its music video. Rosenvinge criticizes various moral beliefs attached to the myth, and this article's focus is specifically on these beliefs, which are analysed using a narrative ethics approach. This field aims to understand how narratives take shape and are repeated in different forms, thus enabling us to transform our understanding of the previous comprehension of the narrative. The methodological frame of narrative ethics is connected to feminist theories and the field of gender history in this article, which provides an opportunity to examine the changing meanings and beliefs around the Siren myth over time in an ethically significant way. This case study intends to illustrate the value of applying narrative ethics to research in cultural history since it helps us to understand how the narrative can articulate power relations and at the same time shape our understanding of the possible.

Translating contemporary scientists’ knowledge and practice into classrooms: Scalable design supporting identity work

There are new demands on science education for students moving into uncertain futures, including engagement with scientific practices, and understanding of the nature of science and scientists’ work. Furthermore, there is increasing recognition of and interest in the construct of identity as a powerful way of looking at students’ engagement with science studies and futures. In Australia there has been policy-level curriculum advocacy focused on finding practical ways to represent scientists, their research practices and specialist knowledge as a powerful context for learning. Research into partnerships shows this has strong identity outcomes and pedagogies that privilege student active engagement with scientific practices. As part of an ongoing research program investigating the possibilities for a more thorough and scalable representation of contemporary science research practices in classrooms, this paper reports on (a) a survey of science teachers probing their beliefs and practices regarding representation of contemporary science, and (b) the identity entailments of producing and evaluating online resources that represent scientists working in key contemporary areas. The survey identifies that teachers are overwhelmingly positive about representing contemporary science and the varied ways they do that, but also identifies a range of structural barriers resulting in low levels of this practice. We describe the design principles process by which scientists’ practices are translated into classroom learning sequences that engage students with scientists’ backgrounds and motivations, research design and data analysis, and ethical and wider framings of scientific research. Preliminary trialing of the resources (previously reported) shows enhanced student engagement with contemporary, societally relevant scientific knowledge and practices. In this paper we interpret these experiences as identity forming and agency-developing. We argue in the paper that the construction and availability of such resources is a potentially powerful way of engaging students with: the practices of contemporary science; the motivations and living reality of scientists; and the societal and personal relevance of science to students’ lives. Engagement with such resources that involve students in actively generating and responding to contemporary concerns we argue is a more powerful way of introducing science ideas and providing identity-shaping opportunities than current established practices identified in the survey.