How we understand the nature and role of grief depends on what we take its object to be and vice versa. This paper focuses on recent claims by philosophers that grief is frequently or even inherently irrational or inappropriate in one or another respect, all of which hinge on assumptions concerning the proper object of grief. By emphasizing the temporally extended structure of grief, we offer an alternative account of its object that undermines these assumptions and dissolves the apparent problems. (...) The principal object of grief, we suggest, is a loss of life possibilities, which is experienced, understood, and engaged with over a prolonged period. Other descriptions of grief's object identify more specific aspects of this loss in ways that do not respect a straightforward distinction between concrete and formal objects. (shrink)

Mandatory vaccination, including for COVID-19, can be ethically justified if the threat to public health is grave, the confidence in safety and effectiveness is high, the expected utility of mandatory vaccination is greater than the alternatives, and the penalties or costs for non-compliance are proportionate. I describe an algorithm for justified mandatory vaccination. Penalties or costs could include withholding of benefits, imposition of fines, provision of community service or loss of freedoms. I argue that under conditions of risk or perceived (...) risk of a novel vaccination, a system of payment for risk in vaccination may be superior. I defend a payment model against various objections, including that it constitutes coercion and undermines solidarity. I argue that payment can be in cash or in kind, and opportunity for altruistic vaccinations can be preserved by offering people who have been vaccinated the opportunity to donate any cash payment back to the health service. (shrink)

There are no egalitarians in a pandemic. The scale of the challenge for health systems and public policy means that there is an ineluctable need to prioritize the needs of the many. It is impossible to treat all citizens equally, and a failure to carefully consider the consequences of actions could lead to massive preventable loss of life. In a pandemic there is a strong ethical need to consider how to do most good overall. Utilitarianism is an influential moral theory (...) that states that the right action is the action that is expected to produce the greatest good. It offers clear operationalizable principles. In this paper we provide a summary of how utilitarianism could inform two challenging questions that have been important in the early phase of the pandemic: (a) Triage: which patients should receive access to a ventilator if there is overwhelming demand outstripping supply? (b) Lockdown: how should countries decide when to implement stringent social restrictions, balancing preventing deaths from COVID‐19 with causing deaths and reductions in well‐being from other causes? Our aim is not to argue that utilitarianism is the only relevant ethical theory, or in favour of a purely utilitarian approach. However, clearly considering which options will do the most good overall will help societies identify and consider the necessary cost of other values. Societies may choose either to embrace or not to embrace the utilitarian course, but with a clear understanding of the values involved and the price they are willing to pay. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle all living systems aim to minimise free energy in their sensory exchanges with the environment. Processes of free energy minimisation are thus ubiquitous in the biological world. Indeed it has been argued that even plants engage in free energy minimisation. Not all living things however feel alive. How then did the feeling of being alive get started? In line with the arguments of the phenomenologists, I will claim that every feeling must be felt by (...) someone. It must have mineness built into it if it is to feel a particular way. The question I take up in this paper asks how mineness might have arisen out of processes of free energy minimisation, given that many systems that keep themselves alive lack mineness. The hypothesis I develop in this paper is that the life of an organism can be seen as an inferential process. Every living system embodies a probability distribution conditioned on a model of the sensory, physiological, and morphological states that are highly probably given the life it leads and the niche it inhabits. I argue for an ecological and enactive interpretation of free energy. I show how once the life of an organism reaches a certain level of complexity mineness emerges as an intrinsic part of the process of life itself. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers increases consumer demand for corporate (...) social responsibility regarding this stakeholder group – specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, thereby bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves from future reputational crises. To do so, we advance a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory in order to leverage customers’ virtuous self-perception and increase gig-worker freedom. (shrink)

