The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Curle concludes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, understood in a Bergsonian context, provides us with a way to affirm in the modern context that ...

Holm (2022) argues that a class of algorithmic fairness measures, that he refers to as the ‘performance parity criteria’, can be understood as applications of John Broome’s Fairness Principle. We argue that the performance parity criteria cannot be read this way. This is because in the relevant context, the Fairness Principle requires the equalization of actual individuals’ individual-level chances of obtaining some good (such as an accurate prediction from a predictive system), but the performance parity criteria do not guarantee (...) any such thing: the measures merely ensure that certain population-level ratios hold. (shrink)

This paper discusses comparison classes—sets that relativize the interpretation of gradable adjectives, often specified with for-clauses as in John is smart for a linguist. Such a discussion ultimately lends support to the thesis that scales, degrees, measure functions, and linear orders are grammatically derived from more basic relations between individuals. Three accounts of comparison classes are compared and evaluated. The first proposes that such classes serve as an argument to a function that determines a standard of comparison. The second (...) maintains that these classes restrict the domain of a measure function used to map entities to degrees. The third proposes that these classes limit the kind of individuals that participate in a binary relation; this relation is then used in the construction of a scale and a measure function. It is this third account that is most consistent with the empirical data. It can explain how comparison classes fix a standard of comparison, induce presuppositions concerning the comparative subjects, and induce incommensurability in comparative constructions. (shrink)

(2001). Just Being a Lawyer: Reflections on the Legal Ethics of a President under Impeachment A review of “An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment and Trial of President Clinton,” by Richard A. Posner. Legal Ethics: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 155-171.

Thinking skills pedagogies like those employed in a community of inquiry (COI) provide a powerful teaching method that fosters reconstruction of thinking in both teachers and students. This collaborative, dialogic approach enables teachers and students to think deeply about the thinking process within a supportive, structured learning environment, by fostering the transformative potential of lived experience. This paper explores the potential for cognitive dissonance (genuine doubt) during students’ experiences of inquiry to be transformed into impetus for the acquisition and improvement (...) of social and intellectual inquiry capabilities and thinking behaviours across the curriculum. (shrink)

As the only nation in the western world without a national health insurance program, the United States faces ongoing issues of access and fairness in health care coverage. The Clinton administration tried and failed to address the problem of universal coverage. Since then we have focused on the narrower, but nonetheless real, issues of fairness and equity in the benefits package provided in insurance plans. The LORAN Commission spent two years trying to devise agreed-upon principles to govern such issues. (...) The lesson learned was the same as that of the Ethics Force study: there was no possibility of getting agreement, let alone consensus, among the participants on how to decide what should be a covered benefit. There were, however, two generally agreed upon principles that emerged regarding health care: “Every individual should be treated alike,” and “When it comes to health, cost cannot be a consideration.” That formula translated into providing everyone with everything. The only certain outcome from such a policy would be fiscal insolvency and ultimately bankruptcy. (shrink)

R. Freeman Butts was an American historian and philosopher of education who died in March 2010. This paper will investigate Butts’ various roles and writings and ask the question: why is Butts important to the contemporary generation of teacher educators and teachers? This paper will argue that the breadth of Butts’ work builds connections and is a very positive model for sub-disciplines in education. Firstly, it is critical to examine Butts’ contribution, as Butts provokes teachers to inquire about the ‘context (...) of education,’ rather than simply the ‘how to’ of teaching and the question of classroom management. Additionally, it is significant to for educators to study Butts’ life and works as they embody the essence of service – in his case, as an education diplomat. He started with what former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calls ‘the conversation,’ and this led eventually to projects such as the Afghan Project to bring development to Afghanistan in the era of the mid to late twentieth century. Finally, one can argue that Freeman Butts’ life and works provide educators with an interdisciplinary example as Butts’ combined the talents of an historian and an international educator, something that remains sorely needed today. (shrink)

