When people lose capacity to make a medical decision, the standard is to assess what their preferences would have been and try to honor their wishes. Dementia raises a special case in such situations, given its long, progressive trajectory during which others must make substituted judgments. The question of how to help surrogates make better‐informed decisions has led to the development of dementia‐specific advance directives, in which people are given tools to help them communicate what their preferences are while they (...) are still able. Such directives allow the perspective of the person to play a clearer role in guiding decisions about their care. Dementia directives can never serve as rigid algorithms. Rather, they can be used to help inform conversations, to help surrogates make decisions that are better aligned with the preferences the person would have had. This essay lays out the proposed utility of dementia‐specific directives and addresses some of the criticisms raised about them. (shrink)

Taking steps to build a more dementia‐friendly society is essential for addressing the needs of people experiencing dementia. Initiatives that improve the quality of life for those living with dementia are needed to lessen controllable factors that can negatively influence how people envision a future trajectory of dementia for themselves. Programs that provide better funding and better coordination for care support would lessen caregiver burden and make it more possible to imagine more people being able to live what they might (...) consider a “good life” with dementia. Specific proposals, such as payment for dementia care managers and new systems to support high‐quality, symptom‐based palliative care beyond the hospice benefit of only six months, would improve and reframe how many people in the United States experience a dementia illness. Such changes should be incorporated into discussions about improving and respecting preferences in the later stages of dementia. (shrink)

Scalar implicatures depend on alternatives in order to avoid the symmetry problem. I argue for a structure-sensitive characterization of these alternatives: the alternatives for a structure are all those structures that are at most as complex as the original one. There have been claims in the literature that complexity is irrelevant for implicatures and that the relevant condition is the semantic notion of monotonicity. I provide new data that pose a challenge to the use of monotonicity and that support the (...) structure-sensitive definition. I show that what appeared to be a problem for the complexity approach is overcome once an appropriate notion of complexity is adopted, and that upon closer inspection, the argument in favor of monotonicity turns out to be an argument against it and in favor of the complexity approach. (shrink)

Counterpossibles are counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The problem of counterpossibles is easiest to state within the "nearest possible world" framework for counterfactuals: on this approach, a counterfactual is true (roughly) when the consequent is true in the "nearest" possible world where the antecedent is true. Since counterpossibles have necessarily false antecedents, there is no possible world where the antecedent is true. On the approach favored by Lewis, Stalnaker, Williamson, and others, counterpossibles are all trivially true. I introduce several arguments (...) against the trivial approach. First, it is counter-intuitive to think that all counterpossibles are true. Second, if all counterpossibles were true, then we could not make sense of their use in logical, philosophical, or mathematical arguments. Making sense of the role of sentences like these requires that they not have vacuous truth conditions. The account of counterpossibles I ultimately favor is an extension of the "nearest possible world" semantics discussed above. The Lewis/Stalnaker account is supplemented with the addition of impossible worlds, and the nearness metric is extended to range over these impossible worlds as well as possible worlds. Thus, a counterfactual is true when its consequent is true in the nearest world where the antecedent is true; if the counterfactual's antecedent is impossible, then the nearest world in question will be an impossible world. Once the framework of impossible worlds and similarity is in place, we can put it to use in the analysis of other philosophical phenomena. I examine one proposal that makes use of a theory of counterpossibles to develop an analysis of the notion of metaphysical dependence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a particular conception of impossible worlds. Possible worlds, as traditionally understood, can be used in the analysis of propositions, the content of belief, the truth of counterfactuals, and so on. Yet possible worlds are not capable of differentiating propositions that are necessarily equivalent, making sense of the beliefs of agents who are not ideally rational, or giving truth values to counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents. The addition of impossible worlds addresses these issues. The kinds (...) of impossible worlds capable of performing this task are not mysterious sui generis entities, but sets of structured propositions that are themselves constructed out of possible worlds and relations. I also respond to a worry that these impossible worlds are unable to represent claims about the shape of modal space itself. (shrink)

