The debate over the genetic testing of minors has developed into a major bioethical topic. Although several controversial questions remain unanswered, a degree of consensus has been reached regarding the policies on genetic testing of minors. Recently, several commentators have suggested that these policies are overly restrictive, too narrow in focus, and even in conflict with the limited empirical evidence that exists on this issue. We respond to these arguments in this paper, by first offering a clarification of three key (...) concepts—autonomy of the minor, future autonomy, and parental authority—which must be disentangled. We then respond to the arguments by noting the uncertainty of the value of predictive genetic information, and by assessing the psychosocial risks still involved in genetic testing of minors, which are also largely unknown. We conclude that the current consensus position is justified at this stage, in light of the predictions of harm resulting from genetic testing of minors that have not been adequately proved to be unwarranted. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theorists aim to justify Bayesian norms by arguing that these norms further the goal of epistemic accuracy—having beliefs that are as close as possible to the truth. The standard defense of Probabilism appeals to accuracy dominance: for every belief state that violates the probability calculus, there is some probabilistic belief state that is more accurate, come what may. The standard defense of Conditionalization, on the other hand, appeals to expected accuracy: before the evidence is in, one should expect (...) to do better by conditionalizing than by following any other rule. We present a new argument for Conditionalization that appeals to accuracy‐dominance, rather than expected accuracy. Our argument suggests that Conditionalization is a rule of coherence: plans that conflict with Conditionalization don't just prescribe bad responses to the evidence; they also give rise to inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

We show that five important elements of the ‘nomological package’— laws, counterfactuals, chances, dispositions, and counterfactuals—needn’t be a problem for the Growing-Block view. We begin with the framework given in Briggs and Forbes (in The real truth about the unreal future. Oxford studies in metaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012 ), and, taking laws as primitive, we show that the Growing-Block view has the resources to provide an account of possibility, and a natural semantics for non-backtracking causal counterfactuals. We show (...) how objective chances might ground a more fine-grained concept of feasibility, and furnished a places in the structure where causation and dispositions might fit. The Growing-Block view, thus understood, provides the resources to explain the close link between modality and tense, so that it predicts modal change as time passes. This account lets us capture not only what the future might hold for us, and also what might have been. (shrink)

Gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female police officers by their male counterparts remain areas of liability where police departments appeared to have failed to effectively confront the nagging issues. However, the appreciable level of research conducted on these issues in the global North has not been matched by the South, where issues bordering on sexual violence have cultural underpinnings. Drawing from the case of the Nigeria Police Force, feminist analysis was used to explore the lived reality of 43 female (...) officers in a qualitative study. Participants expressed distress in abiding by structural discriminatory regulations against female officers which include non-admittance of married women into the force, forbidding unmarried officers from getting pregnant, and a stipulated minimum of three-year work period before a female officer can marry. Findings also indicated that participants suffer a variety of sexual harassment, intimidation, and, violence from their male colleagues, while they feel constrained in reporting their victimization. Important policy and practical implications requiring the Nigerian police to address hegemonic masculinity and promote gender equality were provided. (shrink)

I am interested in extending modal calculi by adding propositional quantifiers, given by the rules for quantifier introduction: provided that p does not occur free in A.

