Human reproductive cloning came to the public´s attention when Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997. This news quickly spread around the world causing both excitements at the possibilities of what cloning techniques could offer, as well as apprehension about the ethical, social and legal implications should human reproductive cloning become possible. Many international organisations and governments were concerned about the impact of human reproductive cloning on human health, dignity and human rights. To this day, many institutions have drafted resolutions, protocols and position statements outlining their concerns. This paper outlines some of the major ethical issues surrounding human reproductive cloning and the position towards this novel technique taken by three important international organisations - Council of Europe, World Health Organization, and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization - expressed in different regulatory frameworks. Proponents of human cloning occasionally point out that cloned humans are already among us in the form of twins - people with identical sets of DNA - so what is the problem? Besides avoiding the fact that natural twins are always siblings, whereas a clone could be the twin of a parent or grandparent, this observation ignores a crucial moral difference: natural twins arrive as rare creations, not as specifically designed products. Instead of being an uncontrolled, self-regulated evolutionary process, creation of man through reproductive cloning are shifting from being natural to a state of instrumentality where parental interests constitutes what is important. This shift will inevitably lead to the child being a means for some other end (parental interests). However, this is not the same as being subdued into genetic determinism, but the point brought forward is the child´s lack of freedom caused by the interests of the parents. In this sense the clone´s genome constitutes a heavy backpack because of our pre-knowledge of its physical building blocks - or in other words its potentiality. Even though the argument of genetic determinism is a weak one, our subconscious"forces"us to create hopes upon the child because of its potentiality. No longer is the evolution the creator with the dices of randomness. A new gambler is in town and this time the dices are equilateral.

Denna studie har en kvalitativ ansats där observationer och intervjuer ligger till grund för resultatet. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur lärare arbetar och diskuterar om etik. Jag har använt mig av grundad teori, där teorier framträder ur det insamlade materialet. I analysen har försök gjorts till att identifiera och förstå etiska situationer utifrån lärarnas syn på elever. Lärarnas undervisning har kunnat kopplas till olika människosyner och därigenom tolkat hur de ser på elever och vad de ska lära sig. / This study has a qualitative attempt where the result has been based upon observations and interviews. The purpose of study was to inquire how teachers work with and discuss ethics. I have adopted grounded theory, where the theories appear from the gathered material. In the analysis, attempts have been made to identify and understand these ethical situations from the teachers’ view on students. The teachers’ education has been able to link to different views on mankind and thereby interpreted on how they perceive their students and what they should learn.

The development of software was considered until the beginning of the 1990th as a cathedral like product development in closed companies. This way of development changed in the last decade. Open source software (OSS) development challenged this consideration significantly. OSS is produced in co-operation by skilled people, distributed and used by many moral agents. The result, the software itself, can be studied and modified. Herein is the main incentive for people to develop the software. In such a mode of production the freedom to access knowledge and information (=source code) is a necessity to produce the artifact (software). Software is a digital entity. The main difference in comparison to natural resources like oil, land, minerals is that it can be used and reproduced without losses. It lacks the capacity of getting naturally scarce. Contemporary intellectual property rights assume implicitly that goods might getting scarce one day. Imbedded in the term intellectual property is also an idea of "fencing" objects. In this thesis I will argue that anartificial"encing"of digital objects might cause unintentional bad consequences for the society. An other quality intellectual property rights are claimed to have is that they serve as an incentive for inventors/authors to produce new inventions and ideas. The practice of OSS development works without such an incentive provided by intellectual property rights. The moral conflict, which I attempt to unravel in this work deals with the question to what extend the application of intellectual property rights in software is necessary and how restrictive particular property rights in digital objects should be - if there should be any at all. Knowledge as the factor of production is of the same value in knowledge societies as land was for agrarian societies. The difference is in the mode of production and the un-limitless availability of digitalized knowledge. I argue that the"protection"of knowledge, and software is knowledge, has to be carefully revised in so called knowledge societies.