Introducing non-Darwinian mind as a nonaptation I argue that Darwinian mind evolved from non-Darwinian mind through the evolution of desire and aversion. The subject position within Darwinian mind is Darwinian self and is inherently selfish. However the cathexis whereby the subject prioritises motivations of desire and aversion is not an inherent property of mind. Instead it is proposed to be an adaptation, a predisposition to respond to pleasant/unpleasant sensations with desire/aversion. This explains why self-sacrifice and disengagement from desire/aversion are the (...) sine qua non of serious commitment to the spiritual path, i.e. Darwinian self and desire/aversion are two sides of the same coin and erosion of one is erosion of the other. Thus, through self- renunciation and suspension of desire/aversion the seeker passes from adaptive selfish Darwinian mind towards nonaptive selfless non-Darwinian mind. But Darwinian mind automatically resists this transcendence by intensifying motivations of desire/aversion thereby explaining the extreme difficulties of the spiritual path. A theoretical distinction is made between evolved Darwinian 'morality' , 'Darwinian' morality and amoral non-Darwinian kenosis . These distinctions make it easy to disentangle scientific and religious jurisdictions on morality with important implications for both religious ethics and science's view of spirituality. All in all, the nonaptive theory of spiritual mind offers a unified solution to age-old problems which have been uncomfortably shifting this way and that in the interstices between biology, psychology, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries, participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity (...) for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress. (shrink)

In the ongoing research of the functions of consciousness, special emphasis has been put on integration of information: the ability to combine different signals into a coherent, unified one. Several theories of consciousness hold that this ability depends on – or at least goes hand in hand with – conscious processing. Yet some empirical findings have suggested otherwise, claiming that integration of information could take place even without awareness. Trying to reconcile this apparent contradiction, the “windows of integration” hypothesis claims (...) that conscious access enables signal processing over large integration windows. The hypothesis applies to integration windows defined either temporally, spatially, or semantically. In this review, we explain the hypothesis and re-examine it in light of new studies published since it was suggested. In line with the hypothesis, these studies provide compelling evidence for unconscious integration, but also demonstrate its limits with respect to time, space, and semantic distance. The review further highlights open questions that still need to be pursued to demonstrate the applicability of the WOI hypothesis as a guiding principle for understanding the depth and scope of unconscious processes. (shrink)

We revisit a typological puzzle due to Horn (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 1972) regarding the lexicalization of logical operators: in instantiations of the traditional square of opposition across categories and languages, the O corner, corresponding to ‘nand’ (= not and), ‘nevery’ (= not every), etc., is never lexicalized. We discuss Horn’s proposal, which involves the interaction of two economy conditions, one that relies on scalar implicatures and one that relies on markedness. We observe that in order to express markedness and to (...) account for a bigger typological puzzle, namely the absence of lexicalizations of ‘XOR’ (= exclusive or), ‘all-or-none’, and many other imaginable logical operators, one must restrict the basic lexicalizable elements to a small set of primitives. We suggest that an ordering based perspective, following Keenan and Faltz (Boolean semantics for natural language, 1985), makes the stipulated primitives that we arrive at more natural. We also propose a modification to Horn’s proposal, based on recent work on implicatures, in which only the implicature condition is operative and in which markedness is part of the definition of the alternatives for scalar implicatures rather than an independent condition. (shrink)

(2004). ‘Flexible Control’: Towards a conception of personal autonomy for postmodern education. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 3-17.

At the beginning ofTristia2, a single long apologetic elegy, Ovid struggles with making sense of his continued occupation with poetry, despite the disaster it has brought upon him. In lines 7–8 he broods over Augustus’ displeasure, roused by theArs Amatoria, which led to his reproach. The passage is also sometimes adduced as a reference to the removal of theArsfrom Rome's public libraries.1.

