Default logic is one of the most popular and successful formalisms for non-monotonic reasoning. In 2002, Bonatti and Olivetti introduced several sequent calculi for credulous and skeptical reasoning in propositional default logic. In this paper we examine these calculi from a proof-complexity perspective. In particular, we show that the calculus for credulous reasoning obeys almost the same bounds on the proof size as Gentzen’s system LK. Hence proving lower bounds for credulous reasoning will be as hard as proving lower bounds (...) for LK. On the other hand, we show an exponential lower bound to the proof size in Bonatti and Olivetti’s enhanced calculus for skeptical default reasoning. (shrink)

Companies increasingly offer their employees the opportunity to participate in voluntary Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Although such programmes have come into focus through national and regional regulation throughout much of the Western world, their ethical implications remain largely unexamined. This article maps the territory of the ethical issues that have arisen in relation to voluntary health promotion in the workplace against the background of asymmetric relationships between employers and employees. It addresses questions of autonomy and voluntariness, discrimination and distributive justice, (...) as well as privacy and responsibility. Following this analysis, we highlight the inadequacy of currently established ethical frameworks to sufficiently cover all aspects of workplace health promotion. Thus, we recommend the consideration of principles from all such frameworks in combination, in a joint reflection of an Ethics of Workplace Health Promotion. (shrink)

Collaborative consumption activities like saving food and buying used clothes are an important and rapidly growing part of sustainable consumer behavior. Many political and commercial campaigns promote collaborative consumption practices by highlighting subsets of normative motives, such as sustainable, social, and ecological effects. Whether or not consumers can comprehend these claims and incorporate them into their decision-making process is, however, unclear. This article introduces a new experimental study design to ethical consumer research—an adapted version of the Defining Issues Test—that enables (...) to assess consumers’ ability to cognitively and intuitively understand moral arguments in collaborative consumption contexts. The experiment was conducted with N = 435 collaborative consumers from Germany. The findings indicate that in different collaborative consumption contexts, consumers consider different moral arguments as important. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that consumers can incorporate the provider’s point of view in their moral judgment. (shrink)

Diese Arbeit untersucht die Frage, ob der aktuelle Schutz des geistigen Eigentums bei Arzneimitteln in Deutschland moralisch zu rechtfertigen ist. Die Untersuchung orientiert sich dabei am aktuellen Diskurs und ordnet die bestehenden Positionen entsprechend ihrer Abstraktheit. Dabei bilden Argumente gegen einen Schutz geistigen Eigentums die allgemeinste Ebene, und Argumente, die sich spezifisch gegen deutsche Arzneimittelpatente richten, die konkreteste Ebene. Ich werde zeigen, dass starke deontologische und konsequentialistische Positionen existieren, welche die realpolitischen Auswirkungen von Arzneimittelpatenten kritisieren. Die konsequentialistische Position argumentiert in (...) erster Linie mit den jüngsten Wirtschaftsdaten, während die deontologische Position die bürgerlichen Autonomieansprüche betont. (shrink)