The strengths and weaknesses of federalism have been debated for centuries. But one major possible advantage of building decentralization and limited government into a constitution has been largely ignored in the debate so far: its potential for reducing the costs of widespread political ignorance. The argument of this paper is simple, but has potentially important implications: Constitutional federalism enables citizens to “vote with their feet,” and foot voters have much stronger incentives to make well-informed decisions than more conventional ballot box (...) voters. The informational advantage of foot voting over ballot box voting suggests that decentralized federalism can increase citizen welfare and democratic accountability relative to policymaking in a centralized unitary state.Ballot box voters have strong incentives to be “rationally ignorant” about the candidates and policies they vote on because the chance that any one vote will have a decisive impact on an electoral outcome is vanishingly small. For the same reason, they also have little or no incentive to make good use of the information they do possess. By contrast, “foot voters” choosing a jurisdiction in which to reside have much stronger incentives to acquire information and use it rationally; the decisions they make are individually decisive. (shrink)

Abstract If voters do not understand the programs of rival candidates or their likely consequences, they cannot rationally exercise control over government. An ignorant electorate cannot achieve true democratic control over public policy. The immense size and scope of modern government makes it virtually impossible for voters to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise such control. The problem is exacerbated by voters? strong incentive to be ?rationally ignorant? of politics. This danger to democracy cannot readily be circumvented through ?shortcut? methods of (...) economizing on voter knowledge costs. A truly democratic government must, therefore, be strictly limited in scope. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have recognized that most citizens have little or no political knowledge, and that it is in fact rational for the average voter to make little or no effort to acquire political information. Rational ignorance is fully compatible with the so‐called “paradox of voting” because it will often be rational for citizens to vote, but irrational for them to become well informed. Furthermore, rational ignorance leads not only to inadequate acquisition of political information, but also to ineffective use (...) of the information that citizens do possess. The combination of these two problems has fundamental implications for a variety of issues in public policy and international affairs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe participants in this symposium raise many insightful criticisms and reservations about my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter. But none substantially undermine its main thesis: that rational political ignorance and rational irrationality are major problems for democracy that are best addressed by limiting and decentralizing government power. Part I of this reply addresses criticisms of my analysis of the problem of political ignorance and its causes. Part II assesses challenges to my proposed solution.

ABSTRACT Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy makes a strong case that democratic majorities’ right to rule rests on shaky grounds so long as their ballot box decisions are heavily influenced by ignorance and bias. But his “epistocratic” alternative - empowering the better-informed segments of society - has significant flaws of its own. Ironically, the biggest shortcoming of epistocracy may be that we lack the knowledge necessary to make it work well.

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of (...) knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHélène Landemore's Democratic Reason effectively demonstrates how cognitive diversity may potentially improve the quality of democratic decisions. But in setting out the preconditions that democracy must meet in order for the many to make collectively well-informed decisions, Landemore undermines the case for voter competence more than she strengthens it. The conditions she specifies are highly unlikely to be achieved by any real-world democracy. Widespread voter ignorance and the size and complexity of modern government are severe obstacles to any effort to (...) implement Landemore's vision. Better-informed decision making is more likely to be achieved by allowing a wider range of issues to be decided by “voting with your feet” instead of at the ballot box. (shrink)

Abstract Richard Posner's Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy urges that political and legal decision makers should be guided by what he calls ?everyday pragmatism,? rather than by ?abstract? moral theory. He links his conception of pragmatic government to Sclmmpeter's unromantic view of democracy. Posner argues that judicial review should be based on a combination of pragmatism and adherence to this limited conception of democracy, rather than sticking closely to ?formalist? theories of adjudication, which demand strict adherence to traditional legal norms. However, (...) Posner's consequentialist pragmatism fails to provide an adequate guide to judicial decision making, because it does not give us any criterion for deciding which consequences are desirable. His Schumpeterian theory of democracy, too, is problematic because it does not sufficiently consider the shortcomings exposed in recent scholarship in political science and economics. (shrink)

