This paper argues that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness are essential for epistemic agents such as scientists who are expected to carry out non-epistemic missions. My chief philosophical claim is that the two values should play a joint role in their communication about earthquake-related damages when their knowledge claims are advisory. That said, I try to defend a minimal normative account of science in the context of communication. I show that these epistemic (...) agents when acting as communicators may encounter various epistemic and practical uncertainties in making their knowledge claims. Using four vignettes, I show that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness may best serve their epistemic and practical purposes across different contexts by reducing their epistemic and practical risks associated with the knowledge claims they communicated. The former may reduce the risks of prematurely excluding epistemic alternatives and is conducive to two types of epistemic plurality; the latter is supposed to reduce the risks of making self-defeating advisory claims and harmful wishful speaking by minimizing the values in tension that can be embedded in the social roles the epistemic agents play. (shrink)

I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevant with respect to environmental ethics, (...) since environmental damage is often the result of the accumulation of individually negligible effects. (shrink)

DCPS is a connectionist production system interpreter that uses distributed representations. As a connectionist model it consists of many simple, richly interconnected neuron‐like computing units that cooperate to solve problems in parallel. One motivation for constructing DCPS was to demonstrate that connectionist models are capable of representing and using explicit rules. A second motivation was to show how “coarse coding” or “distributed representations” can be used to construct a working memory that requires far fewer units than the number of different (...) facts that can potentially be stored. The simulation we present is intended as a detailed demonstration of the feasibility of certain ideas and should not be viewed as a full implementation of production systems. Our current model only has a few of the many interesting emergent properties that we eventually hope to demonstrate: It is damage‐resistant, it performs matching and variable binding by massively parallel constraint satisfaction, and the capacity of its working memory is dependent on the similarity of the items being stored. (shrink)

On December 20, 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dardinger v. Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield granting a landmark punitive damages award against the defendant-insurer for breach of contract and bad faith in its coverage of a cancer patient. The court directed that the punitive damages award of $30 million, should it be accepted by the plaintiff, be apportioned between the plaintiff and a cancer research fund to be established in the name of the plaintiff's deceased (...) wife, Esther Dardinger. In so doing, the court broke new ground in the scope and social purpose of punitive damages in health care litigation, as well as the courts’ role in distributing those damages.After being diagnosed with metastatic brain tumors in October 1996, Esther began intra-arterial chemotherapy treatments at the recommendation of her physician, Dr. Newton. IAC is a targeted form of chemotherapy in which an arterial catheter is threaded through a cranial artery near the tumor and into the brain. (shrink)

On December 20, 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dardinger v. Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield granting a landmark punitive damages award against the defendant-insurer for breach of contract and bad faith in its coverage of a cancer patient. The court directed that the punitive damages award of $30 million, should it be accepted by the plaintiff, be apportioned between the plaintiff and a cancer research fund to be established in the name of the plaintiff's deceased (...) wife, Esther Dardinger. In so doing, the court broke new ground in the scope and social purpose of punitive damages in health care litigation, as well as the courts’ role in distributing those damages.After being diagnosed with metastatic brain tumors in October 1996, Esther began intra-arterial chemotherapy treatments at the recommendation of her physician, Dr. Newton. IAC is a targeted form of chemotherapy in which an arterial catheter is threaded through a cranial artery near the tumor and into the brain. (shrink)

The formation of DNA photoproducts by ultraviolet (UV) light is responsible for induction of mutations and development of skin cancer. To understand UV mutagenesis, it is important to know the mechanisms of formation and repair of these lesions. Cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers and (6–4)photoproducts are the two major classes of UV‐induced DNA lesions. Their distribution along DNA sequences in vivo is strongly influenced by nucleosomes and other DNA binding proteins. Repair of UV photoproducts is dependent on the transcriptional status of (...) the sequences to be repaired and on the chromatin environment. Sensitive techniques are now available to study repair of UV damage at the level of nucleotide resolution in mammalian cells. With the aid of in vitro systems, the entire nucleotide excision repair process has been reconstituted from purified protein components with naked DNA as a substrate. Future work will focus on the development of in vitro assays for transcription‐coupled repair and repair in chromatin. (shrink)