Denna kvalitativa studie har som syfte att skapa en förståelse för om och i så fall hurden icke-verbala kommunikationen (Dimbleby & Burton) och den insocialiseradegenusordningen (Connell, 2003) påverkar interaktioner vid anställningsintervjuer tillchefsposition. Studien utgår ifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv (Gergen,2007) som anser att individer skapas och insocialiseras i mötet med andra. Studien harobservationer som metod för att försöka få förståelse för genusordningen och denicke-verbala kommunikationen i interaktionerna under anställningsintervjuer. Vidareupprättades en observationsmatris utifrån icke-verbalt beteende, samt manligt ochkvinnligt hexis. Resultatet från observationerna inbegriper både de enskildaindividernas icke-verbala kommunikation och den gemensamma interaktionen somuppstår under anställningsintervjun. Fokus i analysen ligger i interaktionerna mellanindividerna, eftersom det är mellan individerna som den icke-verbalakommunikationen kan fångas och utifrån detta tolkar, förstår och förklarar jag om ochhur den insocialiserade genusordningen påverkar den icke-verbala kommunikationen iinteraktionerna. Genom analysen har jag kommit fram till att både den icke-verbalakommunikationen och genus har en viss påverkan för hur interaktionerna skapas underanställningsintervjuer.

<p>Denna kvalitativa studie har som syfte att skapa en förståelse för om och i så fall hurden icke-verbala kommunikationen (Dimbleby & Burton) och den insocialiseradegenusordningen (Connell, 2003) påverkar interaktioner vid anställningsintervjuer tillchefsposition. Studien utgår ifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv (Gergen,2007) som anser att individer skapas och insocialiseras i mötet med andra. Studien harobservationer som metod för att försöka få förståelse för genusordningen och denicke-verbala kommunikationen i interaktionerna under anställningsintervjuer. Vidareupprättades en observationsmatris utifrån icke-verbalt beteende, samt manligt ochkvinnligt hexis. Resultatet från observationerna inbegriper både de enskildaindividernas icke-verbala kommunikation och den gemensamma interaktionen somuppstår under anställningsintervjun. Fokus i analysen ligger i interaktionerna mellanindividerna, eftersom det är mellan individerna som den icke-verbalakommunikationen kan fångas och utifrån detta tolkar, förstår och förklarar jag om ochhur den insocialiserade genusordningen påverkar den icke-verbala kommunikationen iinteraktionerna. Genom analysen har jag kommit fram till att både den icke-verbalakommunikationen och genus har en viss påverkan för hur interaktionerna skapas underanställningsintervjuer.</p>

<p>Safety is an important topic for a wide range of disciplines, such as engineering, economics, sociology, psychology, political science and philosophy, and plays a central role in risk analysis and risk management. The aim of this thesis is to develop a concept of safety that is relevant for decision-making, and to elucidate its consequences for risk and safety research and practices.</p><p>Essay I provides a conceptual analysis of safety in the context of societal decision-making, focusing on some fundamental distinctions and aspects, and argues for a more complex notion than what is commonly given. This concept of safety explicitly includes epistemic uncertainty, the degree to which we are uncertain of our knowledge of the situation at hand. It is discussed the extent to which such a concept may be considered an objective concept, and concluded that it is better seen as an intersubjective concept. Some formal versions of a comparative safety concept are also proposed.</p><p>Essay II explores some consequences of epistemic uncertainty. It is commonly claimed that the public is irrational in its acceptance of risks. An underlying presumption in such a claim is that the public should follow the experts’ advice in recommending an activity whenever the experts have better knowledge of the risk involved. This position is criticised based on considerations from epistemic uncertainty and the goal of safety. Furthermore, it is shown that the scope of the objection covers the entire field of risk research, risk assessment as well as risk management.</p><p>Essay III analyses the role of epistemic uncertainty for principles of achieving safety in an engineering context. The aim is to show that to account for common engineering principles we need the understanding of safety that has been argued for in Essays I-II. Several important principles in engineering safety are analysed, and it is argued that we cannot fully account for them on a narrow interpretation of safety as the reduction of risk (understanding risk as the combination of probability and severity of harm). An adequate concept of safety must include not only the reduction of risk but also the reduction of uncertainty.</p>

