Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal最新文献

Social robots are increasingly being deployed to address social isolation and loneliness, particularly among older adults. Clips on social media attest that individuals availing themselves of this option are pleased with their robot companions. Yet, some people find the use of social robots to meet fundamental human emotional needs disturbing. This article clarifies and critically evaluates this response. It sets forth a framework for loneliness, which characterizes one kind of loneliness as involving an affective experience of lacking human relations that provide certain social goods. Next, the article discusses social robots and critically reviews the literature on the ethics of using them in light of this loneliness characterization. Third, we present a normative argument connecting the philosophical critique of loneliness-as-absence with the design and deployment of social robots. Finally, we draw out the implications of our analysis for public health and for interrogating the aims of commercial companies who make social robots.

COVID-19 elicited a rapid emergence of new mutual aid networks in the US, but the practices of these networks are understudied. Using qualitative methods, we explored the empirical ethics guiding US-based mutual aid networks' activities, and assessed the alignment between principles and practices as networks mobilized to meet community needs during 2020-21. We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 mutual aid group organizers and supplemented these with secondary source materials on mutual aid activities and participant observation of mutual aid organizing efforts. We analyzed participants' practices in relation to key mutual aid principles as defined in the literature: 1) solidarity not charity; 2) non-hierarchical organizational structures; 3) equity in decision-making; and 4) political engagement. Our data also yielded a fifth principle, "mutuality," essential to networks' approaches but distinct from anarchist conceptions of mutualism. While mutual aid networks were heavily invested in these ethical principles, they struggled to achieve them in practice. These findings underscore the importance of mutual aid praxis as an intersection between ethical principles and practices, and the challenges that contemporary, and often new, mutual aid networks responding to COVID-19 face in developing praxis during a period of prolonged crisis. We develop a theory-of-change model that illuminates both the opportunities and the potential pitfalls of mutual aid work in the context of structural inequities, and shows how communities can achieve justice-oriented mutual aid praxis in current and future crises.

Autistic adults suffer from an alarmingly high and increasing unemployment rate. Many companies use pre-employment personality screening tests. These filters likely have disparate impacts on neurodivergent individuals, exacerbating this social problem. This situation gives rise to a bind. On the one hand, the tests disproportionately harm a vulnerable group in society. On the other, employers think that personality test scores are predictors of job performance and have a right to use personality traits in their decisions. It is difficult to say whether these negative disparate impacts are a case of wrongful discrimination. Nevertheless, we will show that pre-employment personality tests prey on several features of autism in an unfair way, and for this reason, we suggest the contours of some regulation that we deem necessary.

In the last two decades it has become increasingly common to advocate for a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes. One reason in favor of such a ban is egalitarian: differences in the prevalence of smoking between socioeconomic groups go a long way in explaining health inequality, and a complete ban might be effective in reducing this inequality. However, a complete ban might also be objectionable on egalitarian grounds if issued with a discriminatory intent or if it is selectively paternalistic. This article argues that a complete ban is likely to be guilty of both, especially when one of its aims is to reduce unequal rates of smoking between groups. A complete ban on the sale of cigarettes thus exhibits a curious feature: in aiming to reduce inequality it threatens to be inegalitarian. This is characteristic of a wider class of public health policies that deserves further attention by egalitarians.

This study describes the results of a social analysis of mutual aid solidarity during Nigeria's #EndSARSprotests against Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) brutality in Nigeria. The results reveal that the protests achieved success with the assistance of mutual aid solidarity networks. Yet there is a dearth of literature exploring the reasons for this accomplishment. Nigeria is a country where everything done usually has a religious coloration and interpretation; however, the 2020 mutual aid solidarity in the #EndSARS protests proved otherwise. Using in-depth interviews, data were elicited from 20 youths, including participants and observers during the #EndSARS mutual aid solidarity protests. Using a phenomenological approach, this study found that the mutual aid support group transcended traditional geopolitical, gender, and religious barriers, and youth and the elderly participated in the protest. Further results show that the 2020 #End-SARS mutual aid solidarity brought about an accountable and transparent civil society, including the financial disbanding of the Nigerian Police Force, the SARS unit responsible for extrajudicial killings. The findings also indicate that Nigerian politicians are the real problem, not religion. Recommendations are discussed.