In recent years it has become increasingly common in the United States and in the United Kingdom for newspapers and other media to expose problematic aspects of the private lives of political figures; or, since the facts may already be in the public domain, to draw wider attention to them and to make them the subject of commentary. These “problematic aspects” may include past or continuing physical or psychological illness, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse or dependence, financial difficulties, family (...) conflict, infidelity, or certain sexual proclivities of both the political figures themselves and of their family members or intimates. In the United States, the most prominent cases are probably those of President Bill Clinton in relation to a series of alleged extramarital affairs leading up to the scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and of President John F. Kennedy, also in relation to marital infidelities. The latter exposure was, of course retrospective, as were revelations of similar matters concerning other presidents and holders of high office. Up until the mid-1960s, while it was sometimes known to the press that politicians had “problems” in their private lives, it was rare for these to be made public. Sometimes it might be reported, or more likely hinted, that a figure had a “complex” or “difficult” personal life, and the public was left to infer whatever it might from this . The recent culture of exposure results from a combination of factors, including changed attitudes toward public discussion of sexual conduct, changed standards of sexual behavior, recognition of the scale of Cold War espionage and of its practice of blackmail, a general decline in social deference, a threat to the print media posed by the growth of television, and the rise of satirical entertainment. All of these elements were present in the case that marked the establishment of the culture of exposure in the U.K.: the ‘Profumo scandal’ of 1963. For those unaware of this episode, it may be sufficient to say that it involved the then-secretary of state for war, members of the British aristocracy, a Soviet naval attaché, and a number of “society” call girls, and that it contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the subsequent fall from power of the Conservative Party. In the United States, the culture of exposure developed somewhat later and took shape in the period of the Watergate scandal, which damaged the American public's perception of the governing classes just as the Profumo scandal had in Britain. (shrink)

I review several theoretical and empirical developments relevant to assessing contemporary virtue epistemology’s theory of knowledge. What emerges is a leaner theory of knowledge that is more empirically adequate, better captures the ordinary conception of knowledge, and is ripe for cross-fertilization with cognitive science. I call this view abilism. Along the way I identify several topics for future research.

It is often said that politics is an amoral realm of power and interest in which moral judgment is irrelevant. In this book, by contrast, John Kane argues that people's positive moral judgments of political actors and institutions provide leaders with an important resource, which he christens 'moral capital'. Negative judgements cause a loss of moral capital which jeopardizes legitimacy and political survival. Studies of several historical and contemporary leaders - Lincoln, de Gaulle, Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi - (...) illustrate the significance of moral capital for political legitimation, mobilizing support, and the creation of strategic opportunities. In the book's final section, Kane applies his arguments to the American presidency from Kennedy to Clinton. He argues that a moral crisis has afflicted the nation at its mythical heart and has been refracted through and enacted within its central institutions, eroding the moral capital of government and people and undermining the nation's morale. (shrink)

The Clinton administration's revised rules regulating but not prohibiting the common practice in managed care of linking physician compensation with cost cutting and control of services demonstrates the complexity of ethical issues in managed care. As originally proposed, the federal guidelines on payment for Medicare and Medicaid services would have precluded any interrelationship between payment to physicians and delivery of services. Such a restriction would have gutted the primary mechanism in managed care plans to curb the unacceptably high cost (...) of healthcare delivery: making physicians directly responsible for cost control by placing them at direct financial risk. At first blush such a linkage seems to involve an obvious and irreconcilable conflict of interest. How can a physician be responsible for the well-being of a patient while at the same time aware that a proportion of his or her income is linked to the provision of cost-conscious care? (shrink)

I'm an experimental physicist. The basic physics research I do is funded primarily by the U. S. Government. As I write this, it is less than two weeks before the 1993 Presidential Inauguration. The new Clinton Administration is still of an unknown quantity. A new Presidential Science Advisor with excellent qualifications, Dr. John H. Gibbons, has just been appointed, but little is know about the science policies of the new administration.

During the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Executive Office of the President became dominated by West Wing advisers who specialized in campaign politics, media management, and nonstop public communications. With record numbers of presidential appointees requiring no congressional approval, the Bush White House pursued partisan control of cabinet agencies. Even obscure federal bureaus were required to remain “on message.” The constitutional derangement about which The Rhetorical Presidency had warned has occurred. No matter who occupies the Oval (...) Office in the future, the hyper‐rhetorical presidency is here to stay. (shrink)

In February 1997, following the announcement that the Roslin Institute in Scotland had successfully cloned a sheep by means of cell-nuclear transfer, US President Clinton requested the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to review legal and ethical issues of cloning and to recommend federal actions to prevent abuse. In the meantime he directed the heads of executive departments and agencies not to allocate federal funds for ‘cloning human beings’. The Commission consulted with members of relevant academic disciplines and other professions, (...) representatives of interest groups and members of the general public, and received written submissions. Unsurprisingly, given the prospect of human cloning and the sensational announcement in January 1998 by the American physicist-cum-embryologist Richard Seed that he would aim to clone himself, public debate in the US has been fairly voluble. (shrink)