Abstract Democratic control of public policy is nearly impossible in the presence of extreme voter ignorance, and this ignorance is in part caused by the vast size and scope of modern government. Only a government limited in its scope can be meaningfully democratic. David Ciepley's response to my article does not seriously challenge this conclusion, and his attempts to show that limited government is inherently undemocratic fail. Ciepley's alternative vision of a ?democracy? that does not require informed voters turns out (...) to be not a defense of democracy at all, but a rationalization for any form of government that achieves a high level of leadership skill and bureaucratic efficiency. (shrink)

Abstract In Politicians Don't Pander, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro show that politicians follow public opinion much less slavishly than conventional wisdom suggests. However, the case studies they themselves rely on show that public opinion constrains policy makers more than they claim. Conversely, to the extent that political leaders are able to ignore the public's wishes, Jacobs and Shapiro do not adequately consider the possibility that this is due in large part to severe voter ignorance of public policy. In urging (...) greater obedience to the popular will, the authors also overlook the danger that increased adherence to the often internally contradictory wishes of the electorate may be impossible or undesirable. (shrink)

Much of the debate over the justice of immigration restrictions focuses on their impact on would-be migrants. Restrictionists often focus on potentially harmful effects of immigration on residents of receiving countries. This article cuts across this long-standing debate by outlining ways in which immigration restrictions inflict harm on natives, specifically by undermining their economic liberty. It covers both the libertarian “negative” view of economic freedom and the “positive” version advanced by left-liberals. Section 1 focuses on “negative” economic freedom. It shows (...) that migration restrictions massively restrict the negative economic liberty of natives. Section 2 takes up “positive” theories of economic freedom; here, too, there are massive effects. Finally, section 3 describes how to address potentially harmful side effects of migration that might undermine economic liberty. (shrink)

Posner's “pragmatic” defense of broad judicial deference to legislative power still reflects the shortcomings noted in my review of his Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy. His pragmatism still fails to provide meaningful criteria for decision making that do not collapse into an indeterminate relativism; and his argument that strict constraints on judicial power are required by respect for democracy underestimates the importance of two serious interconnected weaknesses of the modern state: widespread voter ignorance, and interest‐group exploitation of that ignorance.

Abstract Ilya Somin finds in the public's ignorance of policy issues a reason to reduce the size and scope of government. But one cannot restrict the range of issues that may be raised in a democracy without it ceasing to be a democracy. Jeffrey Friedman argues that, since feedback on the quality of private goods is superior to feedback on the quality of public policies, ?privatizing? public decisions might improve their quality. However, the quality of feedback depends upon (...) the nature of the good, not who provides it; and the absence of reliable feedback on a good may actually justify government involvement, to correct information asymmetries. More fundamentally, voter ignorance of policy issues is a problem only if we assume that the point of democracy is to secure voter control of policy. Max Weber, however, advocated democracy as the best available mechanism for securing strong and responsible leadership. (shrink)

La science classique s'est trouvée associée à un désenchantement du monde. C'est la leçon que Jacques Monod entendait tirer des progrès de la biologie : "L'ancienne alliance est rompue. L'homme sait enfin qu'il est seul dans l'immensité indifférente de l'Univers d'où il a émergé par hasard." Notre science n'est plus ce savoir classique, nous pouvons déchiffrer le récit d'une "nouvelle alliance". Loin de l'exclure du monde qu'elle décrit, la science retrouve comme un problème l'appartenance de l'homme à ce monde. Les (...) théories scientifiques ne peuvent plus supposer la possibilité d'un savoir omniscient : nous lisons, jusque dans leurs principes, les traces d'une activité d'exploration au sein d'une nature en évolution. (shrink)

Ilya Somin argues that in light of the public's rational political ignorance we should make government smaller. But his account of the phenomenon of rational ignorance does not justify his policy prescription of smaller government; on the contrary, it implies that we should revamp the current framework of democratic institutions. This is because, since Somin fails to set out a principled basis on which to value democracy even in the face of rational ignorance, he cannot explain why (...) we should want any democratic government, however small it may be. If rational ignorance is as grave a challenge to democracy as he takes it to be, it would seem to demand either radical institutional innovation or, alternatively, an abandonment of certain democratic principles. By not explaining why we should value citizens’ involvement in politics at all, and why we might therefore draw different policy conclusions than he does himself, Somin's book ultimately fails to do full justice to the important questions that it raises. (shrink)

