This study listens to the contributions of recent graduates from the University of Victoria’s Bachelor of Engineering Program, hearing their understanding of ethics and equity, and how they experienced learning this in the program. This is done with consideration of how their understanding and experiences might inform curricular and pedagogical improvements in the experience of learning ethics and equity. Using a case study of these participants and their experiences at the University of Victoria, this research takes into account the context of engineering education accreditation standards and the current state of the curriculum that the participants completed. The findings suggest that participants have a limited understanding of what ethics and equity means, both personally and professionally. Participants also found it difficult to recall learning occasions for ethics and equity. Recommendations are made for curricular reform, taking an integrated and across the discipline approach to teaching ethics and equity to undergraduate engineers. / Graduate

Even when given the exact same moral dilemma, equally rational peers, colleagues, and friends will disagree about the right course of action. Pro tanto principles are one way to resolve moral conflicts such as these. When broadening the conflicts to real life situations, such as those seen in public policy, pro tanto principles prove to be an extremely useful tool. This paper explores the difference between the way that the individual interacts with pro tanto principles and the way that public policy interacts with such a moral system. In the end, difficulties in public policy attempt to be resolved by using this framework.

Today’s modern, Canadian, business corporations are hugely influential in determining public policy and many aspects of people’s lives. Because this influence permeates so much of our social construct, we expect corporations to act in an ethical manner. Yet, at the very baseline of legal incorporation, there is not a requirement for corporations, per se, to be ethical or to act in an ethical manner. This situation has set up a form of ethical dualism, with individual citizens being required to act in certain prescribed manners, while corporations, which in most cases comprise individual citizens, are allowed to ignore or even to flaunt similar ethical rules and standards. In this investigative paper on corporate applied ethics, I will examine arguments for and against the notion of including ethical responsibility statements within the concept of incorporation. This paper will provide a historical framework in which to view some of the complexities involved, and examine certain influential assertions made by Milton Friedman. The paper will begin with a look at what is meant by corporation in this context. This will be followed by an analysis of the arguments put forward by Milton Friedman in his famous essay “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits” and other related arguments. These other arguments, as objections to the inclusion of ethics within the notion of corporation, fall into three main types: objections to concept; to ability; and to process. I will review each in turn, with the hope that, by dispelling the Friedmanian arguments against corporate ethical inclusion, a new baseline for incorporation might be established. The second part of the paper will examine what kind of ethics might best suit the corporation. It will also consider ethical growth with respect to business. The paper will conclude with a suggestion as to how the inclusion of ethics within the notion of incorporation might be accomplished.

Today’s modern, Canadian, business corporations are hugely influential in determining public policy and many aspects of people’s lives. Because this influence permeates so much of our social construct, we expect corporations to act in an ethical manner. Yet, at the very baseline of legal incorporation, there is not a requirement for corporations, per se, to be ethical or to act in an ethical manner. This situation has set up a form of ethical dualism, with individual citizens being required to act in certain prescribed manners, while corporations, which in most cases comprise individual citizens, are allowed to ignore or even to flaunt similar ethical rules and standards. In this investigative paper on corporate applied ethics, I will examine arguments for and against the notion of including ethical responsibility statements within the concept of incorporation. This paper will provide a historical framework in which to view some of the complexities involved, and examine certain influential assertions made by Milton Friedman. The paper will begin with a look at what is meant by corporation in this context. This will be followed by an analysis of the arguments put forward by Milton Friedman in his famous essay “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits” and other related arguments. These other arguments, as objections to the inclusion of ethics within the notion of corporation, fall into three main types: objections to concept; to ability; and to process. I will review each in turn, with the hope that, by dispelling the Friedmanian arguments against corporate ethical inclusion, a new baseline for incorporation might be established. The second part of the paper will examine what kind of ethics might best suit the corporation. It will also consider ethical growth with respect to business. The paper will conclude with a suggestion as to how the inclusion of ethics within the notion of incorporation might be accomplished.