Following a brief reconstruction of Hutto & Satne’s paper we focus our critical comments on two issues. First we take up H&S’s claim that a non-representational form of ur-intentionality exists that performs essential work in setting the scene for content-involving forms of intentionality. We will take issue with the characterisation that H&S give of this non-representational form of intentionality. Part of our commentary will therefore be aimed at motivating an alternative account of how there can be intentionality without mental content, (...) which we have called skilled intentionality. Skilled intentionality is the individual’s selective openness and responsiveness to a rich landscape of affordances.A second issue we take up concerns the distinction between ur-intentionality and content-involving intentionality. We will argue that our notion of skilled intentionality as it is found in humans cuts across these two categories. Instead of distinguishing between different forms of intentionality we recommend focusing on how skilled intentionality takes different forms in different forms of life. (shrink)

DNA databases have significant commercial value. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies have built databanks using samples and information voluntarily provided by customers. As the price of genetic analysis falls, there is growing interest in building such databases by paying individuals for their DNA and personal data. This paper maps the ethical issues associated with private companies paying for DNA. We outline the benefits of building better genomic databases and describe possible concerns about crowding out, undue inducement, exploitation, and commodification. While certain (...) objections deserve more empirical and philosophical investigation, we argue that none currently provide decisive reasons against using financial incentives to secure DNA samples. (shrink)

Postcolonial theory has enjoyed wide influence in the humanities but it has left sociology comparatively unscathed. Does this mean that postcolonial theory is not relevant to sociology? Focusing upon social theory and historical sociology in particular, this article considers if and how postcolonial theory in the humanities might be imported into North American sociology. It argues that postcolonial theory offers a substantial critique of sociology because it alerts us to sociology’s tendency to analytically bifurcate social relations. The article also suggests (...) that a postcolonial sociology can overcome these problems by incorporating relational social theories to give new accounts of modernity. Rather than simply studying non-Western postcolonial societies or only examining colonialism, this approach insists upon the interactional constitution of social units, processes, and practices across space. To illustrate, the article draws upon relational theories (actor-network theory and field theory) to offer postcolonial accounts of two conventional research areas in historical sociology: the industrial revolution in England and the French Revolution. (shrink)

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the (...) market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests. (shrink)

At the University of Pretoria the author, a practical theologian, experiences a fruitful soil for the development of an interdisciplinary process. He referred to concrete examples of cooperation, but used the article to reflect on best practices for the interdisciplinary dialogue. He came to the conclusion that it probably made more sense to talk of Practical-theological alternatives rather than to describe the subject in a single fixed manner of understanding and action. Our goal should rather be to open up the (...) boundaries between Practical Theology, Human, Social and Natural Sciences. (shrink)

Genomic research can reveal ‘unsolicited’ or ‘incidental’ findings that are of potential health or reproductive significance to participants. It is widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to return certain kinds of unsolicited findings to research participants. It is less widely thought that researchers have a moral obligation to actively look for health-related findings. This paper examines whether there is a moral obligation, grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt (...) for genomic secondary findings. We begin by showing how the duty to disclose individual research findings can be grounded in the duty of easy rescue. Next, we describe a parallel moral duty, also grounded in the duty of easy rescue, to actively hunt for such information. We then consider six possible objections to our argument, each of which we find unsuccessful. Some of these objections provide reason to limit the scope of the duty to look for secondary findings, but none provide reason to reject this duty outright. We argue that under a certain range of circumstances, researchers are morally required to hunt for these kinds of secondary findings. Although these circumstances may not currently obtain, genomic researchers will likely acquire an obligation to hunt for secondary findings as the field of genomics continues to evolve. (shrink)

Some of my colleagues will sadly not be attending the IAB World Congress in Qatar. Amongst other things, they wish to take a stand against Qatar’s human rights record and the treatment of women and...

We develop and test a model of pseudo-transformational leadership. Pseudo-transformational leadership is manifested by a particular combination of transformational leadership behaviors, and is differentiated from both transformational leadership and laissez-faire -leadership. Survey data from senior managers show differential outcomes of transformational, pseudo-transformational, and laissez-faire leadership. Possible extensions of the theoretical model and directions for future research are offered.