The increase of high-risk newborns due to societal changes has presented neonatal intensive care unit nurses with more ethical challenges and heightened their perception of neonatal palliative care. Therefore, this study was a descriptive survey exploring the perceptions of neonatal intensive care unit nurse regarding biomedical ethics and neonatal palliative care in neonatal intensive care units. The research participants were 97 neonatal intensive care unit nurses who had been directly involved with end-of-life care for high-risk babies. Data were collected from (...) November to December 2021 through an online survey. The Korean version of Neonatal Palliative Care Attitude Scale and the tool of biomedical ethics were used. The collected data were analyzed using the T-test, ANOVA, Scheffé test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analysis. The mean score for perception of biomedical ethics in neonatal intensive care unit nurses was 2.89 of 4, and that of neonatal palliative care in neonatal intensive care unit nurses was 3.10 of 5. Existence of a protocol of neonatal palliative care, the experience of patients dying, and the right to life of neonates were factors influencing the perception of neonatal palliative care. The explanatory power was 12.5%. The data support the importance of guidelines regarding systematic neonatal palliative care. Also, developing programs for sharing and supporting experiences of patients dying among colleagues and persistent education about the right to life of neonates for neonatal intensive care unit nurses can improve perception of neonatal palliative care. (shrink)

The paper introduces mathematical encoding for subjective experience and meaning in natural cognition. The code is based on a quantum-theoretic qubit structure supplementing classical bit with circular dimension, functioning as a process-causal template for representation of contexts relative to the basis decision. The qubit state space is demarcated in categories of emotional experience of animals and humans. Features of the resulting spherical map align with major theoreties in cognitive and emotion science, modeling of natural language, and semiotics, suggesting several generalizations (...) and improvements. The developed model bridges psychological, quantum-theoretic, and semiotic perspectives, allowing for an integrative account of subjectivity, agency, and meaning in living Nature.Graphical abstract. (shrink)

The paper describes an algorithm for semantic representation of behavioral contexts relative to a dichotomic decision alternative. The contexts are represented as quantum qubit states in two-dimensional Hilbert space visualized as points on the Bloch sphere. The azimuthal coordinate of this sphere functions as a one-dimensional semantic space in which the contexts are accommodated according to their subjective relevance to the considered uncertainty. The contexts are processed in triples defined by knowledge of a subject about a binary situational factor. The (...) obtained triads of context representations function as stable cognitive structure at the same time allowing a subject to model probabilistically-variative behavior. The developed algorithm illustrates an approach for quantitative subjectively-semantic modeling of behavior based on conceptual and mathematical apparatus of quantum theory. (shrink)

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning (...) and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking—a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that communication in partnering is a physical exchange of information on the basis of ethically-bound conditions. Simply put, partners can cause each other harm. Thus, the criteria of communication in partnering is always within an ethical domain, where action runs along a continuum ranging from the ethical to the unethical. To make this argument, I will first lay out the conditions to which the relevant norms of evaluation can adhere. These conditions include proximity, orientation, and (...) point(s) of contact. Rather than provide a how-to guide for communication, I will examine a critical vocabulary for practically approaching communication in partnering. Section I begins with the conditions of communication, followed by Section II which examines the norms of communicating well. (shrink)