<p>Environmental goals are commonly set to guide work towards ecological sustainability. The aim of this thesis is to develop a precise terminology for the description of goals in terms of properties that are important in their practical use as decision-guides and to illustrate how it can be used in evaluations of environmental policy.</p><p>Essay I (written together with Sven Ove Hansson) identifies a set of rationality criteria for individual goals and discusses them in relation to the typical function of goals. For a goal to perform its typical function, i.e., to guide and induce action, it must be precise, evaluable, approachable (attainable), and motivating.</p><p>Essay II argues that for a goal system to be rational it must not only satisfy the criteria identified in Essay I but should also be coherent. The coherence of a goal system is made up of the relations that hold among the goals, most notably relations of support and conflict, but possibly also relations of operationalization. A major part of the essay consists in a conceptual analysis of the three relations.</p><p>Essay III contains an investigation into the rationality of five Swedish environmental objectives through an application of the rationality criteria identified in Essays I-II. The paper draws the conclusion that the objectives are not sufficiently rational according to the suggested criteria. It also briefly points at some of the difficulties that are associated with the use of goals in environmental policy and managemen</p>

<p>The subject of this thesis is ethical aspects of risk management. It is argued that a model for risk management needs to be developed that acknowledges several ethical aspects and most crucial among these, the individual’s right not to be unfairly exposed to risks.</p><p><i>Article </i>I takes as its starting point the demand frequently expressed in the risk literature for a consistent risk management. Such consistency is often assumed to be in accordance with some kind of cost-benefit analysis. It is maintained that such a model, here called the Standard Model, does not respect the rights of the individual. Two alternative models are outlined in order to better deal with this ethical weakness, the Model of Inviolable Rights and the Model of Procedural Justice. The arguments in the alternative models evolve around the separateness of individuals, rights and fair risk taking. It is claimed that the latter model, which focuses on a fair procedure, seems most fruitful to develop.</p><p><i>Article II</i> is a discussion of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) conflict, which is well known from situations of siting potentially risky facilities. Of special concern is to investigate what the ethical premises are behind the negative characterization of the NIMBY concept. It is argued that, contrary to the assumption that the total benefit should outweigh the individual’s cost, individuals in siting scenarios have rights not to be unfairly exposed to risks.</p><p><i>Article III</i>, which is co-authored with Professor Sven Ove Hansson, presents a three party model as a tool for ethical risk analysis. It is argued that ethical dimensions need to be acknowledged in the analysis of risks and that this is best done through a discussion of three parties that are involved in risk decisions – the risk-exposed, the beneficiary, and the decisionmaker. Seven crucial ethical questions are recognized and discussed regarding the relation between these parties. By using examples from the railway sector it is shown how the questions can be used to identify salient ethical features of risk management problems.</p>

<p>The thesis aims at developing new, alternative approaches and methods based on suggestions and ideas originating from moral philosophy and philosophical decision theory. More precisely, the thesis aims at investigating the rationality of transport policy decisions, including goal-setting and performance evaluation.</p><p>Paper I discusses rationality in road safety policy. Problematic features are identified and discussed. The paper argues that the Swedish road safety goal is rational, since it is action-guiding and achievement-inducing. This follows by observing that the goal satisfies the criteria of <em>precision,</em> <em>evaluability, approachability, </em>and <em>motivity</em>. The paper states that previous accusations of irrationality have been unnecessarily imprecise, since no reference is made to independently developed criteria of rational goal-setting.</p><p>Paper II discusses the Swedish transport policy goals, and the role of social welfare in rational policy decisions. Goals often come into conflict and trade-offs must be rationally and consistently managed. Policy decisions are outcomes of political processes. In the case of policy goals and decisions, the agent is society. This introduces the problematic concept of social welfare, which itself is an ambiguous goal with many meanings. Whether a decision is rational or not depends on whose perspective one takes on – that of society as a whole or that of the actual decision makers.</p><p>Paper III aims at investigating six different procedures for resolving goal conflicts: weighted average, lexicographic preference, conditional lexicographic preference, absolute restriction, generalised prioritarianism, and partial comparability. Criteria for selection, according to the respective procedures, are formulated and summarised in a table. The six procedures are contrasted with respect to their tendency to rule out possible sets of alternatives as being not choiceworthy.</p>

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