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- All Subjects: ethics
- Creators: Robert, Jason S
- Creators: Calhoun, Cheshire
Description
The academic literature on science communication widely acknowledges a problem: science communication between experts and lay audiences is important, but it is not done well. General audience popular science books, however, carry a reputation for clear science communication and are understudied in the academic literature. For this doctoral dissertation, I utilize Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape, a general audience science book on the particularly thorny topic of neuroscientific approaches to morality, as a case-study to explore the possibility of using general audience science books as models for science communication more broadly. I conduct a literary analysis of the text that delimits the scope of its project, its intended audience, and the domains of science to be communicated. I also identify seven literary aspects of the text: three positive aspects that facilitate clarity and four negative aspects that interfere with lay public engagement. I conclude that The Moral Landscape relies on an assumed knowledge base and intuitions of its audience that cannot reasonably be expected of lay audiences; therefore, it cannot properly be construed as popular science communication. It nevertheless contains normative lessons for the broader science project, both in literary aspects to be salvaged and literary aspects and concepts to consciously be avoided and combated. I note that The Moral Landscape's failings can also be taken as an indication that typical descriptions of science communication offer under-detailed taxonomies of both audiences for science communication and the varieties of science communication aimed at those audiences. Future directions of study include rethinking appropriate target audiences for science literacy projects and developing a more discriminating taxonomy of both science communication and lay publics.
ContributorsJohnson, Nathan W (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Creath, Richard (Committee member) / Martinez, Jacqueline (Committee member) / Sylvester, Edward (Committee member) / Lynch, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
I present in this dissertation a theory of moral disillusion. In chapter 1 I explain moral innocence and its loss. I show that becoming morally responsible requires shattering the illusion that one is not an appropriate candidate for the reactive attitudes. The morally responsible individual must understand that she can be an agent of wrongdoing. In chapter 2 I explore the nature of the understanding that accompanies the different phases of disillusion. I show that moral disillusion is an ability, not to follow moral principles, but to question them. In chapter 3 I argue that another phase of disillusion involves an acquaintance with evil. One shatters the illusion that only malicious individuals can be evildoers. Morally good people can also bring about evil. I conclude that evil is the exploitation of the extremely vulnerable. In chapters 4 and 5, I analyze more complex phases of moral disillusion. These stages are characterized by an understanding that one can be an agent of unchosen evil, that one might bring about evil even when pursuing the morally best course of action, and that one can be morally responsible for doing so. In order to understand unchosen evil and the tragedy of inescapable moral wrongdoing, the individual sees that moral responsibility ought to track what we care about, rather than what we believe. In chapter 6 I show that Kierkegaard's conception of the self is a philosophy of moral disillusion. I argue that his prescription that we shatter moral illusions is congruent with Harry Frankfurt's prescription that we ought to care about some things and not others. From this discussion emerges the explicit distinction between moral disillusion and moral goodness. Moreover, I conclude that the morally disillusioned are morally accountable for more than those still harboring moral illusions. Although moral disillusion does not entail becoming morally good, by acquiring the ability to raise questions about moral principles and to affect the content of one's cares, one acquires the ability to take responsibility for, and potentially minimize, evil. To have and understand these abilities, but not to care about them, increases one's moral accountability.
ContributorsGoldberg, Zachary J. (Author) / French, Peter A. (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / Matustik, Martin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Recently, philosophers have charged that Aristotelian-based virtue theories are empirically inadequate because the conception of character in which they are grounded is largely unfounded by findings in psychology. These philosophers argue in favor of situationism, the theory from social psychology that situational rather than dispositional differences among individuals are in large part responsible for human behavior. Situationists dispute the existence of traits that remain consistent across time and diverse situations and argue that features of situations can better explain and predict human behavior. After analyzing the psychological literature and historical cases put forth as evidence for situationism as well as the basic premises grounding arguments against situationism, I make some conclusions about the best responses to situationism. I agree with situationists that Aristotelian-based virtue and character are not quite empirically adequate but disagree that human behavior owes more to situational rather than dispositional determinants. Basing my theory on literature from social psychology, I argue instead that a concept of character grounded in social-cognitive theory is more psychologically realistic and can explain and predict human behavior and ground a character-based virtue theory. A social-cognitive conception of character would highlight the dynamic role between situations and individual psychological factors like beliefs, values, desires and the way that an individual perceives a situation. I sketch out a non-ideal theory of virtue based in a social-cognitive conception of character that is partially dependent on social networks for its maintenance and is fragmented, or contextualized to particular types of psychological situations. However, fragmented and socially dependent virtue is not an optimal type of virtue because it is vulnerable to situational features that place strong psychological pressures on agents to behave in various ways, including ways they would not have normally endorsed. I agree with Aristotelian virtue ethicists that argue that a type of practical wisdom can help to counter the often unwanted and dangerous influence of these strong situations but also maintain that some measure of moral luck is inevitably involved, even in the development of practical wisdom.