This book argues that the risk of harm in armed conflict should be divided equally between combatants and enemy non-combatants. International law requires that combatants in war take 'all feasible precautions' to minimise damage to civilian objects, injury to civilians, and incidental loss of civilian life. However, there is no clear explanation of what 'feasible precautions' means in this context, or what would count as sufficiently minimised incidental harm. As a result, it is difficult to judge whether a particular (...) war or offensive actually satisfies this requirement. Just war theorists often consider it common sense that merely not intending to harm innocent civilians is not sufficient, but there is little clarity in the literature regarding what this means. One crucial question that is almost always overlooked is that of what the appropriate baseline distribution of risk should be. This book defends the Minimal Harm Requirement, which states that combatants should make an effort to reduce merely foreseen harm to enemy non-combatants to the lowest reasonable level. In order to assess which risk impositions are reasonable, and which are not, an egalitarian baseline should be adopted, suggesting that other things being equal risk of harm should be distributed equally between just combatants and unjust non-combatants. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics, security studies, and international relations. (shrink)

The coronavirus has affected almost all sectors of the economy. Some areas have suffered and declined, while others have developed and benefited from the pandemic. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, economies around the world have experienced a downturn. The effects of the pandemic will undoubtedly reverberate around the world for decades to come. The global threat of the COVID-19 epidemic has greatly affected people, families, communities and businesses. Countries have begun implementing a wide range of measures both within and between (...) countries to combat the humanitarian and commercial impact of COVID-19. The effects of the worldwide epidemic and the emergency situations to be taken in this context were felt more and more in business life. Considering that the epidemic progressed very quickly, it was observed that it caused constant negative pressure on business and stock markets. This situation is interpreted as a harbinger of a global crisis. On the other hand, issues such as disruptions in supply and distribution channels, closure of workplaces and ports, disruption of customs processes, lack of manpower and decrease in consumption, operations in the stock market continued in a negative direction day by day. The consistent exposure of COVID-19 around the world, especially in developing economies, suggests that developing economies are seen as a major driver of macroeconomic instability compared to developed countries. After the initiation of economic reforms, with the increase of national income, aggregate production and employment, the trend of increasing economic volatility in developing economies has also been observed. Considering all this, it can be noted that the topic of the article is quite relevant. In the article, the negative impact of the pandemic on the economy of the world, as well as Azerbaijan, is examined in a broad aspect, and the methods of eliminating the damage caused by it are determined. (shrink)

Wind damage to forests can be divided into (1) the direct damage done to the forest and(2) indirect effects. Indirect effects may be of different kinds and may affect the environ- ment as well as society. For example, falling trees can lead to power and telecommunica- tion failures or blocking of roads. The salvage harvest of fallen trees is another example and one that involves extremely dangerous work. In this overview we provide examples of different entities, services, and (...) activities that may be affected by wind damage to for- ests. We illustrate how valuation of the damage depends on the perspective applied and how the affected entities, services, and activities may represent different types of values. Finally we suggest means for how to actively manage the risk in an ethically sustainable way. Many of our examples will be drawn from the experiences of the wind damage Gudrun in southern Sweden on 8–9 January 2005. The direct as well as indirect effects, which are described, are by no means unique to the Gudrun wind damage event and similar or even worse effects have been described after the wind damage events Martin and Lothar in 1999, and Klaus in 2009. (shrink)

This chapter lays out what we take to be the main types of justice and ethical challenges concerning those adverse effects of climate change leading to climate-related Loss and Damage (L&D). We argue that it is essential to clearly differentiate between the challenges concerning mitigation and adaptation and those ethical issues exclusively relevant for L&D in order to address the ethical aspects pertaining to L&D in international climate policy. First, we show that depending on how mitigation and adaptation are (...) distinguished from L&D, the primary focus of policy measures and their ethical implications will vary. Second, we distinguish between a distributive justice framework and a compensatory justice scheme for delivering L&D measures. Third, in order to understand the differentiated remedial responsibilities concerning L&D, we categorise the measures and policy approaches available. Fourth, depending on the kind of L&D and which remedies are possible, we explain the difference between remedial and outcome responsibilities of different actors. [Open access]. (shrink)

