In this paper I critically examine the implications of the uncodifiability thesis for principlism as a pluralistic and non-absolute generalist ethical theory. In this regard, I begin with a brief overview of W.D. Ross’s ethical theory and his focus on general but defeasible prima facie principles before turning to 2) the revival of principlism in contemporary bioethics through the influential work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress; 3) the widespread adoption of specification as a response to the indeterminacy of abstract general principles and the limitations of balancing and deductive approaches; 4) the challenges raised to fully specified principlism by the uncodifiability thesis and 5) finally offer a defense of the uncodifiability thesis against various critiques that have been raised.

In the ethics of algorithms, a specifically epistemological analysis is rarely undertaken in order to gain a critique (or a defense) of the handling of or trust in medical black box algorithms (BBAs). This article aims to begin to fill this research gap. Specifically, the thesis is examined according to which such algorithms are regarded as epistemic authorities (EAs) and that the results of a medical algorithm must completely replace other convictions that patients have (preemptionism). If this were true, it would be a reason to distrust medical BBAs. First, the author describes what EAs are and why BBAs can be considered EAs. Then, preemptionism will be outlined and criticized as an answer to the question of how to deal with an EA. The discussion leads to some requirements for dealing with a BBA as an EA.

The juridical status of persons nowadays tends to be discussed only in narrow contexts: civic status (citizen, alien, and various visa statuses), marital status, penal status, employment status, religious or ethnic status within colonial and postcolonial states, status of the fetus, corporate personal status, and so on. In the century and a half since Henry Maine’s 1861 treatise, Ancient Law, in which he discerned a general movement from status to contract in progressive societies, broad discussions of status as a general feature of law are few, so a renewed comprehensive approach to the issue remains a desideratum. This symposium, which has its origins in an interdisciplinary conference held in November 2019 at Washington and Lee University School of Law, is a step in that direction. The articles and essay gathered here illuminate the multifarious ways in which juridical status of persons overlaps with religious conceptions of persona and status. They provide grounds for seeing the religious component as distinctive because of the uniquely privileged authority attributed to divinely mandated status distinctions and the urgency of claims to religious rights. They also show how a juridical status can straddle law and religion, and how legal institutions handle such hybrid forms of status.

Despite progress, discrimination in public health remains a problem. A significant aspect of this problem relates to how medical resources are allocated. The paradigm of quality-adjusted-life-year (QALY) dictates that medical resources should be allocated on the basis of units measured as length of life and quality of life that are expected after the implementation of a treatment. In this article, I discuss some of the ethical shortcomings of QALY, by focusing on some of its flawed moral aspects, as well as the way it relates to discrimination on the basis of age, race, and disability status. I argue that while this approach seeks to maximize efficiency, it does not place sufficient value on the preservation of life itself. Even more concerning is the fact that the use of QALY disproportionately harms minorities. While QALY is a well-intentioned approach to the allocation of scarce healthcare resources, new alternatives must be sought.

It is a common view that artificial systems could play an important role in dealing with the shortage of caregivers due to demographic change. One argument to show that this is also in the interest of care-dependent persons is that artificial systems might significantly enhance user autonomy since they might stay longer in their homes. This argument presupposes that the artificial systems in question do not require permanent supervision and control by human caregivers. For this reason, they need the capacity for some degree of moral decision-making and agency to cope with morally relevant situations (artificial morality). Machine ethics provides the theoretical and ethical framework for artificial morality. This article scrutinizes the question how artificial moral agents that enhance user autonomy could look like. It discusses, in particular, the suggestion that they should be designed as moral avatars of their users to enhance user autonomy in a substantial sense.

This article makes the case for applying recent developments in the history of emotions, and in particular the concept of “emotional arena”, to the study of past polar expeditions. It focuses on the first Antarctic expedition of Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1903–1905), showing how, despite a lack of ideal sources, attention to the role of emotions in his expedition, and in the way it was communicated to the public provides a new understanding of the culture of exploration of the time. The article pays particular attention to two groups of emotions: first, those related to fear, an emotion that Charcot initially was reluctant to say that he had experienced (his position changed under the influence of journalists who saw the emotion as an interesting selling point); and second, anger and hate, emotions that were deemed inappropriate and were omitted from hidden in published accounts of the expedition, even though they appear in other sources.

In this paper, we expand on existing studies of Canadian Inuit art in the international arena by examining ways in which this new art served domestic purposes, focusing primarily on the 1950s and 1960s. The Canadian government developed and promoted Inuit art as part of its project to transform Inuit from semi-independent hunters into modern Canadian citizens. In this effort, Canada took up and assimilated Inuit art as a genuine Canadian cultural product, presenting it as diplomatic gifts and for other forms of international cultural diplomacy. Previous studies of Canadian Inuit art from that era have noted the ways that the promotion of Canadian Inuit art supported the young nation’s claims to a deep history, while simultaneously marking the country’s distinction from both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the context of the Cold War, the promotion of Canadian Inuit art also asserted Canada as an Arctic power. Labelled as “primitive modernist” fine art, Inuit sculpture and prints provided a stark contrast to the contemporaneous socialist realist art of the Soviet Union and its allies. We argue that the success of the Inuit art program sustained a belief among government officials that their programme to remake Inuit lives and livelihoods would succeed. Inuit art likely deflected attention from the many things that were going wrong with that northern modernisation project.