 Twentieth Anniversary 
Annual Meeting
Association for
Practical and Professional Ethics
ABSTRACTS
March 3–6, 2011
Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, Cincinnati, Ohio
Table of Contents
Concurrent Session I
10:00 – 11:00 a.m., Friday, March 4
A. “Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics”
Donna M. Riley, Picker Engineering Program, Smith College…………………………………….13
B. “Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Just Claims and Avoidable Losses - The Case of Zimbabwe’s
Land Seizures”
Lyn Boyd-Judson, Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, Univ. of Southern California……..13
C. “The Passion & Civility Debate Tournament: Fostering Ethical Dialogue Outside of the
Classroom”
Jack Green Musselman, Center for Ethics and Leadership, St. Edward’s University…………......13
D. “Responsible Conduct of Research with Computational Models and Simulations”
Michael C. Loui, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois
David J. Kijowski, Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign
Harry Dankowicz, Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign…………………………………………………………………………………………14
E. “An Undergraduate Business Ethics Curriculum: Learning and Moral Development Outcomes”
Jessica McManus Warnell, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame...…………14
F. “Individual vs. Family Decision-Making About Posthumous Organ Donation”
Alida Liberman, Philosophy, University of Southern California………………………………..…14
G. Roundtable: “Online Resources for Ethics in the Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics: Current
Resources and Plans for the Future”
Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy of
Engineering
Kelly Laas, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology
C. Kristina Gunsalus, National Center for Professional and Research Ethics, Univer. of Illinois…15
H. “The Problems of Intrumental Value”
Caroline Christoff, Hiram College…………………………………………………………………15
I. “Belief and Death: Capital Punishment and the Competence-for-Execution Requirement”
David M. Adams, Philosophy, California State Polytechnic University………………………......15
J. “Imperiled Newborns and the Limits of Parental Responsibility: Problems with the Child’s Best
Interest Standard”
Trevor Hedberg, University of Tennessee, Knoxville……………………………………………...16
K. “Citizens United and the Balance between Individual and Corporate Political Speech”
Eric Berken, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge……………………………………………16
L. “Patients, Practice, and Power: Moral Decision-making within Medicine”
Barry DeCoster, Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University……………………………...17
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Concurrent Session II
11:00 – 12:00 noon, Friday, March 4
A. “Making Science and Technology Beneficial to Society in China (Case Study)”
Wang Yuping, Senior Secretary of the Society for the Dialectics of Nature, China……………….17
B. “May Corporations Apologize?”
Andrew I. Cohen, Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Georgia
State University…………………………………………………………………………………….18
C. “‘Welfare’ vs. ‘Social Justice’: How Should Aspirational Ethics Be Formulated?”
Charles E. Harris, Sue and Harry Bovay Professor of History and Ethics of Professional
Engineering, Texas A&M University……………………………………………………………....18
D. “The Evidence and Ethics of Teacher Disclosure”
Paula McAvoy, Educational Administration and Foundations, Illinois State University
Diana Hess, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison……...18
E. “Climate Change and Structural Emissions: Moral Obligation at the Individual Level”
Monica Aufrecht, Philosophy, Simon Fraser University…………………………………………..19
F. “The More Things Change… Ethics in American Archaeology”
Dru E. McGill, Anthropology, Indiana University…………………………………………………19
G. “Who Teaches Ethics? An Inquiry into the Nature of Ethics as an Academic Discipline”
David K. McGraw, Department of Integrated Science and Technology, James Madison Univ…...19
H. “‘Same -Sex Marriage’, ‘Homosexual Desire,’ and the Capacity to Love”
Christopher Arroyo, Philosophy, Providence College……………………………………………..20
I. “Rawls and the Epistemic Obligations of Public Officials”
Matt Deaton, Philosophy, University of Tennessee………………………………………………..20
J. “Establishing an International ‘Voluntouring’ Ethic”
Shelby Rogala, Montana State University……………………………………………………….....21
K. “Ethical Justification for Subjective Journalism: a Casuistical Approach”
Keith Thompson, Western Michigan University…………………………………………………...21
L. “Saving for Retirement without Harming Others”
Steven Daskal, Philosophy, Northern Illinois University…………………………………………..21
Concurrent Session III
1:45 -3:45 pm, Friday, March 4
A. Roundtable: “What I Learned from The Association’s Graduate Research Ethics Education
Project (GREE) and what Universities Could Learn from GREE for Research Ethics Education”
Participant Reflections
Participants:
Jeffry L. Dudycha, Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina
Todd M. Freeberg, Psychology, University of Tennessee
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Julia Frugoli, Genetics and Biochemistry, Clemson University
Dee Anne Goodenough-Lashua, Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame
Dru E. McGill, Anthropology, Indiana University
Sara E. Wilson, Mechanical Engineering, University of Kansas…………………………………..22
B. Panel: “Emerging Issues in Business Ethics”
Panelists:
Patricia H. Werhane, Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Director, Institute for Business &
Professional Ethics, DePaul University
Chris MacDonald, Visiting Scholar, Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics & Board Effectiveness,
University of Toronto
Tim C. Mazur, Chief Operating Officer, Ethics and Compliance Officer Association
Elizabeth Ricci, The Proctor & Gamble Company
George Brenkert, Georgetown University………………………………………………………….22
C. Author Meets the Critics: Mass Surveillance and State Control: The Total Information
Awareness Project, Elliot D. Cohen
Critics:
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University
Donald A. Petkus, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
Donald Searing, Syncere Systems
David P. Schmidt, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
Richard Fitzpatrick, Center for Professional Ethics, Manhattan College………………………….22
D. Author Meets the Critics: The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics
(Culture of the Land), Paul B. Thompson, Kellogg Professor of Agriculture, Food, and Community
Ethics, Michigan State University
Critics:
Gregory J. Cooper, Director, Society and the Professions Program in Ethics, Washington and Lee
University
Jennifer J. Everett, Philosophy, DePauw University
Richard A. Russo, Geography, Frostburg State University………………………………………...23
E. Ethical Treatment of Animals
“‘Killing in the Name:’ On the Racialization of Pit Bulls and the Politics of Breed-Specific
Legislation”
Robin M. James, Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
“Rawls and Animals: An Exploration of the Compatibility of Rawls’s Theory of Justice with an
Ethic that Takes the Consideration of Animal Interests Seriously”
Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
“Applying Rawls’ Theory of Justice: Distributing Resources within the Animal Rights
Community”
Alan C. Clune, Psychology and Philosophy, Sam Houston State University……………………...23
F. Health Care Policy
“The Argument from Potential: Nonsense in the Abortion Debate”
Matthew C. Altman, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Central Washington University
“Limited Resources and Tough Choices: Deciding Between Identifiable Patients and Statistical
Persons”
Jeff Cervantez, Philosophy, The University of Tennessee…………………………………………24
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G. Teaching Engineering Ethics
“Jeopardy for Engineering Ethics: Integrating Games”
Marilyn A. Dyrud, Communication, Oregon Institute of Technology
“Integrating Mechanical and Ethical Reasoning through Inverted Instruction of Ethical Cases”
(Case study)
Christopher M. Papadopoulos, General Engineering, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
“What if you don’t get to take an ethics course? An alternate approach – industry sponsored
undergraduate student activities”
Halley D. Sanchez, Dana Collins, Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez…………....25
H. Professional Ethics
“Ethical Perspectives and the Professions”
Patrick Croskery, Philosophy and Religion, Ohio Northern University
“Towards Teaching Professionalism Concretely: A Developmental Perspective on Affective
Formation and Affective Learning Outcomes”
David T. Ozar, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago…………………………………………...26
I. Author Meets the Critics: Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research: Widening the Lens
Alan Wertheimer
Critics:
Lisa M. Rasmussen, Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Kathryn M. Partin, Research Integrity and Compliance Review Office, Colorado State University
Jennifer M. McCafferty, Assistant Dean for Research, Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine,
University of Miami………………………………………………………………………………..27
J. Topics in Journalism Ethics
“Journalist, Doctor, or Both?: Mixing Reporting and Medical Care After the Haiti Earthquake”
David Ferman, University of Oklahoma
“Doctors, Journalists, Victims and Frames: Communications from Medécins Sans
Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders”
Valerie C. Aquila, Journalism, Indiana University………………………………………………...28
Concurrent Session IV 4:15 – 5:45 pm, Friday, March 4
A. Author Meets the Critics: Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social
Sciences
Zachary Schrag, History, George Mason University
Critics:
John J. Laukaitis, Education, Elmhurst College
Douglas J. Adams, Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Arkansas
William L. Gannon, Special Assistant, Research Ethics and Integrity, Office of the Vice President,
University of New Mexico……………………………………………………………………….…29
B. Panel: Economics and Ethics: Dodd-Frank and Financial Reform
Panelists:
John R. Boatright, Professor of Business Ethics, Loyola University-Chicago
Nicholas P. Sargen, Chief Investment Officer, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, a division of
Western Southern Life
Kevin Bass, Financial Analyst, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, a division of Western
Southern Life
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Chair: Gretchen A. Winter, Executive Director of the Center for Professional Responsibility in
Business and Society at the University of Illinois College of Business……………………………29
C. AEJMC Panel: “Ethics of Data Mining: Media, Privacy and Technology”
Convenor:
Jan Leach, Journalism & Mass Communication, Kent State University
Panelists:
Bernhard Debatin, Journalism, Ohio University
Marianne Ryan, School of Information, University of Michigan…………………………………..30
D. Panel: “Immigration is it (Un) Just to Exclude?”
“Just Excludability and Reciprocity”
Alan Tomhave, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University
“The Rights of Peoples to Occupy Land (to the Exclusion of Others)”
Lisa H. Newton, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
“Don’t Fence Me In (or Out): Moral Considerations for an Inclusive Immigration Policy”
Christina M. Bellon, Center for Practical and Professional Ethics, California State University
Sacramento
Chair: Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Dr. James Dale Ethics Center, Youngstown State Univ……….30
E. Author Meets the Critics: The Ethics of Parenthood
Norvin W. Richards, University of Alabama
Critics:
Claudia J. Mills, Philosophy, University of Colorado
Sara Goering, Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington
Julia A. Pedroni, Williams College…………………………………………………………………32
F. Author Meets the Critics: The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation
Sarah Clark Miller, University of Memphis
Critics:
Allison Wolf, Philosophy, Simpson College
Peggy DesAutels, Philosophy, University of Dayton
Kristen Hessler, Philosophy, University at Albany, SUNY………………………………………..32
G. Author Meets the Critics: Personal Identity and Fractured Selves: Perspectives from
Philosophy, Ethics and Neuroscience
Debra J. H. Mathews, Assistant Director, Science Programs Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns
Hopkins University
Critics:
Deborah Mower, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University
Monica E. Calkins, Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania……………………………………….32
H. Author Meets the Critics: Striking a Balance: A Primer in Traditional Asian Values
Michael C. Brannigan, Philosophy and Religion, The College of Saint Rose
Critics:
Thomas M. Pynn, History and Philosophy, Kennesaw State University
Mark A. Wilson, Ethics Program, Villanova University
Joe Johnson, Kennesaw State University………………………………………………………..….33
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I. Roundtable: Assisted Reproduction Across Cultures
Erin McKinley, Clinical Ethics Fellow, Bon Secours, Richmond
Amy M. VanDyke, Health Care Ethics, Duquesne University
Ramez Islambouli, Modern Languages, Case Western University………………………………...33
J. Panel: Developing Scenarios for Exploring Approaches to Research Ethics Problems
Wayne R. Fuqua, Psychology, Western Michigan University
David J. Hartmann, Kercher Center for Social Research, Western Michigan University
Thomas L. Van Valey, Sociology, Western Michigan University…………………………………34
K. Topics in Business Ethics
“How Transparency is Constrained by Privacy and Secrecy”
Howard Harris, School of Management, University of South Australia
“Professionally Benefiting from Bigotry”
Dennis R. Cooley, Northern Plains Ethics Institute, North Dakota State University………………34
L. Topics in Social/Political Ethics
1. “Women on the Move: A Feminist Analysis of Eldercare Workers in a Global Economy”
Rosemarie Tong, Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina,
Charlotte
2. “Ethics and the Law: The Environment Among Strangers”
Allyson Robichaud, Philosophy, Cleveland State University……………………………………...35
Concurrent Session V 8:00 – 9:30 am, Saturday, March 5
V. A Roundtable:
“Global Fairness: CSR Engagement and the Faces of Poverty”
Pauline J. Albert, Management, St. Edward’s University
Jennifer K. Greene, Philosophy, St. Edward’s University
Danney F. Ursery, Philosophy, St. Edward’s University
“The Many Faces of Poverty – a Video Presentation”
Kim Clark, College of Computing and Digital Media
Patricia H. Werhane, Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Director, Institute for Business &
Professional Ethics, DePaul University…………………………………………………………….35
B. Roundtable: Buddhist Ethics: The Eightfold Path and Contemporary Life
“Two Theories of Desire: Girard and Buddhism”
Jim Grote, University of Louisville
“Vipassana and Politics in Burma-Myanmar and Beyond”
Patrick Pranke, Humanities, University of Louisville
Chair: Carl Mitcham, Hennebach Program in the Humanities, Colorado School of Mines………..36
C. Roundtable: “20 Years of Advance Care Planning: Progress, Pitfalls, and Possibilities”
Valerie B. Satkoske, Wheeling Hospital, Wheeling West Virginia
Bruce Archer, Wheeling Hospital, Wheeling West Virginia
Amy M. VanDyke, Health Care Ethics, Duquesne University……………………………………..37
D. Roundtable: “‘The Sponsor Made Me Do It!’ Issues in Central Sponsorship of Research
Involving Human Participants”
Toby L. Schonfeld, Center for Ethics, Emory University
Joseph S. Brown, Psychology, University of Nebraska, Omaha
6
D. Micah Hester, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences…………....37
E. Author Meets the Critics: Global Journalism Ethics
Stephen J.A. Ward, James E. Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, University of WisconsinMadison
Critics:
Edward Spence, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University
Robert M. Steele, The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University
Carrie Figdor, Philosophy, University of Iowa……………………………………………………..38
F. Social Ethics
“Exploiting for the Cause”
Amanda Decker, University of South Florida
“On the Immorality of Lying to Children About Their Origins”
Sonya Charles, Philosophy, Cleveland State University…………………………………………...38
G. Medical Ethics II
“Freitas’s Volitional Normative Model of Disease: Implications for Nanoethics”
Vassiliki L. Leontis, Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
“The (Mistaken) Medicalization of Childbirth”
Allison Wolf, Philosophy, Simpson College……………………………………………………….39
H. Roundtable: “The Dread Disease: Cancer and the Implications for Justice in the Developing
World”
Kayhan Parsi, Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics & Health Policy, Loyola University, Chicago
Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharya, Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University, Chicago
Justin List, Yale University…………………………………………………………………………39
I. The Virtues
“Open-mindedness and Intellectual Humility”
James S. Spiegel, Philosophy, Taylor University
“Virtue Ethics and the Whistleblowing Dilemma”
Brandon J. Archuleta, University of Northern Colorado…………………………………………...40
J. “Ethics at Secondary Schools: Active Learning in Research Ethics to Develop Future
Professionals in Science and Engineering”
William J. Frey, Business Administration, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
Carlos Rios Velazquez, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez…………...……………………...41
K. Ethical Issues in Pervasive and Autonomous Technology
Roundtable: “Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: Are ‘The Rules’ the Way to Go?”
“Origins of the Rules, and Why They Aren’t a Wiki”
Keith W. Miller, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Springfield
“The Authority of the Rules: Why Should Anyone Allow Them to Serve as a Guide?”
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
“Similarities and Differences between IT Codes of Ethics and the Rules”
Charles W. Huff, Psychology, St. Olaf College
“The Rules: A Bigger Picture”
Kenneth D. Pimple, Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, Indiana
University
“The Intervention of Robot Caregivers and the Cultivation of Children’s Capability to Play”
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Yvette Pearson, Philosophy, Institute of Ethics and Public Affairs, Old Dominion University
Jason Borenstein, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology …………………….42
Concurrent Session VI
10:00 am – 12 noon, Saturday, March 5
A. Panel: The Last Twenty Years: Emerging Views of Moral Reasoning in Practical Ethics
“Pragmatism and the Role of Experience in Ethics”
James D. Wallace, Philosophy, University of Illinois
“Casuistic Reasoning in the Professions”
David E. Boeyink, Journalism, Indiana University
“Ethical Reasoning in the Professions: Engineering, Research, Academic Administration”
Michael S. Pritchard, Philosophy, Western Michigan University
“The Need for a Systematic Approach in Applied and Professional Ethics”
Bernard Gert, Social Medicine, Dartmouth College………………………………………………....42
B. Author Meets the Critics: Prospects for the Professions in China
Kenneth I. Winston, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Critics:
Michael C. Brannigan, Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values, The College of Saint Rose
Seumas Miller, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, The Australian National
University
Kenneth W. Goodman, Ethics Programs, University of Miami
James Angresano, Political Economy; College of Idaho…………………………………………….43
C. Roundtable: Creating a National High School Ethics BowlSM Network
“The Growth of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Intercollegiate Ethics BowlSM:
A Case Study”
Robert F. Ladenson, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Discussants:
Matt Deaton, Philosophy, University of Tennessee
Alfred H. Guy, Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics, University of Baltimore
Karen Mizell, Utah Valley University
George W. Sherman, Ethics, St. Petersburg College
Convenor: Roberta Israeloff………………………………………………………………………....43
D. Author Meets the Critics: Drawing the Line: Public and Private in America
Andrew Stark, Management, University of Toronto
Critics:
Andrew I. Cohen, Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Georgia State
University
John R. Chamberlin, Center for Ethics in Public Life, University of Michigan
Louis Lombardi, Ethics Center, Lake Forest College…………………………………………….…44
E. AEJMC Panel: The Blame Game: The Ethics of Blame in U.S. Social Institutions
Panelists:
Wendy Wyatt, Communication and Journalism, University of St. Thomas
James Biddle, Education, University of Dayton
Katherina Glac, Ethics and Business Law, University of St. Thomas
Thomas D. Cavenagh, Leadership, Ethics & Values Program, North Central College…………......44
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F. Roundtable: Progress as an Idea: A Macroethics Concept for Science and Engineering Students
Clark A. Miller, Center for Nanotechnology in Society, Arizona State University
Jason Borenstein, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Laura R. Grossenbacher, Engineering Professional Development, University of Wisconsin at
Madison
Karin D. Ellison, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
Karen L. Wellner, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
Convenor: Joseph R. Herkert, Arizona State University………………………………………….....44
G. Roundtable: Contributions of Cognitive Neuroscience and Moral Psychology to Applied Ethics:
A Conversation
J. Brooke Hamilton III, Management, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Charles W. Huff, Psychology, St. Olaf College
Matthew W. Keefer, Educational Psychology, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Response:
Charles Ed Harris, Sue and Harry Bovay Professor of History and Ethics of Professional
Engineering, Texas A&M University……………………………………………………………......45
H. Medical Ethics
“A Fiduciary Framework for Healthcare Proxy Decision Making”
Patricia C. Flynn, Philosophy St. Joseph’s College of Maine
“Ethics of Public Health: Overlap with Curative Medical Ethics and the Potential of Virtue Ethics”
Karen Meagher, Philosophy, Michigan State University………………………………………........46
I. Ethics Education
“The Ethics of Teaching: A Graduate Course on the Ethical Obligations of the College Professor as
Teacher”
Edward L. Queen, Center for Ethics, Emory University
“Teaching Ethics Beyond the Classroom: Electronic Media and Ethics Education”
Mary L. Brydon-Miller, Action Research Center, University of Cincinnati
Valerie Louis, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati……………...…47
J. Research Ethics
“‘You Don’t Know Me, But…’: Ethical Access and Subject Recruitment in Human Subjects
Research”
Toby L. Schonfeld, Center for Ethics, Emory University
Joseph S. Brown, Psychology, University of Nebraska
“The Use of Conflict of Interest Policies by Health Technology Assessment Organizations:
Preliminary Findings and Policy Analysis”
Shilpa Shinde, Elizabeth Heitman, Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt
University…………………………………………………………………………………………….47
K. Business Ethics
“Business Ethics in North America: Trends and Challenges”
Joseph A. Petrick, Department of Management and International Business, Raj Soin College of
Business, Wright State University
Wesley Cragg, York University, Toronto, Canada
Martha Sanudo, Campus Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
“Can Business be too Good? Applying Susan Wolf's ‘Moral Saints’ to Business”
Earl Spurgin, Program in Applied Ethics, John Carroll University………………………………….48
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Concurrent Session VII
1:30 – 3:30 pm, Saturday, March 5
A. Panel: “The Use of Imaginary Cases in Practical Ethics”
“A Critique of Philosophy’s Imaginary Cases”
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Responses:
“On the Uses and Disadvantages of the Ticking Bomb Case for Life”
Matthew C. Altman, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Central Washington University
“Imaginary Cases in Ethics: A Defense”
Fritz Allhoff, Philosophy, Western Michigan University
“Defusing Dangers of Imaginary Cases”
Joseph Spino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign… …………………………………....49
B. Author Meets the Critics: Lessons Amid the Rubble: An Introduction to Post-Disaster
Engineering and Ethics
Sarah K. A. Pfatteicher, College of Agricultural & Life Sciences/College of Engineering, University
of Wisconsin, Madison
Critics:
Donna M. Riley, Picker Engineering Program, Smith College
Rebekah Green, Institute for Global and Community Resilience, Western Washington University
Richard A. Burgess, National Institute for Engineering Ethics, Texas Technical Univ…………….50
C. EJMC Panel: Professionalizing Journalism: Either Possible or Desirable?
Christopher Meyers, Kegley Institute of Ethics, California State University, Bakersfield
Sandra L. Borden, Communication, Western Michigan University
Wendy Wyatt, Communication and Journalism, University of St. Thomas
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University
Aaron Quinn, Journalism, California State University, Chico……………………………………...51
D. Ethics Of Markets
“Playing the Market Good or Well?:The Ethical Implications of the ‘Flash Crash’” (Case Study)
Elizabeth A. M. Searing, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University
Donald Searing, Syncere Systems, Lawrenceville, Georgia
“A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics”
Shlomo Sher, Levan Institute of Humanities and Ethics, Univ. of Southern California…………....52
E. Intelligence Ethics
“Legitimizing the Study of Intelligence Ethics: A Comparison to Business Ethics”
Cynthia Jones, Mayy Avila, Pan American Collaboration for Ethics in the Professions, University of
Texas-Pan American
“Just Torture?”