As its subtitle indicates, Democracy’s Discontent is a study of the political philosophies that have guided America’s public life. The “search” Michael Sandel describes has, in his view, temporarily come to a disappointing resolution in America’s acceptance of a liberal “public philosophy” that “cannot secure the liberty it promises” and has left Americans “discontented” with their “loss of self-government and the erosion of community”. This theme is unlikely to surprise readers familiar with Sandel’s earlier work. What may surprise them is (...) how little of Sandel’s second book is devoted to his critique of liberal theory or to his defense of his favored “republican” alternative. Far less than 10 percent of the book is devoted to characterizing liberal and republican political philosophy and to argument concerning their relative theoretical virtues. The body of Democracy’s Discontent is a history of American Constitutional law and political/economic debate, from pre-Revolutionary times to the Clinton presidency, all designed to show that the republican vision that has animated so much of that history has been recently abandoned to our detriment, replaced by a liberal public philosophy whose dramatic failure in practice “recapitulates” its “poverty in theory”. Sandel’s history is lively and engaging, and many of his analyses are insightful and persuasive. But the looseness in his treatment of theory regularly infects the conclusions he draws from this history and undermines his efforts to show that American political practice indicts liberal political philosophy. (shrink)

As its subtitle indicates, Democracy’s Discontent is a study of the political philosophies that have guided America’s public life. The “search” Michael Sandel describes has, in his view, temporarily come to a disappointing resolution in America’s acceptance of a liberal “public philosophy” that “cannot secure the liberty it promises” and has left Americans “discontented” with their “loss of self-government and the erosion of community”. This theme is unlikely to surprise readers familiar with Sandel’s earlier work. What may surprise them is (...) how little of Sandel’s second book is devoted to his critique of liberal theory or to his defense of his favored “republican” alternative. Far less than 10 percent of the book is devoted to characterizing liberal and republican political philosophy and to argument concerning their relative theoretical virtues. The body of Democracy’s Discontent is a history of American Constitutional law and political/economic debate, from pre-Revolutionary times to the Clinton presidency, all designed to show that the republican vision that has animated so much of that history has been recently abandoned to our detriment, replaced by a liberal public philosophy whose dramatic failure in practice “recapitulates” its “poverty in theory”. Sandel’s history is lively and engaging, and many of his analyses are insightful and persuasive. But the looseness in his treatment of theory regularly infects the conclusions he draws from this history and undermines his efforts to show that American political practice indicts liberal political philosophy. (shrink)

John Rawls, the Harvard Professor, died rights open to any and all challenges, even stupid last month. He was, without question, the most ones. important political philosopher of the Twentieth What does a country do when faced century. It is a terrible time to lose him because with a person, group, or nation that claims that America, and the world, is faced with dire such rights are not obvious but dubious? What questions of justice, rights, and political stability. do (...) we do when faced with an enemy – foreign or These are questions that Rawls spent his life domestic – who rejects justice? Wars were pursuing, and his answers, while not always fought for much less; wars are being fought for convincing, taught us a great deal about much less. Believers in the rights announced by ourselves, and our political priorities. the Declaration of Independence need a theory Few people have heard of Rawls. In that can justify inalienable rights more part, this is because he shied away from convincingly than by simply appealing to publicity, but mostly this is because Americans Jefferson’s personal preference. This is where tend not to regard philosophy as important. John Rawls comes in. Many college students who become interested in In his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, the subject are pressured by their parents to study Rawls attempted to provide a justification of something else because, their parents claim, rights that would apply to all people, for all time, philosophy is not practical. It is, in fact, quite that everyone would ultimately consent to no difficult to get a job as a philosopher, but matter who they are or what religious or cultural philosophy itself is far from useless. Virtually beliefs they held. This is a massive achievement, everything that we value comes out of and in addition to a lifetime of success in his philosophy in one form or another. chosen field, it won him the Medal of Honor Political philosophy, for example, is from Bill Clinton in 1999. responsible for the creation of individual rights, Rawls revised his theory throughout his theories of justice and equality, the creation of career but his early work will be his most lasting. capitalism and the free market (and, of course, It will be read for generations alongside the opposing theories such as communism and greatest of philosophers, partly because at its anarchy).. (shrink)