In the four papers presented in this dissertation I analyze and discuss various value statements and moral stances, which I regard as unjustifiably harmful for persons with Autism and obstacles for the creation of an Autism-friendly society. In the papers I try to show that the positions underpinning the Autism-phobic moral stances are not warranted and cannot be defended in a good way. In doing so, I hope to transform the harmful moral intuitions underlying these positions into autism-friendly ones. The first paper investigates the Neurodiversity claim that ‘Autism is a natural variation’. The claim is interpreted and investigated and an argument is given that, contrary to Low-Functioning Autism, High-Functioning Autism can indeed be seen as a natural variation, without necessarily being seen as a disability. The second paper focuses on the problem for persons with Autism to adapt to prosocial lying, which is saying something not true but socially acceptable in a situation. By comparing a Kantian approach and a care ethics approach, the paper ends up recommending teaching persons with Autism to lie in a rule based and empathic way. The third paper deals with the morality of embryo selection in IVF. Based on a widely shared intuition of natural capabilities, arguments are given that it is morally legitimate to choose an Autistic embryo instead of a ‘normal’ one, contrary to arguments given by proponents of ‘every child should have the best chance of the best life’. The fourth paper deals with moral education. An argument is given that due to problems with cognitive empathy children with Autism should be taught pro-social behavior in a rule based way. / I de fyra artiklarna, som presenteras i denna avhandling, analyserar och diskuterar jag olika värdeuttalanden och moraliska ställningstaganden, vilka jag anser inte kan berättigas och är skadliga för personer med autism och utgör hinder för skapandet av ett autismvänligt samhälle. I artiklarna försöker jag visa att de ståndpunkter som ligger till grund för autism - fobiska moraliska ställningstaganden inte kan berättigas eller försvaras på ett rimligt sätt. På så sätt hoppas jag att omvandla de skadliga moraliska intuitioner som ligger bakom dessa positioner till autismvänliga sådana. Den första artikeln undersöker påståendet från förespråkare av neurodiversitet att ”autism är en naturlig variation”. Påståendet tolkas och utreds och ett argument ges att, i motsats till låg fungerande autism, kan högfungerande autism faktiskt ses som en naturlig variation, utan att nödvändigtvis ses som ett handikapp. Den andra artikeln fokuserar på problem för personer med autism för att anpassa sig till att ljuga prosocialt, nämligen att säga något som är osant men socialt lämpligt i en viss situation. Genom att jämföra en Kantiansk strategi med en omsorgsetisk strategi rekommenderar artikeln att undervisning i att ljuga på ett regelbaserat och empatiskt sätt bör ges till personer med autism. Den tredje artikeln behandlar moralen kring väljande av embryo i IVF. Baserat på en allmänt delad intuition om förekomsten och betydelsen av naturliga förmågor ges ett argument för att det är moraliskt legitimt att välja ett autistiskt embryo i stället för ett ”normalt”, i motsats till argument som ges av förespråkarna för ”varje barn ska få bästa chansen till det bästa livet”. Den fjärde artikeln handlar om hur barn ska bibringas moral genom utbildning. Ett argument ges att på grund av problem med kognitiv empati så bör barn med autism undervisas i pro - socialt beteende på ett regelbaserat sätt. / <p>The series name<strong> Dissertations on Health and Society</strong> is incomplete. The correct and complete name is <strong>Linköping Dissertations on Health and Society</strong>.</p>

The presence of art and artists in health care settings raise many questions of an ethical nature. The presence of art in such milieux challenges the manner in which notions of art, persons, health, healing, community, ethics and aesthetics are presently conceptualized. This thesis will argue that art ought properly be considered an essential human need - integral to the health, flourishing and well-being of all persons - particularly those who are sick and suffering. An ethical care of sick persons would demand that both artistic practice and health care practice be revisioned in the light of this different understanding.