The growing field of neuro-philosophy throws up important issues for our society about how we understand the persistence of personal identity over time: if my brain is damaged or otherwise altered, do I become a different person? This chapter explores some of the work of the French neuro-philosopher Catherine Malabou as she asks, and tries to answer, this fundamental question about who we think we are, giving a non-reductive materialist account of self-identity. I argue that Malabou has implicit within her (...) writing the seeds of a more adequate account which would not understand identity and personhood to be immanent to the material brain but would embrace a broader notion of identity distributed across relationships, institutions, and shared common narratives. (shrink)

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, (...) in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics. (shrink)

BackgroundWhether patients in the vegetative state (VS), minimally conscious state (MCS) or the clinically related locked-in syndrome (LIS) should be kept alive is a matter of intense controversy. This study aimed to examine the moral attitudes of lay people to these questions, and the values and other factors that underlie these attitudes.MethodOne hundred ninety-nine US residents completed a survey using the online platform Mechanical Turk, comprising demographic questions, agreement with treatment withdrawal from each of the conditions, agreement with a series (...) of ethical principles and three personality tests.ResultsMore supported treatment withdrawal from VS (40.2 % agreed, 17.6 % disagreed) than MCS (20.6 %, 41.2 %) or LIS (25.3 %, 35.8 %). Agreement with treatment withdrawal was negatively correlated with religiosity (r = −0.272, P < 0.001), though showed no significant relationship with need for cognition or empathy, and only a partial association with utilitarian judgment in a standard moral dilemma. Support for treatment withdrawal was most strongly associated with endorsement of the importance of patient autonomy, dignity, suffering, best interests. Distributive justice was not given significant weight by most. Importantly, agreement with treatment withdrawal was noticeably higher when considered from a first as opposed to third person perspective for VS (Z = −6.056, P < 0.001), MCS (Z = −6.746, P < 0.001) and LIS (Z = −6.681, P < 0.001).ConclusionLay attitudes to withdrawal of treatment in brain damaged patients are largely shaped by values similar to those central to the secular ethical debate. Neither traditional values such as the sanctity of life nor utilitarian values relating to resource allocation seem to play a central role. Far greater weight is given to autonomy, which may explain why participants were far more willing to endorse withdrawal of treatment when the issue was presented in the first person, or in relation to a concrete case involving a patient’s explicit wishes. Surveys focusing on abstract cases presented in the third person may not provide an accurate picture of lay attitudes to these critical ethical questions. (shrink)

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, (...) in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics. (shrink)

Fines and monetary damages account for the majority of legal sanctions across the whole spectrum of legal governance. Money is, in key respects, the primary tool law has to achieve compliance. Yet money has largely been ignored by social analyses of law, and especially by social theory. _The Currency of Justice_ examines the differing rationalities, aims and assumptions built into money’s deployment in diverse legal fields and sanctions. This raises major questions about the extent to which money appears as an (...) abstract universal or whether it takes on more particular meanings when deployed in various areas of law. Indeed, money may be unique in that it can take on the meanings of punishment, compensation, denunciation or regulation. _The Currency of Justice_ examines the implications of the ‘monetization of justice’ as life is increasingly regulated through this single medium. Money not only links diverse domains of law; it also links legal sanctions to other monetary techniques which govern everyday life. Like these, the concern with monetary sanctions is not who pays, but that money is paid. Money is perhaps the only form of legal sanction where the burden need not be borne by the wrongdoer. In this respect, this book explores the view that contemporary governance is less concerned with disciplining individuals and more concerned with regulating distributions and flows of behaviours and the harms and costs linked with these. (shrink)