No point of John C.Calhoun's political thought has been more disputed than exactly where it is situated in the theoretical landscape. Calhoun has been treated as the �Marx of the master class� by Richard Hofstadter; a �reactionary conservative� arguing eclectically from liberal premises by Louis Hartz; an authentic conservative by Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and August Spain; and a precursor to the pluralist vision of politics by Peter Drucker. Two of the most engaging treatments of Calhoun's thought are (...) Darryl Baskin's and Peter Steinberger's, both of relatively recent vintage. Baskin argues that despite Calhoun's use of vocabulary borrowed from organic conservatism he is essentially a classical liberal and, as such, is engaged in the typically liberal �flight from community�. He has no true notion of civic virtue and his concept of the public interest is only a mechanistic sum of private interests. Steinberger agrees that Calhoun is a liberal, but argues that his contribution to American liberalism is precisely to sublate selfishness to an authentic civic virtue. These disputes are interesting, but I suggest that in the efforts to contain Calhoun within the conservative/liberal scheme of categorization some of the subtlety of his thought is lost. Too often an appreciation of his thought is sacrificed to an underlying agenda of attacking or defending one ideology or another. In the present critique I attempt to recover some insights that have been submerged in other treatments. Calhoun's constitutional theory of concurrent majoritarianism, rather than his liberal or conservative bent, is the focal point of sections III and IV. I argue that Calhoun's theory exposes -- sometimes unwittingly -- the stern limits of what constitutions can accomplish. In section V I suggest that insofar as Calhoun is generally a liberal (as Hartz, Baskin and Steinberger contend) an internal contradiction within his theory points to a paradox at the very heart of liberalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.3 (2004) vii-viii [Access article in PDF] John C. Fletcher 1931-2004 John Fletcher was one of the pioneers in the still-young field of bioethics. In this short tribute, I can only hope to highlight a few of the many contributions he made to the field.For many of us, our first introduction to John occurred in October 1971. At an international symposium (...) sponsored by the Kennedy Foundation, the film "Who Should Survive?" depicted the dramatic case of an infant with Down syndrome and an intestinal blockage. The parents of the infant refused surgery to relieve the obstruction, and the healthcare providers for the infant decided not to pursue a court order permitting the surgery. During a period of approximately two weeks the infant was allowed to die.In the second part of "Who Should Survive?" John was one of several panelists invited to discuss the decisions made in this case. After acknowledging how troubling the infant's death was to him, John nonetheless sought to be empathic with the parents. He pointed out that in the re-enactment of the case the faces of the parents were never seen, and he worried that the film did not permit the parents to discuss the reasons for the choice they had made. John realized that his position would not be shared by most other panelists. Yet he had the courage to take an unpopular stand and to challenge other panelists—and the audience—not to reach premature closure on complex ethical dilemmas.Already in 1967, John had begun contributing to the literature of bioethics. His essay "Human Experimentation: Ethics in the Consent Situation," appeared in Law and Contemporary Problems. At the time, John was deeply immersed in studying the ethical dimensions of research with human subjects at the NIH Clinical Center. Paul Ramsey cited John's work with appreciation in his 1970 book, The Patient as Person. By the time he completed his dissertation at Union Theological Seminary in 1969, John was arguably one of the best trained bioethicists in the world—before there was a field of bioethics.After serving as chaplain, teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary, and founding and leading a seminary without walls in Washington, DC, John became the chief of the ethics program at the NIH Clinical Center in 1977. There he had the unenviable task of providing a second review for all clinical protocols emerging from the intramural programs of the NIH institutes. John discovered that in some cases the institutional review boards of the institutes had overlooked important ethical questions. This role also [End Page vii] required courage. At times John found it necessary to challenge senior NIH researchers, even institute directors, and to request protocol revisions that in his view were required for the protection of human subjects.In 1980, after Martin Cline had performed an unauthorized gene transfer experiment involving thalassemia patients, John joined with physician W. French Anderson to write an essay entitled "Gene Therapy in Human Beings: When Is It Ethical to Begin?" [New England Journal of Medicine 303: 1293-97]. Not only did this essay help to defuse a potentially explosive problem for NIH, which had funded Cline's research. It also provided a set of guidelines for the conduct of human gene transfer research that is of continuing relevance today.At times John disagreed with federal policies on research, for example, conservative policies on human embryo research. He also chafed at the idea of subjecting his publications to prior NIH review, both for accuracy and for political correctness. Thus, he welcomed the opportunity to move to the University of Virginia in 1987. There his academic career flowered, and he enjoyed some of his most productive years of research and writing.Among his many contributions during these later years, John participated as Committee co-chair in an effort to "redress the wrongs of Tuskegee." The Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee proposed in May 1996 that President Clinton apologize to the participants in the Tuskegee study on behalf of the federal government. In May 1997, the President did in... (shrink)