This thesis purports to make two contributions to understandings of biotechnology. First, it presents a novel framework through which to view biotechnology as a complex series of fundamentally social and politically economic mediations rather than a decontextualised collection of technical and scientific phenomena. Second, the thesis presents a method for analysing contemporary discourses about biotechnology within this framework. The framework presented in the first content chapter of the thesis identifies what I see to be the four primary mediating "movements" that are central to seeing Biotechnology as Media: Alienation, Translation, Recontextualisation, and Absorption. The next chapter explicates these movements more fully using a combination of social practice and discourse theory. Using these four movements and the mediation framework as a guide, I then critically analyse a corpus of seventy two exemplary texts (approximately 700,000 words) about contemporary biotechnology. Mediation, in the sense I use it here, is not concerned with one particular media form or technology. Rather, it focuses on the process of mediation as the movement of meanings (Silverstone, 1999). I argue that seeing biotechnologies as mediations can provide a deeper and more critical understanding of how ways of seeing, being, acting, and describing (discourses) associated with contemporary biotechnology are moved from micro- and macro-biological and scientific contexts into the everyday lives of citizens and ecosystems. In particular, such a view highlights the forces and voices that currently determine the path and substance of political-economic movements in biotechnology and, consequently, how everyday perceptions of biotechnology are shaped or silenced in processes of mediation. A core assumption of the thesis is that processes of mediation are not neutral. Rather, they are always inherently interpretive, politically economic, and ethically significant. Any mediation involves "filtering" processes via which "content" is transformed into a form that is appropriate for a given medium by persons who have control over the medium, and by the nature of the medium itself. This applies as much in laboratory and scientific contexts as it does in the contexts of mass consumption, whether in newspapers, policy papers, movies (such as Gattaca), or consumer goods. The same is true in the mediation of biotechnology: there are technological and discursive restrictions on what and who can "contribute to" and "come out" of biotechnology and also what is construed as being a valuable and desirable outcome of biotechnology research and development. The three central analysis chapters of the thesis outline firstly how biotechnology can function as a time-based medium for the reproduction of already powerful discourses on, for example, the role of technology in human development and the consumer market as the moral medium between generators of new technologies and their "consumers". I identify exemplars of how the history of biotechnology and mediation (movement) is expressed in the corpus. This is followed by a more concentrated analysis of the ethical and social significance of the key "official" mediations presented in the corpus. I focus in particular on how the predominant policy evaluations of biotechnological mediations expressed in state, national, and international policy documents construct a "virtuous cycle" of product development that will ostensibly "deliver the benefits" of biotechnology to all citizens who, in the corpus, are framed predominantly as "consumers". The final chapter of the thesis reflects on the significance of biotechnology at the macro level of social practices and systems. Apart from its direct function as a technical medium for alienating hitherto inalienable aspects of life, such as configurations of DNA, and turning them into products for sale, I argue that, as a suite of mediating movements, biotechnology has the potential to effectively, and for the most part invisibly, mediate our more general understandings and experiences of ourselves, of other species, and of the world we live in. More specifically, I argue that biotechnological mediations actively, and often forcefully, promote a narrowing of the range of evaluative resources on offer to the general community, and indeed to biotechnologists themselves. Biotechnological mediations can therefore be described as part of a broader movement away from conditions of heteroglossia or dialogue (multi language, multi voice) toward conditions of monologia (one language, one voice). The thesis concludes with an important question: if we can identify these narrowing effects or mediations of biotechnology by using techniques such as Critical Discourse Analysis and by seeing biotechnology in a mediation framework, what can we do to interrupt them and generate movements that are more generative of heteroglossic and socially responsive ways of seeing, being, and acting? I offer a number of responses to the question in the conclusion.