Dance, as a mode of physical interaction, offers opportunities to care and be cared for, but this does not mean that dancers will, in fact, care. There may be no moral motivation underlying a lift, dip or intricate sequence of coordinated action. Choreographic scores may (knowingly or not) encourage merely perfunctory movements that are a poor simulacrum to care. Moreover, the caring that is expressed through dance need not transfer to other walks of life. I am not alone in knowing (...) spectacularly talented dancers whose behaviour off the dance floor is far from ethical – from the arrogant and petty to the flagrant abuse that plagues institutions of art and culture. This article considers how dance can illuminate both the acts and sentiments of care, conveying particular ethical orientations that trouble straightforward, absolute moral reasoning. The article frames an enquiry into the relation between ethics and aesthetics of care, drawn from feminist epistemologists Joan Tronto, Maurice Hamington, and Nel Noddings, as well as my own performance research on partnering. I frame a zone between technique and competence, foregrounding care in dance as both a technical and ethical issue. I will consider the necessary conditions by which dancing together can manifest care, rather than suggest blanketly that it always does or even that it should. To make this argument, I will describe and analyse Considered Care, a duet I created in the autumn of 2021 in collaboration with Boston Ballet. This performance research project provided the material from which to consider the concept of need, a condition of care in a dancing situation. I will conclude by considering the relationship between needs and trust in conceptualizing care within partnering. (shrink)

In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘genegenetic plasticityphenotypeenvironment’ (...) tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research. (shrink)

Abilitism is an approach to the metaphysics of concepts according to which each concept consists of a managing cognitive ability coordinating other abilities (cognitive and non-cognitive) and a set of subordinate abilities associated with this managing ability. As I argue here, if we accept the abilitist approach, we can efficiently solve such puzzles in the metaphysics of concepts as the partial possession problem, the concept pluralism problem, etc. However, there are some possible objections to abilitism, concerning the abilitist explanation of (...) compositional properties of concepts, knowledge-that, an extension/intension of concepts, and the idea that concepts are constituents of thought. As I demonstrate here, these objections can be answered. (shrink)

Abstact. Although it is generally known that M.M. Bakhtin viewed himself as primarily a philosopher and not a philologist, the overwhelming majority of studies of his work belong to literary criticism. The purpose of this article, relying on the oral testimony of Bakhtin himself and his philosophical texts written in the Nevel-Vitebsk period, is to restore the origin of his philosophical sources and the content of his philosophical ideas of this period. The main idea is the concept of moral philosophy (...) as a philosophical system, whose main subject is participative thinking and an answerable act as an event of being. One of the most important sources of these ideas was probably the philosophy of Neo-Kantianism represented by the teachings of H. Cohen. The article provides four examples of Bakhtin's continuity in relation to the Marburg philosopher - the idea of an answerable act concerning another person as the source of a human's self-consciousness and personal integrity, the idea of a correlative relationship between a person and his neighbor as an expression of a caring participatory being, the idea of distinguishing a moral attitude from an ethical-legal one and the idea of the philosophical system, whose subject is the process of interpersonal relations. In this case, the system consists not only in the integrity of the object but also in its openness. Revealing the continuity of Bakhtin's philosophical ideas regarding Cohen leads to a better understanding of these ideas and Bakhtin's originality of their development. It is also fruitful to compare the perception of Cohen's ideas by Bakhtin and their reception by another philosopher of dialogue, F. Rosenzweig. (shrink)

Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non-verbal communication mediates change between individuals and groups in complex scenarios, including political settings. Scenarios in which individuals move together – whether in completely extemporaneous situations or in existing forms such as Contact Improvisation, Argentinian Tango, or Classical Pas de Deux – pose a similarly complex communicative problem. Drawing on the work of Lloyd Bitzer, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory provides methodological insight by which we (...) can better understand the dynamic practice that is always already happening in situations where individuals move together. (shrink)

Trust is often considered valuable in a broad range of rela- tionships, from professional collaborations to personal part- nerships. This article examines the possibility of trust in a robotic system. By posing the question “can a robot do a trust fall?”, an investigation on the issues embedded in de- signing trusting systems is presented, using methods and per- spectives from philosophy and engineering. Posing such a question helps us understand the physicality and embodiment of trust, as well as the limits (...) and resources of robotics. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 49 Heft: 1 Seiten: 149-164.

Educational Theory, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 5-25, February 2022.