This article aims at contributing to the discussion about the relationships between ICT, computer science and policy-making by focusing on agent-based social simulation. Enabled, from a technical point of view, by the developments of Distributed Artificial Intelligence in the 1990s and by the features of the object-oriented programming paradigm, agent-based social simulations are a tool for the analysis of social dynamics that can be used also to support the design and the evaluation of public policies. After a brief description of (...) social simulation paradigm and of its impact on social sciences, the paper presents a simple agent-based model devised to analyze, even if in a very abstract way, a phenomenon that can rouse the interest of legal scientists: the interplay between damaging behaviors, punishment and social mechanisms of learning and imitation. Our goal is to show how agent-based simulation can be used not only to illuminate basic mechanisms underlying social phenomena but also to reflect, in an innovative way, on how society can deal with them. (shrink)

This paper conducts a numerical simulation of the antiseismic performance for single-layer masonry structures, completes a study on crack distributions and detailed characteristics of masonry structures, and finally verifies the correctness of the numerical model by experimental tests. This paper also provides a reinforced proposal to improve the antiseismic performance of single-layer masonry structures. Results prove that the original model suffers more serious damage than the reinforced model; in particular, longitudinal cracks appear on bottoms of two longitudinal walls in (...) the original model, while these cracks appear later in the reinforced model; a lot of cracks appear on the door hole of the original model, and no crack appears in the reinforced model till the end of seismic waves; seismic damage of walls in the reinforced model is obviously lighter than that in the original model; dynamic responses at all observed points of the reinforced masonry are obviously less than those of the original model. Strains at all positions of the reinforced model are obviously smaller than those of the original model. From macroscopic and microscopic perspectives, the computational results prove that the reinforced proposal proposed in this paper can effectively improve the antiseismic performance of the masonry structure. (shrink)

Fred Feldman is known for the view that consequentialists should admit a fundamental role for desert in moral evaluation. But this book sketches a different desertism. It is a theory of what Feldman calls “political-economic distributive justice,” according to which such justice is a matter of getting what one deserves. The view, briefly stated in Feldman’s theoretical vocabulary, is this: First, there is perfect political-economic distributive justice in a country if and only if, and in virtue of the fact that, (...) in every case in which a citizen of that country deserves a political-economic desert, he or she receives that desert from the appropriate political-economic distributor. Second, there is greater political-economic distributive justice in one imperfectly just group than another when the situation of the first more closely approximates perfect political economic justice than does the situation of the second. These claims require unpacking. I will focus, with Feldman, on the first and central claim. What does it mean? Perhaps the best way to capture the basic idea behind Feldman’s view is to cite the case used to motivate it: a hurricane causes enormous damage to a farm, which the farm family needs some assistance to repair. Feldman says that they “need to get some help from someone—presumably their community, and they deserve it because they need it”. Many people do not have devastated farms. But, Feldman says, they “are like the farmers in this somewhat more abstract respect: since they are vulnerable to natural disasters... and since they are individually unable to protect themselves against these natural disasters, they deserve to be embedded in a community that will do its best to ensure that help will be provided to members who are adversely affected by such things”. Everyone is vulnerable to natural disasters, and on Feldman’s view, everyone deserves for that very reason assurance of assistance, guaranteed by their community. (shrink)

[Comment] Jonathan Herington argues that harms can occur whether or not there is actually a loss. He claims that subjectively or objectively merely being at risk of losing access to basic goods is sufficient for lowering that individual’s well-being for the value of ‘security’. I challenge whether losing access to basic goods is sufficient to justify the introduction of this value. I also point to some issues in his interpretation of IPCC risk categories and the social science research he relies (...) on. [Open access]. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and John Roemer, two of the most influential of the ‘Analytic Marxists,’ have argued convincingly that the Marxian concept of exploitation must include injustice as part of its definition. ‘Exploitation’ is more like ‘murder’ which includes injustice in its very meaning, than like ‘killing’ which describes a fact which is often unjust but need not be. ‘Forced extraction of unpaid or surplus labor,’ then, is not sufficient for exploitation. The extraction must be unjust to be exploitative. Otherwise (...) we would have to call it exploitation if people were forced to labor without pay as just punishment, or if people-selected by lottery-were drafted to fight a defensive war and provided no more than subsistence for their trouble, or if initiators of an unjust war were forced to labor to repair the damages they had caused. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and John Roemer, two of the most influential of the ‘Analytic Marxists,’ have argued convincingly that the Marxian concept of exploitation must include injustice as part of its definition. ‘Exploitation’ is more like ‘murder’ which includes injustice in its very meaning, than like ‘killing’ which describes a fact which is often unjust but need not be. ‘Forced extraction of unpaid or surplus labor,’ then, is not sufficient for exploitation. The extraction must be unjust to be exploitative. Otherwise (...) we would have to call it exploitation if people were forced to labor without pay as just punishment, or if people-selected by lottery-were drafted to fight a defensive war and provided no more than subsistence for their trouble, or if initiators of an unjust war were forced to labor to repair the damages they had caused. (shrink)

