7,744 research outputs found

    The Ontology and Ethics of Money.

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    This thesis aims to explore the ontology and the normative nature of money. Part 1 aims to provide a philosophical and methodological toolbox with which to consider the ontology of money and the boundary between market and non-market spheres. From a Critical Realist perspective, it blocks the slide into two problems of reductionism. The positivist perspective, on the one hand, reduces objects to their empirical existence and seeks to quantify them. The Post-structuralist perspective, on the other hand, reduces objects to our discourses and ignores their extra-discursive nature. The Critical Realist can avoid reducing commensurability into either a mere empirical existence or a mere social construction. Whether things are marketable or not is partly a matter of extra-discursive facts and partly of discursive institutional facts. A market boundary, a separation between the marketable and the non-marketable goods, exists not only for us, but also in virtue of the nature both of money and of non-monetary goods. The ontology of money matters to the morality of money. Part 2 aims to provide an ethical approach from which to consider normative debates about money. From the perspective of an Aristotelian virtue ethics, it criticises the moral instrumentalist view of money - i. e. the view that money is simply a tool and hence that it is pointless to argue about morality of money as such --- and the Smithian virtue-based justification of money, which holds that whilst the society may subsist without a positive virtue of beneficence, it cannot subsist without a negative virtue of justice promoted by money. From an Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective, it defends the importance and possibility of altruistic gift giving from both practical indifference and theoretical skepticism. Finally, it explores the possibility of a 'virtue-based utopianism' in contrast with an 'evotopianism' based on a consequentialist ethical perspective

    Virtuous living towards an African theology of wisdom in the context of the African renaissance

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    The structure of this study is a complex inter-relationship of a variety of sources in a theological work, namely, personal experience, African social and politico-economic context, philosophical reflection, wisdom traditions and Christian theology. These sources form a coherent inter-relationship which is foundational for an African theology of wisdom. The introduction gives an overview of my moral and theological formation. This is intended to provide a perspective through which the issue of moral orientation in African context has been approached. It is therefore entitled: Moral formation and the shaping of a theological mind. The first chapter answers the question: Why is Africa in need of a wisdom theology that addresses the issue of moral regeneration? This question is posed in the broader context of the current African Renaissance debates. The links between the Italian (European) and African Renaissance indicate that moral regeneration is a crucial part of the socio-political, intellectual and economic re-birth of Africa. This ā€œsocio-historicalā€ source gives the context and urgency of a wisdom theology. It is therefore entitled: A contextual analysis: The European and African Renaissance. The second chapter re-asserts the rise of virtue ethics as an alternative ethical theory to the predominant deontological and utilitarian traditions. This is achieved through analysing Alisdair MacIntyreā€™s earlier work, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), set in the context of Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe, the modern initiators of a virtue ethic. This ā€œphilosophicalā€ source gives the theoretical framework that addresses the question of moral formation. It is therefore entitled: A philosophical analysis: The rise of virtue ethics as alternative ethical theory. The third chapter is devoted to two related ā€œwisdomā€ themes: Firstly, the seven traditional virtues are briefly described highlighting the virtue of wisdom as foundational. Secondly, the idea of wisdom is further developed via three wisdom traditions, namely: wisdom in the Hellenistic, Judeo-Christian and African traditions. This ā€œsapientialā€ source gives this African theology of wisdom its most important building blocks. This chapter is therefore entitled: A sapiential analysis: Wisdom as foundation for virtue ethics in Africa. The last chapter brings the previous sources together under a specific theological perspective. It draws on aspects of recent African theologiansā€™ work, notably: Kwame Gyekye and Benezet Bujo who engage with and bring together Western and African theological traditions. I answer a pertinent question, ā€œWhat does such a ā€˜theologicalā€™ perspective entail?ā€ I draw on Scripture and its Trinitarian tradition to demonstrate how African wisdom, reinforced by the framework of virtue theory, and developed in the context of present-day Africa by an African student of theology, has the potential to contribute to the moral transformation of Africa. This more overt ā€œtheologicalā€ source is the distinctive Christian enterprise of an African wisdom theology. The chapter title is aligned with the overall title of this study: A theological analysis: Toward an African virtue ethics? To this end, this study achieves its attempt to construct an inter-related framework from which an African theology of wisdom may emerge

    Human Supremacy as Posthuman Risk

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    Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of public policy. Posthumanism is an historical and cultural situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on Rosi Braidottiā€™s critical posthumanism and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the use of human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis leads to identifying a set of risks posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, specifically involving the classification of agents by type

    Is the Rule of Law Cosmopolitan?

