Moral dilemmas in contemporary virtue ethics

A simple definition of a moral dilemma is a situation where an agent ought to do two different things but can only do one. Though this definition may seem straightforward enough, it has created a stir over the last fifty years. Bernard Williams first used the concept of moral dilemmas to call the adequacy of the major ethical theories into question, challenging the possibility of consistent ethical systems. More recently, virtue ethicists, like Rosalind Hursthouse, have used moral dilemmas to challenge the two dominant schools of moral philosophy: deontology and utilitarianism. These attacks have been instrumental in setting up virtue ethics as an alternative to the other two schools. But, is virtue ethics really able to account for moral dilemmas in its theory? This will be the focus of this thesis. The first two chapters of this thesis are expository. They try to clearly present some of the major ideas of Williams and Hursthouse. After establishing some of the key concepts in contemporary virtue ethics and elaborating on the structure and problem of the concept of moral dilemmas, the remaining four chapters critically examine the strength of Williams\u27 and Hursthouse\u27s arguments in favor of the existence of moral dilemmas. Partly drawing upon the work of Terrence McConnell, I attempt to argue that both philosophers\u27 theories face tremendous odds and are unable to offer a satisfactory account of moral dilemmas

Passive Virtues and the Second Amendment

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

The Harmony Thesis and the Problem of Continence in Contemporary Virtue Ethics

Contemporary virtue ethicists have largely followed Aristotle in accepting what Karen Stohr calls the harmony thesis. This thesis claims that a virtuous agent will not experience inner conflict or pain when acting. His reasons, desires, and actions will correspond and be in harmony with one another. A merely continent agent, on the other hand, is one who is said to perform the same action as the virtuous agent, but experiences inner conflict or pain in doing so. While the harmony thesis provides a useful criterion for demarcating virtue from continence, we can imagine cases where acting with conflict or pain is not only appropriate but necessary in the situation. In these cases the virtue/continence distinction cannot be easily drawn. This difficulty for the harmony thesis is better known as the problem of continence. In writing this dissertation I have three goals: show that the problem of continence poses a threat to the harmony thesis, offer a solution to the problem, and make that solution fit the needs of contemporary virtue ethics. In bringing about the first goal, I begin by introducing the harmony thesis and show that, in the contemporary context, the virtue/continence distinction takes on a much more expanded scope than espoused by Aristotle. For example, McDowell applies it to courage; Foot to honesty, charity, and justice; and Hursthouse to nearly all the moral virtues. While useful for contemporary virtue ethicists, this more robust conception makes the harmony thesis susceptible to problematic cases that Aristotle did not have to face. Chapter 2 explores a problematic case offered by Stohr involving a company owner who needs to fire several of her employees in order to save the company from ruin. Because acting rightly in the case requires an agent experience inner conflict or pain, only the continent agent can deliver. This puts the status of the virtuous agent in a compromising position: either be deemed morally lacking (in some way) compared to the continent agent or deny that the standard of virtue is sharply distinct from continence. In looking for a way out of the dilemma, Chapter 3 explores some attempts at a solution offered by Sarah Broadie, Susan Stark, David Carr, Geoffey Scarre, and Howard Curzer, concluding that none of the mentioned solutions adequately solve the problem of continence. The second goal of the dissertation is reached in three steps. I first return to the traditional account of continence defended by Aristotle. In a neo-Aristotelian spin drawing on Terence Irwin and Ursula Coope, I argue in Chapter 4 that continence should be interpreted as a failure of rationality rather than one of feeling. By redefining continence in this way, the real problem in Stohr's counterexample can be homed in on: the company owner who fires her employees with ease feels less pain than she should. The second step sets out to make sense of what it means to feel an inappropriate amount of pain. In Chapter 5, I propose that we turn to Aristotle's virtue of endurance to make sense of the defect. The third step uses the virtue of endurance to show that the defect in the company owner that acts with ease is that he is subject to the vice of hardness– feeling less pain than he should–not that virtue is inferior to continence in the case. Having accounted for Stohr's problem case, I address the other horn of the dilemma in Chapters 6 by offering an improved method for drawing the virtue/continence distinction. I do this by expanding and refining the concept of endurance. This culminates into a sophisticated account making use of temperance, continence, endurance, softness, and hardness. This meets my third goal by allowing the contemporary virtue ethicist to utilize continence and/or endurance in accommodating the wide variety of cases characteristically treated in the field