ContributorsValadez, Mayra (Author) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Thesis advisor) / Walker, Margaret U (Committee member) / French, Peter A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Corporations in biomedicine hold significant power and influence, in both political and personal spheres. The decisions these companies make about ethics are critically important, as they help determine what products are developed, how they are developed, how they are promoted, and potentially even how they are regulated. In the last fifteen years, for-profit private companies have been assembling bioethics committees to help resolve dilemmas that require informed deliberation about ethical, legal, scientific, and economic considerations. Private sector bioethics committees represent an important innovation in the governance of emerging technologies, with corporations taking a lead role in deciding what is ethically appropriate or problematic. And yet, we know very little about these committees, including their structures, memberships, mandates, authority, and impact. Drawing on an extensive literature review and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with executives, scientists and board members, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the Ethics and Public Policy Board at SmithKline Beecham, the Ethics Advisory Board at Advanced Cell Technology, and the Bioethics Committee at Eli Lilly and offers insights about how ideas of bioethics and governance are currently imagined and enacted within corporations. The SmithKline Beecham board was the first private sector bioethics committee; its mandate was to explore, in a comprehensive and balanced analysis, the ethics of macro trends in science and technology. The Advanced Cell Technology board was created to be like a watchdog for the company, to prevent them from making major errors. The Eli Lilly board is different than the others in that it is made up mostly of internal employees and does research ethics consultations within the company. These private sector bioethics committees evaluate and construct new boundaries between their private interests and the public values they claim to promote. Findings from this dissertation show that criticisms of private sector bioethics that focus narrowly on financial conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency obscure analysis of the ideas about governance (about expertise, credibility and authority) that emerge from these structures and hamper serious debate about the possible impacts of moving ethical deliberation from the public to the private sector.
ContributorsBrian, Jennifer (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Brown, Mark B. (Committee member) / Moreno, Jonathan D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In the past 100 years pet, zoo/aquarium, and research animals have gained unprecedented legal protection from unnecessary human harm via the creation of strict animal cruelty laws. Due to the work of moral philosophers and compassionate lawyers/judges animal cruelty laws have been improved to provide harsher punishments for violations, had their scopes widened to include more animals and had their language changed to better match our evolving conception of animals as independent living entities rather than as merely things for human use. However, while the group of pet, zoo/aquarium, and research animals has enjoyed more consideration by the US legal system, another group of animals has inexplicably been ignored. The farm animals that humans raise for use as food are exempted from nearly every state and federal animal cruelty law for no justifiable reason. In this paper I will argue that our best moral and legal theories concede that we should take animal suffering seriously, and that no relevant difference exists between the group of animals protected by animal cruelty laws and farm animals. Given the lack of a relevant distinction between these two groups I will conclude that current animal cruelty laws should be amended to include farm animals.
ContributorsDeCoster, Miles (Author) / McGregor, Joan (Thesis advisor) / Blackson, Thomas (Committee member) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The advent of advanced reproductive technologies has sparked a number of ethical concerns regarding the practices of reproductive tourism and commercial gestational surrogacy. In the past few decades, reproductive tourism has become a global industry in which individuals or couples travel, usually across borders, to gain access to reproductive services. This marketable field has expanded commercial gestational surrogacy--defined by a contractual relationship between an intending couple and gestational surrogate in which the surrogate has no genetic tie to fetus--to take on transnational complexities. India has experienced extreme growth due to a preferable combination of western educated doctors and extremely low medical costs. However, a slew of ethical issues have been brought to the forefront: the big ones manifesting as concern for reduction of a woman's worth to her reproductive capabilities along with concern for exploitation of third world women. This project will be based exclusively on literature review and serves primarily as a call for cultural competency and understanding the circumstances that gestational surrogates are faced with before implementing policy regulating commercial gestational surrogacy. The paper argues that issues of exploitation and commodification hinge on constructions of motherhood. It is critical to define and understand definitions of motherhood and how these definitions affect a woman's approach to reproduction within the cultural context of a gestational surrogate. This paper follows the case study of the Akanksha Infertility Clinic in northern India, a surrogacy clinic housing around 50 Indian surrogates. The findings of the project invokes the critical significance of narrative ethics, which help Indian surrogates construct the practice of surrogacy so that it fits into cultural comprehensions of Indian motherhood--in which motherhood is selfless, significant, and shared.
ContributorsMoorthy, Anjali (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Hurlbut, Benjamin (Committee member) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation puts forth an account of moral responsibility. The central claim defended is that an agent's responsibility supervenes on the agent's mental states at the time of the action. I call the mental states that determine responsibility the agent's quality of will (QOW). QOW is taken to concern the agent's action, understood from an internal perspective, along with the agent's motivations, her actual beliefs about the action, and the beliefs she ought to have had about the action. This approach to responsibility has a number of surprising implications. First, blameworthiness can come apart from wrongness, and praiseworthiness from rightness. This is because responsibility is an internal notion and rightness and wrongness are external notions. Furthermore, agents can only be responsible for their QOW. It follows that agents cannot be responsible for the consequences of their actions. I further argue that one's QOW is determined by what one cares about. And the fact that we react to the QOW of others with morally reactive emotions, such as resentment and gratitude, shows that we care about QOW. The reactive attitudes can therefore be understood as ways in which we care about what others care about. Responsibility can be assessed by comparing one's actual QOW to the QOW one ought to have had.