This Article explores several meanings of a regulatory preference for government inaction. It explains the rise to dominance of this inaction preference in the United States and its distorting influence on the perception and understanding of regulation. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how basic terms in regulation, such as “government failure,” “regulatory capture,” and “deregulation,” acquired misleading connotations suggesting that government inaction is always superior to government action. The Article further explains how, through government inaction, the U.S. legal system accommodates rent (...) extraction - the profitable exploitation of market imperfections and favorable laws. Several developments in recent decades have considerably improved the capacity of very small groups in society to collect rents, namely, use talent and positional advantages to gain increasing levels of earnings. The Article argues that the parallel rise of the inaction preference has contributed to this trend, primarily because the availability of rent extraction opportunities draws talent that utilizes them with growing effectiveness. The purpose of the Article is to clarify several aspects of the relationships between regulation and rent extraction or, more precisely, to emphasize that government inaction may entail undesirable income effects. (shrink)

According to the tuning-for-criticality theory, the essential role of sleep is to protect the brain from super-critical behaviour. Here we argue that this protective role determines the content of dreams and any apparent relationship to the art of memory is secondary to this.

While Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) have improved the health and well-being of the people they serve, most healthcare institutions will only invest in an MLP if they are convinced that doing so will improve its balance sheet. This article offers a detailed estimation of the cost savings that an MLP targeted toward the most acute legal needs would accrue to an academic medical center (AMC) in North Carolina.

We examine the link between the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility at the organizational level and beliefs about social responsibility at work (SRW) expressed by individuals. Drawing from theories of professionalism and diffusion of innovations (including practices and beliefs), we advance hypotheses about beliefs of managers and non-managers in 11 countries at two time periods, and use a unique international data set to test our hypotheses. Our general prediction that managers would score higher than non-managers on a measure of (...) SRW was not supported. However, further analysis revealed a more complex relationship moderated by the contextual factors of time frame and country inequality level. We discuss implications and extensions for future research. (shrink)

We examine the link between the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility at the organizational level and beliefs about social responsibility at work (SRW) expressed by individuals. Drawing from theories of professionalism and diffusion of innovations (including practices and beliefs), we advance hypotheses about beliefs of managers and non‐managers in 11 countries at two time periods, and use a unique international data set to test our hypotheses. Our general prediction that managers would score higher than non‐managers on a measure of (...) SRW was not supported. However, further analysis revealed a more complex relationship moderated by the contextual factors of time frame and country inequality level. We discuss implications and extensions for future research. (shrink)

The growing trend of shifting from classroom to distance learning in ethics education programs raises the need to examine ways for adapting best instructional practices to online modes. To address this need, the current study was set to apply a social constructivist approach to an online course in research ethics and to examine its effect on the learning outcomes of science and engineering graduate students. The study applied a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental research design within a framework of a mixed-methods approach. (...) The study compared the learning outcomes of students who participated in a social constructivist online course with those who studied in a conventional online course. The data were collected via questionnaires and interviews. The findings indicated that both the conventional and the social constructivist online learners gained knowledge of facts and regulations. Yet, the social constructivist learners were more successful in demonstrating knowledge of practices that are used to establish research ethics, and in understanding the importance of conducting research in a responsible manner. The social constructivist online learners were also more successful in demonstrating awareness of ethical dilemmas, by identifying ethical dilemmas and providing solutions to ethical problems. (shrink)

The goal of the current study was to examine novice researchers’ views about online ethics education and to identify the instructional design components that may foster ethical practice. Applying the mixed methods approach, data were collected via a survey and semi-structured interviews among M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in science and engineering. The findings point to the need for rethinking the way conventional online ethics courses are developed and delivered; encouraging students to build confidence in learning from distance, engaging them in (...) online active and interactive experiences, and providing them with personalized support and adaptive guidance. The novice researchers identified the synergistic integration of collaborative, case-based, and contextual learning, as the instructional design components that may foster not only ethical knowledge but also ethical practice in a fully online course. (shrink)