Both Jago, in his 2020 article ‘A short argument for truthmaker maximalism’ and his 2021 article ‘Which Fitch?’, and Loss in his 2021 article ‘There are no fundamental facts’, employ arguments similar to that familiar from the Church–Fitch Paradox to infer some substantial metaphysical claims from their mere logical possibility. Trueman in his 2022 article ‘Truthmaking, grounding and Fitch’s paradox’ and Nyseth in his 2022 article ‘Fitch’s paradox and truthmaking’ respond by using exactly the same kind of argument to prove (...) contrary theses. Intended as bad company objections, these counterarguments cast doubt on the original arguments, but do not actually identify their flaw. This paper aims to fill this gap. (shrink)

This essay criticizes the current approach to epistemic democracy. Epistemic democrats are preoccupied with the question of how a society can best exploit a given stock of knowledge. This article argues that the problem-solving capability of a society depends on two factors rather than one. The quality of decision-making depends both on how a democracy is able to make use of its stock of knowledge and on the size of the knowledge stock. Society’s problem-solving capability over time is therefore a (...) function of its ability to develop its knowledge exploitation mechanisms and the growth rate of its knowledge stock. Based on this enhanced model of social problem-solving, this essay compares two different political ideal types: experimental democracy, as commonly defended by epistemic democrats; and polycentric democracy, a model defended most commonly by political economists. (shrink)

Genomic sequencing technologies (GS) pose novel challenges not seen in older genetic technologies, making traditional standards for fully informed consent difficult or impossible to meet. This is due to factors including the complexity of the test and the broad range of results it may identify. Meaningful informed consent is even more challenging to secure in contexts involving significant time constraints and emotional distress, such as when rapid genomic testing (RGS) is performed in neonatal intensive care units. In this article, we (...) propose that informed consent matters not for its own sake, but because obtaining it furthers a range of morally important goals, such as promoting autonomy, well‐being, and trust in medicine. These goals form the basis of a new framework [PROmoting Morally Important Consent Ends (PROMICE)] for assessing the ethical appropriateness of various informed consent models. We illustrate this framework with two examples: (a) a tiered and layered consent model for obtaining consent for GS, and (b) consent for RGS in critically ill newborns. We conclude that appropriately—rather than fully—informed consent provides the correct standard for genomic medicine and research. (shrink)

Even though human smuggling is one of the central topics of contention in the political discourse about immigration, it has received virtually no attention from moral philosophy. This article aims...

The second edition of this popular compendium provides the necessary intellectual equipment to engage with and participate in effective philosophical argument, reading, and reflection Features significantly revised, updated and expanded entries, and an entirely new section drawn from methods in the history of philosophy This edition has a broad, pluralistic approach--appealing to readers in both continental philosophy and the history of philosophy, as well as analytic philosophy Explains difficult concepts in an easily accessible manner, and addresses the use and application (...) of these concepts Proven useful to philosophy students at both beginning and advanced levels. (shrink)

Criminal behaviour is but one behavioural tendency for which a genetic influence has been suggested. Whilst this research certainly raises difficult ethical questions and is subject to scientific criticism, one recent research project suggests that for some families, criminal tendency might be predicted by genetics. In this paper, supposing this research is valid, we consider whether intervening in the criminal tendency of future children is ethically justifiable. We argue that, if avoidance of harm is a paramount consideration, such an intervention (...) is acceptable when genetic selection is employed instead of genetic enhancement. Moreover, other moral problems in avoiding having children with a tendency to criminal behaviour, such as the prospect of social discrimination, can also be overcome. (shrink)

One objection to embryonic stem (ES) cell research is that it ‘cannibalizes’ human beings, that is, kills some human beings to benefit others. I grant for argument’s sake that the embryo is a person. Nonetheless, killing it may be justified. I show this through the Embryonic Stem Cell Lottery. Whether killing a person is justified depends on: (1) whether innocent people at risk of being killed for ES cell research also stand to benefit from the research and (2) whether their (...) overall chances of living are higher in a world in which killing and ES cell research is conducted. I call this kind of killing ‘risk reductive.‘. (shrink)

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 85-90, Winter 2020.