The author's motivation for constructing the calculi of this paper\nis so that time and tense can be "discussed together in the same\nlanguage" (p. 282). Two types of enriched propositional caluli for\ntense logic are considered, both containing ordinary propositional\nvariables for which any proposition may be substituted. One type\nalso contains "clock-propositional" variables, a,b,c, etc., for\nwhich only clock-propositional variables may be substituted and that\ncorrespond to instants or moments in the semantics. The other type\nalso contains "history-propositional" variables, u,v,w, etc., for\nwhich only history-propositional variables may (...) be substituted and\nthat correspond to maximally linearly ordered subsets of instants.\nThis second type is for tense logics in which time is not linear\nand where at any moment there may exist alternative future courses\nof events. Quantifiers are included in both types but only for clock-\nand history-propositional variables. However, these quantifiers are\ngiven an essentially substitutional interpretation. In addition,\nbesides each clock-propositional variable being true at exactly one\ninstant, the semantics requires that for each instant there be at\nleast one clock-propositional variable true at that instant, which\nin effect amounts to having each instant of the model "denoted" in\nthe formalism by some clock-propositional variable. Thus it is not\nsurprising that quantification over clock-propositional variables\nturns out to have a "well behaved first-order semantics" (p. 284).\n{One axiom relating history- with clock-propositions seems to need\nrevision: CKTauTbuAUabUba. Since the clock-propositional variables\nmight be true at the same instant the consequent should include an\nalternative, namely, LCab.} Besides the standard truth-functional\nand tense operators G,H,F,P, the author includes L for "it is\nalways the case that". The model-theoretic earlier-than relation\nordering instants and the semantic truth-at (an instant) relation\nare formalized by Uab and Taα (for a wff α) which\nare defined respectively as LCbPa (whenever the clock-proposition\nb is the case the clock-proposition a was the case) and LCaα\n(α is the case whenever the clock-proposition a is the case).\nBecause the future tense operators are definable in terms of U\nand T and the latter are definable in terms of L and P, the\ndual of H, the author notes that his completeness proofs can be\nrestricted to L and H as primitive and with the future tense\noperators used for other interpretations, especially Prior, A.'s\nindeterminist "it will be the case that", where time is not linear.\nThe author concludes with some rather technical observations showing\nthat "in ordinary tense logics the instants are nonstandard elements\nof the models. This provides", according to the author, "a semantic\npressure to build the instants into tense logic, so that they will\nappear as standard elements in the models" (p. 283). (shrink)

Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theories, offers the most (...) fruitful way of understanding punishment's meaning and justification. Duff addresses such questions as how much sentences should be constrained by proportionality requirements; what modalities of punishment best communicate their intended meaning; and what decisionmaking procedures he envisions. This book will appeal to criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in theories of punishment. (shrink)

Aim To study the views of people in a largely Muslim country, Kuwait, of the acceptability of a life-ending action such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Method 330 Kuwaiti university students judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age (35, 60 or 85 years); the level of incurability of the illness (completely incurable vs extremely difficult to cure); the type of suffering (extreme physical pain or complete dependence) and the extent to (...) which the patient requests a life-ending procedure, euthanasia or PAS (no request, some form of request, repeated requests). In all scenarios, the patients were women who were receiving the best possible care. The ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance. Results Five clusters were found. For 44%, PAS was always very unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. For 23%, it was unacceptable, but less so if the patient was older or requested it repeatedly. For 16%, it was unacceptable if the patient was young but was acceptable if the patient was elderly. For 5%, it was unacceptable if the patient had extreme pain but was acceptable if completely dependent. For 11%, it was unacceptable if the patient did not request it but acceptable if she did. Conclusion The majority of the Kuwaiti university students opposed PAS either categorically or with a slight variation according to circumstances. Nonetheless, a minority approved of PAS in some cases, particularly when the patient was elderly. (shrink)

After distinguishing different species of Legal Moralism I outline and defend a modest, positive Legal Moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize some type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong. Some of the central elements of the argument will be: the need to remember that the criminal law is a political, not a moral practice, and therefore that in asking what kinds of conduct we have good reason to criminalize, we must begin not with the (...) entire realm of wrongdoing, but with conduct falling within the public realm of our civic life; the need to look at the different processes of criminalization, and to ask what kinds of consideration can properly figure in those processes; the need to attend to the relationship, and the essential differences, between criminal law and other modes of legal regulation. (shrink)

Teaching medical ethics by the case method may be enriched by adding to the principles-and-rules approach to practical reasoning modes of inquiry and interpretation that engage the moral imagination.

How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? Traditional attempts to justify punishment as a deterrent or as retribution fail, but Duff suggests that punishment can be understood as a communicative attempt to bring a wrong-doer to repent her crime. This account is supported by discussions of moral blame, of penance, of the nature of the law's demands, (...) and of the proper meaning and purpose of the criminal process of trial and verdict: it deals both with the ideals that should inform a system of criminal law and the extent to which those ideals are actualised in existing institutions and practices. The conclusion is pessimistic: punishment cannot be justified within our legal system; and this gap between the ideal and the actual presents us with serious moral dilemmas. (shrink)