The discovery by Hans Spemann of the “organizer” tissue and its ability to induce the formation of the amphibian embryo's neural tube inspired leading embryologists to attempt to elucidate embryonic inductions’ underlying mechanism. Joseph Needham, who during the 1930s conducted research in biochemical embryology, proposed that embryonic induction is mediated by a specific chemical entity embedded in the inducing tissue, surmising that chemical to be a hormone of sterol-like structure. Along with embryologist Conrad H. Waddington, they conducted research aimed at (...) the isolation and functional characterization of the underlying agent. As historians clearly pointed out, embryologists came to question Needham's biochemical approach; he failed to locate the hormone he sought and eventually abandoned his quest. Yet, this study finds that the difficulties he ran into resulted primarily from the limited conditions for conducting his experiments at his institute. In addition, Needham's research reflected the interests of leading biochemists in hormone and cancer research, because it offered novel theoretical models and experimental methods for engaging with the function of the hormones and carcinogens they isolated. Needham and Waddington were deterred neither by the mounting challenges nor by the limited experimental infrastructure. Like their colleagues in hormone and cancer research, they anticipated difficulties in attempting to establish causal links between complex biological phenomena and simple chemical triggering. (shrink)

The discovery by Hans Spemann of the “organizer” tissue and its ability to induce the formation of the amphibian embryo’s neural tube inspired leading embryologists to attempt to elucidate embryonic inductions’ underlying mechanism. Joseph Needham, who during the 1930s conducted research in biochemical embryology, proposed that embryonic induction is mediated by a specific chemical entity embedded in the inducing tissue, surmising that chemical to be a hormone of sterol-like structure. Along with embryologist Conrad H. Waddington, they conducted research aimed at (...) the isolation and functional characterization of the underlying agent. As historians clearly pointed out, embryologists came to question Needham’s biochemical approach; he failed to locate the hormone he sought and eventually abandoned his quest. Yet, this study finds that the difficulties he ran into resulted primarily from the limited conditions for conducting his experiments at his institute. In addition, Needham’s research reflected the interests of leading biochemists in hormone and cancer research, because it offered novel theoretical models and experimental methods for engaging with the function of the hormones and carcinogens they isolated. Needham and Waddington were deterred neither by the mounting challenges nor by the limited experimental infrastructure. Like their colleagues in hormone and cancer research, they anticipated difficulties in attempting to establish causal links between complex biological phenomena and simple chemical triggering. (shrink)

Navigating limits to confidentiality with adolescent clients can be ethically and professionally challenging. This study follows on from a previous quantitative survey of psychologists about confidentiality dilemmas with adolescents. The current study used qualitative methods to explore such dilemmas in greater depth. Twenty Australian psychologists were interviewed and asked to describe an ethically challenging past case. Cases were then used to facilitate discussion about the decision-making process and outcomes. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using interpretive content and thematic analysis. Three (...) key findings are discussed. First, it is of little use to perceive confidentiality dilemmas as binary choices because psychologists described 5 distinct options. These can be conceptualized on a spectrum of varying degrees of client autonomy, ranging from “no disclosure” to “disclosure without the client’s knowledge or consent”. Second, confidentiality dilemmas often involve balancing multiple and conflicting risks regarding both immediate and future harm. Third, a range of strategies are employed by psychologists to minimize potential harms when disclosing information. These are primarily aimed at maintaining the therapeutic relationship and empowering clients. These findings and the case studies described provide a valuable resource for teaching and professional development. (shrink)

During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. (...) Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur. (shrink)

This article explores an issue of some ongoing controversy in Ovidian scholarship: the identity of the anonymous person addressed in the epilogue of the “Tristia”’s third book. The exploration combines an analysis of the text with an examination of salient aspects of Hellenistic and Roman literary culture. These in turn inform a systematic prosopographical reassessment of four hypotheses. Evidence converges in the conclusion that the addressee was likely a high-level library administrator, most probably C. Iulius Hyginus.