Over the past 10 years, John Harris has made important contributions to thinking about distributive justice in health care. In his latest work, Harris controversially argues that clinicians should stop prioritising patients according to prognosis. He argues that the good or benefit of health care is providing each individual with an opportunity to live the best and longest life possible for him or her. I call this thesis, opportunism. For the purpose of distribution of resources in health care, Harris rejects (...) welfarism (the thesis that the good of health care is well-being) and argues that utilitarianism in general may lead to de facto discrimination against groups of people needing health care. I argue that well-being is a superior theory of the good of health care to Harris' opportunism. Harris' concerns about utilitarianism can be better addressed by: (i) relating justice more closely to reasons for action; (ii) by conceptualising the relationship between reasons for action and the value of the consequences of those actions as a plateau rather than scalar relationship. Justice can be understood as satisfying as many equally rational claims on resources as possible. The rationality of a person's claim on health resources turns on the strength of that person's reasons to promote certain health-related states of affairs. I argue that the strength of that reason does not track the expected value of that state of affairs in a fully scalar fashion. Rather a person can have most reason to promote some state of affairs, even though he or she could promote other more valuable states of affairs. Thus there can be equal reason for a distributor of public resources to save either of two people, even though one will have a better and more valuable life. This approach, while addressing many of Harris' concerns about utilitarianism, does not imply that doctors should give up prioritising patients according to prognosis altogether, but it does allow that patients with lower but reasonable prognosis should have a share of public resources. (shrink)

This paper addresses what I call ‘the constitutive question’ concerning the rules we follow: namely, what determines the standard for a rule's correct application. John McDowell has offered a putative ‘middle position’ between two extreme, unacceptable answers: empirical idealism, which takes the requirements of a rule in any given situation to be constituted by our reaction to the case; and hard platonism, which takes these requirements to be delivered by unvarnished reality as absolutely the simplest or most natural way to (...) carry on. Tellingly, however, McDowell's position is itself unacceptably idealist in his picture of the way in which we are ‘involved’ on the right-hand side of biconditionals such as, ‘“Diamonds are hard” is true if and only if diamonds are hard’.In response to this stultifying state of affairs, I suggest that McDowell has followed the empirical idealist and hard platonist in assuming that the requirements of a rule must be grounded by something else: something external to the rule, which mediates between the rule and the standard for its correct application. This assumption is false. What is more, one application of a metaphor to which Wittgenstein has a somewhat equivocal relation—that of rules as rails invisibly laid to infinity—can help this point to stick. (shrink)

We consider whether intervening in the criminal tendency of future children is ethically justifiable. We argue that, if avoidance of.

As a first approximation, it may be said that the central issue in the correspondence concerns whether semantical statements are essentially, albeit implicitly, mentalistic or psychological in character. In the language of the protagonists themselves, it concerns whether statements of the form.

In this research I propose to bring to light the meaning of "Venus" in the invocation of Lucretius´s De rerum natura. This paper is divided into six parts. In the first, I give an account of the various interpretations of the invocation and I systematize them. In the second I analyze and discuss three incategorizable investigations. In the third and fourth parts I expose the epicurean concepts of pleasure and divinity respectively. In the fifth I look for the terms, by (...) way of epithets, that the poet uses to refer to the goddess, bringing to light the nuances that light up them alternately in various instances of the invocation. In the sixth, finally, I give mine interpretation of vv 44-49 explaining why they should be included in the invocation. (shrink)

Elizabeth Chloe Romanis argues that surrogacy, uterine transplantation (UTx) and ectogestation belong to a genus of ‘assisted gestative technologies” (“AGTs”).1 These technologies are conceptually distinct from assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in that they support gestation rather than conception. Romanis argues that they also raise some overlapping ethical and policy issues that are best appreciated by ‘considering these technologies together’, thus placing the issues that AGT’s share at the forefront of ethical analysis. The neologism ‘AGTs’ picks out a distinctive and important (...) category of technologies, and there is value in considering the ethical parallels between various AGT’s. However, the category of AGTs should provide neither the only nor the main level of ethical analysis. Surrogacy, UTx and ectogestation share important parallels not only with each other but also with other practices; indeed, some of these parallels are stronger than those AGT’s share with each other. Consider ectogestation. One striking implication of ‘artificial placentas’ is that they may make it possible to terminate a pregnancy without causing the death of the fetus. This is noteworthy in part because it threatens to disrupt one influential defence of abortion rights: that they are protected by something like a moral right to bodily integrity. Once fetuses can be transferred to artificial wombs, bodily integrity would no longer support a …. (shrink)