Shunzo Majima, Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Hokkaido University………………...53
F. Roundtable: “Synthetic Biology and Ethics: A New Challenge”
“Uncertainties and Risks: Should We Support Synthetic Biology?”
Deborah G. Johnson, Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia
Brian Pfleger, Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin
“Synthetic Bioethics:Issues Small and Large”
Carl Mitcham, Hennebach Program in the Humanities, Colorado School of Mines
Co-chairs: Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy
of Engineering; Eleonore Pauwels, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, DC ……53
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G. Roundtable: Diversity, Pluralism, Social Work Professional Education and Practice Behaviors
Richard Spano, School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas
Terry L. Koenig, School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas
Anne R. Simpson, Institute for Ethics, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Jennifer Lisa Vest, Philosphy, University of Central Florida
Lisa M. Lee, Chief Science Officer, Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, & Laboratory Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention………………………………………………………...54
H. Measuring Ethics Education
“Assessing Graduate-Level Ethics Education: A New Qualitative Instrument”
Robert Kirkman, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Roberta M. Berry, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Developing Methods of Measuring Ethical Comprehension Among Undergraduate Students:
Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Measures”
Jill May, Department of Industrial Organizational Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
Daniel Gandara, Department of Industrial Organizational Psychology, Illinois Institute of
Technology…………………………………………………………………………………………..54
I. Hospital Ethics Committees
“Role of Clergy in Health Care Ethics Committees”
Alex Dubov, Emory University
“Physicians’ Roles on Hospital Ethics Committees (HECs)”
Charlotte McDaniel, Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University……………….55
Concurrent Session VIII
4:00 – 5:30 pm, Saturday, March 5
A. Mini Conference, “Twenty Years of Practical Ethics: Looking Back and Looking Forward”
Mini Conference Keynote: “Professional Ethics: Where We Have Been and Where We Should Go”
David H. Smith, Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University
Convenor: Lisa H. Newton, Director, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University…………....56
B. Panel: “Business Ethics Education: Retrospect and Prospect”
Panelists:
Nien-he Hsieh, Legal Studies & Business Ethics Department, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania
Thomas I. White, Center for Ethics and Business, Loyola Marymount University
Alice Eldridge, Vice President, Ethics & Business Conduct, Lockheed Martin Corporation
Aine Donovan, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics,
Dartmouth College
Chair: Marianne M. Jennings, Professor of Legal and Ethical Studies, W. P. Carey School of
Business, Arizona State University………………………………………………………………….56
C. Roundtable: Science and Engineering Ethics Editorial Board: The Role of an Academic Journal
in the Promotion of Ethics to Scientists and Engineers
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Carl Mitcham, Hennebach Program in the Humanities, Colorado School of Mines
Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy of
Engineering
Deborah G. Johnson, Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia
Chair: Raymond E. Spier, Co Editor-in-Chief Science and Engineering Ethics………………….....56
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D. Topics in Ethics
“Self-Determination as a Principle of Justice, Revisited”
Victoria I. Burke, Philosophy, University of Guelph, Toronto
“The Articulated State”
Susan M. Turner, Thompson Rivers University, Victoria, British Columbia…………………….....57
E. Ethical Issues for Clergy
“Religious Beliefs in the ICU: The Golubchuk Case”
Gregory L. Bock, Philosophy, Walters State Community College
Robert Mundle, Ethics and Spiritual Care, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
“A Gregorian Natural Law Approach to the Clergy-Penitent Privilege and the Seal of Confession”
Mark Andrew Jones, Nova Southeastern University………………………………………………...57
F. Medical Ethics
“Not-for-Profit Health Care: A Preliminary Argument”
William P. Kabasenche, Philosophy, Washington State University
“Being a Bioethicist: Questions Concerning Method and the Future of Bioethics”
Michael E. Da Silva, Law, University of Toronto…………………………………………………...58
Mini Conference Session I
7:30—9:30 pm
Roundtable: Ethical Issues in Climate Change, “Ethical Dimensions of the Phenomenon”
Lisa H. Newton, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
Monica Aufrecht, Philosophy, Simon Fraser University
Paul B. Thompson, Kellogg Professor of Agriculture, Food, and Community Ethics, Michigan State
University…………………………………………………………………………………………….60
Mini Conference Session II
8:30-10:00 am, Sunday, March 6
Roundtable: Ethical Issues in Engineering
Michael S. Pritchard, Willard Brown Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University
P. Aarne Vesilind, College of Engineering, Bucknell University, Retired
Joseph R. Herkert, Lincoln Associate Professor of Ethics and Technology, Arizona State University
Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy of
Engineering
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Richard A. Burgess, National Institute of Engineering, Texas Tech………………………………..60
Mini Conference Session III
10:00-11:30 am
Round Table Discussion: Ethical Issues in Journalism
Elaine E. Englehardt, Distinguished Professor of Ethics, Special Assistant to the President, Utah
Valley University
Stephen J. A. Ward, James E. Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, University of WisconsinMadison
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University………...60
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Concurrent Session I
10:00-11:00 a.m., Friday, March 4
I. A.
Hidden in Plain View: Feminists Doing Engineering Ethics, Engineers Doing Feminist Ethics
Donna M. Riley, Picker Engineering Program, Smith College
How has engineering ethics addressed gender concerns to date? How have the ideas of feminist
philosophers and feminist ethicists made their way into engineering ethics? What might an explicitly
feminist engineering ethics look like? This paper reviews some major themes in feminist ethics and then
considers three areas in which these themes have been taken up in engineering ethics to date. First,
Caroline Whitbeck’s work in engineering ethics integrates considerations from her own earlier writings
and those of other feminist philosophers, but does not use the feminist label. Second, efforts to
incorporate the Ethics of Care and principles of Social Justice into engineering have drawn on feminist
scholarship and principles, but these commitments can be lost in translation to the broader engineering
community. Third, the film Henry’s Daughters brings gender considerations into the mainstream of
engineering ethics, but does not draw on feminist ethics per se. The literature review and analysis of the
three examples point to future work for further developing feminist engineering ethics.
I. B.
Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Just Claims and Avoidable Losses - The Case of Zimbabwe’s
Land Seizures
Lyn Boyd-Judson, Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics, University of Southern California
The case of Zimbabwe's land seizures is one of four cases Boyd-Judson analyzes in her recent
book, Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Understanding the Enemy’s Moral Universe. The book addresses a
critical political problem of our time: how to negotiate seemingly incompatible moral values between
nations. Current normative theories tend to simplify the actions and motives of leaders at the best, and
paint enemies as immoral or evil at the worst. Boyd-Judson argues that it can be both strategically useful,
as well as ethical, to assume an enemy has just moral concerns and give these claims credence. Strategic
Moral Diplomacy explores the US and UN negotiations with Zimbabwe, Iran, Libya, and Haiti to
illustrate the practical application of strategic moral diplomacy. Through personal interviews with
negotiators and those close to them, she unearths the complex moral positions held by those involved and
arrives at workable suggestions for future diplomatic dilemmas.
I. C.
The Passion & Civility Debate Tournament: Fostering Ethical Dialogue Outside of the
Classroom
Jack Green Musselman, Kate Rosati, St.Edward’s University, Center for Ethics and Leadership
James Puglisi, St. Edward’s University, Campus Ministry
The Passion & Civility debates are not the typical high school debates or Ethics Bowl
competitions with which many of us are familiar. Instead, the main goal of our tournament is to promote
dialogue of ethical topics on campus outside of the classroom by engaging in no-preparation debates
where topics are passionately argued in a civil manner that shows respect for one’s opponent. The format
of the debate easily allows beginners and experienced debaters to take part and is intended to minimize
personal investments in particular issues because topics are not revealed to participants until a few
minutes before they debate, and the early debates (short of the Final Four stage where a winner is
determined) are also done in private. In this pedagogical demonstration we explain how the debates work
for participants and faculty and staff judges, and we will do a role play of a debate as well.
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I. D.
Responsible Conduct of Research with Computational Models and Simulations
Michael Loui, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois
David J. Kijowski, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Harry Dankowicz, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Most previous works on responsible conduct of research have focused on good practices in
laboratory experiments. Because computation now rivals experimentation as a mode of scientific
research, we sought to identify the responsibilities of researchers who use computational modeling and
simulation. We interviewed nineteen experts to collect examples of ethical issues from their experiences
in conducting research with computational models. We gathered their recommendations for guidelines for
computational research. Informed by these interviews, we describe the respective professional
responsibilities of developers and users of computational models in research. In particular, we examine
whether developers should disclose the full computational codes, and we explain how developers and
users should minimize harms from improper uses of models.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant IIS-0832843. Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, Exelon Corporation,
or the University of Illinois.
I. E.
An Undergraduate Business Ethics Curriculum: Learning and Moral Development Outcomes
Jessica McManus Warnell, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame
The presentation will include findings from a recent study exploring outcomes associated with a
business ethics curriculum over an intervention with undergraduate business students – completion of a
required course in the conceptual foundations of business ethics. A case study analysis provided results
that were coded using a rubric based on the Four Component Model of Morality and address development
of moral reasoning capacity. Initial findings indicate statistically significant change in each of four
categories of analysis of the case response, related to the moral development scale.
Findings are useful in assessing outcomes, suggesting curriculum design and providing
information for further research of moral reasoning with business students.
I. F.
Individual vs. Family Decision-Making About Posthumous Organ Donation
Alida Liberman, University of Southern California
Who decide what happens to an individual’s organs after death when the explicit decision about
donation that the individual made while living conflicts with the desires of her family? My concern in
this paper is the underexplored question of whether there are principled ethical reasons for medical
professionals to prioritize family decision-making.
I argue that prioritizing the family’s decision is indefensible from a consequentialist perspective.
If we allow into our moral reasoning consequentialist considerations about the family’s distress if we fail
to prioritize their decision, we must also consider the harm that would result from family vetoes due to the
severe organ shortage; this rules out siding with the family in cases in which the individual desired to
donate and the family vetoes the decision.
I suggest a non-consequentialist, alternative method of looking at the problem: construing the
living individual’s act of deciding to be an organ donor on the model of making a promise. I lay out two
ways in which we can understand organ donation as an act of promising: as the individual’s promise to
state institutions to allow them to use her organs after her death, or as the institutions’ promise to the
individual to use her organs after death. I argue that understanding organ donation as a promise that
institutions make to an individual is the more plausible model, and conclude that the common practice of
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prioritizing the family’s decision in all cases is not obviously ethically defensible from either a
consequentialist or a non-consequentialist perspective.
I. G.
Roundtable: Online Resources for Ethics in the Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics—
Current Resources & Plans for the Future
Rachelle Hollander, National Academy of Engineering Center for Engineering, Ethics, and
Society
Kelly Laas, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of
Technology
C.K. Gunsalus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The American COMPETES Act of 2008 has compelled scholars and institutions to think more
deeply about meaningful ways to incorporate ethical reasoning into their pedagogy and research, as well
as heightening the need to digitize and organize the thousands of articles, case studies, instruction
modules and other works that have already been developed in the fields of practical and professional
ethics. To respond to this need, the National Science Foundation is currently funding a number of projects
aimed at accomplishing this monumental task, namely to systematically organize this vast collection of
material and provide easy access for a wide audience of students, scholars and practitioners. This session
will introduce participants to two such projects, the enhancement of the Online Ethics Center (OEC) of
the National Academy of Engineering’s Center for Engineering Ethics and Society, and the development
of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics, a collaborative project headed by the
University of Urbana-Champaign. We will discuss how the enhanced OEC site and its companion
database, the Ethics Education Library, can be used by instructors, scholars and students to find seminal
readings, ethics case studies and examples and best practices for integrating ethics into technical and
professional courses and workshops, and describe the development of the National Portal, a five million
dollar project which will provide comprehensive access to existing and new scholarship in these fields, as
well as providing new, innovative methods for hosting discussions among communities of interest.
I. H.
The Problems with Instrumental Value
Caroline Christoff, Hiram College—Undergraduate
Environmentalists have an obligation to protect nature. When asked why they do so,
environmentalists often provide one of the following answers: (1) the environment has a type of
instrumental value for people and, therefore, the natural environment should be protected for the sake of
human interests, (2) the natural environment has an inherent moral value in and of itself and, therefore, it
is a prima facie wrong to harm the natural environment. In this paper, I argue that assigning the
environment instrumental value fails to guarantee protection for the natural environment. The
environmentalists’ instrumental value argument is unclear about what types of instrumental value the
natural environment provides. The argument also cannot account for conflicting interests and fails to
provide long term solutions to problems arising in natural environments. In addition, assigning
instrumental value allows people to personally define what the natural environment is, thereby failing to
ensure protection for the environment. Therefore, there are pragmatic reasons for the environmentalist to
grant the natural environment inherent value.
I. I.
Belief and Death: Capital Punishment and the Competence-for-Execution Requirement
David M. Adams, California State Polytechnic University
Prisoners on death row sometimes develop serious mental illness subsequent to trial and
sentencing. The courts have permitted the executions of certain of these individuals to go forward by
interposing a further requirement for death: “competence for execution” (or CFE). This doctrine holds
that a condemned, death-row inmate may be killed only if, at the time of his scheduled execution, he
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possesses an awareness of his impending death and the reasons for it. CFE is well known to generate
wrenching moral dilemmas for prisoners, health care professionals, and the legal system. In this paper I
do not try to add to this list of dilemmas but rather, in light of them, to examine the justification for
having such a competence requirement at all. I argue that CFE is both conceptually and normatively
indefensible and should be abandoned, along with the notion that it is permissible to kill the deeply
psychotic just so long as they meet some minimal test of readiness to die. The courts should disavow the
assumption that deeply disturbed prisoners may yet be killed as long as they are aware of specific facts,
for the narrow kind of awareness required simply cannot bear the conceptual and moral weight the courts
wish to rest upon it.
I. J.
Imperiled Newborns and the Limits of Parental Responsibility: Problems with the Child’s Best
Interest Standard
Trevor Hedberg, University of Tennessee
In “Imperiled Newborns,” Arthur Caplan and Cynthia Cohen defend the child’s best interest
standard (CBIS) as the proper means of evaluating whether treatment may be withdrawn from imperiled
newborns. In this paper, I address CBIS while considering “Imperiled Newborns” and several other
articles. First, I provide a brief overview of CBIS and its main supporting arguments. I then critique these
arguments and contend that there are no compelling reasons to give physician’s judgment preference over
parental judgment, a preference that is heavily endorsed under CBIS. Additionally, based largely on a
modified version of Judith Thomson’s violinist case, I argue that CBIS requires parents to take on duties
of care which are too extreme to be morally mandated. Finally, I argue that the standard of care required
by CBIS often forces parents to choose between two morally unacceptable alternatives: They must either
care for the child at extraordinary costs to themselves and other family members or submit the child to an
institution where he or she may be deprived of even basic care. It seems our means of making decisions
about imperiled newborn cases must be altered so that parents do not face this moral quandary and that
CBIS cannot achieve this goal in its current form. I suggest a plausible solution to the problems with
CBIS would be requiring the hospital to take responsibility for finding a suitable home for imperiled
newborns when the parents are unable or unwilling take on the duties of caring for the child.
I. K.
Citizens United and the Balance between Individual and Corporate Political Speech
Eric J. Berken, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
In an attempt to create stronger protection for free speech rights, the Supreme Court in ruling on
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), has issued a determination that limits the rights
of human citizens in favor of artificial industrial participants. The majority’s stated position that
corporations cannot be regulated differently from real human beings ignores the prior reasoned regulation.
They further assert that large sums of unregulated money accrued for capital investment cannot be
demonstrated to cause corruptions, which is an obvious mischaracterization of financial influence of the
current political process. By ignoring the purpose of the federal legislation as a balancing agent between
artificial organizations and citizens, the Supreme Court has opened the door for a centralized control of
public policy and other ideas through information dissemination that can now be dictated by financially
privileged government instantiated powerful organizations. To provide a basis for the equilibrium needed
between competing agents in the political arena my paper utilizes John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty to
demonstrate the principles that define this competition for control of knowledge and understanding
between agents. I then utilize the perspective of Milton Friedman to elaborate on the modern impact of
imbalanced regulation between citizen, state and business entity, and outline a direction toward solutions
for this difficult problem. By demonstrating the foundations of equity needed for the maximization of
liberty for all parties, I feel my paper provides fundamental philosophical groundwork that the Supreme
Court’s decision is lacking.
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I. L.
Patients, Practice, and Power: Moral Decision-making within Medicine
Barry DeCoster, Lyman Briggs College (HPS), Michigan State University
The vast and interdisciplinary literature within bioethics has mainly considered issues of
improving clinicians’ activities. Some academics have studied the changing role of patients, noting how
bioethics successfully has argued to provide patients greater autonomy, information, and control
regarding their own health. It is surprising, though, that only limited critical accounts of what it means to
be a “good patient” have been produced. Although the term “problem patient” is frequently tossed about,
there is little by way of corrective provided, or detailed moral analysis of such individuals.
In this paper, I take up Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of a “practice” (After Virtue), focusing
specifically on the kinds of excellence the practice of healthcare attempts to achieve. Primarily, this is the
goal of good patient health. Yet this conception of healthcare as a practice is too basic. I argue that it
must be expanded in two ways.
First, it must include patients as moral deliberators, active agents who participate from an
insider/outsider position in making normative judgments. Secondly, I argue that clinicians are best
positioned to help guide patients through their moral deliberations.
Concurrent Session II
11:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, Friday, March 4
II. A.
Making Science and Technology Beneficial to Society in China
Wang Yuping, Chinese Society for Dialectics of Nature, Chinese Association of Science and
Technology, Colorado School of Mines
This presentation will review the ethical aspects of making science and technology beneficial to
society in China. The ethical justification for the societal support and promotion of science and
technology in a developing country such as China is that science and technology will benefit society. In
general, scientific and technological development does contribute to the societal welfare of a developing
country. At the same time, science and technology can also be associated with harms to both human
beings and the natural environment. Some prominent recent examples from China are the Sanlu milk
contamination, Hui River pollution, “white” (plastic) pollution, and pollution. Thus, despite the many
benefits of scientific research and technological development, there is increasingly recognition of a
moral obligation to meet the challenge presented by such problems.
