Papers by Karl de Fine Licht
Ett verktyg som kan användas av små och mellanstora kommuner som ett processtöd i stadsplanerings... more Ett verktyg som kan användas av små och mellanstora kommuner som ett processtöd i stadsplaneringsprocesser
Philosophia, Mar 25, 2021
Trust is often perceived as having great value. For example, there is a strong belief that trust ... more Trust is often perceived as having great value. For example, there is a strong belief that trust will bring different sorts of public goods and help us preserve common resources. A related concept which is just as important, but perhaps not explicitly discussed to the same extent as "trust", is "reliance" or "confidence". To be able to rely on some agent is often seen as a prerequisite for being able to trust this agent. Up to now, the conceptual discussion about the definition of trust and reliance has been rational in the sense that most people involved have offered arguments for their respective views, or against competing views. While these arguments rely on some criterion or other, these criteria are rarely explicitly stated, and to our knowledge, no systematic account of such criteria has been offered. In this paper we give an account of what criteria we should use to assess tentative definitions of "trust" and "reliance". We will also offer our own well-founded definitions of "trust" and "reliance". Trust should be regarded as a kind of reliance and we defend what we call "the accountability view" of trust, by appealing to the desiderata we identify in the first parts of the paper.
IS4SI Summit 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics
The interest in "social sustainability" has recently increased in the field of urban de... more The interest in "social sustainability" has recently increased in the field of urban development. We want societies, cities, and neighborhoods to be economically and environmentally sustainable, but we also want urban areas that are safe, diverse, walkable, and relaxing, just to mention a few examples. Strikingly, however, there is no consensus regarding what definition of "social sustainability" should be employed. Additionally, some people are skeptical about the prospect of finding a useful definition at all and claim it is impossible to satisfactorily define the concept for various reasons, such as its complexity. A potential first step towards navigating this conceptual maze is to provide desiderata for a definition of social sustainability. We defend a list of nine desiderata and thereby create a theoretical framework for analyzing and constructing a definition of "social sustainability". We also examine the skeptical arguments and find that it is...
NanoEthics
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are one of the first examples of nanotechnology, with a history of promis... more Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are one of the first examples of nanotechnology, with a history of promising uses and high expectations. This paper uses the recent debate over their future to explore both ethical and value-laden statements which unsettle the notion of CNTs as a value-free nanotechnology and their regulation as purely a technical affair. A point of departure is made with the inclusion of CNTs on the Substitute-It-Now list by the Swedish NGO ChemSec, an assessment process that anticipates and complements the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation in Europe. An argument map is constructed to illustrate the core contention in the debate—should CNTs be substituted or not—which follows from a systematic literature review and content analysis of sampled journal articles. Nine arguments are articulated that bolster one of two camps: the pro-substitution camp or the contra-substitution camp. Beneath these arguments are a set of three ...
There is a growing trend of holding people responsible for their lifestyle-based diseases. For ex... more There is a growing trend of holding people responsible for their lifestyle-based diseases. For example, policymakers as well as researchers have argued that medical conditions caused by smoking, overweight, or extreme sports should be given lower priority in publicly funded healthcare. This view on resource allocation is grounded in a common belief that people are responsible for these diseases and that it is fair to hold them responsible because of this. It is far from clear, however, that we are responsible for anything we do, never mind our ill health. A wide range of skeptical arguments seem to show that the notion of responsibility is misplaced. Though these arguments are controversial, they have by no means been successfully refuted. Furthermore, even if these skeptical arguments were shown to be invalid, there are additional, more mundane, excusing conditions that might relieve people of responsibility, such as those from nonculpable ignorance and addiction. Responsibility an...