This paper surveys and critically assesses existing theories of evidence with respect to four desiderata. A good theory of evidence should be both a theory of evidential support (i.e., be informative about what kinds of facts speak in favour of a hypothesis), and of warrant (i.e., be informative about how strongly a given set of facts speaks in favour of the hypothesis), it should apply to the non-ideal cases in which scientists typically find themselves, and it should be ‘descriptively adequate’, (...) i.e., able to adequately represent typical episodes of evidentiary reasoning. The theories surveyed here—Bayesianism, hypotheticodeductivism,satisfaction theories, error statistics as well as Achinstein’s and Cartwright’s theories—are all found wanting in important respects. I finally argue that a deficiency all these theories have in common is a neglect or underplaying of the epistemic context in which the episode of evidentiary reasoning takes place.Este artículo describe y valora críticamente diversas teorías de la evidencia en relación a cuatro desiderata. Una buena teoría de la evidencia debería ser tanto una teoría sobre el apoyo evidencial [evidential support] (ser informativa sobre qué tipos de hechos hablan a favor de la hipótesis) como sobre la justificación [warrant]; debería aplicarse en las situaciones no ideales en las que normalmente se encuentran los científicos; y debería ser ‘descriptivamente adecuada’, esto es, capaz de representar correctamente episodios típicos de razonamiento evidencial. Las teorías aquí revisadas—bayesianismo, hipotético-deductivismo, teorías de la satisfacibilidad, la estadística del error, así como las propuestas de Achinstein y Cartwright—se consideran deficientes en aspectos básicos. Argumentaré que un defecto común en todas ellas es que olvidan, o minusvaloran, el contexto epistémico en el que el episodio de razonamiento evidencial tiene lugar. (shrink)

In their recent paper in this journal, Zümrüt Alpinar-Şencan and colleagues review existing dignity-based objections to organ markets and outline a new form of dignity-based objection they believe has more merit: one grounded in a social account of dignity. This commentary clarifies some aspects of the social account of dignity and then shows how this revised account can be applied to other perennial issues in bioethics, including the ethics of human embryo research and the ethics of creating part-human chimeras.

This is the first instalment of a two-part paper on the counterfactual theory of causation. It is well known that this theory is ridden with counterexamples. Specifically, the following four features of the theory suffer from problems: it understands causation as a relation between events; counterfactual dependence is understood using a metric of similarity among possible worlds; it defines a non-discriminatory concept of causation; and it understands causation as transitive. A number of philosophers have recently proposed that causation is contrastive (...) because making contrasts explicit defuses counterexamples. A contrastive causal claim has the following form: C rather than C* causes E rather than E*, where C* and E* are alternative or contrast events. In this paper, I show that making contrasts explicit does indeed defuse some counterexamples. However, I also argue that the examples discussed in the literature all share a common feature, viz. that the original causal judgement is ambiguous in one way or another. Contrasting does not help with counterexamples that do not have this feature. Part II of this paper then takes up the hard cases. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to analyze the ideas about commercial society among Spanish and Spanish American intellectuals from the second half of the eighteenth century to the first decades of the following century. Special attention is paid to some relevant concepts like “amor propio” or “interés”. We are also specially interested in the knowledge of political economy and its moral implications for the idea of commercial society. My proposal is to consider the possibilities of a Catholic enlightenment as (...) the expression of the combination of some intrinsic principles of the enlightened thought with Catholic confessionalism. This is significant not only for the understanding of the enlightenment in the Spanish World but also for a correct interpretation of the first constitutionalism. (shrink)