In critically examining this problem, it is important to note that for the general public the
authority or value of science rests to a large extent on the use of science in technology. Science is
primarily respected by the public when it is turned into some form of technology. In this respect, it is
useful to refer not to science and technology but to technoscience.
The most general cause for the harms associated with technoscientific development in China
today is that social change lags behind technoscientific change. (The problem of social or cultural lag was
initially identified by the American sociologist William Fielding Ogburn.) The following analysis focuses
on three areas in which there need to be adjustments to techno scientific change:
(1) economics and politics, (2) scientific method, and (3) ethical culture.
With regard to economics and politics: There is often too much of an emphasis on economic
growth and simply increasing GDP. To respond, it is necessary for the government to establish and
increase the power of agencies to regulate technoscience, especially with regard to food safety and
environmental protection. Specific mention will be made to the agencies in China that have these
responsibilities.
With regard to scientific method: Technoscientific analysis of a problem often remains too
limited or narrow in its analysis of a problem. Specialized disciplines have a tendency to think in terms
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of only specific disciplinary aspects of a problem. This often leads to unintended consequences in
technoscientific projects. There is a need to promote more holistic or interdisciplinary methods in
technoscience.
Finally, with regard to ethical culture: Without a respect for the ethos of science (as originally
analyzed, for instance, in the work of Robert Merton, and promoted now by educational programs in the
responsible conduct of research) scientists and engineers sometimes pursue their own self-interests at the
expense of broader social interests. There is thus a need for more general humanistic cultural education,
including ethics, in science and engineering.
II. B.
May Corporations Apologize?
Andrew I. Cohen, Georgia State University
Jennifer A. Samp, University of Georgia
Recent public acts of contrition by various sorts of corporations have elicited a challenge: perhaps
such displays of ‘corporate apology’ are but metaphors for the actual apologies that only individual
natural agents can offer. We argue against this challenge. We discuss what it means for corporations to
apologize and how it can be true that they can and ought to apologize. We argue against the notion that
the differences between natural and corporate agents preclude the possibility of corporate apologies.
II. C.
“Welfare” vs. “Social Justice”: How Should Aspirational Ethics Be Formulated?
Charles Ed Harris, Texas A&M University
Recent discussions in engineering ethics have often made reference to “social justice” in the
formulation of the more positive and aspirational aspects of engineering ethics. That is, one of the goals
of engineering should be the enhancement of the material well-being of the more disadvantaged members
of the human community. I argue that the use of the social-justice formulation of the goal (or a goal) of
engineering is both unwise and unnecessary. It is unwise because reference to social justice does not
appear in engineering codes and suggests a political agenda with which many (or most) engineers are
uncomfortable. Thus, it poses an impediment to the laudable goal of encouraging a more positive and
aspirational element in engineering ethics. It is unnecessary because the term “welfare,” which does
appear in the codes, is not as politically loaded, and is susceptible to considerable expansion and
interpretation, can accommodate many of the ideals incorporated in the term “social justice.”
II. D.
The Evidence and Ethics of Teacher Disclosure
Paula McAvoy, Educational Administration and Foundations, Illinois State University
Diana Hess, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This paper draws from the findings of a longitudinal study of civic education and high school
classrooms (N=1001) that, in part, investigated the question of whether or not teachers should disclose
their views on the issues discussed in class. We make a pragmatic argument that begins with the view that
disclosure, neutrality and advocacy are pedagogical tools that require teachers to use professional
judgment. In this case, good decision-making requires teachers to think within a normative framework
that considers: elements of the school context, the appropriate aims of education, relevant evidence, and
the values trade-offs embedded in particular decisions. We develop the argument using case studies from
three different high schools (one public, one Catholic girls school, and one Evangelical Christian school)
to show how the framework helps guide teacher practice about this issue.
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II. E.
Climate Change and Structural Emissions: Moral Obligations at the Individual Level
Monica Aufrecht, Department of Philosophy Simon Fraser University
Given that mitigating climate change is a large-scale global issue, what obligations do individuals
have to lower their personal carbon emissions? I survey recent suggestions by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
and Dale Jamieson and offer models for thinking about their respective approaches. I then present a third
model based on the notion of structural violence. While the three models are not mutually incompatible,
each one suggests a different focus for mitigating climate change. In the end, I agree with SinnottArmstrong that people have limited moral obligations to directly lower personal emissions, but I offer
different reasons for this conclusion, namely that the structural arrangements of our lives place a limit on
how much individuals can restrict their own emissions. Thus, individuals should focus their efforts on
changing the systems instead (e.g., the design of cities, laws and regulation, etc.), which will lead to lower
emissions on a larger scale.
II. F.
The More Things Change… Ethics in American Archaeology
Dru Evan McGill, Indiana University
The practice of archaeology goes well beyond discovering and writing about artifacts.
Archaeologists are confronted by situations that require delicate, complicated, and influential decisions,
whether in the field collaborating with others, in the lab or office deciding how to treat data, in
publications, in the classroom, or in interactions with colleagues, Indigenous populations, or other
stakeholders. Archaeological ethics are specific to the roles, responsibilities, and obligations of those who
do archaeology. As these roles and responsibilities have changed over time, so have the ethics that give
them meaning. Archaeologists have been thinking about ethics at a profession-wide level since at least
1960. The earliest codes developed by archaeologists were reactions to problems and issues of that time.
In this brief summary of ethics in American archaeology, I will describe the history of archaeological
ethics, compare the themes of early codes and standards of conduct to themes relevant to modern
archaeology, and discuss new methods and practices archaeologists are taking-on to address the ethical
dilemmas of the next generation.
II. G. Who Teaches Ethics? An Inquiry into the Nature of Ethics as an Academic Discipline
David McGraw, Daphyne Saunders-Thomas, Morgan Benton, Jeffrey Tang, Amanda
Biesecker, James Madison University
Disciplines serve a number of functions, including providing a community for academicians who
share a common intellectual identity. This paper presents an empirical study of the educational
backgrounds of professors currently teaching college- and university-level ethics courses in the U.S. The
purpose of the research is to discern whether there exists a community of ethics professors by examining
the educational backgrounds of those teaching ethics in American colleges and universities. The research
suggests that most professors teaching ethics courses offered through philosophy departments have
credentials in philosophy, but that the largest number of ethics courses are taught outside philosophy
departments by professors who have no degrees in philosophy.
Our research suggests that there are two very distinct kinds of ethics courses. About 46% of
undergraduate ethics courses are taught in philosophy or religion departments, and for those courses, the
instructors generally have graduate degrees in religion or philosophy, or are working towards such a
degree. On the other hand, about 54% of ethics classes are taught outside of religion or philosophy
departments, typically by professors without graduate degrees in religion or philosophy. Our research
was not able to determine whether the professors teaching these courses have availed themselves of
specific training in ethics outside of their home discipline. It appears that faculty in application areas
perceive applied ethics to be a course that can be taught by faculty who have little or no formal training in
ethics but who have graduate degrees in the relevant application area.
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II. H. Same-Sex Marriage, “Homosexual Desire,” and the Capacity to Love
Christopher Arroyo, Providence College
The issue of same-sex marriage continues to be a hot-button issue in the United States.
Opponents of same-sex marriage offer a variety of reasons in defense of their position. To my mind,
many of these arguments are motivated by one persistent belief: that homosexuals are incapable of loving
properly, especially (though not exclusively) with regard to erotic/romantic relationships. Unfortunately,
in the public discourse of the United States, arguments are seldom given in support of the truth of this
belief. That said, there are those who formulate arguments designed to show that homosexuals are
incapable of loving properly. One notable example is the Catholic Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, Fabian
Bruskowitz. In “Homosexuality and Catholic Doctrine,” Bishop Bruskowitz argues that homosexuals are
incapable of genuine sexual and affective complementarity. It is the inability of homosexuals to have
genuine affective complementarity, according to Bruskowitz, that makes it impossible for homosexuals to
love. Homosexuals lack this type of complementarity, he claims, because homosexual sex acts are of
necessity hedonistic, and so-called homosexual desire, which is the kind of sexual desire characteristic of
those who are homosexual, is by definition narcissistic.
In this paper I shall argue against Bruskowitz, claiming that his position rests on an erroneous
conception of desire. Once this conception of desire is corrected, I shall argue, the myth of “homosexual
desire” is debunked and along with it the main argument in support of the claim that homosexuals are
incapable of love. I proceed as follows. First, I explain the ways in which I use the term “homosexual”
and its cognates in the paper, drawing on recent sociological and anthropological literature. Second, I lay
out Bruskowitz’s position, drawing particular attention to (1) its independence from any teachings
regarding Catholic revelation and (2) the picture of homosexual desire contained in his view. Third
(relying on Gareth Moore’s, A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality) I sketch an alternative,
more philosophically cogent account of desire, one that recognizes what Moore calls the intensionality of
desire. Finally, I briefly indicate the implications of my argument for the debate about same-sex marriage
taking place in the United States.
II. I.
Rawls and the Epistemic Obligations of Public Officials
Matt Deaton, University of Tennessee
The preeminent political philosopher of the twentieth century, John Rawls argues that in light of
the burdens of judgment and consequent fact of reasonable pluralism, liberal democratic citizens and
officials have an obligation to draw from a common pool of premises and values when deciding
constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Contrary to some contemporary Rawlsians, I contend
that a correct understanding of Rawls’s work requires that political participants be exclusively motivated
by these shared public reasons.
Though Rawls sometimes implies that citizens and officials need only offer justifications in
public language for policies truly motivated by nonpublic considerations, this standard is unacceptable on
grounds that it undermines mutual respect, the epistemic benefits of deliberation, and legitimate state
coercion in ways antithetical to liberalism. Accordingly, the Principle of Public Motivation (PPM) for
which I argue requires that citizens and officials vote, advocate, and legislate according to whichever
policy they sincerely find most just according exclusively to their public political lights.
An implication of my view is that comprehensive doctrines, both religious and secular, are to be
relegated to an even lesser role than Rawls himself recognizes—to that of what Rawls calls conjecture.
Finally, these standards apply to all citizens, but given their power to more greatly influence policy, and
their special ability to instigate or quell instability, public officials bear an amplified obligation to satisfy
PPM.
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II. J.
Establishing an International ‘Voluntouring’ Ethic
Shelby Rogala, Montana State University
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical obligations of international volunteers and
volunteer agencies. One might think that volunteers and volunteer agencies have minimal obligations to
the communities they serve precisely because it is voluntary and non-profit. That is, we tend to think of
volunteering as a “supererogatory act” that goes above and beyond the call of duty. However, new ethical
problems have emerged, particularly in the area of short-stay volunteering, or “voluntouring.” I will
argue that volunteer practices are often carried out in ways that deny the autonomy of local populations.
However, this does not translate into international volunteering as an inherently unethical practice to be
condemned. Rather, I will argue both organizations and volunteers have moral duties to the populations
they serve. I will draw out the implications that my analysis has for developing an “international
volunteering ethic.”
II. K. Ethical Justification for Subjective Journalism: A Casuistical Approach
Keith Thompson, Western Michigan University
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the airing of the television news documentary, “Harvest
of Shame,” a seminal piece of investigative journalism produced by CBS News. The program was
narrated (and written in part) by Edward R. Murrow, who is often credited with “inventing” television
news. Though Murrow is respected for aspiring to the highest standards of unbiased reporting, “Harvest
of Shame” represents a different style of journalism – advocacy journalism – where the reporter is not a
dispassionate disseminator of information, but a partisan advocate, identifying problems and
recommending solutions. This style of subjective journalism deviates from many of the tenants of
objective reporting which are embraced by mainstream journalists.
In this essay, I propose to offer ethical justification for advocacy journalism as a style of
journalism that exists as an exception inside the mainstream of news reporting. I propose to examine the
concept of duties from a deontological perspective, specifically utilizing philosopher W. D. Ross’ (1930)
notion of prima facie duties. Using a casuistical approach, I propose to identify a Paradigm case when a
journalist’s obligation to objectivity may be superseded by other duties which will then serve to support
the ethical justification for subjectivity (advocacy). Through casuistry, I propose to illuminate a
situation(s) where most would agree that the ethical obligation to objectivity can be set aside, with certain
limitations, identifying what those limitations might be and when they might come into play. Possible
benefits of applying the paradigm to “hard cases” are discussed.
II. L.
Saving for Retirement without Harming Others
Steven Daskal, Northern Illinois University
In this paper I discuss moral issues raised by 401(k) retirement plans. I argue that participation in
401(k) plans is strongly encouraged by the following three factors: (1) the lack of adequate public
provision of retirement support, (2) the tax-advantaged status of such plans, and (3) the availability of
matching contributions from employers. Given that most 401(k) plans fail to offer adequate socially
responsible investment options, these factors constitute significant pressure to commit indirect harm by
owning stock in companies that engage in harmful behavior. In order to eliminate this pressure, I argue
that the federal government ought to require 401(k) plans to include a range of socially responsible
investment options. I argue that such a requirement would not constitute an inappropriate government
interference in the market because 401(k) plans are themselves the result of government regulation and
because the proposed change would enhance the freedom of individual investors rather than restricting it.
I further argue that corporations have obligations to incorporate socially responsible options into their
401(k) plans even without a government mandate, and that individuals have at least some obligation to
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take advantage of such options when they are available and to advocate for them when they are
unavailable.
Concurrent Session III
1:45-3:45 p.m., Friday, March 4
III. A. Roundtable: “What I Learned from The Association’s Graduate Research Ethics Education
Project (GREE) and what Universities Could Learn from GREE for Research Ethics
Education”
Participant Reflections:
Jeffry L. Dudycha, Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina
Todd M. Freeberg, Psychology, University of Tennessee
Julia Frugoli, Genetics and Biochemistry, Clemson University
Dee Anne Goodenough-Lashua, Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame
Dru E. McGill, Anthropology, Indiana University
Sara E. Wilson, Mechanical Engineering, University of Kansas
For seven years the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics did intensive research ethics
education with over 120 graduate students and post doctoral participants under an NSF funded grant
(Graduate Research Ethics Education). Six of those participants, many who are now faculty, reflect on
how that educational experience subsequently shaped their own perceptions and observations of research
ethics education in the university and what universities might learn from this project.
III. B. Panel: “Emerging Issues in Business Ethics”
Panelists:
Patricia H. Werhane, Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Director, Institute for Business
& Professional Ethics, DePaul University
Chris MacDonald, Visiting Scholar, Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics & Board Effectiveness,
University of Toronto
Tim C. Mazur, Chief Operating Officer, Ethics and Compliance Officer Association
Elizabeth Ricci, The Proctor & Gamble Company
George Brenkert, Georgetown University
As we move into the second decade of the new millennium and the aftermath of the Great
Recession, it is important to take time to consider the issues business ethics will face in the coming
decade. Globalization certainly remains on the table, but the responsibilities of business for the problem
of poverty appear to be an ever greater issue. The use of social media for the revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt has been widely discussed, but what is the role of business vis-à-vis the social media, not only with
regard to its customers and their countries, but also with regard to the employees of business? How is
business to address its ever greater exposure to ethical issues due to the third parties, e.g. suppliers,
service contractors, etc. it must deal with? These are just a few of the many urgent issues facing business
ethics at the local, national, and international levels within which business operates. Join us to discuss
these and other issues.
III. C. Author Meets the Critics: Mass Surveillance and State Control: The Total Information
Awareness Project (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010)
Elliot D. Cohen, Indian River State College
Critics:
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University
22
Donald A. Petkus, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
Donald Searing, Syncere Systems
David P. Schmidt, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
Richard Fitzpatrick, Center for Professional Ethics, Manhattan College
A global system of mass, warrantless, government surveillance now imperils privacy and other
civil liberties essential to sustaining the free world. This project to unilaterally, totally control information
flow is a product of complex, ongoing interplay between technological, political, legal, corporate,
economic, and social factors, including research and development of advanced, digital technologies; an
unremitting “war on terror”; relaxed surveillance laws; government alliances with information technology
companies; mass media manipulation; and corporate globalism. This book details these and other factors
contributing to this degenerative trend; specifies recommendations for constructive change; and provides
a platform for grassroots efforts to stop the decline before it is too late.
III. D. Author Meets the Critics: The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics
(Culture of the Land) (The University Press of Kentucky, 2010)
Paul B. Thompson, Kellogg Professor of Agriculture, Food, and Community Ethics, Michigan
State University
Critics:
Gregory J. Cooper, Director, Society and the Professions Program in Ethics, Washington and
Lee University
Jennifer J. Everett, Philosophy, DePauw University
Richard A. Russo, Geography Frostburg State University
As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the
forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the
earth’s ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve
sustainable development. In The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics, Paul B.
Thompson articulates a new agrarian philosophy, emphasizing the vital role of agrarianism in modern
agricultural practices. Thompson, a highly regarded voice in environmental philosophy, unites concepts
of agrarian philosophy, political theory, and environmental ethics to illustrate the importance of creating
and maintaining environmentally conscious communities. Thompson describes the evolution of agrarian
values in America, following the path blazed by Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, and Wendell Berry.
Providing a pragmatic approach to ecological responsibility and commitment, The Agrarian Vision is a
significant, compelling argument for the practice of a reconfigured and expanded agrarianism in our
efforts to support modern industrialized culture while also preserving the natural world.
III. E. Ethical Treatment of Animals
1.
“Killing in the Name”: On the Racialization of Pit Bulls and the Politics of Breed
Specific Legislation
Robin James, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL) purports to protect innocent dogs and people by banning the
ownership and prescribing the euthanization of specific dog breeds thought to be inherently, inalienably
violent and aggressive—i.e., pit bulls. Using Falguni Sheth’s account of race as “unruliness,” I argue that
pit bulls have been racialized, and that this racialization motivates the otherwise unjustifiably inhumane
treatment of pit bulls. Through an analysis of both specific BSL bills and media coverage of “pit bull”
attacks, I argue that pit bulls are associated with a specific brand of racialized “unruliness”—i.e., urban
black masculinity. In contexts where explicit racism is both illegal and immoral, BSL serves as a proxy
for anti-black racism. Thus, I argue that BSL is an attempt not to contain dog violence per se, but the
23
unruliness associated with urban black masculinity; in this sense, then, the dogs become innocent victims
of our racism.
2.
Rawls and Animals: An Exploration of the Compatibility of Rawls’s Theory of Justice with an
Ethic that Takes the Consideration of Animal Interests Seriously
Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
Many have criticized John Rawls for being wrongfully incomplete in theorizing his conception of
justice because he fails to include animals (or, at least all sentient creatures) as proper subjects of justice.
This paper will consider two of the most common criticisms in this arena – the argument from marginal
cases and the argument from the original position - as well as a third, less common criticism. I show that
the first two arguments can be easily dispelled by considering Rawls’s claims in the context of his overall
project. However, the third argument cannot be as easily dismissed. The problem can be described in the
following way: since some non-participants (what I shall call domesticated animals) in social cooperation
bear some of the worst burdens of social cooperation, the treatment of animals is not completely out of
the realm of the political. As such, the possibility of the moral and legal considerability of domesticated
animals within the confines of a liberal democracy needs to be examined. At first glimpse, it might
appear that even if Rawls’s theory is compatible with the consideration of animal interests as a matter of
law, such consideration is necessarily dependant upon this view being the majority moral consensus.
(This, of course, is a very big problem for those who believe that the consideration of animal interests
should not be a function of the majority’s moral preference.) However, I show that animal interests can
be considered (if only indirectly) by appealing to political values that stretch across competing
conceptions of the good. Thus, I conclude that while the critics are right to point out that Rawls does not
consider animals proper subjects of justice, there is still room in his theory for the protection of animal
interests.
3.
Applying Rawls’ Theory of Justice: Distributing Human Resources within the Animal Rights
Community
Alan C. Clune, Sam Houston State University
In this paper, using John Rawls’ theory of justice, I argue for fair guidelines for the distribution of
animal rights community’s resources. More specifically, I argue that if we apply Rawls’ theory to a
limited society, composed of only the animals of concern and their advocates, we must support two
principles of distribution: 1) That no class of animal ought to be abandoned for the sake of utility, and 2)
That the resources of the animal rights community ought to be distributed to the level of suffering of the
class of animal. The first principle can be seen as a non-negotiable non-abandonment principle. The
second principle states what actual conditions ought to guide the distribution within the restraints imposed
by the first principle.