ContributorsKhoury, Andrew (Author) / French, Peter A. (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Committee member) / Portmore, Douglas W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Within ethics, a number of scholars advocate an interdisciplinary approach of combining the two traditionally different professions of science and philosophy with the confidence that this collaboration will be a mutually beneficial experience. Current ethicist-scientist interactions include embedded-ethicists and research ethics consultation services. Both methods are employed with the hope that they will reduce social and ethical problems that could arise from scientific research, and enhance the reflective capacity of investigative teams. While much effort has been put forth in the endeavor of creating ethicist-scientist interactions, there remains opportunity to refine these new interaction models to make them more robust. There is need for ethicists to understand the context of ethical decision-making in the laboratory. By extension, before interacting with scientists in a research lab, research ethicists ought to have the ability to understand the science and also be familiar with the different factors that influence scientific research, such as funding, productivity requirements, time constraints, politics of laboratories and institutional reward structures. Through literature review and the analysis of qualitative data obtained from the ethnographic study in a neuroscience laboratory, this thesis explores the strengths and weaknesses of ethicist-scientist interactions and aims to understand the culture, traditions and values of this community and their perspectives on their role as scientists and their relationship to ethics. This study shows that the quantity and quality of ethics discussions in the lab are limited and dictated by time constraints and minimal incentives. Other influencing factors are the researchers' perspectives on ethics and how they view their role as a scientist in relation to the public.
ContributorsMin, Gyongeun Catherine (Author) / Ellison, Karin (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Minteer, Ben A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
With new trends in drug development and testing, it must be determined whether the current state of balance of ethos (the moral norm) and regula (the legal framework) can successfully protect patients while keeping the door to scientific innovation open. The rise of the Clinician Investigator (CI) in both academic and private research introduces a challenge to the protection of subjects in the conflicting dual role of physician and scientist. Despite the constant evolution of regulation and ethical standards, questions about the roles' combined effectiveness in relation to this challenge persist. Carl Elliot describes the suicide of a patient-subject enrolled in an industry-funded physician-run anti-psychotic pharmaceutical drug trial in a 2010 Mother Jones article. Elliot provides a personal account of discrepancies seen in the ethical principles of beneficence, respect for subjects and justice. Through analysis of the problems presented in the case as a model for potential dangers in clinical research, the effectiveness of ethics and law in protecting human subjects is examined. While the lag between ethical standard and regulation has historically shown to cause similar issues, the misconception of current regulation and ethical standards may be contributing to the decrease in subject protections. After IRB approval of subject protections in the research protocol, CIs have been shown to downgrade their responsibility to maintaining ethos through the course of the trial. And, despite their experience in patient-centered ethos as a physician, CIs may be inclined to substitute these values for the ethos of a researcher, with the goal to avoid therapeutic misconception. Maintaining personal responsibility for subjects beyond regulatory structure, and promoting the welfare of the subjects in regards to the ethical standard of research investigators, will provide added security for subjects and decrease opportunity for exploitation in future research.
ContributorsWaddell, Amanda (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Fuse Brown, Erin C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In the past century, a number of technological projects have been undertaken as grand solutions to social problems. In the so called century of biology, this technological world view focuses on biomedical advances. The President of the United States, who once called for nuclear weapons and space exploration, now calls for new biotechnologies, such as genomics, individualized medicine, and nanotechnology, which will improve the world by improving our biological lives. Portrayed as the Manhattan Project of the late 20th Century, the Human Genome Project (HGP) not only undertook the science of sequencing the human genome but also the ethics of it. For this thesis I ask how the HGP did this; what was the range of possibilities of goods and evils imagined by the HGP; and what, if anything, was left out. I show that the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) research program of the HGP was inscribed with the competencies of the professional field of bioethics, which had lent itself useful for governing biomedical science and technology earlier in the 20th century. Drawing on a sociological framework for understanding the development of professional bioethics, I describe the development of ELSI, and I note how the given-in-advance boundaries between authorized/unauthorized questions shaped its formation and biased technologically based conceptualizations of social problems and potential solutions. In this sense, the HGP and ELSI served both as the ends of policy and as instruments of self-legitimation, thus re-inscribing and enacting the structures for these powerful sociotechnical imaginaries. I engage the HGP and ELSI through historical, sociological, and political philosophical analysis, by examining their immediate context of the NIH, the meso level of professional/disciplinary bioethics, and the larger context of American democracy and modernity. My argument is simultaneously a claim about how questions are asked and how knowledge and expertise are made, exposing the relationship between the HGP and ELSI as a mutually constitutive and reciprocally related form of coproduction of knowledge and social structures. I finish by arguing that ELSI is in a better position than bioethics to carry out the original project of that field, i.e., to provide a space to elucidate certain institutionally authorized questions about science and technology. Finally, I venture into making a prophecy about the future of ELSI and bioethics: that the former will replace the latter as a locus for only formally rational and thin ethical debates.
ContributorsCarvalho, Tito (Author) / Robert, Jason S (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin D (Committee member) / Hurlbut, James B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012