Latest articles
16th July 2024
Human(s) in the loop(s): On the use of AI in German law enforcement
The criminal justice system is a core area of society undergoing intense digitalization and datafication processes accompanied and accelerated by rapidly evolving artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. While the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) provides the legal framework for the adoption of AI-based systems for the police, our research provides the empirical data to analyze this undertaking. By outlining the requirements for human oversight of AI applications in the context of policing, we demonstrate the importance of ethical reflection where AI use can have serious consequences.
18th June 2024
Female identities in internet communication
At the beginning of its use, the Internet was associated with high expectations in terms of free communication. This freedom was conceptually linked to the invisibility of physical identities. From a perspective related to female identities, the article shows that although there are still ways of concealing living bodies or creating new virtual bodies in Internet communication, it also argues that Internet communication is nevertheless not free from social and possibly repressive contexts.
28th May 2024
Automated Pain Detection
The emerging technology of AI-supported pain assessment not only has the potential to support external pain evaluations by medical and nursing staff, it also harbours a number of ethical problems. The risk of systematic discrimination against members of certain groups in being able to provide competent information about their own pain deserves particular attention here, as there is a long tradition of such epistemic injustices in the field of pain diagnosis and treatment.
Blog Categories
28th May 2024
Automated Pain Detection
The emerging technology of AI-supported pain assessment not only has the potential to support external pain evaluations by medical and nursing staff, it also harbours a number of ethical problems. The risk of systematic discrimination against members of certain groups in being able to provide competent information about their own pain deserves particular attention here, as there is a long tradition of such epistemic injustices in the field of pain diagnosis and treatment.
25th January 2024
Ethical reflection as orientation knowledge
In this blog article, the problem of a lack of orientation is framed as an area of tension between knowledge of availability and knowledge of orientation, with particular consideration of ethical reflection as a form of knowledge of orientation.
14th November 2023
Keeping Livestock in Africa
Not least to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 - Zero hunger -, there is much discussion and experimentation in the African context on the intensification of so called ‘neglected’ livestock species. In the following, we will examine the idea of intensification from a Sustainable Development and ethical perspective.
30th April 2024
The Shroud of Security
It is a much-trumpeted truism: there is no such thing as absolute security. In any case, the provision of security is limited in view of the associated material resources and the always limited knowledge. Moreover, security, as one value among many, must also be limited, as security ethicist Regina Ammicht Quinn emphasised.
15th December 2023
Grotesque Women in the Media
The media exert a significant influence on body images. They confirm cultural ideals of beauty, disseminate idealised images and influence social norms and values. This article will focus on how the grotesque, repulsive, obscene body, of all things, can contribute to breaking down such powerful representational conventions and questioning normative ideas of femininity.
14th May 2024
Doing Pluralism
Right-wing extremist and right-wing populist concepts of society are often condemned across the board without recognising that they offer their supporters a coherent and attractive meaning. Pluralist democrats need a clearer understanding of pluralism in order to reject forms of life that are anti-democratic and anti-pluralist, but also to accept or tolerate those who merely follow a different idea of the good life. The "Doing Pluralism" approach outlined here attempts to provide an impetus for this.
18th June 2024
Female identities in internet communication
At the beginning of its use, the Internet was associated with high expectations in terms of free communication. This freedom was conceptually linked to the invisibility of physical identities. From a perspective related to female identities, the article shows that although there are still ways of concealing living bodies or creating new virtual bodies in Internet communication, it also argues that Internet communication is nevertheless not free from social and possibly repressive contexts.
21st February 2022
Consulting or "ethical coating"?
Ethics counseling in the health care sector is increasingly not provided by external experts, but by grassroots trained employees from within the company, who either act as counselors themselves or, for example, conduct an ethical case discussion (...)
16th April 2024
The Self as a Multispecies Being. Ethical Aspects of the Influence of Microbes on the Physicalness
Trillions of microbes live on and in the bodies of humans, animals and plants. They form the human, animal or plant microbiome. Accordingly, microbiomes do not exist independently of each other. Through the constant circulation and interaction of microorganisms, we humans are connected to each other and to our environment in a complex way. This raises numerous ethical questions. These are examined in the following blog post. The focus is on ethical questions in the context of human physicality.