III. F. Health Care Policy
1.
The Argument from Potential: Nonsense in the Abortion Debate
Matthew C. Altman, Central Washington University
One classic argument against the moral permissibility of abortion is the argument from potential.
In this paper, I argue that the argument does not need to be refuted because the concept of potentiality is
perniciously vague and ultimately nonsensical. To specify the meaning of the term, one must make a
series of unsustainable distinctions between active and passive potentiality, and between internal and
external causes. These distinctions are untenable in general, but they are especially problematic with
regard to fetuses, whose existence depends almost entirely on the pregnant woman. In addition, those who
appeal to natural potential have trouble accounting for the value of embryos that result from in vitro
24
fertilization or fetuses that are saved by fetal surgery. Finally, the argument from potential seems to rest
on a biological claim with clear moral implications, but in fact it depends on an Aristotelian worldview
that is philosophically and scientifically bankrupt. Proponents of the argument from potential assume that
there is a single path of actualization that trumps all others, because they understand a fetus’s potential
through the actual (personhood), the latter of which is primary. But the idea that there is one purpose that
is present in a thing from its conception is inconsistent with a causal explanation of natural phenomena.
2.
Limited Resources and Tough Choices: Deciding Between Identifiable and Statistical Persons
Jeff Cervantez, The University of Tennessee
In this paper I explore an important human phenomenon, namely, people generally value
identifiable lives more than statistical ones. As a result, a disproportionate amount of resources are
allocated to save identifiable patients compared with statistical ones. I call this the psychological
phenomenon of identifiable lives (PPOIL), where an identifiable life is a known person (or group of
people) and a statistical life is an unknown person (or group of persons). I contend that PPOIL presents a
formable obstacle to efficiently and ethically allocating resources (in this paper I consider medical
resources but the same phenomenon arises elsewhere). In the end, I think an acceptable approach to this
problem must recognize PPOIL as a legitimate human response to those in need. Such a response
however, should only be tolerated within reasonable limits. Respecting PPOIL shouldn’t come at too high
a cost to society or other patients, including statistical persons. So, I propose a novel approach to this
problem. I conclude that PPOIL needs to be respected, but such respect must be balanced by other
morally relevant considerations, which includes taking statistical lives seriously.
III. G. Teaching Research Ethics
1.
Jeopardy for Engineering Ethics: Integrating Games
Marilyn Dyrud, Oregon Institute of Technology
Engineering is a naturally competitive field. As students, budding engineers may participate in a
number of national contests: The American Society of Civil Engineering, for example, has steel bridge
and concrete canoe contests; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers sponsors a Baja car contest;
the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration supports a mine design contest. Other organizations
sponsor design competitions for a myriad of creations: windmills, water treatment systems, micro
mouses, chemical cars, kinetic sculptures, Lego robots, etc. As private sector professionals, they compete
for jobs via proposals and bids.
It seems logical, then, that using games as a methodology to teach engineering ethics would
appeal these particular students. Indeed, as the literature indicates, gaming is a highly effective method of
engaging students in course materials. This pedagogical presentation will feature the popular game show
Jeopardy. Specifically, the presentation will focus on the following:
•
•
•
Briefly acquaint the audience with the literature about gaming
Have the audience actually play Jeopardy, as a demonstration of classroom usage
Explain how to develop the game board (with written instructions)
In addition, the audience will receive a bibliography of the more prominent articles written on this
subject, as well as a listing of websites that offer free game templates.
25
2.
Integrating Mechanical and Ethical Reasoning through Inverted Instruction of Ethical Cases
Christopher Papadopoulos, William Frey, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez
The method of teaching engineering ethics by integrating ethics content into technical
engineering courses is well established. Not only does this approach advance teaching of ethics, but also,
arguably, the teaching of engineering, especially when one adopts the view that no true engineering
problems are purely technical or economic, but equally social, ethical, and political.
The traditional manner in which ethical cases are introduced into technical courses might be
considered retrospective. Cases are presented with the benefit of hindsight, leaving students to analyze the
ethical and technical issues as well-structured problems in which the underlying issues are often reduced
to “obvious” abstractions and basic principles.
This paper is concerned with the inversion of this process to use cases prospectively to engage
students in the imaginative process of extrapolating away from abstractions into real systems that provide
social functionality. This requires students to wrestle with ill-structured situations in which “good” design
decisions and their outcomes – both technical and ethical – are not obvious.
To illustrate this idea, we provide an account of this approach that we are currently implementing
in engineering statics related to the case of the collapse of the walkway at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency
in 1981. Initially, a bare abstraction, absent of all references to the case, is presented in which students are
asked to use basic concepts of static equilibrium to distinguish the behavior of two competing designs.
Then, a series of transitional exercises leads the students see the abstraction in increasingly complex
situations, culminating with the real details of the actual case. At each stage of this process, instructor
comments and feedback are provided to students.
More generally, we will discuss our impressions of how this process works, using our own
observations and feedback collected from students. In particular, we will discuss the potential benefits of
this method to give students a sense of the real conditions under which people make bad decisions. We
will argue that this process will help our students approach real world problems with greater ethical and
technical maturity.
3.
What if you don’t get to take an ethics course? An alternate approach – industry sponsored
undergraduate student activities
Halley D. Sanchez, Dana Collins, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Let us assume as a working hypothesis – which should not seem odd to members of APPE– that
it is of positive value that during their years of study students take a course in practical or professional
ethics, or that they have some other exposure to professional ethics. The question then arises: what about
those students who are not able to take an ethics course? This might occur for various reasons: lack of
interest on the part of a student or the advisor, lack of space in the program of study, unavailability of the
resources, etc. As ethics educators, do we have an alternative? At the University of Puerto Rico at
Mayaguez (UPRM) we have developed an alternative to serve this need: industry sponsored
undergraduate student activities. In this paper, after a short summary of some of the problems we have
encountered with our ethics across the curriculum approach, we report on the industry co-sponsored
ethics workshops we have developed and carried out to help students who have not had the opportunity to
take an ethics course to acquire some ethics awareness training. One of the workshops described includes
a unique ethics bowl type experience.
III. H. Professional Ethics
1.
Ethical Perspectives and the Professions
Patrick Croskery, Ohio Northern University
26
There are many dimensions to the debate about the nature of the professions. In this paper I
argue that competing ethical perspectives provide us with a powerful means to explore the fundamental
nature of the professions. In particular, I will suggest that accounts from consequentialist, deontological,
and virtue-ethical perspectives can be usefully juxtaposed to glean insight into what is at stake in our
understanding of professions.
2.
Towards Teaching Professionalism Concretely: A Developmental Perspective on Affective
Formation and Affective Learning Outcomes
David T. Ozar, Loyola University Chicago
The term, “professionalism,” as I shall use it here will refer to the set of personal characteristics
and patterns of conduct that we associate with the ideal member of a particular profession. While the
articulation of the cognitive and practical goals of professional education has increased in specificity and
concreteness over the last two decades, our society’s professions and our students and scholars of
professional ethics have not been very successful in articulating in concrete terms the aims of the affective
component of professional formation. We need a much clearer understanding in concrete terms of the
personal characteristics and habits of conduct that the ideal members of the various professions ought to
possess in the daily practice of their profession. After briefly reviewing proposals I have made elsewhere
to contribute to the “ethical criteria” side of this concern, I offer two initial pedagogical contributions on
the personal characteristics side, i.e. for educators concerned with the affective learning needed to achieve
professionalism in one’s specific profession. First, I identify six kinds of human affective activity that
educators need to consider for professional formation of their students and explain how they that form a
plausible developmental model of affective growth. Second, I offer pedagogical reflections on the role of
learning habits in achieving professionalism, on the role of affective learning in the formation of such
habits, and on the role of the teacher and the institution in facilitating the learning of the habits of
professionalism by those they teach.
III. I.
Author Meets the Critics: Rethinking the Ethics of Clinical Research: Widening the Lens
(Oxford University Press, 2010)
Alan Wertheimer, University of Vermont
Critics:
Lisa M. Rasmussen, Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Kathryn M. Partin, Research Integrity and Compliance Review Office, Colorado State
University
Jennifer M. McCafferty, Assistant Dean for Research, Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine,
University of Miami
Clinical research requires that some people be used and possibly harmed for the benefit of others.
What justifies such use of people? This book provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of several
crucial issues raised by that question.
Much writing on the ethics of research with human subjects assumes that participation in research
is a distinctive activity that requires distinctive moral principles. In most contexts, we allow people to
choose the activities in which they engage. By contrast, people are permitted to participate in research
only after Institutional Review Boards determine that it is appropriate for them to do so. Although we
assume that consent to participate in research must be preceded by an elaborate disclosure of information,
we make no such assumption in many other areas of life. Although it is thought to be morally problematic
to provide financial inducements to prospective subjects, we make no such assumptions when we hire
people as loggers, fishermen, and fire fighters. Although we readily accept the "off-shoring" of
manufacturing, many regard the off-shoring of medical research with great skepticism. This book seeks to
widen the lens through which we consider such issues. When we do so, we will find that many standard
principles of research ethics are difficult to defend.
27
The book first argues that because respect for "autonomy" has been a central tenet of research
ethics, many have failed to recognize that the structure of the regulation of research is deeply paternalistic
and have therefore failed to justify such paternalism. The book then rejects “the autonomous
authorization” model that characterizes most writing in bioethics and argues for a “fair transaction”
model. Although many worry that the use of financial payment to recruit research subjects is coercive or
constitutes an undue inducement, the book argues that most of those worries are misplaced. Shifting its
attention to research in developing societies, the book considers the claim that international researchers
exploit research abroad and often exploits its subjects. Finally, the book considers the claim that because
researchers benefit from their use of research subjects, they acquire special obligations to them or their
communities.
III. J. Topics in Journalism Ethics
Journalist, Doctor, or Both?: Mixing Reporting and Medical Care After the
Haiti Earthquake
David Ferman, University of Oklahoma
The earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010 marked the first time that medical reporters
from four major American television networks covered a natural disaster. Reporting by CNN’s Dr.
Sanjay Gupta, CBS’s Dr. Jennifer Ashton and others was sharply criticized by medical and media
ethicists for the amount of time the networks gave to their own reporters and lack of attention to patient
confidentiality, among other issues. This study uses semi-structured interviews with three journalism and
medical ethicists and the media critic of a major American newspaper, all of whom were highly critical of
the networks’ Haiti coverage and the medical reporters’ mix of care-giving and reporting, to discuss the
ethical issues put into play when physicians are the primary reporters of a major disaster. Based on these
interviews, as well as the tenets of communitarian- and agape-based ethical theory and existing literature
on the common themes found in television disaster coverage, the study also constructs a six-part
guideline detailing how physician/reporters and their supervisors can better address these ethical concerns
the future. These guidelines include providing more balanced coverage to both real-time medical
assistance given by the network physician/reporters and the overall scope of relief efforts by local
medical personnel and international aid workers. This paper is meant to further the dialogue on these
issues and how communitarian and agape ethical theories can be applied to television news coverage of
disasters.
2.
Doctors, Journalists, Victims and Frames: Communications from Medécins Sans
Frontières/Doctors Without Borders
Valerie C. Aquila, Indiana University
With sentiments in the intellectual community that NGOs portray victims solely as victims (i.e.,
lacking in personhood) and that NGOs are possibly doing more harm than good, the ability of Medécins
Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to manage their media output in an effective and
respectful manner is something that needs to be explored for potential use by other NGOs.
Didier Fassin accuses many NGOs of perpetuating a “humanitarian reduction of the victim,”
which he defines as characterizing the victims of atrocities as “those who can exist only as objects (the
unfortunate whose suffering is testified to in front of the world).” MSF is used here to analyze how
Fassin’s claim has played out at one NGO.
I use framing theory (episodic/thematic and morality frames) as a method of analysis for these
articles, which focus on MSF’s response to the Haiti disaster of January 2010. The two research questions
are:
1) How is the episodic frame used by the MSF communications staff in conjunction with
requests for public or additional medical support?
28
2) Does the MSF communications staff participate in Fassin’s framing of the “humanitarian
reduction of the victim,” or do they present the victim in a different way?
In answering these questions, I will explain how MSF created a systematic pattern of using episodic
frames to heighten awareness of pressing issues discussed in the thematically framed articles or the press
releases. I also maintain that the MSF communications staff’s coverage of victims refutes Fassin’s claim
of the NGO reduction of the victim.
Concurrent Session IV
4:15-5:45 p.m., Friday, March 4
IV. A.
Author Meets the Critics: Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the
Social Sciences (The Johns Hopkins University Press)
Zachary Schrag, History, George Mason University
Critics:
John J. Laukaitis, Education, Elmhurst College
Douglas J. Adams, Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Arkansas
William L. Gannon, Special Assistant, Research Ethics and Integrity, Office of the
Vice President, University of New Mexico
University researchers in the United States seeking to observe, survey, or interview people are
required first to complete ethical training courses and to submit their proposals to an institutional review
board (IRB). Under current rules, IRBs have the power to deny funding, degrees, or promotion if their
recommended modifications to scholars’ proposals are not followed. This volume explains how this
system of regulation arose and discusses its chilling effects on research in the social sciences and
humanities.
Zachary M. Schrag draws on original research and interviews with the key shapers of the
institutional review board regime to raise important points about the effect of the IRB process on
scholarship. He explores the origins and the application of these regulations and analyzes how the rules - initially crafted to protect the health and privacy of the human subjects of medical experiments -- can
limit even casual scholarly interactions such as a humanist interviewing a poet about his or her writing.
In assessing the issue, Schrag argues that biomedical researchers and bioethicists repeatedly excluded
social scientists from rule making and ignored the existing ethical traditions in nonmedical fields.
Ultimately, he contends, IRBs not only threaten to polarize medical and social scientists, they also create
an atmosphere wherein certain types of academics can impede and even silence others.
The first work to document the troubled emergence of today’s system of regulating scholarly
research, Ethical Imperialism illuminates the problems caused by simple, universal rule making in
academic and professional research. This short, smart analysis will engage scholars across academia.
IV. B. Panel: Economics and Ethics: Dodd-Frank and Financial Reform
Panelists:
John R. Boatright, Professor of Business Ethics, Loyola University-Chicago
Nicholas P. Sargen, Chief Investment Officer, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, a
division of Western Southern Life
Kevin Bass, Financial Analyst, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, a division of
Western Southern Life
Ron Duska, Director of the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services
Chair: Gretchen A. Winter, Executive Director of the Center for Professional Responsibility in
Business and Society at the University of Illinois College of Business
The 2,300 plus pages of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill signed into law in August included
29
a variety of corporate governance changes that raise business ethics issues, and regulatory agencies are
in the process of interpreting those requirements in the rule-making process. We’ll start with a
discussion about what economic conditions led to the reform and explore the financial implications of
the legislation. We’ll look at specific provisions as well, including the requirement that public
companies include a “say-on-pay” vote at their 2010 annual meetings and regularly thereafter. Join us as
we ask those who study ethics in the financial arena to help us explore the ethical dilemmas that will
have to be confronted by business as this legislation and supporting regulations are developed and
implemented. Gretchen Winter, Executive Director of the Center for Professional Responsibility in
Business and Society at the University of Illinois College of Business, will moderate a panel of
academic and corporate representatives who will better position us to understand the ethical aspects of
financial reform.
IV. C.
AEJMC Panel: Ethics of Data Mining: Media, Privacy and Technology
Convenor:
Jan Leach, Journalism & Mass Communication, Kent State University
Panelists:
Bernhard Debatin, Journalism, Ohio University
Marianne Ryan, School of Information, University of Michigan
Sarah Cohen, Duke University
This panel will examine issues around data-mining, media and technology. Data mining includes
accessing publicly available information, looking for patterns within it, analyzing it and publishing. It’s
a new and powerful technique for citizen journalists and community websites, for traditional reporters
and for many other businesses and professionals.
• For citizen journalists and social media, data mining provides micro-info that can help people
learn intricate, but significant things about their communities.
• For traditional journalists and legacy media, data mining has been used as an investigative
reporting tool, but the increased amount of data offers great potential for accountability in
journalism.
• For businesses, data mining presents opportunities for research into products, clients and
customers at levels never before imagined.
• For technology, data mining raises questions of availability of information, sorting techniques,
security and analysis.
Altogether, the ethical ramifications of data mining are significant and increasing.
Bernhard Debatin Ethics of Data Mining: The Need for Privacy Literacy
My paper will first explore different types of privacy invasion through data mining in online
social networks. It will then briefly discuss philosophical approaches to privacy and how violations of
privacy can be ethically justified, asking if and how the notion of informed consent can be applied as a
criterion for the ethical justifiability and acceptability of privacy invasion. Since social media change the
very fabric of the public/private relationship, it will become clear that a reevaluation of the two main
types of privacy protection, the spatial and temporal approach, is necessary. This also implies a
reorientation of ethics, education, and social media design toward advancing privacy literacy.
IV. D. Panel: Immigration: is it (Un) Just to Exclude?
Convenor: Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Dr. James Dale Ethics Center, Youngstown State University
1.
“Just Excludability and Reciprocity”
Alan Tomhave, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University
2.
“The Rights of Peoples to Occupy Land (to the Exclusion of Others)”
30
3.
Lisa H. Newton, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
“Don’t Fence Me In (or Out): Moral Considerations for an Inclusive Immigration
Policy”
Christina M. Bellon, Center for Practical and Professional Ethics, California State
University Sacramento
1. Just Excludability and Reciprocity
Alan Tomhave, Youngstown State University
I take the presumptive argument in favor of just excludability to rest on one moral principle and
one factual claim. This paper will look at this argument in the context of immigration—primarily as the
issue exists in the United States. The moral principle is that we may justly exclude others from things
that we justly own. The factual premise in the immigration context is that the US justly owns the
territory of the US, which is a part of the claim that the US is a sovereign state. From these two
premises, the conclusion that the US may justly deny entry into, and justly remove from, the territory of
the US is obvious. A simple way to think about this argument regarding this issue is to consider the
analogous claim that I may exclude from my home anyone that I choose.
This paper attempts to show the falsity of the moral premise at work in this presumptive
argument. We will focus primarily on three attempts. The first is that the ownership of the territory of
the US could constitute a violation of the Lockean Proviso that we leave ‘enough and as good’ for others
when we appropriate natural resources. The second is that we may owe others compensation for past
wrongs. Both of these are shown to be violations of the factual premise of the presumptive argument.
The third attempt is based on reciprocity. This third attempt is the only one of the three that has a hope
of challenging the moral principle at work in the argument. This paper will attempt to make the case for
this third option, arguing that others who benefit us have a claim to the benefits of their labor. In some
cases this will result in the conclusion that those who we allow into the US through a de facto policy of
hiring illegal immigrants (in some industries) have a claim right to goods and services within the US.
2. Don’t Fence Me In (or Out): Moral Considerations for an Inclusive Immigration Policy
Christina Bellon, California State University, Sacramento
Let me begin by indicating what I take to be the central question of immigration reform in the
21st Century: How can human migration be facilitated to mutual benefit, where beneficiaries include not
only immigrants and their employers, but also the host communities in their broadest sense and the
communities of origin from which immigrants come?
As a recent immigrant, I cannot help but see myself in many of the policy recommendations
currently under consideration, especially those which call for a shift in immigration preference toward
skilled/highly skilled labor and which direct immigration policy toward the promotion of permanent
rather than temporary statuses. However, I am also keenly aware of the recent scholarship, especially
that originating from parts of the world from which many people seek to emigrate, which remind us
there are the two sides to the sword of immigration. As highly skilled and promising young people come
to countries like the US, Canada, UK, France, etc., they leave behind communities struggling to build
their political and economic resources. As immigrant accepting nations draw the best and brightest from
around the world, what is the effect on those who remain in the communities left behind, what sort of
future can they hope for, and who will help build it? Further, as immigrants come for jobs, education,
and careers, we could similarly ask into which communities are they to live, among whom shall they be
welcomed, and to what purpose? Immigration is as much about employment and economics as it is
about building communities, both the host communities and the communities of origin. I will argue that
as immigration policy is reformed to be more inclusive of migrants it may lose its moral legitimacy, just
as more restrictive policies which exclude migrants have been argued to lack. In this essay, I present
31
some of the more controversial and resilient moral challenges for immigration policy reform from the
perspective of the implications for community construction.