Since the emergence of HIV/AIDS as a global pandemic in the 1980’s, the focus of the scientific community has been to firstly identify, then treat and ultimately find a cure for, this disease. This has proven to be challenging and far from realistically achievable by the scientific community or the communities affected by this disease. / A funding allocation from the National Institutes of Health in the United States came to a consortium in Australia seeking to develop a prime-boost preventative HIV vaccine. The consortium included members of the Australian HIV/AIDS Partnership. This partnership emerged from a particular set of historical contexts and included affected community. The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations was the affected community representative on the consortium. This thesis sets out the contextual and ethical reasons for this arrangement, and explores how this unusual partnership worked in practice, with a view to identifying its broader implications. / HIV vaccine development, and AFAO’s role in that development, is complex and multifaceted. The consortium existed within a particular social context which I explore by describing the social history of HIV in Australia. The search for an HIV vaccine is difficult and complex work requiring significant effort and I describe the challenges involved in such an enterprise. Biomedical research more generally exists in the context of international and national research documents which govern the way in which researchers may conduct human experimental trialling. I discuss these documents and highlight the underlying ethical principles. / This research involved 9 interviews with 7 key informants who were members of the consortium. The accounts were analysed following a grounded theory approach, utilising the sensitising concepts outlined in the discussion of the social history of HIV in Australia, the science of HIV vaccine development and the general and specific ethical principles. Following this methodological approach, I identify common themes in the data and discuss the results in greater detail, paying particular attention to the ways this particular social practice plays out in practice and the key ethical considerations arising from the accounts. I also explore the risks, costs and benefits to AFAO of its involvement in the consortium. The overall aim of this research is to understand how practicable, feasible and effective community involvement was in this consortium. / Finally, I come to three major conclusions. First, that the consortium is an emerging social practice, which is the intersection of three established social practices; biomedical research, the affected community and the Australian HIV/AIDS Partnership. Using Langford’s criteria for a social practice, I demonstrate the social practice of the consortium was clearly made up of members who were aware of each other’s intentions and beliefs. It was clear from the commencement of the consortium’s project that the consortium was directed at the overall purpose of developing an efficacious preventative prime-boost HIV vaccine. The unique history and tradition of the social practice of the consortium is slightly less clear but what the accounts of the informants demonstrated is that the histories and traditions of the Australian HIV/AIDS Partnership approach and biomedical research, in particular, were a significant influence on most of the consortium members. So much so, that the consortium adopted that unique history and tradition and it was this factor, perhaps above all others, that facilitated AFAO becoming a full partner in the vaccine development enterprise in the first place. Importantly, my research theoretically extends the notion of shared ways of seeing and doing within a social practice. The socialisation aspects are highlighted very strongly within the accounts. / Second, AFAO’s involvement was highly concordant with the core principles of the Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for biomedical HIV prevention trials document, and it influenced important protocols within the consortium, but there were also conflict of interest issues for AFAO to manage. Third, the different approaches for community involvement in biomedical HIV prevention trialling (the partnership approach and the Community Advisory Board approach) each has strengths and weaknesses and should be carefully considered in light of the context of the trialling to be conducted. / This thesis concludes with a series of recommendations for future biomedical HIV prevention trials.