Computer ethics has mostly been concerned with moral issues relating to the use, regulation, and social implications of new information technology. Few studies have been concerned with the design of computer systems, and those that are often have a narrow scope. In this essay, computer systems are analyzed as social structures, harboring design features that have political implications. The aim...

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict tha...

The possibility of morally enhancing the behavior of individuals by means of drugs and genetic engineering has been the object of intense philosophical discussion over the last few years. However, although moral enhancement may turn out to be useful to promote cooperation in some areas of human interaction, it will not promote cooperation in the domain of international relations in those areas ...

Recent authors have reported a relationship between women's fertility status, as indexed by menstrual cycle phase, and conservatism in moral, social and political values. We conducted a survey to test for the existence of a relationship between menstrual cycle day and conservatism. 2213 women reporting regular menstrual cycles provided data about their political views. Of these women, 2208 prov...

People are often inconsistent in the way they apply their values to their political beliefs (e.g., citing the value of life in opposing capital punishment while simultaneously supporting abortion rights). How do people confront such inconsistencies? Liberals were more likely to say that issues that could draw on several competing values were complex issues that required value tradeoffs, whereas...

ontemporary ethical theory begins with G. E. Moore (1873–1958). Moore opened up new issues for consideration and altered the focus of ethical discussion. Much of twentieth-century analytic ethics, at least until recently, treated issues that were raised by Moore or by philosophers responding either to him or to other respondents. Although analytic ethical philosophers discussed many questions t...

Is the justification of punishment a moral question? Much contemporary writing on punishment, whether by philosophers or legal scholars, treats it as such. Theories of punishment are taken to be moral theories, and the problem of justifying punishment is presented as a key battle-ground in the war between utilitarian and deontological ethics. The question of how and when the state should punish...

This is not a conformist book. Its thesis is bold: that political theorists and mainstream commentators have been looking for democracy in all the wrong places. The New Left's call for a reinvigorated, participatory democracy aligned " around contentious moral questions that animate citizens rather than bureaucratic, technical, or economic issues that tend to bewilder and subdue them " has been...

There exists in Australia a significant group of intellectuals whose distinguishing feature is their global outlook on politics and law. These are writers and activists who call upon universalist values to criticise and reform institutions and practices in Australia, and in other countries. By universalism is meant a doctrine, such as world peace, international human rights, or ecological susta...