IV. E.
Author Meets the Critics: The Ethics of Parenthood (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Norvin W. Richards, University of Alabama
Critics:
Claudia J. Mills, Philosophy, University of Colorado
Sara Goering, Philosophy and Program on Values in Society, University of Washington
Julia A. Pedroni, Williams College
This book explores the moral relationship between parents and children from slightly before the
cradle to slightly before the grave. It develops a unique version of the view that biological parents
ordinarily have a right to raise their children, then applies this view to cases including those of Baby
Jessica and Baby Richard, prenatal abandonment, babies switched at birth and sent home with the wrong
parents, and families separated by war or natural disaster.
The book offers views about the obligations parents have while their children are young and
under their care, the obligations children have at that time, and what love has to do with it. These
chapters contend children have a claim of their own to have their autonomy respected, and that this
claim is stronger the better the grounds for believing that the child’s actions express a self of his or her
own (an idea that book explains). A final set of chapters explores the period after the children have
become adults. It offers views about what duties parents have at this stage of life, about what it is to treat
a grown child as an adult, and about what obligations grown children owe their parents.
IV. F. Author Meets the Critics: The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation (Routledge,
April 2011)
Sarah Clark Miller, University of Memphis
Critics:
Allison Wolf, Philosophy, Simpson College
Peggy DesAutels, Philosophy, University of Dayton
Kristen Hessler, Philosophy, University at Albany, SUNY
In this book, Sarah Clark Miller illuminates the philosophical importance of the notion of need
and constructs an ethical framework through which we can determine which needs have moral
significance. She synthesizes insights from Kantian and feminist ethics to establish that our inescapable
interdependence gives rise to a duty to care for the fundamental needs of others. We are obligated not
merely to meet others’ needs, but to do so in a manner that expresses “dignifying care,” a concept Miller
originates to capture how human interactions can grant or deny equal moral standing and inclusion in a
moral community. Miller argues that meeting others’ needs also entails bolstering their agency,
understood in a broad way that moves beyond the conventional identification of agency with rational
capacity and foregrounds human emotional and relational abilities. She illustrates these theoretical
developments by examining two cases where urgent needs require a caring and dignifying response: the
needs of the elderly and the needs of distant strangers. The work as a whole provides a compelling case
for the moral significance of human need, a central, yet undertheorized concept in ethics.
IV. G. Author Meets the Critics: Personal Identity and Fractured Selves: Perspectives from
Philosophy, Ethics and Neuroscience (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
Debra J. H. Mathews, Assistant Director, Science Programs Berman Institute of
Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University
Critics:
Deborah Mower, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University
Monica E. Calkins, Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
32
This book brings together some of the best minds in neurology and philosophy to discuss the
concept of personal identity and the moral dimensions of treating brain disease and injury. The
contributors engage a crucial question: When an individual’s personality changes radically because of
disease or injury, should this changed individual be treated as the same person?
Rapid advances in brain science are expanding knowledge of human memory, emotion, and cognition
and pointing the way toward new approaches for the prevention and treatment of devastating illnesses
and disabilities. Through case studies of Alzheimer disease, frontotemporal dementia, deep brain
stimulation, and steroid psychosis, the contributors highlight relevant ethical and social concerns that
clinicians, researchers, and ethicists are likely to encounter.
Personal Identity and Fractured Selves represents the first formal collaboration between the
Brain Sciences Institute and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, both at the Johns Hopkins University.
Contributors: Samuel Barondes, M.D., University of California, San Francisco; David M. Blass, M.D.,
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Patrick Duggan, A.B., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute
of Bioethics; Ruth R. Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Michael S.
Gazzaniga, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; Guy M. McKhann, M.D., Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine; John Perry, Ph.D., Stanford University; Carol Rovane, Ph.D., Columbia
University; Alan Regenberg, M.Be., Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Marya Schechtman,
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago; Maura Tumulty, Ph.D., Colgate University
IV. H. Author Meets the Critics: Striking a Balance: A Primer in Traditional Asian Values
(SevenBridges Press, LLC, 2000)
Michael C. Brannigan, Philosophy and Religion, The College of Saint Rose
Critics:
Thomas M. Pynn, History and Philosophy, Kennesaw State University
Mark A. Wilson, St. Augustine Center for Ethics, Villanova University
Joe Johnson, Department of History and Philosophy, Kennesaw State University
Striking a Balance offers a lucid, thoughtful, and thoroughly engaging review of the major
ethical teachings in the dominant Asian traditions. Michael C. Brannigan applies his extensive
background and scholarship to craft a concise yet comprehensive introduction to Asian ethics
covering the long-standing traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and
Confucianism.
IV. I. Roundtable: Assisted Reproduction Across Cultures
Erin McKinley, Clinical Ethics Fellow, Bon Secours, Richmond Health System
Amy M. VanDyke, Health Care Ethics, Duquesne University
Ramez Islambouli, Modern Languages, Case Western University
On October 4, 2010 British Physiologist, Robert Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize for
pioneering the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. This accomplishment was met with great
hope and multiple anxieties; however no mention was made of cross-cultural concerns. Presently,
medical tourism for fertility treatment is common and fertility treatment options are numerous. This
roundtable will address the ethical concerns of providing assisted reproductive care across cultures—
within a single country and when treatment is sought outside a patient’s home country. Key issues
include: identification of the patient or others to whom duties of care are owed, respect for cultural
standards, and standards of care when sought at home or abroad.
This presentation will briefly review the history of various fertility treatments addressing how
ethical thinking and law have altered the provision of services. To set the stage for consideration of two
relevant cases, the roundtable will review three religious perspectives —Catholic, Jewish and Muslim—
33
regarding common fertility treatments. Case one, When Treatment Combines Eggs, Sperm and Clans,
addresses fertility treatment using donated sperm to women in countries with strong clan affiliations.
Case two, Too Many Wives, Too Few Eggs, involves a multiple wife family from a wealthy African
country seeking to use the eggs of the first wife to facilitate the pregnancy of wife two. The second case
obviously involves cross-cultural concerns, the first case also raises these concerns, as contemporary and
traditional cultures clash, and cultural roles are implicated.
IV. J.
Developing Scenarios for Exploring Approaches to Research Ethics Problems
Wayne Fuqua, Psychology, Western Michigan University
David Hartmann, Sociology, Western Michigan University
Thomas Van Valey, Sociology, Western Michigan University
The NSF funded project on “The Nature of Ethical Decision-Making in Research” seeks to
examine the way ethical decisions are made – to discern patterns and principles in that practice. The
methods are based in cognitive science and are called “protocol analysis”. In general, experts are tasked
with solving non-obvious ethical problems. In this case, the experts are of three types: experienced
scientists, regulatory and compliance officers, and practicing ethicists. The tasks are contained in brief
scenarios embodying important ethical tensions in research. The experts verbalize the normally
unexpressed processes they follow in analyzing and “solving” a problem. Those verbalizations are the
data through which, over multiple scenarios and experts, commonalities of approach can be discerned.
This first empirical report on the study focuses on scenario development. Scenarios are cases
designed to draw out respondents’ thinking on ethical problems. Since the method requires articulation of
cognitive effort, we posited that scenarios must: 1) elicit ethical effort, 2) that effort must be realistic
(akin to the effort likely to be encountered in research situations), 3) be instrumentally oriented – oriented
toward a particular task or decision point, and 4) focus on at least one of the four areas of research ethics
identified as priorities for this project.
We developed sample scenarios based on the criteria and first convened a focus group of experts
to vet both the criteria and the draft scenarios. The scenarios were subsequently reviewed by a validation
panel with regard to the above four criteria. A set of eight scenarios resulted from this process, two each
dealing with human subjects, conflict of interest, academic misconduct, and intellectual property.
IV. K. Topics in Business Ethics
1.
How Transparency is Constrained by Privacy and Secrecy
Howard Harris, Ezaz Ahmed, University of South Australia
There is a fashion for transparency and yet transparency is not an unalloyed good. On the one
hand, limits are placed on it by privacy and secrecy and on the other transparency can be employed to
mislead. This paper is concerned with the distinctions and similarities between the concepts of
transparency, secrecy and privacy, with the intention or hope that a closer understanding of the
circumstances under which privacy and secrecy should be a proper limit to transparency might restrain
those who otherwise might unwittingly legislate or regulate for transparency without understanding the
potential dangers. It considers the development of the scope of each concept over time, and their
potentially perverse manifestations.
We argue that despite the many purposes for which privacy, transparency and secrecy are
employed, these uses can be placed into two categories, those based on instrumental or utilitarian claims,
and those based on respect for persons or virtue. This classification can be, we believe, a useful aid when
considering the extent to which transparency should be constrained by privacy or secrecy.
2.
Professionally Benefitting from Bigotry
Dennis R. Cooley, Northern Plains Ethics Institute, North Dakota State University
34
In the business world and many business ethics classrooms, it is often taken as a given that the
Responsibility Criterion, which requires blindness to natural or determined characteristics, is true. The
criterion states that people may be treated differently in ways which profoundly affect their lives only on
the basis of features for which they are responsible. In other words, we are obligated to treat people
equally in regards to their determined features. In addition, benefits that flow from decisions based on
natural qualities are morally tainted, and should not be accepted by business professionals.
In this paper, I defend Boxill’s attack on the Responsibility Criterion. However, the Criterion can
be revised into a practical principle that can be easily taught to students and which any fiduciary can use
to make important decisions about which clients to accept in her practice.
IV. L. Topics in Social/Political Justice
1.
Women on the Move: A Feminist Analysis of Eldercare Workers in a Global Economy
Rosemarie Tong, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
The rapid aging of the world’s population warrants a response from developed and
developing countries as to who should care for elderly people and for how much compensation, if any.
A growing trend that requires scrutiny is that of relatively-poor immigrant women who
leave behind their families and countries to provide elderly people in wealthier countries with
care services. As a result of meeting the eldercare needs of relatively-rich people, relatively-poor
immigrant women sometimes create deficits of care among the dependents they leave behind. In this
presentation, I argue that ordinarily these and other care deficits should not be viewed as the fault of
individual women, but primarily as the fault of uncaring marketplaces, governments, and/or men who do
not do their fair share of carework. Justice, I will conclude, depends on an equal distribution of care work
among both public and private players.
2.
Ethics and the Law: The Environment Among Strangers
Allyson Robichaud, Cleveland State University
Optimally, humans ought to care enough about others, human and nonhuman as well as the
environment. Alas, we fall very short of this mark. Being in relationship with other creatures and the
environment can result in caring; what about when we are not in relationship? This paper argues that
unless or until people come to care enough to do the right thing, laws will be necessary to enforce right
action.
Concurrent Session V
8:00-9:30 a.m., Saturday, March 5
V. A.
Roundtable: Global Fairness: Agency, CSR, and Civic Engagement
Presenters:
Pauline J. Albert, St. Edward’s University
Jennifer K. Greene, St. Edward’s University
Danney F. Ursery, St. Edward’s University
What do we owe those in need outside of our own communities? This Roundtable Discussion will
examine this question from a global perspective, focusing on the needs of developing nations and how we
in the developed world ought to respond to them. More specifically, we argue that the “shrinking” of our
world as a result of globalization has made an important difference to our moral obligations. Rather than
relying on the concept of global justice, we suggest that such obligations are based on fairness and that
35
fairness is something that individuals, organizations, and corporations alike must take into account. The
discussion begins with a theoretical account of global fairness, grounding the concept in social
responsibility. We follow this with two concrete illustrations: one from the corporate realm and the other
from the point of view of voluntary organizations. Following a current debate on the role of corporate
social responsibility (CSR) in transnational corporations’ practices, we first argue that it is required both
pragmatically and by the demands of fairness. Turning, then, to voluntary associations, we show that
such demands are not fully met by charitable aid but only by facilitating empowerment which leads to the
opportunity for civic engagement.
2.
The Many Faces of Poverty – a Video Presentation
Kim Clark, Patricia Werhane, DePaul University
Poverty is often defined in terms of income, often in dollar amounts. But poverty is not merely a
matter of income. Poverty is a socially constructed phenomenon defined locally on how a particular
community values social goods. Poverty is created by one’s economic and social class, education, social
and community status, religion, availability of health care, family abuse, lack of legal representation, role
models, inability to form relationships, one’s self-identity or self-worth, physical handicaps, and/or
psychological disorders.
To demonstrate this thesis we will present a series of three short videos that illustrate various
forms of poverty. Our first video will be of poverty alleviating projects in Bangladesh. The second will be
the effects of poverty on incarceration, particularly of women, and how that in turn affects children of
incarcerated parents. Our third illustrates a growing phenomenon in the United States, “wage theft,” and
how lack of legal representation, social and immigrant class, and language barriers encourage employers
not to pay their workers for their contributions. This presentation is part of a longer study of various
contributors to poverty, both in the United States and in other countries.
V. B.
Engaged Buddhism: Making Eight-fold Path Pertinent Today
Following a cursory overview of traditional distinctions between Theravada Buddhism,
Mahayana, and other versions of Buddhism, this presentation will sketch some of the ways Buddhism has
and is being transformed by globalization. Emphasis will be placed on that transformation known as
“engaged Buddhism,” a term coined by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and activist Thich Nhat Hanh.
Generally speaking, engaged Buddhism often attempts to link Buddhist meditation with social action. The
current Dalai Lama, for instance, has argued for Buddhists to be more involved in the social and political
realm. Organizations such as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the International Network of Engaged
Buddhists and the Zen Peacemakers have contributed to developments in this area. Other engaged
Buddhist groups include the Benevolent Organization for Development, Health and Insight, Gaden Relief
Projects, the UK Network of Buddhist Organizations, Fo Guang Shan, and Tzu Chi. Prominent western
figures in the engaged Buddhism movement include Joanna Macy, Gary Snyder, and Joan Halifax. But
the immigrant Pure Land tradition of Jodo Shinzu manifested in the Buddhist Churches of America can
also be interpreted as contributing to this emergent tradition, perhaps as emphasizing more the practical
adaptation of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Discussion will aim to elicit reflection from both presenters and collaborating (audience)
participants critical reflections how Buddhism can help shed ethical light on contemporary economic and
political affairs.
1.
“Two Theories of Desire: Girard and Buddhism”
Jim Grote, University of Louisville
2.
“Vipassana and Politics in Burma-Myanmar and Beyond”
Patrick Pranke, Humanities, University of Louisville
36
V. C.
Roundtable: 20 Years of Advance Care Planning: Progress, Pitfalls, and Possibilities
Participants:
Valerie Satkoske, Wheeling Hospital Medical Center
Bruce Archer, Wheeling Hospital Medical Center
Amy VanDyke, Duquesne University
As the APPE celebrates its 20th anniversary, 2011 also marks the 20th anniversary of the
enactment of the Patient Self Determination Act (PSDA). The PSDA originally sought to protect the
rights of competent adults to autonomously direct their healthcare, determining what medical treatments
they will accept or reject, and to provide vehicles (advance directives) and education to protect those
rights in times when one lacks decision making capacity. As we mark the 20th anniversary of both the
APPE and the PSDA this roundtable discussion will analyze the effectiveness of the PSDA in achieving
the expressed goals, the ways in which the intent of the PSDA has been subverted, and will offer several
alternative practice models currently in use which may more fully realize the original intention of the
PSDA.
Valerie Satkoske, PhD, will provide a history of the PSDA and will review the landmark legal
cases, and the legal and ethical questions that arose from those cases, that have shaped advance care
planning. Amy VanDyke, PhD, will explore the most commonly utilized and recognized advance care
planning tools, and how current advance directives may be too narrow and static to address the advance
care planning needs of special populations. Bruce Archer, JD, will discuss what he sees as the successes,
failures, and future challenges of the PSDA, based upon his years of experience as hospital counsel for a
freestanding Catholic hospital.
V. D.
Roundtable: “The Sponsor Made Me Do It!” Issues in Central Sponsorship of Research
involving Human Participants
Toby Schonfeld, Center for Ethics Emory University
Joseph S. Brown, University of Nebraska at Omaha
D. Micah Hester, Division of Medical Humanities UAMS College of Medicine
Clinical trials are increasingly being conducted by cooperative groups. Cooperative group
sponsorship is a useful mechanism for ensuring sufficient recruitment in a trial to achieve the study goals,
and enables greater administrative efficiency than would be possible with single-site trials. In a similar
way, pharmaceutical company sponsorship also enables large-scale projects to proceed with a central
source for oversight and management. Corporate sponsors may also have greater resources available to
facilitate the conduct of research.
Yet when IRB’s believe that a particular protocol needs modification, cooperative group or
corporate sponsorship becomes a particular challenge. Federal Regulations (45 CFR 46.114) stipulate that
“each institution is responsible for safeguarding the rights and welfare of its subjects” with cooperative
research projects. Because a cooperative group trial must the same at multiple sites, requiring a change at
one site may also require changes at many other sites. Further, as IRB’s at different institutions may
consider these protocols at different times, changes at one site could very well require re-review at other
IRB’s as well as re-consent of subjects. This is a burden, both administrative and actual, for the sponsors,
investigators, and sometimes participants (if, for example, they must be contacted for re-consent). As a
result, investigators are sometimes reluctant to communicate the IRB’s request for changes to the sponsor,
and the sponsor may or may not agree to the change based on the recommendations of an individual site’s
IRB.
Although we grant the notion that not all requested changes are equally important in protecting
the safety of human subjects in clinical research, we anecdotally recognized that there were times when
we were more insistent on the changes requested by the IRB and times when we readily conceded to the
sponsor’s desire not to make the requested changes.
37
Participants in this Roundtable Discussion will think critically about the context of these
decisions and the factors that contribute to the risk/benefit assessment. The panel will begin by
considering several cases where consent form changes alter the risk/benefit relationship and where the
sponsorship of the proposed study differs in terms of scope and authority. Next, they will consider
changes in the conduct of the research itself. They will limit this discussion to issues affecting inclusion
criteria and those affecting risk to subjects. Among other issues, panelists will consider whether the
inflexibility of the sponsor should change the standard of what the IRB considers minimally ethically
acceptable. The third panelist will discuss the issue of individual IRB review of centrally-sponsored
studies, in particular to contrast individual IRB review with a centralized-IRB review mechanism.
V. E.
Author Meets the Critics: Global Journalism Ethics (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010)
Stephen J.A. Ward, James E. Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, University of WisconsinMadison
Critics:
Edward Spence, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University
Robert M. Steele, The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University;
Carrie Figdor, Philosophy, University of Iowa
New media has caused drastic changes in the reporting of current events and shattered the old
boundaries of region, nation, and traditional deadlines. While journalists have quickly adapted to a world
where a story is instantaneously accessible across the globe, a new code of ethics to deal with reporting to
a globalized world is beginning to emerge. Reformulating the basic aims and principles of journalism,
Global Journalism Ethics offers a systematic philosophy for this new era of reporting news in a
technologically connected age where stories and ethics cross borders. Stephen Ward argues that present
media practices are narrowly based within the borders of single country and thus unable to successfully
inform the public about a globalized world. Presenting an ethical framework for work in multimedia, the
author extends John Rawl’s theories of justice and the human good to redefine the aims for which
journalism should strive and then applies this new foundation to issues such as the roles of patriotism and
objectivity in journalism. An innovative argument that presents a necessary corrective to contemporary
media practices, Global Journalism Ethics is a theoretically rich study for journalists on the air, in print
and on the internet.
V. F. Social Ethics
1.
Exploiting for the Cause
Amanda Decker, University of South Florida St. Petersburg
There is little dispute today that sexual imagery and connotation dominate advertising. While it’s
clear that sex does sell, the exploitation of women to achieve the distribution of products has raised
concerns for many scholars as to what is ethically permissible. Recently, sexual imagery has been used to
promote worthwhile causes in addition to the more traditional use of selling products. This paper argues
that the exploitation of women is not justified, even if the cause is worthwhile. The end does not justify
the means.
2.