Assessment in ethics education faces a challenge. From the perspectives of teachers, students, and third-party evaluators like the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the National Institutes of Health, assessment of student performance is essential. Because of the complexity of ethical case analysis, however, it is difficult to formulate assessment criteria, and to recognize when students fulfill them. Improvement in students’ moral reasoning skills can serve as the focus of assessment. In previous work, Rosa Lynn Pinkus and Claire Gloeckner (...) developed a novel instrument for assessing moral reasoning skills in bioengineering ethics. In this paper, we compare that approach to existing assessment techniques, and evaluate its validity and reliability. We find that it is sensitive to knowledge gain and that independent coders agree on how to apply it. (shrink)

Based on the study of the works of domestic and foreign authors, the article presents a decompositional model of value creation when conducting business acquisition transactions with the involvement of debt capital, discloses the content of its main elements. Clarification of direct and indirect sources of value creation for debt financing transactions, as well as factors affecting their value, creates a theoretical basis for improving financial analysis and evaluating the effectiveness of LBO transactions, contributing to their development.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Temporal Registers in the Realist NovelIlya BernsteinIThere are two ways of thinking about time: in terms of sequences of events, and in terms of time-scales. In the first case, each event is conceived of as having a "before" and an "after": it is categorized as part of a sequence and distinguished from other events by its position in that sequence. In the second case, there is no "before" and (...) "after": events are conceived of as occupying different time-scales and distinguished from one another by being associated with durations of greater or lesser magnitude.1 Thus, the same situation may be categorized alternatively as an unfolding succession of events (event 1, event 2, event 3...) or as a progression of overlapping events on expanding time-scales (the second-event, the minute-event, the hour-event...). In what follows, I will argue that this distinction can shed light on narrative structure—as well as musical form—and that it has particularly interesting implications for literary realism.It may be claimed that this distinction between two ways of approaching time has been an explicit theme in the arts over the course of their history. Different musical forms, for instance, may be seen as being oriented toward one paradigm or the other. Thus, melody aesthetically suggests a sequential conception of time. Melodic forms are supposed to take listeners on a journey from point A to point B, by way of a succession of points in between. By contrast, a form such as the fugue addresses itself to discovering different degrees of density and intensity within the [End Page 173] same event, as it were. It adds layer upon layer, aesthetically dilating the event without moving away from it. The ideology of melody, we might say, thus leans toward a conception of time as a sequence, while the ideology of the fugue suggests a scaling notion of time.Echoes of the distinction between these two aesthetic alternatives may also be found in literature, as embodied in different approaches to narrative. Narrative, conceived of as a succession of episodes, suggests a sequential conception of time, oriented around a "before" and an "after." Yet within these parameters, a spectrum of tendencies may be identified. In some literary forms, the succession of episodes is organized to suggest the idea of a passage from one event to the next (Shakespearean drama, the realist novel), as the notions of "before" and "after" are projected onto ideas of past and future. In others, the succession of episodes represents the layer-by-layer assembly of some larger imaginative or conceptual construct (as is true, in different ways, of such texts as Plato's dialogues, the Divine Comedy, and any number of religious, philosophical, or allegorical narratives): "before" and "after" are interpreted not so much in terms of a past and a future, as in terms of premises and conclusions.Within this spectrum, the novel—and perhaps the realist novel in particular—would appear to be the literary form par excellence that embodies a sequential conception of time. It thematizes and dramatizes time's passage—the unknowability of the future and the irretrievability of the past—more exhaustively than any other narrative genre. Yet as I hope to show below, while the explicit themes of literary realism treat fictional events as a sequence (event 1, event 2, event 3...), its implicit organization is grounded in time-scales and directs readers' attention to differentiations among events taking place at different temporal registers (the sentence-event, the chapter-event, the novel-event...).III would like to begin exploring the theoretical distinction laid out above by going back to music and focusing on an empirical observation that has been made about a variety of musical forms. It has been pointed out that when people listen to a piece of music, they retain in their memory, at greater or lesser degrees of awareness, a certain segment of what they have just heard; this memory serves as a background for their perception of incoming sounds and as a frame of reference for their experience of them. Consequently, musical forms may be characterized, [End Page 174] compared, and distinguished from one another based... (shrink)