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    What I will argue in the bulk of the paper is that whether or not the rule of law implies ethical cosmopolitanism depends: it depends on how we understand or interpret the legalistic sense of justice that law and the rule of law seemingly require. The virtue that we sometimes call legal justice, and the correlative meaning of the rule of law to which it is yoked, can plausibly be subjected to a range of different interpretations, each resting on quite different understandings of the point of law and of what the individual law is meant to protect. Some of these interpretations do, but some don\u27t, imply some version of cosmopolitanism

    The Value of Existence Beyond Life: Towards a More Versatile Environmental Ethics

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    This paper argues that those that subscribe to ā€œBiocentrismā€, specifically the Biocentrism argued for by Paul Taylor, ought to adopt ā€œOntocentrismā€ instead. Biocentrism, the theory that all and only living things are morally considerable, fails to account for important moral differences between living things. It cannot justify, without ad-hoc addition, the intuition that a man is worth more than a pig, and a pig is worth more than a mouse. It similarly fails to account for the status of larger systems such as ecosystems, and lastly it fails to account for the status of non-biological entities and artificial life. Ontocentrism, the theory that all existing things, broadly construed, are morally considerable, ought to be adopted because it can account for these things without being ad-hoc and arbitrary

    Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration \ud

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    Should we grant rights to artificially intelligent robots? Most current and near-future robots do not meet the hard criteria set by deontological and utilitarian theory. Virtue ethics can avoid this problem with its indirect approach. However, both direct and indirect arguments for moral consideration rest on ontological features of entities, an approach which incurs several problems. In response to these difficulties, this paper taps into a different conceptual resource in order to be able to grant some degree of moral consideration to some intelligent social robots: it sketches a novel argument for moral consideration based on social relations. It is shown that to further develop this argument we need to revise our existing ontological and social-political frameworks. It is suggested that we need a social ecology, which may be developed by engaging with Western ecology and Eastern worldviews. Although this relational turn raises many difficult issues and requires more work, this paper provides a rough outline of an alternative approach to moral consideration that can assist us in shaping our relations to intelligent robots and, by extension, to all artificial and biological entities that appear to us as more than instruments for our human purpose

    Research Perspectives: Toward Theoretical Rigor in Ethical Analysis: The Case of Algorithmic Decision-Making Systems

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    Algorithmic decision-making systems (ADMS) are increasingly being used by public and private organizations to enact decisions traditionally made by human beings across a broad range of domains, including business, law enforcement, education, and healthcare. Their growing prevalence engenders profound ethical challenges, which, we maintain, should be examined in a structured and theoretically informed fashion. However, much of the ethical exploration of ADMS within the IS field draws upon an atheoretical application of ethics. In this paper, we argue that the ā€œbig threeā€ ethical theories of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics can inform a structured comparative analysis of the ethical significance of ADMS. We demonstrate the value of such an approach through an illustrative case study of an ADMS in use by an Australian bank. Building upon this analysis, we address four characteristics of ADMS from the three theoretical perspectives, provide guidance on the contexts within which the application of each theory might be particularly fruitful, and highlight the advantages of theoretically grounded ethical analyses of ADMS

    Evaluating Ethical Technology Leadership: Organizational Culture, Leader Behavior, and a Cyberspace Ethic of Business

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    Evaluating ethical technology leadership at a financial services firm in North Carolina requires discovering interactions amongst organizational culture, leadership approaches, and ethical decision-making practices. This study provides insight into how the participating firmā€™s organizational culture creates a leadership climate accommodative of an applied cyberspace business ethic. A cyberspace business ethic provides guidance to technology leaders addressing ethical challenges arising from emergent digital technologies. The identification of four key influencers that support ethical decision-making and provide protection against reputational risk exposures create an understanding of the collective nature of core values, relational, reputational, and technological influences on ethical behaviors. Self-determination theory assists in understanding the motivations for ethical leader behavior in the form of competency, autonomy, and relatedness. Coupling this theoretical knowledge with identification of the four influencers of ethical decision-making provides the basis of understanding the participating firmā€™s applied cyberspace business ethic. Given the rapid pace of emerging digital technology deployment, a dynamic condition of internal environmental complexity and external environmental uncertainty creates the need for leaders to develop a cyberspace business ethic appropriate for the business context. The participating firmā€™s cyberspace business ethic centers on core values, transparency, and communication clarity, purposefully utilized to mitigate reputational risk. Applying a Christian worldview to study findings adds a theological construct to organizational core values and underlying virtue ethics
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