On the Immorality of Lying to Children About Their Origins
Sonya Charles, Cleveland State University
In this paper, I will make a moral argument to show why lying to children about their genetic
origins is wrong. Using the moral work on trust and lying, I will argue that allowing or encouraging
children to believe you are their genetic parent when you are not is a breach of trust in the parent-child
relationship.
38
In short, my argument goes like this: Children are forced into an intimate relationship with their
primary caregiver(s). They have no choice (at least in the earliest years) over who this person or persons
might be. On the contrary, those who choose to become primary caregivers have some choice in the
matter. Therefore, primary caregivers have moral responsibilities toward those who are forced into this
intimate relationship with them. A key aspect of any intimate relationship is trust. Therefore, when
primary caregivers allow or encourage a child to believe they are the child’s genetic parents when they
are not, this breach of trust is a violation of the parent-child relationship.
V. G.
Medical Ethics II
Freitas’s Volitional Normative Model of Disease: Implications for Nanoethics
Vassiliki L. Leontis, George Agich, Bowling Green State University
This paper critically examines the volitional normative model of disease and its underlying
nanotechnologic vision of medicine, both defended by Robert Freitas. After providing an account of this
vision, and its contrast with the most generally accepted view of nanomedicine, the details of the
volitional normative model of disease and its emphasis on individual values and preferences are
discussed. The model’s normative positions, which are also implicit in Freitas’s vision of nanotechnologic
medicine that grounds this model, are then critiqued based on two arguments. First, it is argued that
Freitas’s implicit claims about human biology, which form the epistemic basis of his vision of medicine,
are scientifically flawed and do not support the expectations of this vision. Since his scientific
assumptions also form, in great part, the epistemic basis of his volitional normative model of disease, it is
argued that the model is not supported either. Second, an ethical and social critique of the model is
conducted based on the model’s implicit ethical underpinnings. It is argued that Freitas fails to justify the
normativity of his model by not addressing the ethical issues that permeate it, one of which is the question
of responsibility regarding the development of medical nanotechnology and the practice of new forms of
medicine like the one he envisions. The paper concludes that the radically individualistic position of the
model relegates nanoethics to the periphery of discussions of nanomedicine and suggests policy
regulation regarding the development of nanomedical technology.
2.
The (Mistaken) Medicalization of Childbirth
Allison Wolf, Simpson College
Feminists have been debating, analyzing, and criticizing the medicalization of childbirth for
decades. Although many of the original critiques explored the metaphysical tenets of different birth
models, most recent discussions have moved away from metaphysics and toward ethical concerns. Ethics
cannot be done well without considering such metaphysical issues and connections. So, here I return to
analyzing the metaphysical ideas underlying the medicalization of childbirth and how they alienate
women from their humanity. Specifically, I argue that medicalization and the medical practices it supports
obscure and/or deny certain conditions of human existence, namely, our animality, the fact of
contingency, and our sociality. This prevents women who have medicalized births from understanding
themselves and the world. Consequently, we must challenge the medicalization of childbirth and
construct new models of birth based on a metaphysics that connects us to our humanity and each other.
V. H.
Roundtable: The Dread Disease: Cancer and the Implications for Justice in the Developing
World
Participants:
Kayhan Parsi, Loyola University Chicago
Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharya, Loyola University Chicago
Justin List, Yale University
39
This roundtable discussion is composed of a bioethicist, public health attorney and resident
physician. We are interested in examining the growing burden of cancer in the developing world and the
justice implications this particular disease category poses.
First Panelist: Over the past decade, bioethics has witnessed a burgeoning of interest in justice
and health care. Beyond the concerns of health care reform in this country, much more interest has been
expressed in justice and health care in the developing world. Books, articles and even entire journals are
now devoted to this topic. For most of this time, energies have been spent examining the justice
implications of infectious disease epidemics such as HIV/AIDs, TB and malaria. Ethicists have
commented on the 90/10 divide (that is, 10% of our research funds are devoted to addressing 90% of the
disease burden in the world). The question I plan to explore is whether the 90/10 divide still applies when
we are discussing disease burdens such as cancer, as compared to communicable diseases such as
HIV/AIDs. If this divide does not exist, what are the barriers to adequate and effective treatment for
cancer in the developing world? If it does exist, how can we best ameliorate this divide, in light of
distributive justice and political realities?
Second Panelist: Every year, over 1 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide,
and over 400,000 women succumb to its debilitating effects. Although it is the most common malignancy
affecting women around the globe, it also presents unique ethical challenges for developing and
developed countries. To be sure, breast cancer has historically been seen as a disease affecting
industrialized nations, i.e. a problem in high-resource regions, which have borne a larger share of new
cases. Furthermore, developing countries often do not have the political will or resources to implement a
comprehensive plan of prevention, early detection, and optimal treatment. To make matters worse,
women in low income regions are not necessarily empowered with the individual rights and access as
relates to healthcare, education, and social support. Given inadequate resources, what population-based
criteria should be used to prioritize preventive and treatment modalities? Should efforts be limited to the
costs and benefits that accrue within the health system? Or should they also be directed at modifying the
social landscape, particularly with respect to public awareness, women’s rights, and access to care? Are
cost-benefit and/or cost-effectiveness studies appropriate to determinate which measures ought to be
implemented? If so, what costs and health indicators are relevant to our inquiry? For example, should we
assess the costs of alternative treatments in isolation, or with respect to the overall burden on the health
budget? And how should we gauge an effective treatment? Should we use objective survival rates or
perhaps more subjective quality of life indicators? These questions implicate societal issues of human
dignity, equity and justice that include, and simultaneously transcend, the individual patient. Although
mitigating the effects of breast cancer implicate a host of ethical issues, the public health burden of everincreasing rates and advanced stage diagnoses can no longer be ignored.
Third Panelist: The burden of non-communicable chronic diseases, such as cancer, continue to
rise in low-income countries. Current hurdles for cancer patients in low-income countries include poor
access to cancer care and evaluation, poor access to cancer treatment, and inadequate clinical research
focused on cancer care in the lower income country setting. I propose to discuss the cancer burden in
lower income countries, share cancer-related narratives from my time in Uganda as a NIH/Fogarty
International Research Scholar in 2008-2009, and relay some new initiatives by the NIH to address cancer
and non-communicable diseases in low income countries. Ethical issues to discuss within this topic
include resource allocation, global health agenda setting, and justice through the lens of state and
international community obligations to health and human rights.
V. I.
The Virtues
1.
Open-mindedness and Intellectual Humility
Jim Spiegel, Taylor University
With the rise of virtue epistemology in recent years, philosophers have been increasingly interested in
those intellectual traits that are conducive to the acquisition of knowledge, that is, which make a person a
40
good knower. One trait that has received much less attention than it deserves is open-mindedness.
Though typically regarded by virtue epistemologists as an important intellectual virtue, some, such as
Peter Gardner, reject it as such, usually because they see it as incompatible with having firm convictions.
Among those who regard open-mindedness as a virtue, there is dispute over whether the trait is essentially
an attitude toward particular beliefs or toward oneself as a believer. In this paper I address both of these
debates.
I argue that William Hare’s account of open-mindedness as a first-order attitude toward one’s beliefs is
correct and critique Jonathan Adler’s account of open-mindedness as a second-order recognition of one’s
fallibility as a knower. While I reject Adler’s account of open-mindedness as a meta-attitude, I affirm his
intuition that there is a closely related second-order intellectual virtue pertaining to the attitude we take
toward ourselves as knowers. However, I show that this trait is intellectual humility, not openmindedness. Finally, I explain why both of these traits are intellectual virtues and how they properly build
off one another in the virtuous mind, as open-mindedness and intellectual humility beget one another.
2.
Virtue Ethics and the Whistleblowing Dilemma
Brandon Archuleta, University of Northern Colorado
This paper will argue that virtue ethics gives the best theoretical account of how and why
whistleblowing dilemmas arise, as well as the most practical guidance to persons confronted with the
decision about to whether to blow the whistle. First, I will identify the main features of a whistleblowing
situation in order to clarify the nature of the dilemma and explain why whistleblowing dilemmas are best
viewed through a virtue ethical lens. After we gain an understanding of how the decisions people make in
whistleblowing dilemmas are related to character, we can begin to understand how virtue ethics can
provide practical guidance to those facing the whistleblowing dilemma. I will then provide a background
on the ethical theory of virtue ethics and clarify concepts like virtue, the golden mean, and happiness.
This will lead to an introduction of the concept of a ‘regulative ideal,’ which is essential to understanding
how virtue ethical thinking guides a person’s conduct. Next, we will explore how moral intuition relates
to a person’s regulative ideal and the way intuition often conflicts with ethical judgments. Lastly, this
paper will aim to show why a virtue ethical approach to solving the whistleblowing dilemma is superior
to the rival moral theories of consequentialism and deontology. The final conclusion of this paper will be
that by following a virtue ethical approach, a person will be prepared to make the correct decision in a
whistleblowing dilemma.
V. J.
Ethics at Secondary Schools: Active Learning in Research Ethics to Develop Future
Professionals in Science and Engineering
Carlos Ríos-Velázquez, William J. Frey, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
This paper reports on workshops in research ethics for pre-university students led by graduate
student mentors. To target and develop skill objectives in ethics, this workshop uses PowerPoint
presentations, case discussion activities, role-playing, and student-produced video vignettes to link basic
moral concepts (ethics, morality, absolutism, relativism) with intermediate moral concepts in research
ethics such as academic integrity, social responsibility, and responsible research environment. Pre- and
post-tests have been used to document changes in student perception of ethical issues. Other assessment
activities examine the workshop’s impact on student moral awareness and conduct; these include rubricassessed answers to open-ended essay questions and case analysis results. Findings show short term gains
in students’ ability (1) to distinguish moral customs from more systematic and formal ethical theoretical
approaches, (2) to appreciate the importance of ethics for environmental protection, and (3) to recognize
the ethical implications of research involving humans and animals. Ethics videos acted out by students
introduce topics related to scientific truth (plagiarism, fabrication, falsification), the research environment
(conflict of interest and mentoring), and responsible research (ethical treatment of experimental subjects
and environmental integrity). This paper will describe the novel educational model employed by outlining
41
the active learning pedagogy developed in the workshops and the special pedagogical adjustments made
to provide a more fruitful learning experience for pre-university students.
V. K.
1.
Ethical Issues in Pervasive and Autonomous Technology
Roundtable: Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: Are “The Rules” the Way to Go?
Speakers:
Keith Miller, University of Illinois at Springfield
Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology
Charles Huff, St. Olaf College
Ken Pimple, Indiana University
Around the time of the 2009 APPE Annual Meeting, a collaborative, online writing project
began. Nicknamed “The Rules,” the project has developed a relatively short document (currently three
pages) entitled “Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: The Rules.” Volunteers have formed the
“The Ad Hoc Committee for Responsible Computing.” Members of the committee suggest improvements
in the document (as individuals); any member of the committee can object to any suggested change.
At this writing, the document is in its 27th version. Forty eight people have become members of
the Ad Hoc Committee, from nine different countries. More details about The Rules are available at
https://edocs.uis.edu/kmill2/www/TheRules/ and
at https://edocs.uis.edu/kmill2/www/TheRules/history.html.
In this roundtable discussion, several members of the Ad Hoc Committee will discuss different
aspects of The Rules and the development of the document.
Individual Topics:
Keith Miller: Origins of The Rules, and why they aren’t a wiki.
Michael Davis, The Authority of the Rules: Why should anyone allow them to serve as a guide?
Chuck Huff, Similarities and differences between IT Codes of Ethics and The Rules.
Ken Pimple, Beyond The Rules: different applications, different rules.
2.
The Intervention of Robot Caregivers and the Cultivation of Children’s Capability to Play
Yvette Pearson, Philosophy, Institute of Ethics and Public Affairs, Old Dominion University
Jason Borenstein, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
In this paper, we explore whether and how robots might be able to improve the well-being of
children with impairments. A design process guided by an understanding of central human capabilities
can hopefully contribute to the flourishing of impaired children and their caregivers, especially if the
importance of play activities is recognized.
Concurrent Session VI
10:00 a.m.-12 Noon, Saturday, March 5
VI. A. Panel: The Last Twenty Years: Emerging Views of Moral Reasoning in Practical
Ethics
1. “Pragmatism and the Role of Experience in Ethics”
James D. Wallace, Philosophy, University of Illinois
2. “Casuistic Reasoning in the Professions”
David E. Boeyink, Journalism, Indiana University
3. “Ethical Reasoning in the Professions: Engineering, Research, Academic Administration ”
Michael S. Pritchard, Philosophy, Western Michigan University
42
4. “The Need for a Systematic Approach in Applied and Professional Ethics”
Bernard Gert, Social Medicine, Dartmouth College
When the question, “Is journalism a profession?” is typically posed, the answers seem to center
on the extent to which journalism meets the standard criteria of professions, such as licensing and
specialized knowledge and, after noting journalism’s failure to meet those criteria, whether it’s worth
thinking of it as a profession nonetheless.
We, in this roundtable, are tackling that question anew in light of a changing landscape in which
it’s unclear who counts as a journalist, much less a professional one. In doing so, I’d like us to consider
professionalism as an occupational ideology and not solely a set of practices. That is, how do journalists
conceive of professionalism, how does it inform their practice, and what are the implications for ethical
performance of thinking about professionalism in those ways? To offer one example, journalists often
include objectivity among the elements of professionalism, though there’s a good argument to be made –
and it’s been made many times – that the pursuit of objectivity can be contrary to ethical performance.
All of which is merely to say that our understanding of (the desirability of and prospects for) a
“professional” journalism needs to account for these internal notions as well as the external forces such
as changing technology that are forcing us to rethink – again – what professionalism means in
journalism.
VI. B. Author Meets the Critics: Prospects for the Professions in China (Routledge, 2010)
Kenneth I. Winston, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Critics:
Michael C. Brannigan, Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values, The College of Saint Rose
Seumas Miller, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, The Australian National University
Kenneth W. Goodman, Ethics Programs, University of Miami
James Angresano, Political Economy; College of Idaho
This book focuses on professionals in China and asks whether developing countries have a
fateful choice: to embrace Western models of professional organization as they now exist, or to set off
on an independent path, adapting elements of Western practices to their own historical and cultural
situation. In doing so, the authors in this volume discuss a wealth of issues, including: the historic
antecedents of modern Chinese professionalism; the implications of professionalism as an import in
China; the impact of socialism, the developmental state and rampant commercialism on the professions
in China; and the feasibility of liberal professions in an illiberal state. To conclude, the book considers
whether there might be an emerging professionalism with Chinese characteristics, and how this might
have an impact on the professions elsewhere.
VI. C. Roundtable: Creating a National High School Ethics BowlSM Network
“The Growth of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Intercollegiate Ethics BowlSM:
A Case Study”
Robert F. Ladenson, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Discussants:
Matt Deaton, Philosophy, University of Tennessee
Alfred H. Guy, Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics, University of Baltimore
Karen Mizell, Utah Valley University
George W. Sherman, Ethics, St. Petersburg College
Convenor: Roberta Israeloff
This presentation will describe briefly the growth of the APPE Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl as a
case study for a panel discussion on developing a national ethics bowl competition at the high school
level. The presentation will focus special attention upon the period 2004-07 during which the plan was
43
developed and implemented that resulted in reorganization and expansion of the APPE Intercollegiate
Ethics Bowl into its current form as a nationwide competition in which over one hundred colleges and
universities take part.
VI. D. Author Meets the Critics: Drawing the Line: Public and Private in America (Brookings
Institution Press, 2009)
Andrew Stark, Management, University of Toronto
Critics:
Andrew I. Cohen, Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Georgia State
University
John R. Chamberlin, Center for Ethics in Public Life, University of Michigan
Louis Lombardi, Ethics Center, Lake Forest College
In Drawing the Line, Andrew Stark takes a fresh and provocative look at how Americans debate
the border between the public realm and the private. The seemingly eternal struggle to establish the
proper division of societal responsibilities to draw the line has been joined yet again. Obama
administration initiatives, particularly bank bailouts and health care reform, roil anew the debate of just
what government should do for its citizens, what exactly is the public sphere, and what should be left to
individual responsibility.
Are these arguments specific to isolated policy issues, or do they reveal something bigger about
politics and society? The author realizes that the shorthand, public vs. private dichotomy is overly
simplistic. Something more subtle and complex is going on, Stark reveals, and he offers a deeper, more
politically helpful way to view these conflicts.
Stark interviewed hundreds of policymakers and advocates, and here he weaves those insights
into his own counterintuitive view and innovative approach to explain how citizens at the grassroots
level divide policy debates between public and private responsibilities specifically on education, land
use and public space, welfare, and health care. In doing so, Drawing the Line provides striking lessons
for anyone trying to build new and effective policy coalitions on Main Street.
VI. E. AEJMC Panel: The Blame Game: The Ethics of Blame in U.S. Social Institutions
Panelists:
Wendy Wyatt, Communication and Journalism, University of St. Thomas
James Biddle, Education, University of Dayton
Katherina Glac, Ethics and Business Law, University of St. Thomas
Thomas D. Cavenagh, Leadership, Ethics & Values Program, North Central College
A recent column in The Economist claimed that Western cultures are “dominated and warped by
blame” that pervades all of their social institutions. Blame, according to the column, has appeal; “it
offers a simple narrative of how problems and tragedies arise, and a beguilingly simple solution: sack,
punish, excoriate the culprits.” Philosophers who have written about blame also claim that our system of
morality depends on blame -- morality itself rises and falls on blame. However, are we seeing the
“right” kind of blame in our culture? The Economist column claims that vitriolic blame is wrecking
morale, inhibiting decision making and providing a false, childish hope that complex problems can be
easily solved. During this panel, ethicists who specialize in our culture’s public institutions will assess
the nature of blame within those institutions and what that blame is doing to either move our
democracies forward or inhibit their growth.
VI. F. Roundtable: Progress as an Idea: A Macroethics Concept for Science and Engineering
Students
Clark A. Miller, Center for Nanotechnology in Society, Arizona State University
Jason Borenstein, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
44
Laura R. Grossenbacher, Engineering Professional Development, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Karin D. Ellison, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
Karen L. Wellner, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
Convenor: Joseph R. Herkert, Arizona State University
This roundtable discussion will explore the critique of the idea of progress as a macroethics
concept. It will do so by bringing together scholars working on four science and engineering education
projects and having them to explore the role of this concept in their projects. Many science and
engineering students view generation of new knowledge or development of new technologies as
progress, or inherently good. Leo Marx and other humanists and social scientists who study technology
have offered a critical examination of this common concept. Marx argues that, historically, the concept
of progress linked the adoption of new technologies to the enhancement of enlightenment societal values
of political liberation. However, by the late-nineteenth century, this explicit coupling of technological
and social progress had given way to the idea that new or more advanced technology constituted
progress in its own right. Thus, while early Americans saw cotton gins as contributing to the creation of
a free society, the development of mass production of the Model T at Ford Motor Company in the early
twentieth century did not carry this same connotation. Rather than freedom from political oppression,
mass production brought progress through greater efficiency and control in the factory and market.
Building on this reflection, John Staudenmaier and Merritt Roe Smith have pointed out that those who
view new technology as progress often fail to ask: “Progress for whom?” The laborer doing repetitive,
semi-skilled work on an assembly line may weigh the merits of mass production differently than the
owner of a new, inexpensive automobile or the owner of a highly efficient new factory.
This panel will ask to what extent and how should science and engineering students be exposed
to a critique of the idea of progress as part of macroethics education in particular projects. Presenter 1,
Clark Miller, is leading a project on the ethics of energy system change. He will analyze the
relationships between sustainability concepts and the idea of progress and discuss how his project will
incorporate these ideas into new energy ethics materials. Presenter 2, Jason Borenstein, is participating
in a project developing the capacity of science and engineering students to address “fractious problems,”
contentious policy debates concerning innovative science and technology, such as stem cell research or
human enhancement technologies. He will analyze the utility of introducing students to a critique of the
idea of progress for developing policy recommendations for “fractious problems.” Presenter 3, Laura
Grossenbacher, is leading a project to provide undergraduate engineers with significant international
experience without traveling. She will reflect on the potential value of having students struggle with the
idea of progress as part of analyzing a case on water resource engineering, tribal politics, and gender
equity in Kenya. Karin Ellison, Karen Wellner, and Joseph Herkert are developing a conceptual
framework for introductory macroethics education that will be the basis for online macroethics modules.