Effects of virtual acoustics on dynamic auditory distance perception

Sound propagation encompasses various acoustic phenomena including reverberation. Current virtual acoustic methods, ranging from parametric filters to physically-accurate solvers, can simulate reverberation with varying degrees of fidelity. We investigate the effects of reverberant sounds generated using different propagation algorithms on acoustic distance perception, i.e., how faraway humans perceive a sound source. In particular, we evaluate two classes of methods for real-time sound propagation in dynamic scenes based on parametric filters and ray tracing. Our study shows that the more accurate method shows less distance compression as compared to the approximate, filter-based method. This suggests that accurate reverberation in VR results in a better reproduction of acoustic distances. We also quantify the levels of distance compression introduced by different propagation methods in a virtual environment.Comment: 8 Pages, 7 figure

The rise and fall of the UK Operating and Financial Review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the controversial repeal of legislation requiring UK companies to disclose an Operating and Financial Review (OFR). After a lengthy period of consultation and the preparation of a reporting standard, legislation was passed in March 2005 requiring UK listed companies to disclose a separate statement of management commentary, an OFR. In November 2005 the Chancellor unexpectedly and controversially announced the repeal of the OFR during a speech to the largest business lobbying group in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis draws upon internal, private governmental documents prepared by the Treasury ministry to brief the Chancellor, publicly disclosed as a result of a legal challenge against the repeal decision. Findings – The paper describes how Treasury officials were motivated to seek deregulatory opportunities in order to gain political support for their head, Prime Minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown. The analysis reveals how the repeal of the OFR was identified as an example of corporate deregulation, and how this perception proved to be misplaced following the reaction to the repeal decision which led to the government reinstating many OFR requirements in an enhanced Business Review in 2006. Originality/value – The paper draws on the conception of “3-D” power to analyse how a political ideology prevalent in the pre-financial crisis environment came to influence accounting technology with unexpected consequences. Using data rarely disclosed in the public domain, it illuminates the “black boxed” processes underlying regulatory decision making. The paper details how the Treasury were politically motivated to influence corporate reporting policy in the absence of concerted political lobbying, and why this episode of government intervention led to an unanticipated regulatory outcome. </jats:sec

Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

Treating a human mind like a machine is an essential component of dehumanization, whereas attributing a humanlike mind to a machine is an essential component of anthropomorphism. Here we tested how a cue closely connected to a person's actual mental experience-a humanlike voice-affects the likelihood of mistaking a person for a machine, or a machine for a person. We predicted that paralinguistic cues in speech are particularly likely to convey the presence of a humanlike mind, such that removing voice from communication (leaving only text) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text's creator for a machine. Conversely, adding voice to a computer-generated script (resulting in speech) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text's creator for a human. Four experiments confirmed these hypotheses, demonstrating that people are more likely to infer a human (vs. computer) creator when they hear a voice expressing thoughts than when they read the same thoughts in text. Adding human visual cues to text (i.e., seeing a person perform a script in a subtitled video clip), did not increase the likelihood of inferring a human creator compared with only reading text, suggesting that defining features of personhood may be conveyed more clearly in speech (Experiments 1 and 2). Removing the naturalistic paralinguistic cues that convey humanlike capacity for thinking and feeling, such as varied pace and intonation, eliminates the humanizing effect of speech (Experiment 4). We discuss implications for dehumanizing others through text-based media, and for anthropomorphizing machines through speech-based media. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Meta-analysis of honey bee neurogenomic response links deformed wing virus type A to precocious behavioral maturation