Waging war for money has been frowned upon since the Peace of Westphalia and the rise of the modern nation-state. The stigma associated with private warfare translates, in legal terms, into a prohibition on mercenary activity and denying mercenaries the protection afforded to regular combatants . Noting the apparent similarities between mercenaries and private military contractors, some have sought to extend to the latter the restrictive regime applicable to the former. But the resemblance between these two types of actors should (...) not imply that private warfare, in its modern form, is condemnable outright. This Article argues that an inclusive approach to military outsourcing—drawing upon historical, legal and moral perspectives—is necessary to contend with the challenges raised by the growth of the private military industry. I examine the connection between history , morality , and law , to show that private warfare deserves a more nuanced and pragmatic treatment under international law. (shrink)

This essay focuses on proportionality stricto sensu as a consequential test of balancing. The basic balancing rule establishes a general criterion for deciding between the marginal benefit to the public good and the marginal limit to human rights. Based on the Israeli constitutional jurisprudence, this essay supports the adoption of a principled balancing approach that translates the basic balancing rule into a series of principled balancing tests, taking into account the importance of the rights and the type of restriction. This (...) approach provides better guidance to the balancer , restricts wide discretion in balancing, and makes the act of balancing more transparent, more structured, and more foreseeable. The advantages of proportionality stricto sensu with its three levels of abstraction are several. It stresses the need to always look for a justification of a limit on human rights; it structures the mind of the balancer; it is transparent; it creates a proper dialog between the political brunches and the judiciary, and it adds to the objectivity of judicial discretion. Proportionality stricto sensu however has it critics: some claim that it attempts to balance incommensurable items; others that balancing is irrational. The answer to the critics is that it is a common base for comparison, namely the social marginal importance and that the balancing rules—basic, principled, concrete—supply a rational basis for balancing. A democracy must entrust the judiciary—the unelected independent judiciary—to be the final decision-maker—subject to constitutional amendments—about proper ends that cannot be achieved because they are not proportionality stricto sensu. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA careful look at societies facing threat reveals a unique phenomenon in which liberals and conservatives react emotionally and attitudinally in a similar manner, rallying around the conservative flag. Previous research suggests that this rally effect is the result of liberals shifting in their attitudes and emotional responses toward the conservative end. Whereas theories of motivated social cognition provide a motivation-based account of cognitive processes, it remains unclear whether emotional shifts are, in fact, also a motivation-based process. Herein, we propose (...) that under threat, liberals are motivated to feel existential concern about their group’s future vitality to the same extent as conservatives, because this group-based emotion elicits support for ingroup protective action. Within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we tested and found support for this hypothesis both inside and outside the laboratory. We d... (shrink)

The semantics of association with focus and the pragmatic conditions governing the appropriateness of focus in discourse are usually taken to depend on focus alternatives. According to a common view, these alternatives are generated by a permissive process. This permissive view has been challenged by Michael Wagner, who has noted that certain alternatives are systematically excluded from consideration. Wagner describes a more restrictive view, on which only contrastive alternatives are relevant for association with focus and for the appropriateness of focus (...) in discourse. I use recent work on the role of contradiction to show that the standard, permissive view derives the same results as the contrast-based view for the basic cases. These basic cases involve a contradiction that prevents us from using them to distinguish the two approaches. I show that when this contradiction is eliminated, evidence of non-contrastive alternatives emerges, supporting the permissive standard view over the restrictive contrast-based one. (shrink)

Résumé Ce texte se compose de trois extraits de l’ouvrage de Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, dans lequel l’auteure explore les représentations des « indigènes » non occidentaux au début du XX e siècle, entre cinéma, culture populaire et ethnographie. Elle met en évidence le rôle des images dans la perception de l’altérité à travers la notion de « troisième œil », soit l’expérience consistant à regarder tout en étant soi-même regardé comme un Autre. (...) Entre récit autobiographique, réflexion sur la relation entre histoire et narration, et une analyse des films de Zora Neale Hurston, ce texte aborde des stratégies de résistance qui déjouent les constructions occidentales du « sauvage ». (shrink)

The article asks why and how Hannah Arendt framed The Human Condition as a history of modern science. It answers that, in telling the history of instrumental rationality and the work of the experim...