They will discuss the incorporation of a critique of the idea of progress into that framework.
The roundtable format is chosen so that, after brief presentations, the presenters and session
attendees can discuss the role of a critique of the idea of progress in macroethics education for science
and engineering students more broadly.
VI. G. Roundtable: Contributions of Cognitive Neuroscience and Moral Psychology to Applied
Ethics: A Conversation
J. Brooke Hamilton III, Management, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Charles W. Huff, Psychology, St. Olaf College
Matthew W. Keefer, Educational Psychology, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Response:
Charles Ed Harris, Sue and Harry Bovay Professor of History and Ethics of Professional Engineering,
Texas A&M University
Recent research in cognitive neuroscience and moral psychology is challenging many of the
45
traditional ways we think about ourselves and our ethical responsibilities, confirming others, and
opening new possibilities for understanding. Work in moral psychology has highlighted the pervasive
role of unconscious or automatic processes in intentional (i.e., ethical) decisions and has demonstrated
that even our conscious “rational” thinking is often and easily subject to bias and distortion.
Neuroscientific findings, likewise, support these conclusions and have challenged even our common
understanding of the voluntary control of our actions, a notion that has traditionally underwritten our
understanding of free will and moral responsibility. We will discuss these challenges and other
controversies (e.g., the recent “consensus statement” reached among participants at The Edge: The New
Science of Morality Conference Washington, CT, June 20-22, 2010). We will suggest categories for
applying research on the origin of the “feeling of certainty” that accompanies ethical judgments, to
business and professional training programs. Join us for a conversation on how advances and challenges
in these areas can inform work you are doing in applied ethics and research settings.
VI. H. Medical Ethics
1.
A Fiduciary Framework for Healthcare Proxy Decision Making
Patricia C. Flynn, St. Joseph’s College of Maine
Recent statistics show that healthcare proxies make up to seventy five percent of medical
decisions for critically ill patients in hospitals and up to sixty-nine percent of medical decisions for
nursing home patients. Despite the importance of the role of healthcare proxy, little attention has been
paid to the ethical framework within which proxy decision making occurs. The purpose of this paper is
to critique a prevalent contemporary approach that describes the patient-proxy relationship as a quasicontract and sets proxy responsibilities in light of the values and behaviors privileged by contracts:
respect for autonomy, procedurally guaranteed fairness and promise keeping.
In place of this contractual account I will offer the model of the fiduciary relationship with its
own values and behaviors: an appeal to a shared identity, a concern for substantive goods, and the
exercise of forward looking responsibility. I will argue that the current contractually based account of
proxy decision making fails to address the vulnerability and complexity of the patient-proxy relationship
and provides little guidance for proxy decision making. Recognizing proxies as fiduciaries situates the
patient-proxy relationship within the mutual expectations and obligations created by the entrustment of
one’s health and life into the hands of another. A fiduciary perspective on this important relationship can
provide both patient and proxy with the resources they need to face the challenge of end of life
decisions.
2.
Ethics of Public Health: Overlap with Curative Medical Ethics and the
Potential of Virtue Ethics
Karen Meagher, Michigan State University
In this paper, I argue in favor of two conclusions: first, that a successful ethics of public health
will be developed with critiques of contemporary bioethics in mind and second, that virtue ethics
provides a potential avenue of philosophical investigation to meet this diverse set of needs. In Section 1,
I highlight the causes of increasing attention to public health ethics and the overlap between a
development of public health ethics and reform of dominant trends in bioethics. In the second section, I
lay out four critiques of contemporary dominant bioethics and their connection to public health. In
Section 3, I contend that virtue ethics suggests a potentially valuable line of philosophical investigation
to grapple with these various and complex demands of both applied ethics generally, and the normative
challenges of public health practice specifically.
46
VI. I. Ethics Education
1.
The Ethics of Teaching: A Graduate Course on the Ethical Obligations of
the College Professor as Teacher
Edward L. Queen, Center for Ethics, Emory University
Despite lip-service given to the importance of teaching, not only is insufficient attention paid to
the mechanics of teaching but graduate students rarely are provided with an opportunity to reflect either
on the overall ethical implications of teaching or on the ethical obligations one assumes by accepting the
role of teacher. These lacunae are exacerbated by an undercurrent permeating much of graduate
education that denigrates teaching and suggests that teaching is an imposition on a scholar’s “main”
responsibility, research.
While a rectification of these problems requires a multi-pronged approach to re-structuring
higher education, particularly in relation to promotion and reward, this course aims at producing a
modest and incremental change by providing graduate students with a structured environment in which
to reflect upon the ethical obligations inherent within the professional role of teacher, of professor. The
course will spend significant time examining one area of teaching that receives far too little
consideration, teachers’ interactions with students and the ethical obligations that emerge from being
involved in students’ lives, often with potentially serious implications for the latter’s futures, at least in
the short to mid-term.
This pedagogical demonstration session invites participants to engage in a conversation about
the development and delivery of a course addressing the issues of the ethics of teaching at the college
level. The presentation will provide an overview of the course’s rationale, its main topics, and structure.
It will then lead the participants through an example of one of the problem-based learning modules
presented in the course.
2.
Teaching Ethics Beyond the Classroom: Electronic Media and Ethics
Education
Mary Brydon-Miller, Action Research Center, University of Cincinnati
Valerie Louis, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati
In this presentation we will review the range of possible strategies for using electronic
communications as sites for teaching ethics, focusing on our own use of a blog to present ethical theory,
reflection, and case studies. We will describe what a blog is and how it works, review some basic
guidelines for creating and maintaining a blog, provide examples from our own efforts to create a blog
that focuses on research ethics, examine the ethical issues involved in creating and maintaining a blog,
and assist those attending the session in drafting a basic plan for creating their own blog.
VI. J. Research Ethics
1.
You Don’t Know Me, But…”: Ethical Access and Subject Recruitment in
Human Subjects Research
Toby Schonfeld, Emory University
Joseph S. Brown, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Jean Amoura, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Bruce G. Gordon, Psychology, University of Nebraska
In this paper, we argue that maintaining a patient’s right to privacy is the key notion in
determining who has ethical access to patient information for research purposes. This is based on the
notion that patients may be harmed by unrestricted access to their private information. We argue that
limiting research access to those with ethical access to patient clinical information minimizes the
likelihood that there will be an expansion in the number of people who know private patient information,
which will minimize harm to patients. We apply our argument to several common agents in health care
47
and clinical research to determine whether or not they have ethical access to patient private information
for research purposes. We also make an analogy between waiving informed consent and an increase in
ethical access to private information for information that presents no greater than a minimal risk to
subjects should it be released. These are part of the pragmatic considerations we offer to facilitate the
conduct of research while endeavoring to maintain a patient’s fundamental right to determine who has
access to his or her private information.
2.
The Use of Conflict of Interest Policies by Health Technology Assessment
Organizations: Preliminary Findings and Policy Analysis
Shilpa Shinde, Elizabeth Heitman, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Concern for integrity in the work of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) organizations has
led to new efforts to define the nature of conflict of interest. In response, many research organizations
have published guidelines for managing conflicts of interest. The role of such policies is the focus of this
project.
To determine the extent to which HTA organizations have established policies on conflict of
interest, a ten-question web-based survey was sent via email to a master list of 302 worldwide HTA
organizations. Of the 230 organizations presumed to have received the survey, 31 responded. Eighteen
of the 31 respondents provided some sort of document representing their organization’s approach to
handling conflict of interest. The documents provided a range of definitions and examples of conflicts of
interest, and reflected differing requirements for disclosure and varying review procedures.
While there is currently some implicit recognition that conflicts of interest may affect the formal
assessment of medical technologies and thus health policy on their use and funding, conflict of interest
policies appear to remain uncommon in this field and their use variable. Moreover, whether and how
HTA organizations that have a conflict of interest policy differ in practice from those that do not remain
important questions for future evaluation.
The presentation will introduce the role of HTA and HTA organizations in health policy;
consider the recent history of conflict of interest and the arguments for organizational conflict of interest
policies; and present the results of a survey of worldwide HTA organizations about their use of conflict
of interest policies.
VI. K. Business Ethics
1.
Business Ethics in North America: Trends and Challenges
Joseph A. Petrick, Department of Management and International Business, Raj Soin
College of Business, Wright State University
Wesley Cragg, Project Director and Principal Investigator, Canadian Business Ethics
Research Network (CBERN), York University, Toronto, Canada
Martha Sañudo, Titular de Cátedra de Investigación en Ética Empresarial y
Democracia, Depto. de Filosofía y Ética, ITESM, Campus Monterrey, Monterrey,
Mexico
Using 15 years of data (1995-2009) from literature reviews, survey questionnaires, personal
interviews, and desktop research, the authors examine North American (Canada, Mexico and the United
States) regional trends in business ethics research, teaching and training. The patterns indicate that
business ethics continues to flourish in North America with high levels of productivity in both quantity
and quality of teaching, training and research publication outputs. Topics/themes that have been covered
during the time period are treated with an acknowledgement of the concomitant marginal impact on
improving ethical business behaviour and contexts - as recurring domestic and global scandals attest.
Major North American business ethics challenges/issues to be addressed in the future are proposed.
48
2.
Can Businesses be too Good? Applying Susan Wolf’s “Moral Saints” to
Businesses
Earl W. Spurgin, John Carroll University
Susan Wolf famously argues that moral sainthood is not an ideal for which persons should aim
because it requires one to cultivate moral virtues to the exclusion of significant, nonmoral interests and
skills. I find Wolf’s argument compelling in her context of persons, and seek to demonstrate that it
remains so when the context is expanded to businesses. I argue that just as moral perfection precludes
individuals from challenging societal norms and traditions in ways that benefit us, moral perfection
prevents businesses from challenging norms and traditions in ways that can promote positive, social
change. I also describe, and respond to, three possible objections to my position, most notably the claim
that businesses’ greater social power justifies demanding moral perfection from them even though we
should not demand moral perfection from persons.
Concurrent Session VII
1:30-3:30 p.m., Saturday, March 5
VII. A. Panel: The Use of Imaginary Cases in Practical Ethics
Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology
Matthew C. Altman, Central Washington University
Fritz Allhoff, Western Michigan University
Joseph Spino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Wendy Wyatt, University of St. Thomas
1.
The Use of Imaginary Cases in Practical Ethics
Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology
Imaginary cases plainly have an important role in contemporary ethics, especially in applied or
practical ethics. This paper is a systematic critique of imaginary cases in ethics (what Kant would have
called “a prolegomenon” to their use). The paper has two main parts. In the first, I explain what it is to
imagine a case and what limits these are to what can be imagined. For many purposes, there are severe
limits on what can be imagined. The second part distinguishes eight uses of imaginary cases: rhetorical;
probative (subdivided into counter-example, proof of possibility, and pattern-proving); and heuristic
(subdivided into illustrative, experiments in theory, insight-sharpening, and commitment mapping). Some
of these uses are (more or less) unobjectionable (whether the particular case succeeds or fails in its object)
but some require special care or outright avoidance. I give examples of how philosophical ethics would be
better off if philosophers were more cautious in their use of imaginary cases.
2.
On the Uses and Disadvantages of the Ticking Bomb Case for Life
Matthew C. Altman, Central Washington University
The ticking bomb case is meant to challenge absolute prohibitions on the use of torture. In his
paper on “Imaginary Cases in Ethics,” Michael Davis attempts to show that such cases can only be
legitimately employed within certain limited parameters. In this paper, I explain how the ticking bomb
case, suitably revised, does not run afoul of Davis’s prohibition on impossible content. The fact that
torture could elicit the necessary information is enough; we need not stipulate a guaranteed result. I also
defend philosophers’ use of the case to identify our moral intuitions and to evaluate our theoretical
assumptions. Although our responses to actual events are better at mapping our actual commitments,
imaginary events can also reveal our pre-theoretic intuitions. Ultimately, however, I reject the use of the
49
ticking bomb case on pragmatic grounds, because the imaginary case distorts our moral reasoning in
actual cases and leads to our acceptance of torture more generally.
3.
Imaginary Cases in Ethics: A Defense
Fritz Allhoff, Western Michigan University
Imaginary cases in ethics are widespread, ranging from violinists to shallow ponds to ticking
time-bombs and beyond. Very little work has been done on the roles that these cases are supposed to
play, and in what differentiates good experiments from bad ones; ticking time-bomb cases have, perhaps,
started to catalyze more critical reflection on case-based methodology. I defend a promiscuous account of
cases by which virtually any is methodologically useful, so long as we understand what ‘useful’ is
supposed to mean in this context. Starting with critical comments on ways in which case-based
methodology would be limited, I go on to sketch this positive account.
4.
Defusing Dangers of Imaginary Cases
Joseph Spino, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Some imaginary cases lead us to surprising conclusions. Unfortunately, there exists the danger of
being so distracted by these conclusions that the imaginary cases themselves escape critical examination.
Using the now famous ticking time-bomb scenario as an example, I will propose a simple methodology to
help us better understand what role a given imaginary case should be playing in ethical discourse. In
particular, I hope to show why the ticking time bomb scenario fails to have any probative value as a
counter-example for anti-torture policies. Despite this, I will argue that there is still an important role for
cases like the ticking time-bomb scenario, as they can motivate study into some of our intuitive moral
commitments. This in turn may lead us to a better understanding of what moves us to surprising ethical
evaluations in the first place.
VII. B. Author Meets the Critics: Lessons amid the Rubble: An Introduction to PostDisaster Engineering and Ethics (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010)
Sarah K. A. Pfatteicher, College of Agricultural & Life Sciences/College of
Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Critics:
Donna M. Riley, Picker Engineering Program, Smith College
Rebekah Green, Institute for Global and Community Resilience, Western
Washington University
Richard A. Burgess, National Institute for Engineering Ethics, Texas Technical
University
The aftermath of September 11, 2001, brought the subject of engineering—failure forensics to
public attention as had no previous catastrophe. In keeping with the engineering profession’s long
tradition of building a positive future out of disasters, Lessons amid the Rubble uses the collapse of the
World Trade Center towers to explore the nature and future of engineering education in the United States.
Sarah K. A. Pfatteicher draws on historical and current practice in engineering design,
construction, and curricula to discuss how engineers should conceive, organize, and execute a search for
the reasons behind the failure of man—made structures. Her survey traces the analytical journey
engineers take after a disaster and discusses the technical, social, and moral implications of their work.
After providing an overview of the investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers, Pfatteicher
explores six related events to reveal deceptively simple lessons about the engineering enterprise, each of
which embodies an ethical dilemma at the heart of the profession. In tying these themes together,
Pfatteicher highlights issues of professionalism and professional identity infused in engineering education
50
and encourages an explicit, direct conversation about their meaning.
Sophisticated and engagingly written, this volume combines history, engineering, ethics, and
philosophy to provoke a deep discussion about the symbolic meaning of buildings and other structures
and the nature of engineering.
VII. C.
EJMC Panel: Professionalizing Journalism: Either Possible or Desirable?
Christopher Meyers, Kegley Institute of Ethics, California State University,
Bakersfield
Sandra L. Borden, Communication, Western Michigan University
Wendy Wyatt, Communication and Journalism, University of St. Thomas
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee
University
Aaron Quinn, Journalism, California State University, Chico
Meyers:
The professions of law and medicine emerged largely out of a desire to distinguish themselves as
uniquely qualified, in contrast to ‘mere’ practitioners. This push was driven both by economic
pressures—i.e., the desire to create a monopoly on services—and by an attempt to establish a genuine
fiduciary relationship with clients—i.e., a relationship in which clients could trust the credentialed
professional’s knowledge and skills. The resulting organizations—the ABA and the AMA—thus
established standards for educational accreditation and practitioner certification and used these to
convince legislators to grant them practice monopolies. In theory at least, this was a win-win for all:
clients could feel assured they weren’t being represented or treated by a charlatan and professionals
acquired increased social status and wealth.
Journalism now faces similar economic pressures and a perceived need to distinguish ‘real’
journalists from wannabes. The standard criteria for professionals, though, are in direct conflict with
many of the most cherished values of American journalism, in particular that of being independent
outsiders critical of established power. Is there a professionalizing model that will work for journalism? If
so, I argue, it will look very little like the traditional model.
Quinn:
The term profession implies an occupation with a monopoly over its fundamental activities such
as in medicine and law in which licensing requirements limit who can practice. Though journalism is not
fully or even mostly professionalized in this manner, traditional journalists do have at least one explicit
monopolistic advantage – shield laws – over non (traditional) journalists such as citizen journalists and
casual bloggers. Traditional journalists, by way of convention, also have a somewhat monopolistic
advantage in respect to some types of access to information. For example, major news organizations
typically have access to press conferences and other formal limited-space news events that would prove
elusive to an un-established newsgatherer.
I’ll argue that the explicit and tacit advantages that traditional journalists have over nontraditional journalists are a result of decades of relatively strong dedication to journalism’s purpose –
providing information in the public interest in a manner that is appropriately ethically guided – and that
those advantages may be improved upon, maintained or even lost based on whether that commitment
sustains. Moreover, citizen journalists and bloggers who sufficiently commit to journalism’s purpose and
guiding ideals may well earn some or all of these quasi-professional advantages over time, since, in
essence, fulfilling journalism’s purpose in a way that is appropriately ethically guided is what gives it its
professional essence, even if it fails to survive the checklist of a classical profession.
Wasserman:
Professionalism, for contemporary journalism, increasingly becomes a more useful concept to
apply to the practice, not the practitioner. That’s because more and more of the work that’s properly
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regarded as journalistic is being performed by people who are not doing it for their livelihood, and a
professionalist model that defines itself by cordoning off an occupational grouping (no matter how
carefully delineated) will be unable to reflect that emerging reality. The challenge, therefore, is to define
not journalists, but journalism. To qualify as a professional practice, journalism would be defined as
specialized work that requires particular skills (even if they’re not so rarefied as to warrant licensing),
which is undertaken for public benefit, and is subject to some performance standards related to work
process, product quality and conformance to specific ethical norms.
If we say that journalism consists of fact-based narrative or topical commentary about
contemporary realities, we will then want to distinguish it from, say, political propaganda, advertising or
public relations. The challenge becomes one of defining a practice that incorporates specific standards of
methodology (and epistemology), independence, accountability and public service.
Wyatt:
Today’s journalism landscape creates pressing questions about who gets to count as a journalist.
This is important for scholars and practitioners of “journalism” but even more so for citizens, who are
faced with negotiating an increasingly complex and often confusing information environment. Any
changes to the journalism model ought to benefit the public—ought to help citizens navigate the
information age in a literate way. Is professionalization a means of accomplishing this?
I argue that journalism’s adoption of some features of traditional professions would create goods
for the public, but others would not. Goods include a publicized commitment to a set of principles that
guide the work of professionals; harms include a distance that emerges between professionals and their
clients, a distance that wrongly takes journalists out of the communities they serve. In this roundtable
discussion, I’ll present ideas for how journalism can capitalize on the helpful features of professionalism
while leaving behind those that don’t serve the public and don’t help citizens meet their obligations to the
press.
VII. D. Ethics of Markets
1.
Playing the Market Good or Well?: The Ethical Implications of the “Flash Crash”
Elizabeth Searing, Georgia State University
Donald R Searing, Syncere Systems
On May 6th, 2010 the American stock markets experienced one of the most unprecedented oneday events in their history. In the early afternoon of what was a fairly lackluster trading day, one firm’s
mis-configured trade execution program precipitated a crisis which rippled across the futures markets and
into the stock markets, at one point sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) down almost 1000
points (10% of the index’s value) in a matter of minutes. Then, just as quickly, the slide reversed itself
and the markets recovered most of their value. This event is used as a case study to consider the ethics of
agency in finance and the use of automated trading systems in the complex sociotechnical system that is
the market.
2.
A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics
Shlomo Sher, USC Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics
A longstanding debate exists both in academic literature and popular culture about whether noninformative marketing tactics are manipulative. But given that we tend to believe that some marketing
tactics are manipulative and some are not, the question that marketers, their critics, and consumers need to
ask themselves is that of how to actually determine whether any particular marketing tactic is
manipulative, and whether a given manipulative tactic can be morally permissible.
