Volume 31, Issue 2

This article is a libertarian critique of incest laws. On the basis of the libertarian “harm principle”, one must ask what exactly is the harm that incest brings forth. Traditionally, anthropologists have tried to rationalize the incest taboo in various theories, and lawmakers have used these principles as grounds for the criminalization of incest. These principles are the preservation of family structure, the enhancement of alliances and the avoidance of genetic risks. While I acknowledge that these rationalizations are plausible, I argue that they are still not sufficient grounds for the preservation of incest laws, and consequently, there is an ethical need to reform them.

Contemporary medical diagnostics has a dynamic moral landscape, which includes a variety of agents, factors, and components. A significant part of this landscape is composed of information technologies that play a vital role in doctors’ decision-making. This paper focuses on the so-called Intelligent Decision-Support System that is widely implemented in the domain of contemporary medical diagnosis. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I will show that the IDSS may be considered a moral agent in the practice of medicine today. To develop this idea I will introduce the approach to artificial agency provided by Luciano Floridi. Simultaneously, I will situate this approach in the context of contemporary discussions regarding the nature of artificial agency. It is argued here that the IDSS possesses a specific sort of agency, includes several agent features (e.g. autonomy, interactivity, adaptability), and hence, performs an autonomous behavior, which may have a substantial moral impact on the patient’s well-being. It follows that, through the technology of artificial neural networks combined with ‘deep learning’ mechanisms, the IDSS tool achieves a specific sort of independence (autonomy) and may possess a certain type of moral agency. Second, I will provide a conceptual framework for the ethical evaluation of the moral impact that the IDSS may have on the doctor’s decision-making and, consequently, on the patient’s wellbeing. This framework is the Object-Oriented Model of Moral Action developed by Luciano Floridi. Although this model appears in many contemporary discussions in the field of information and computer ethics, it has not yet been applied to the medical domain. This paper addresses this gap and seeks to reveal the hidden potentialities of the OOP model for the field of medical diagnosis.

This paper explores happiness as an aim of education, particularly schooling. What role does happiness play in philosophy of education? How do critics view the aims of public schooling today and its relation to happiness? Is happiness embedded in the concept of education as an aim of education? The paper explores happiness—understood inclusively as a positive mental state—by examining the relevant literature from various disciplines. It looks briefly at critical views of current trends in public school practice and concludes that happiness is not a central concern in present public school practice. Turning to philosophy of education, the author finds that happiness has been considered in relation to the philosophical conception of the human self and consequently eudaimonia has been prioritized over hedonia. The paper concludes by proposing that happiness is an appropriate and valid aim of education and schooling based on the normative implications of the concept of education.

The aim of this study is to explore the antecedents of studying abroad. First, we explore motivations for and barriers against studying abroad in two groups of students (who had studied abroad, and who had not studied abroad). Second, differences in attachment dimensions and styles are examined in both groups. A deductive thematic analysis supported the thematic structure identified by Krzaklewska (2008) in regard to motivations. Furthermore, five barriers were identified using inductive thematic analysis. Although the same motivational and barrier themes were found in both groups, there were some notable qualitative differences in meaning attached to them. A one-way MANOVA showed non-significant differences between the two groups of students and attachment dimensions. Finnaly, Fisher’s exact test was conducted, and the post hoc comparison showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of students who had studied abroad and had a secure attachment style compared to students who had not studied abroad.

This study, theoretically based on integrated threat and image theory, explored (1) the mental constructs produced by the Slovak majority in relation to cooperation with the Roma minority and (2) differences in thinking about different Roma demographic groups. In Slovakia, prejudice towards Roma people is a long-standing phenomenon. In this study there were 228 participants, mostly young adults, who produced 22 categories of associations, explored using content and network analyses. The frequency of category associations in the first and second research group was mostly the same, but the distribution differed for the demographic groups considered by the third research group, which was asked to produce associations separately for each Roma demographic group. The largest difference measured was between integrated and segregated Roma people – the associations were mostly positive for the first and negative for the second. These results provide the first empirical exploration of cooperation intentions with Roma people in the Slovak context and suggestions are made for future discourse on Roma.

This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘baby factories’ as an abusive pattern of surrogacy and child adoption practices in Nigeria. Relying on a mixed qualitative approach that draws on extant literature and field-based personal insights, the paper posits that the economic, socio-cultural and psycho-emotional value of bearing and having a child, as well as the tacit disapproval of adoptive parenting by some cultures in Nigeria, have driven childless couples and adults into seeking child adoption through illicit and unconventional paths, such as ‘baby factories’. The paper contends that the commercialization and non-regulation of surrogacy in Nigeria has created pretexts for the proliferation of ‘baby factories’, where babies are bought and sold, with pregnant girls and infants objectified as ‘stocks-in-trade’. To mitigate the phenomenon, it is expedient to regulate the bourgeoning illicit baby market in the country through proper legislation that is capable of moderating the excesses of surrogate and adoptive practices.

The question of why bad things happen (to good people) has puzzled individuals over generations and across different cultures. The most popular approach is to turn the issue into a question about God: Why does he allow bad things that lead to the suffering of often innocent bystanders? Some have drawn conclusions that there can be no God. These attempts that seek to find meaning in suffering are called theodicies. Thus, theodicies promise that the torment of the innocent is not in vain. In this article, I argue that theodicy as a viewpoint, independent of its intention, does injustice to the experience of the sufferer. Furthermore, an Adornian approach to suffering avoids the instrumentalization of others’ suffering and that instead of relating to another person’s suffering through theodicy, Adorno’s notion of non-identity opens up an alternative, non-coercive avenue.

Ever since the publication of the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, autobiographical testimonies were a mainstay of the abolition movement in the United States. Being or having been held as slaves and all the attendant injury is the very theme of the documents in question, which are testimonies, rather than theoretical works, because the authors maintained the first-person point of view. Since autoethnography aims at overcoming the preset mentality of the researcher in order to gain insight into what it is like to live in a particular social environment, slave narratives, beyond any abolitionist agenda, may serve as a paradigm for autoethnographic interpretation of historic sources. For an understanding of the authentic perspective of the speakers, external redactions need to be filtered out when reading those documents. On the other hand, certain tropes are worth considering (such as ignorance of the speaker’s date and place of birth or stereotypical names) because these narrative gestures indicate the state of mind of the narrator. I will propose methods for finding interpretive tools to identify the Self and the world of the slave-narrators. Such interpretation relies on the close reading of narratives as I will show by examples.