The news media form major sources of information to the general public in matters of science and health. And yet journalists and experts differ in what they consider as newsworthy and relevant. This article analyses in detail a current affair interview with a health expert reporting on a new research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Applying Bamberg’s three-level model for positioning analysis, the interview is searched for the stories that speakers introduce, attend to their embedding in the design of questions (...) and answers and examine how their tellers are positioned therein as knowledgeable regarding ADHD. The narratives identified are shown to enable the adopting and shifting between various expert positions including that of the scientific researcher, the advice-giving expert and the more specific identity of the public health clinician. Shifts between these positions are shown to reflect the claims and counter-claims that the interviewee and interviewers are making and backing. These findings are discussed for their implications regarding the use of narratives in presenting science to media audiences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Medical AID organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières receive several requests from individuals and international academic institutions to conduct research at their implementation sites in Africa. Do AID agencies have an ethical duty to comply with research requests? In this paper we respond to the views and constructed theories (albeit unfounded) of one such researcher, whose request to conduct research at one of our sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo was turned down.

The sensitivity of focus to context has often been analyzed in terms of focus-based anaphoric relations between sentences and surrounding discourse. The literature, however, has also noted empirical difficulties for the anaphoric approach, and my goal in the present paper is to investigate what happens if we abandon the anaphoric view altogether. Instead of anaphoric felicity conditions, I propose that focus leads to infelicity only indirectly, when the semantic processes that it feeds—in particular, exhaustification and question formation—make an inappropriate contribution (...) to discourse. I outline such an account, in line with Roberts (In Papers in semantics, Vol. 49 of Working papers in linguistics, 91–136, The Ohio State University, 1996 ) and incorporating recent insights from Büring (In Questions in discourse, Vol. 36 of Current research in the semantics/pragmatics interface, 6–44, Leiden: Brill, 2019 ) and Fox (In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, 403–434, 2019 ). This account, which I motivate on conceptual grounds, has no anaphoric conditions on focus placement and has only an economy condition as a potential felicity condition on focus. However, there are cases where the fine control offered by anaphoricity seems needed, either to block deaccenting that would be licensed by a question or to allow local deaccenting that is not warranted by a question. Such cases challenge non-anaphoric accounts such as the present one and appear to support recent anaphoric proposals such as Schwarzschild (In Making worlds accessible. Essays in honor of Angelika Kratzer, 167–192, 2020 ), Wagner (In The Wiley Blackwell companion to semantics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020 ), and Goodhue (Journal of Semantics 39: 117–158, 2022 ). I argue that this potential motivation for anaphoricity is only apparent and that to the extent that anaphoric conditions on focus from the literature are not inert, they are in fact harmful. (shrink)

Law, Economics, and Morality examines the possibility of combining economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit and direct incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. Economic analysis of law is a powerful analytical methodology. However, as a purely consequentialist approach, which determines the desirability of acts and rules solely by assessing the goodness of their outcomes, standard cost-benefit analysis is normatively objectionable. Moderate deontology prioritizes such values as autonomy, basic liberties, truth-telling, and promise-keeping over the promotion of good outcomes. It (...) holds that there are constraints on promoting the good. Such constraints may be overridden only if enough good is at stake. While moderate deontology conforms to prevailing moral intuitions and legal doctrines, it is arguably lacking in methodological rigor and precision. Eyal Zamir and Barak Medina argue that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. They discuss various substantive and methodological choices involved in modeling deontological constraints. Zamir and Medina propose to determine the permissibility of any act or rule infringing a deontological constraint by means of mathematical threshold functions. Law, Economics, and Morality presents the general structure of threshold functions, analyzes their elements and addresses possible objections to this proposal. It then illustrates the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, antidiscrimination law, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism. (shrink)