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This paper proposes operationalizable criteria that can be used by marketers for making such
determinations and attempts to provide some clarification towards our understanding of the concept of
manipulation and the conditions for the moral acceptability of manipulative marketing practices.
VII. E. Intelligence Ethics
1.
Legitimizing the Study of Intelligence Ethics: A Comparison to Business Ethics
Cynthia Jones, University of Texas - Pan American
The field of intelligence ethics has the unique distinction of being criticized from the opposing
perspectives of both those within the intelligence community and those who are hyper-critical of the
intelligence community. This paper examines and critically evaluates arguments that have been offered
against the very study of intelligence ethics, for example, arguments that claim it is unreasonable to apply
ethics to intelligence work as well as arguments that condemn the study of intelligence ethics as
government propaganda or as an oxymoron. The uniqueness of the military and intelligence fields as
professions will be examined, while considering whether this uniqueness places practitioners outside of
the scope of professional ethics. We will discuss whether subjecting these jobs to the scrutiny of ethics is
legitimate.
Until fairly recently, most people regarded business ethics to be an oxymoron, as the sole purpose
of business, so the popular story went, was to make money without regard for ethics. On this view, the
very practice of business is antithetical to ethics. Public opinion on the relevance of business ethics as a
field of study has recently shifted, however, due in part to many highly-publicized and significant
scandals in the business world. This paper draws a parallel between the nascent field of intelligence ethics
and the more established academic field of business ethics, focusing especially on similar criticisms of the
legitimacy of applying ethics to work in these fields.
2.
Just Torture?
Shunzo Majima, Hokkaido University
Few doubt that torture is wrong. However, we cannot entirely eliminate torture once and for all,
despite the fact that the vast majority of us believe it to be wrong, because there are people who think that
torture can occasionally be morally justified. In fact, torture is conducted around the world.
Commentators who believe that torture can sometimes be morally justified give their reason for this
justification as one of national security. Thus, torture sponsored by government agencies which take
charge of national security cannot be entirely eliminated until and unless all major threats to national
security, actual or perceived, vanish. Nevertheless, the fact that torture is undertaken in the noble cause of
national security does not necessarily mean that it can be morally justified. The fact that torture is still
conducted at all, despite the fact that the vast majority of us share the view that it is wrong, is of major
concern.
The purpose of this paper is to develop and analyze a theory of just torture by reference to the
framework of just war theory, which proposes moral criticism against war, in order that we can critically
consider the morality or otherwise of torture, even that undertaken for interrogation purposes. In order to
construct this just torture theory and consider whether torture can be considered to be morally permissible
under certain exceptional circumstances, we will propose a tentative framework for just torture, and
investigate the set of principles behind the framework.
VII. F. Roundtable: Synthetic Biology and Ethics: A New Challenge
Rachelle Hollander, co- chair, National Academy of Engineering Center for Engineering, Ethics,
and Society
Eleonore Pauwels, co- chair, Woodrow Wilson International Center
Deborah Johnson, University of Virginia
Carl Mitcham, Colorado School of Mines
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This panel discussion will provide an opportunity to explore with the APPE community some
new and emerging issues related to the opportunities and challenges of synthetic biology. The proposal
grows out of the work of the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Center in Washington, DC, in
collaboration with the NAE Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society. Together these two groups held a
series of workshops and consultations over the last year exploring public, scientific, engineering, and
ethical perspectives on synthetic biology.
The co-chairs will frame the discussion. Eleonore Pauwels (from Belgium) serves as a Visiting
Scholar at the Wilson Center, and will be able to provide an overview of the project and to share some
European perspectives as well.
Rachelle Hollander will set the discussion in the larger U.S. perspective of science and
engineering ethics. Deborah Johnson and Carl Mitcham will help stimulate a discussion of practical and
professional ethics issues.
VII. G. Roundtable: Diversity, Pluralism, Social Work Professional Education and Practice
Behaviors
Richard Spano, School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas
Terry L. Koenig, School of Social Welfare, University of Kansas
Anne R. Simpson, Institute for Ethics, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Jennifer Lisa Vest, Philosphy, University of Central Florida
Lisa M. Lee, Chief Science Officer, Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, & Laboratory
Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Diversity and pluralism are highly valued in the preparation for professional practice across
multiple disciplines (e.g., public health, social welfare, law and education) and in the practice behaviors
needed to work with people. How these ideas are to be understood and utilized within professional social
work curricula and in professional practice behavior, however, remain entirely unclear. How can theories
and modes of critique (e.g., postmodern, culturally sensitive perspectives, feminist) be used to analyze,
deconstruct these ideas, and inform the construction of social work curricula and professional behavior?
How do we as professional social workers deal with the multiple truths that are evident in diverse cultures
(e.g., role of women; views of human sexuality)? Further, how do we (or should we) develop culturally
sensitive professional guidelines (e.g., curriculum standards, codes of ethics) that take into account client
self-determination and these multiple truths?
VII. H. Measuring Ethics Education
1.
Assessing Graduate-Level Ethics Education: A New Qualitative Instrument
Robert Kirkman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Roberta Berry, Georgia Institute of Technology
Matthew Drake, Duquesne University
Laura Palucki Blake, UCLA
We have developed a new, qualitative instrument for assessing ethics education outcomes in
sciences, engineering, and related fields. The instrument, called SkillSET (Skills for Science/Engineering
Ethics Test) consists of a detailed case study followed by five open-ended questions.
We are currently testing the instrument in a quasi-experimental study involving four institutions
in Atlanta, Georgia. The experimental group consists of graduate and professional students participating
in a newly designed, cross-institutional seminar in which teams of students work to address ethically
contentious policy problems that arise from recent bioscience research and technological innovation. In
this paper, we provide some of the theoretical and methodological background of the new instrument,
describe its implementation as part of an innovative ethics education project, and present the first results
of our analysis of the data we have collected.
54
2.
Developing Methods of Measuring Ethical Comprehension Among Undergraduate
Students: Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Measures
Jill May, Illinois Institute of Technology
Daniel Gandara, Illinois Institute of Technology
A number of current scandals in Wall Street, the housing crisis, the academic dishonesty
revelations at Harvard University have illustrated serious problems in the moral decision making of
professionals from different fields. There has been a call for improved ethical education.
Many educators would like to believe they are helping their students prepare to become
intelligent, skilled, responsible and ethical individuals. However, much research has indicated that few
schools have serious, well-designed programs to assess the ethical competence of their students and to
ensure that the desired outcomes are met.
We will report on a multi-university research program designed to develop measures of ethical
awareness in order to identify best practices in developing those competencies. The paper is a description
of the qualitative and quantitative measures being developed on applied ethical comprehension and team
attitudes toward ethics. We also provide a description of several ethical interventions we have put in place
in order to enhance ethical understanding.
VII. I. Hospital Ethics Committees
1.
Role of Clergy in Health Care Ethics Committees
Alex Dubov, Andrews University, Emory University
The goal of this paper is to carry out an evaluation of the role of clergy as members of Healthcare
Ethical Committees (HEC). Their participation in HEC was always assumed but never defined. What
unique contribution may be provided by a clergy member to the work of HEC? The main role of a
chaplain is to provide spiritual care to the patients. The spiritual needs of a patient should be taken into
consideration because of the following reasons: strong connection between personal beliefs and medical
decisions of a patient; religion helps patients to cope with a disease, and it has a noteworthy influence on
the general well-being of a patient. Therefore clergy members can provide a unique perspective on two
specific domains of healthcare, namely spirituality and personhood. A chaplain can explain how beliefs
and religious practices may influence a patient’s decisions and actions. The presence of a chaplain may be
a sign for the patient’s family that their case was given a holistic approach and careful consideration. Due
to the involvement in the personal struggles of patients and their families, chaplains usually have a unique
perspective on a particular case. Additionally, their previous training in a variety of disciplines combined
with their efforts to uphold the concept of human dignity make their presence on the board of a HEC
imperative. This paper offers recommendations for the further research including necessary characteristics
for a clergy member to participate in HEC sessions as well as their participation in other ethical
committees.
2.
Physicians’ Roles on Hospital Ethics Committees (HECs)
Charlotte McDaniel, Emory University
Hospital ethics committees (HECs) continue to evolve since their initial 1980s inception. They
also continue to hold an important place in the complicated decisions occurring daily in American
hospitals. However, HECs have also garnered concerns including, for example, their membership
composition, professional roles, leadership, and outcomes. Among the continuing issues have been
physicians’ roles, both as members and leaders. For these reasons, an empirical analysis was conducted
regarding those roles using a purposive sample to assess MDs’ decisional processes and perceptions of
their roles using established methods and quality questionnaires. Selection was compared to a state-wide
and a national sample, with no statistically significant (p=0.05) differences among them, thereby
affirming results. Power analysis confirmed adequate sample size. These findings offer a depiction of
55
physicians’ communication exchange-type and number, as well as perceptions MDs’ have of their
contributions and decisional abilities. Among the findings is that physicians have a lower rated opinion of
their roles than do other HEC professionals. Results complement prior findings on structural aspects of
HECs; however, these detailed findings regarding communication and other process aspects do not affirm
prior findings. These differing results provide an important complement to prior analyses of HECs and
warrant a focused discussion.
Concurrent Session VIII
4:00-5:30 pm., Saturday, March 5
VIII. A. Mini Conference, “Twenty Years of Practical Ethics: Looking Back and Looking Forward”
Keynote: “Professional Ethics: Where We Have Been and Where We Should Go”
David H. Smith, Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University
VIII. B. Panel: Business Ethics Education: Retrospect and Prospect
Panelists:
Alice Eldridge, Loyola Marymount University
Aine Donovan, Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional
Ethics, Dartmouth College
Nien-he Hsieh, University of Pennsylvania
Tom White, Loyola Marymount University
Marianne Jennings, Chair, Arizona State University
Over the past several decades business ethics education has developed in a variety of new and
important ways. At the outset, in academia, business ethics education was often viewed as teaching
students and practitioners how to apply the ethical principles of major ethical theories to practical
problems in business. As time went on, more integrative views of ethics and business were brought to the
table, as well as other narrative, virtue, and particularist views of ethics. Within business, ethics education
has also developed in the context of demands for compliance to laws, regulations, and corporate codes of
conduct. This has involved videos, board games, role playing, and computer based training. All of this
has made for a vibrant, complex, and expanding set of approaches to business ethics education. Join the
panel in discussing the business ethics education, both retrospectively and prospectively.
VIII. C. Roundtable: Science and Engineering Ethics Editorial Board: The Role of an
Academic Journal in the Promotion of Ethics to Scientists and Engineers
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Carl Mitcham, Hennebach Program in the Humanities, Colorado School of Mines
Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy of
Engineering
Deborah G. Johnson, Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia
Chair: Raymond E. Spier, Co Editor-in-Chief Science and Engineering Ethics
Journals are organs that disseminate information. The information that appears in academic
journals has been peer reviewed, edited and offered to the readership as material that will contribute to
progress in the area covered by the journal. The content of such publications provides an opportunity to
those interested in the field to test, check and challenge or support the provided material. The same
writings may also serve to stimulate, educate and inspire people in the fields that are covered.
Additionally they provide descriptions of methods that can be used to discover, evaluate, analyze and test
the subject matter of the area of the journal. In performing these functions it is not uncommon for a
community of like-minded people to emerge from the interactions that are engendered by the existence of
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a journal that creates or provides a forum for communication and the exchange of ideas.
In the light of the above considerations it is to be hoped that we may expand, criticize and extend
these views and introduce other ideas that will examine and evaluate how a journal might develop further
as a tool used to progress the benefit and well-being of people and the rest of biota.
VIII. D. Topics in Ethics
1.
Self-Determination as a Principle of Justice, Revisited
Victoria I. Burke, University of Guelph
In 1979, the late Iris Marion Young presciently captured what is now thought to be forwardlooking about the latter decades of the 20th-Century: the normative principle of self-determination.
Young argued that a rational agent in the “original position” under John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”
would choose the principle of self-determination as a principle of justice. Not knowing anything about
one’s race, socio-economic status, or level of ability, one would choose self-determination as a norm
because, regardless of one’s situation, a rational agent would want the greatest amount of control over the
conditions of his or her own life as possible. This is a very different norm, however, than the Kantian
categorical imperative, which proposes that the subject should universalize the maxim that animates her
action. I argue, in light of Rawls’ later philosophy and recent scholarship on Hegel’s social and political
philosophy, that self-determination is best understood not as self-causality. Rather, it should be
understood as the recognition of one’s identification with and partial dependence upon an ethical order
[Sittlichkeit] that one does not choose or determine.
2.
The Articulated State
Susan M. Turner, Thompson Rivers University
In a work of contextualized meta-ethical analysis, I explore the possibility that the four principal
moral theories: Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, Feminist Ethics of Care, Kant’s Deontology and Mill’s
Utilitarianism form a sort of moral fractal. I adopt the philosophical yet immanently practical idea
bequeathed us by Feminism that the sort of relationship two or more people are in matters to what sort of
moral assumptions they will make about its existence and their part in it. Deployed, the singular
importance in morality of relationships and the logical connections between the four main theories
produce what I call ‘the articulated state.’
The articulated state has four relationship domains. Using meta ethical domain analysis, personal
life relates unequals by promises and the Ethics of Care in the Personal Domain. Professional life relates
equals by oaths and Virtue Ethics in the Professional Domain. Private life relates unequals by contracts
and Deontology in the Private Domain. Public life relates aspirational equals by warrants and
Utilitarianism in the Public Domain.
At the borders where each domain meets the others, clarity on what relationship rules and values
are being assumed is a precious commodity. For example, the last 50 years have meant a sea change to
the professional domain given its ancient heritage. What were once strictly private or personal
relationships between cared for and carer have been professionalized. The combination of an ancient or
medieval lifetime commitment, the individual caprice of promise based care and the short term basis of
private relations has resulted in a lot of ethical confusion. If it can be cleared up using meta ethical
domain analysis, then it ought to be.
VIII. E. Ethical Issues for Clergy
1.
Religious Beliefs in the ICU: The Golubchuk Case
Gregory Bock, Philosophy, Walters State Community College
Robert Mundle, Ethics and Spiritual Care, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
A discussion of the Golubchuk case appeared in the March 2010 edition of The American
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Journal of Bioethics. Samuel Golubchuk, an elderly Orthodox Jewish man, was being maintained on life
support longer than was deemed reasonable by physicians. The family insisted on continued treatment
citing their religious beliefs.
We (the two presenters) come from different backgrounds and our presentation cuts across two
professions: medical ethics and pastoral care (chaplaincy). On the one side, the Golubchuk case
represents a violation of the medical standard of care: a request for inappropriate treatment. On the other,
the request comes from a religious worldview, and we need to be sensitive to patients’ religious beliefs.
In our discussion, we will approach the case from both the ethical and pastoral care points of
view. A recently published bioethical framework suggests a set of conditions for deciding whether
religious beliefs are “medically valid”:
1. The belief is shared by a community
2. The belief is deeply held
3. The belief would pass the test of a religious interpreter
4. The belief does not harm others
We will discuss how the beliefs of Samuel Golubchuk (or family) fare in this framework and
whether such a framework works and is sensitive to the patient’s beliefs.
The chaplain’s role in ethical dilemmas is to bridge polarization and encourage respect among
stakeholders. We will discuss whether and how chaplains should help “interpret” a patient’s belief and
work toward conflict resolution.
2.
A Gregorian Natural Law Approach to the Clergy-Penitent Privilege and the
Seal of Confession
Mark Andrew Jones, Nova Southeastern University
As a general rule, under the principle that the public has a right to each person’s evidence,
citizens are legally obligated to testify when subpoenaed. Professional ethical obligations can conflict
with this duty, however. This conflict is moderated by testimonial privileges or exceptions to the general
rule. I intend to explore in this paper the tension between church and state in the scope of the clergypenitent privilege, a historically important instance of the more general professional-client privilege. I
will offer an alternative based on natural law as reflected in the thought of Pope Gregory I, which better
serves both secular and non-secular interests.
The moral obligation not to reveal secrets communicated in sacramental confession is primarily
grounded in natural law, which demands respect for others by not revealing their transgressions without
just cause. This ethical obligation is most compelling when secrets are confided with the express or tacit
understanding of confidentiality.
I argue that a Gregorian approach recognizes a limited “dangerous person exception” to the Seal
of Confession. Further, the clergy-penitent privilege should be abrogated as to reporting to avoid harm to
third parties but not as to subsequent judicial proceedings. I suggest that this Gregorian approach
facilitates identification and rendering of aid to potential victims without transforming clergy into
instruments of state prosecution or substantially burdening the practice of religion. Through the
foregoing, I hope to demonstrate that a Gregorian natural law approach has
sufficient analytical power to warrant application to other testimonial privileges and more general
professional ethical issues.
VIII. F. Medical Ethics
1.
Not-for-Profit Health Care: A Preliminary Argument
William P. Kabasenche, Washington State University
I would like to bring together three claims to support the admittedly bold thesis that all sectors of
health care provision should be not-for-profit. The first claim is that medicine as a profession, when
58
properly understood, exists in a relationship of social trust with the larger community in which it
practices. This claim can be generalized to many other areas of health care, especially to other health care
professions. Second, we have a looming shortage of medical doctors, as well as professionals in other
areas of health care, and a limit on the available number of seats in medical and other schools, which
suggests that the opportunity to gain a health care education should be seen as a limited commodity.
Third, current financial arrangements, in various sectors of health care provision, are clearly
compromising patient well-being. There may be other claims that could also support my thesis, however I
will focus on these here. By themselves, these three claims seem to me to make a strong case for a fairly
radical change in the financial structure of health care. I use them to make a normative argument that all
segments of health care provision, and perhaps by extension other parts of the health care industry,
should be not-for-profit. That is to say that while anyone working in the provision of health care at any of
its diverse levels should receive fair compensation, no organization or individual should be making a
profit on top of a fairly negotiated wage.
2.
Being a Bioethicist: Questions Concerning Method and the Future of Bioethics
Michael DaSilva, University of Toronto
Earlier this year, the Hastings Center proposed that the 40th anniversary of bioethics is imminent.
They further suggested that this anniversary presents an opportunity to consider the future of bioethics
with a particular emphasis on what topics bioethicists should begin to consider.
This short paper takes up the call for focus on the future of bioethics by instead focusing on the
unresolved questions in the history of bioethics that we must answer in order to improve future bioethical
theory and practice. Its primary focus is on method. Questions concerning 1) the nature of bioethics as an
interdisciplinary practice, and 2) what interdisciplinarity methodologies do and should look like, motivate
the bulk of the queries. While the paper is concerned with bioethics in particular, many of these questions
are at the root of other inter- and multidisciplinary branches of ethics. Since professional and applied
ethics are often inter- or multidisciplinary, theorists and practitioners in those fields will find the piece
particularly intriguing.
As a programmatic piece, the paper hopes to provoke responses to these fundamental unanswered
questions in bioethics. The author also hopes that the paper will inspire further suggestions of questions
that need answering in bioethics.
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Mini Conference
Mini Conference Session I
7:30-9:00 pm, Saturday, March 5
Roundtable: Ethical Issues in Climate Change, “Ethical Dimensions of the Phenomenon”
Lisa H. Newton, Program in Applied Ethics, Fairfield University
Monica Aufrecht, Philosophy, Simon Fraser University
Paul B. Thompson, Kellogg Professor of Agriculture, Food, and Community Ethics, Michigan
State University
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Mini Conference
Session II & III
Mini Conference Session II
8:30-10:00 am
Roundtable: Ethical Issues in Engineering
Michael S. Pritchard, Willard Brown Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University
P. Aarne Vesilind, College of Engineering, Bucknell University, Retired
Joseph R. Herkert, Lincoln Associate Professor of Ethics and Technology, Arizona State
University
Rachelle D. Hollander, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society, National Academy of
Engineering
Michael Davis, Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
Richard A. Burgess, National Institute of Engineering, Texas Tech
Mini Conference Session III
10:00-11:30 am
Roundtable: Ethical Issues in Journalism
Elaine E. Englehardt, Distinguished Professor of Ethics, Special Assistant to the President,
Utah Valley University
Stephen J. A. Ward, James E. Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Edward Wasserman, Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics, Washington and Lee University
60