Crop pollination by the western honey bee Apis mellifera is vital to agriculture but threatened by alarmingly high levels of colony mortality, especially in Europe and North America. Colony loss is due, in part, to the high viral loads of Deformed wing virus (DWV), transmitted by the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor, especially throughout the overwintering period of a honey bee colony. Covert DWV infection is commonplace and has been causally linked to precocious foraging, which itself has been linked to colony loss. Taking advantage of four brain transcriptome studies that unexpectedly revealed evidence of covert DWV-A infection, we set out to explore whether this effect is due to DWV-A mimicking naturally occurring changes in brain gene expression that are associated with behavioral maturation. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that brain gene expression profiles of DWV-A infected bees resembled those of foragers, even in individuals that were much younger than typical foragers. In addition, brain transcriptional regulatory network analysis revealed a positive association between DWV-A infection and transcription factors previously associated with honey bee foraging behavior. Surprisingly, single-cell RNA-Sequencing implicated glia, not neurons, in this effect; there are relatively few glial cells in the insect brain and they are rarely associated with behavioral plasticity. Covert DWV-A infection also has been linked to impaired learning, which together with precocious foraging can lead to increased occurrence of infected bees from one colony mistakenly entering another colony, especially under crowded modern apiary conditions. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms by which DWV-A affects honey bee health and colony survival

The effects of assimilating a sub-grid-scale sea ice thickness distribution in a new Arctic sea ice data assimilation system

In the past decade groundbreaking new satellite observations of the Arctic sea ice cover have been made, allowing researchers to understand the state of the Arctic sea ice system in greater detail than before. The derived estimates of sea ice thickness are useful but limited in time and space. In this study the first results of a new sea ice data assimilation system are presented. Observations assimilated (in various combinations) are monthly mean sea ice thickness and monthly mean sea ice thickness distribution from CryoSat-2 and NASA daily Bootstrap sea ice concentration. This system couples the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling's (CPOM) version of the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE) to the localised ensemble transform Kalman filter (LETKF) from the Parallel Data Assimilation Framework (PDAF) library. The impact of assimilating a sub-grid-scale sea ice thickness distribution is of particular novelty. The sub-grid-scale sea ice thickness distribution is a fundamental component of sea ice models, playing a vital role in the dynamical and thermodynamical processes, yet very little is known of its true state in the Arctic. This study finds that assimilating CryoSat-2 products for the mean thickness and the sub-grid-scale thickness distribution can have significant consequences for the modelled distribution of the ice thickness across the Arctic and particularly in regions of thick multi-year ice. The assimilation of sea ice concentration, mean sea ice thickness and sub-grid-scale sea ice thickness distribution together performed best when compared to a subset of CryoSat-2 observations held back for validation. Regional model biases are reduced: the thickness of the thickest ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) is decreased, but the thickness of the ice in the central Arctic is increased. When comparing the assimilation of mean thickness with the assimilation of sub-grid-scale thickness distribution, it is found that the latter leads to a significant change in the volume of ice in each category. Estimates of the thickest ice improve significantly with the assimilation of sub-grid-scale thickness distribution alongside mean thickness

Long-term behavior at foraging sites of adult female loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) from three Florida rookeries

We used satellite telemetry to study behavior at foraging sites of 40 adult female loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) from three Florida (USA) rookeries. Foraging sites were located in four countries (USA, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Cuba). We were able to determine home range for 32 of the loggerheads. One turtle moved through several temporary residence areas, but the rest had a primary residence area in which they spent all or most of their time (usually >11 months per year). Twenty-four had a primary residence area that was <500 km(2) (mean = 191). Seven had a primary residence area that was ≥500 km(2) (range = 573–1,907). Primary residence areas were mostly restricted to depths <100 m. Loggerheads appeared to favor areas with larger-grained sediment (gravel and rock) over areas with smaller-grained sediment (mud). Short-term departures from primary residence areas were either looping excursions, typically involving 1–2 weeks of continuous travel, or movement to a secondary residence area where turtles spent 25–45 days before returning to their primary residence area. Ten turtles had a secondary residence area, and six used it as an overwintering site. For those six turtles, the primary residence area was in shallow water (<17 m) in the northern half of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), and overwintering sites were farther offshore or farther south. We documented long winter dive times (>4 h) for the first time in the GOM. Characterizing behaviors at foraging sites helps inform and assess loggerhead recovery efforts