From the theory of ‘deliberative democracy’ to the politics of the ‘third way’, the present Zeitgeist is characterized by attempts to deny what Chantal Mouffe contends is the inherently conflictual nature of democratic politics. Far from being signs of progress, such ideas constitute a serious threat to democratic institutions. Taking issue with John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas on one side, and the political tenets of Blair, Clinton and Schröder on the other, Mouffe brings to the fore the paradoxical (...) nature of modern liberal democracy in which the category of the ‘adversary’ plays a central role. She draws on the work of Wittgenstein, Derrida, and the provocative theses of Carl Schmitt, to propose a new understanding of democracy which acknowledges the ineradicability of antagonism in its workings. (shrink)

William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having also served from 1993–5 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. He is thus able to speak with an authority unique amongst political theorists about the implications of advancing certain moral and political values in practice. The foundational argument of this 2002 book is that liberalism is compatible with the value pluralism first espoused by Isaiah Berlin. William Galston defends a version of (...) value pluralism - liberal pluralism - and argues, against the contentions of John Gray and others, that it undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life. (shrink)

We are sceptical of concerns over the opacity of algorithmic decision tools. While transparency and explainability are certainly important desiderata in algorithmic governance, we worry that automated decision-making is being held to an unrealistically high standard, possibly owing to an unrealistically high estimate of the degree of transparency attainable from human decision-makers. In this paper, we review evidence demonstrating that much human decision-making is fraught with transparency problems, show in what respects AI fares little worse or better and argue that (...) at least some regulatory proposals for explainable AI could end up setting the bar higher than is necessary or indeed helpful. The demands of practical reason require the justification of action to be pitched at the level of practical reason. Decision tools that support or supplant practical reasoning should not be expected to aim higher than this. We cast this desideratum in terms of Daniel Dennett’s theory of the “intentional stance” and argue that since the justification of action for human purposes takes the form of intentional stance explanation, the justification of algorithmic decisions should take the same form. In practice, this means that the sorts of explanations for algorithmic decisions that are analogous to intentional stance explanations should be preferred over ones that aim at the architectural innards of a decision tool. (shrink)

William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having also served from 1993–5 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. He is thus able to speak with an authority unique amongst political theorists about the implications of advancing certain moral and political values in practice. The foundational argument of this 2002 book is that liberalism is compatible with the value pluralism first espoused by Isaiah Berlin. William Galston defends a version of (...) value pluralism - liberal pluralism - and argues, against the contentions of John Gray and others, that it undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life. (shrink)

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America (...) came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft.... The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy of science takes on sharp contour in terms of his interaction with the practicing life scientists of his day, particularly Johann Blumenbach and the latter’s student, Christoph Girtanner, who in 1796 attempted to synthesize the ideas of Kant and Blumenbach. Indeed, Kant’s engagement with the life sciences played a far more substantial role in his transcendental philosophy than has been recognized hitherto. The theory of epigenesis, especially in light of Kant’s famous analogy in the first Critique, posed crucial (...) questions regarding the ‘looseness of fit’ between the constitutive and the regulative in Kant’s theory of empirical law. A detailed examination of Kant’s struggle with epigenesis between 1784 and 1790 demonstrates his grave reservations about its hylozoist implications, leading to his even stronger insistence on the discrimination of constitutive from regulative uses of reason. The continuing relevance of these issues for Kant’s philosophy of science is clear from the work of Buchdahl and its contemporary reception. (shrink)

The danger of human operators devolving responsibility to machines and failing to detect cases where they fail has been recognised for many years by industrial psychologists and engineers studying the human operators of complex machines. We call it “the control problem”, understood as the tendency of the human within a human–machine control loop to become complacent, over-reliant or unduly diffident when faced with the outputs of a reliable autonomous system. While the control problem has been investigated for some time, up (...) to this point its manifestation in machine learning contexts has not received serious attention. This paper aims to fill that gap. We argue that, except in certain special circumstances, algorithmic decision tools should not be used in high-stakes or safety-critical decisions unless the systems concerned are significantly “better than human” in the relevant domain or subdomain of decision-making. More concretely, we recommend three strategies to address the control problem, the most promising of which involves a complementary coupling between highly proficient algorithmic tools and human agents working alongside one another. We also identify six key principles which all such human–machine systems should reflect in their design. These can serve as a framework both for assessing the viability of any such human–machine system as well as guiding the design and implementation of such systems generally. (shrink)