Ethics and Drug Resistance: Collective Responsibility for Global Public Health, 2020
This chapter charts and critically analyses the ethical challenge of assessing how much (and what... more This chapter charts and critically analyses the ethical challenge of assessing how much (and what kind of) evidence is required for the justification of interventions in response antibiotic resistance (ABR), as well as other major public health threats. Our ambition here is to identify and briefly discuss main issues, and point to ways in which these need to be further advanced in future research. This will result in a tentative map of complications, underlying problems and possible challenges. This map illustrates that the ethical challenges in this area are much more complex and profound than is usually acknowledged, leaving no tentatively plausible intervention package free of downsides. This creates potentially overwhelming theoretical conundrums when trying to justify what to do. We therefore end by pointing out two general features of the complexity we find to be of particular importance, and a tentative suggestion for how to create a theoretical basis for further analysis.
The need for reflecting engineers that can deal with ethical dilemmas are increasingly important.... more The need for reflecting engineers that can deal with ethical dilemmas are increasingly important. In the automotive field, the “diesel gate” in 2015[1] has put the ethical aspect in focus. However, this scandal can be explained by a consequence of (bad) political decisions and (insufficient) technological development. The dilemma for the students (and the society as well) is that these problems are complex and that there are no clear “right or wrong”. Nevertheless, no matter how difficult the problem, ethical dilemmas will need to be dealt with and the future engineers from Chalmers can contribute to a more (ethically) sustainable future. In the master’s program Automotive Engineering (MPAUT), the course in Internal Combustion Engines (MTF240) is used as the platform for practice in ethical reflections. With central support (from Karl Fine de Licht), the “applied ethics” approach is implemented using a bottom-up approach, working with a hypothetical but realistic ethical dilemma. Th...
svensk sammanfattning: Kronisk hepatit C-infektion drabbar idag framst personer med injektionsmis... more svensk sammanfattning: Kronisk hepatit C-infektion drabbar idag framst personer med injektionsmissbruk. Den medicinsketiska forskningen rorande hur denna grupp bor behandlas ar underutvecklad, vilket framgar i de nuvarande behandlingsriktlinjerna. Har tar vi ett forsta steg i att atgarda detta genom att anvanda oss av empiriska, etiska och legala overvaganden.
In recent years “hostile architecture” or designs (also called “disciplinary architecture” and “d... more In recent years “hostile architecture” or designs (also called “disciplinary architecture” and “defensive architecture”) has become an ever more common feature of our cities. Examples of these designs are benches you cannot sleep on, spikes you cannot stand on, and metal plugs you cannot skate on. These designs have created an outrage among activists and the general population since they have largely been conceived as an attack on the worst-off and there is an increasing academic body of work mostly looking into their design features, the motivations behind them, but also whether and under what condition they should be used. Although progress has been made on the issue of these forms of architecture/designs, no clear definitions currently exist for “hostile architecture,” (etc.) and their related concepts, which are especially concerned with their respective environments, such as a “hostile environment.” As a result, there has been no clear discussion of how these concepts relate to...
Energies, 2021
While the energy transition of the EU housing stock is now being intensified with the launch of t... more While the energy transition of the EU housing stock is now being intensified with the launch of the Renovation Wave, economic inequalities are increasing in many OECD countries, which has effects on housing-related inequalities and the demand of affordable housing. The Renovation Wave is thus an opportunity to improve housing quality for low-income households, but also entails risks for increased rents. In Sweden, the standard of housing is relatively high and energy poverty in multifamily housing is rare, meaning that there are limited social benefits to be achieved from extensive energy retrofitting; moreover, Sweden lacks a social housing sector, which limits protection of the worst-off residents. This paper thus explores whether the limited social benefits of the Renovation Wave weigh up against the risks that it entails for the worst-off in the Swedish context. This is done within a normative framework for just energy transitioning that is developed within the context of the Re...
AI & SOCIETY, 2020
The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for making decisions in public affairs has spa... more The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for making decisions in public affairs has sparked a lively debate on the benefits and potential harms of self-learning technologies, ranging from the hopes of fully informed and objectively taken decisions to fear for the destruction of mankind. To prevent the negative outcomes and to achieve accountable systems, many have argued that we need to open up the “black box” of AI decision-making and make it more transparent. Whereas this debate has primarily focused on how transparency can secure high-quality, fair, and reliable decisions, far less attention has been devoted to the role of transparency when it comes to how the general public come toperceiveAI decision-making as legitimate and worthy of acceptance. Since relying on coercion is not only normatively problematic but also costly and highly inefficient, perceived legitimacy is fundamental to the democratic system. This paper discusses how transparency in and about AI decision...
Etikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics, 2019
Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 2020
In recent years “hostile architecture” or designs (also called “disciplinary architecture” and “d... more In recent years “hostile architecture” or designs (also called “disciplinary architecture” and “defensive architecture”) has become an ever more common feature of our cities. Examples of these designs are benches you cannot sleep on, spikes you cannot stand on, and metal plugs you cannot skate on. These designs have created an outrage among activists and the general population since they have largely been conceived as an attack on the worst-off and there is an increasing academic body of work mostly looking into their design features, the motivations behind them, but also whether and under what condition they should be used.
Although progress has been made on the issue of these forms of architecture/designs, no clear definitions currently exist for “hostile architecture,” (etc.) and their related concepts, which are especially concerned with their respective environments, such as a “hostile environment.” As a result, there has been no clear discussion of how these concepts relate to each other and also to morally permissible and impermissible actions, which many times lead the discussion astray. In this paper I try to amend this by defining the central concepts, as well as showing how they relate to each other and morally permissible and impermissible actions.
AI&SOCIETY , 2020
The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for making decisions in public affairs has spa... more The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for making decisions in public affairs has sparked a lively debate on the benefits and potential harms of self-learning technologies, ranging from the hopes of fully informed and objectively taken decisions to fear for the destruction of mankind. To prevent the negative outcomes and to achieve accountable systems, many have argued that we need to open up the “black box” of AI decision-making and make it more transparent. Whereas this debate has primarily focused on how transparency can secure high-quality, fair, and reliable decisions, far less attention has been devoted to the role of transparency when it comes to how the general public come to perceive AI decision-making as legitimate and worthy of acceptance. Since relying on coercion is not only normatively problematic but also costly and highly inefficient, perceived legitimacy is fundamental to the democratic system. This paper discusses how transparency in and about AI decision-making can affect the public’s perception of the legitimacy of decisions and decision-makers and produce a framework for analyzing these questions. We argue that a limited form of transparency that focuses on providing justifications for decisions has the potential to provide sufficient ground for perceived legitimacy without producing the harms full transparency would bring
Comput. Sci. Math. Forum, 2023
The emergence of large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, introduces transformative ... more The emergence of large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, introduces transformative opportunities for higher education across various disciplines. While the integration of LLMs into higher education has sparked significant debate regarding whether to fully incorporate these systems into curricula or restrict their use, this paper contends that there has been an inadequate focus on the process of establishing suitable guidelines for their usage. Given the importance of stakeholder buy in, especially in terms of perceiving the final decision as legitimate, this paper advocates for transparent and inclusive procedures that involve faculty, administration, and students during the integration process. Once a decision is made, clear justifications for LLM guidelines should be provided, paired with an effective implementation strategy, to ensure widespread acceptance and adherence.
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Papers by Karl de Fine Licht
Although progress has been made on the issue of these forms of architecture/designs, no clear definitions currently exist for “hostile architecture,” (etc.) and their related concepts, which are especially concerned with their respective environments, such as a “hostile environment.” As a result, there has been no clear discussion of how these concepts relate to each other and also to morally permissible and impermissible actions, which many times lead the discussion astray. In this paper I try to amend this by defining the central concepts, as well as showing how they relate to each other and morally permissible and impermissible actions.
Although progress has been made on the issue of these forms of architecture/designs, no clear definitions currently exist for “hostile architecture,” (etc.) and their related concepts, which are especially concerned with their respective environments, such as a “hostile environment.” As a result, there has been no clear discussion of how these concepts relate to each other and also to morally permissible and impermissible actions, which many times lead the discussion astray. In this paper I try to amend this by defining the central concepts, as well as showing how they relate to each other and morally permissible and impermissible actions.