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present study aims to analyze the possibility of employing a narrative approach – especially the literary – in the treatment of applied ethical issues compared to the approaches of Normative Ethics as Utilitarian Theory. In the first chapter, we will focus primarily on some metaethical considerations about morality. In the second, in the other hand, we intend to present certain characteristics of the Utilitarian doctrine. It is worth remembering that we call traditional all approaches of Normative Ethics. This includes the Kantian ethical theory, Virtue Ethics, besides the already mentioned Utilitarianism. In sequence, in the third chapter, we will introduce the Ethics of Authenticity notion as a starting point through which we will begin to conceive the viability of a narrative approach in Ethics. Furthermore, the forth chapter of this assessment will include remarks of own authorship on what consists a differentiated approach in Applied Ethics. Without delay, in the fifth, we will promote an exemplification of how Applied Ethics issues can be problematized starting from a narrative approach. Finally, in the sixth chapter, we will show some objections to the premise that narrative cohesion in the life of an individual is necessary and essential for it to make some sense from a moral standpoint. In short, we will seek to indicate in this dissertation how the criticism thrown by Carl Elliott, Raimond Gaita, Charles Taylor (and others) to traditional notions of ethics – the Utilitarian notion of Peter Singer, for example – are capable of causing significant changes and improvements in areas of knowledge crucial to the most diverse interests. In a nutshell, Gaita advocates a concept of morality at the same time more humane and less distant from the daily reality shared by all of us. According to Elliott, in turn, the Bioethics manuals, health professionals and researchers working in the area of Applied Ethics can be widely benefited from the change proposed by him. In addition, we will argue, similarly, that literature allows us to reflect more deeply on a considerable number of issues relevant to Philosophy. / O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a possibilidade de emprego de uma abordagem narrativa – em especial a literária – no tratamento de questões de ética aplicada frente às abordagens da ética normativa, como a teoria utilitarista. No primeiro capítulo, focaremos primariamente em algumas considerações metaéticas acerca da moralidade. No segundo, por sua vez, pretendemos apresentar certas características da doutrina utilitarista. Vale a pena lembrar que chamaremos de tradicionais todas as abordagens da ética normativa. Isso incluí a teoria deontológica kantiana, a ética das virtudes, além do já mencionado utilitarismo. Em sequência, no terceiro capítulo, introduziremos a noção de ética da autenticidade como ponto de partida através do qual começaremos a conceber a viabilidade de uma abordagem narrativa em ética. Outrossim, o quarto capítulo da presente apreciação contará com observações de autoria própria a respeito do que consiste uma abordagem diferenciada em ética aplicada. Sem demora, no quinto, promoveremos uma exemplificação de como questões de ética aplicada podem ser problematizadas a partir de uma abordagem narrativa. Finalmente, no sexto capítulo, evidenciaremos algumas objeções à premissa de que é necessário e imprescindível haver coesão narrativa na vida de um indivíduo para que essa faça algum sentido, a partir de um ponto de vista moral. Em resumo, nesta dissertação buscaremos indicar como as críticas lançadas por Carl Elliott, Raimond Gaita, Charles Taylor (e outros) à noções tradicionais da ética – a utilitarista de Peter Singer, por exemplo – são capazes de provocar mudanças e melhorias significativas em áreas do saber cruciais aos interesses mais diversos. Em poucas palavras, Gaita defende uma concepção da moralidade ao mesmo tempo mais humanizada e menos distante da realidade cotidiana compartilhada por todos nós. De acordo com Elliott, por seu turno, os manuais de bioética, os profissionais da saúde e os pesquisadores que trabalham com a área de ética aplicada podem ser amplamente beneficiados com a mudança por ele proposta. Ademais, sustentaremos, similarmente, que a literatura nos permite refletir com maior profundidade sobre uma série de questões pertinentes à filosofia.

John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant authored two of the most famous pieces of work in ethical theory (Utilitarianism and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, respectively), yet both fail for various reasons to give us direction by way of living good lives. This thesis begins by outlining those shortcomings, before offering Aristotelian virtue ethics as the solution. Virtue ethics, as conceived by Aristotle, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Julia Annas, delineates a process – grounded in our real lives – by which we may improve as people and therefore flourish, or live good, moral lives: the habituation of the virtues. Importantly, virtue ethics is a process, (not a set of outcomes) and is teachable, which distinguishes it from the other two theories. In developing the virtues, we are able to discover goods internal to the practices that define our lives, whether those are our work, our school, our relationships, or something else entirely. Furthermore, the virtue-ethical approach helps us learn from and grow in our emotional lives, as opposed to casting emotions aside as a skewing force contrary to morality. Virtue, as I will show, lays the groundwork for love, and therefore for flourishing relationships across our lives. In the final chapter, I examine a place where virtue and virtuous love are effectively taught and embraced: Camp Lanakila, in Fairlee, VT. I conclude by offering some takeaways from Lanakila that we may incorporate in our schools, our places of work and worship, our families, and our lives.