Despite a significant effort to reduce civilian casualties, a large number of civilians have been killed and injured by the military forces of the Western powers undertaking military operations in remote regions. However, there is no requirement in the just war tradition (JWT) and international humanitarian law (IHL) to provide reparation for the victims of unintended and proportional attacks. This article seeks to establish moral grounds for responsibility to provide reparation for “collateral damage” by focusing on the distinct characteristics (...) of expeditionary intervention and supplementing JWT with the frameworks of corrective justice and restorative justice. We propose that the elective, non-reciprocal, and asymmetrical natures of expeditionary interventions give rise to a special obligation to provide reparation for the civilian harms permitted by the JWT, on the basis of the fair distribution of risks and the need to restore damaged relationships. (shrink)

Neither environmental economics nor environmental philosophy have adequately examined the moral implications of imposing environmental degradation and ecosystem instability upon our descendants. A neglected aspect of these problems is the supposed extent of the burden that the current generation is placing on future generations. The standard economic position on discounting implies an ethicaljudgment concerning future generations. If intergenerational obligations exist, then two types of intergenerational transfer must be considered: basic distributional transfers and compensatory transfers. Basic transfers have been the central (...) intergenerational concern of both environmental economics and philosophy, but compensatory transfers emphasize obligations of a kind often disregarded. (shrink)

Recent advances in machine learning methods have created opportunities to eliminate unfairness from algorithmic decision making. Multiple computational techniques (i.e., algorithmic fairness criteria) have arisen out of this work. Yet, urgent questions remain about the perceived fairness of these criteria and in which situations organizations should use them. In this paper, we seek to gain insight into these questions by exploring fairness perceptions of five algorithmic criteria. We focus on two key dimensions of fairness evaluations: distributive fairness and procedural fairness. (...) We shed light on variation in the potential for different algorithmic criteria to facilitate distributive fairness. Subsequently, we discuss procedural fairness and provide a framework for understanding how algorithmic criteria relate to essential aspects of this construct, which helps to identify when a specific criterion is suitable. From a practical standpoint, we encourage organizations to recognize that managing fairness in machine learning systems is complex, and that adopting a blind or one-size-fits-all mentality toward algorithmic criteria will surely damage people’s attitudes and trust in automated technology. Instead, firms should carefully consider the subtle yet significant differences between these technical solutions. (shrink)

Neither environmental economics nor environmental philosophy have adequately examined the moral implications of imposing environmental degradation and ecosystem instability upon our descendants. A neglected aspect of these problems is the supposed extent of the burden that the current generation is placing on future generations. The standard economic position on discounting implies an ethicaljudgment concerning future generations. If intergenerational obligations exist, then two types of intergenerational transfer must be considered: basic distributional transfers and compensatory transfers. Basic transfers have been the central (...) intergenerational concern of both environmental economics and philosophy, but compensatory transfers emphasize obligations of a kind often disregarded. (shrink)

Despite a significant effort to reduce civilian casualties, a large number of civilians have been killed and injured by the military forces of the Western powers undertaking military operations in remote regions. However, there is no requirement in the just war tradition (JWT) and international humanitarian law (IHL) to provide reparation for the victims of unintended and proportional attacks. This article seeks to establish moral grounds for responsibility to provide reparation for “collateral damage” by focusing on the distinct characteristics (...) of expeditionary intervention and supplementing JWT with the frameworks of corrective justice and restorative justice. We propose that the elective, non-reciprocal, and asymmetrical natures of expeditionary interventions give rise to a special obligation to provide reparation for the civilian harms permitted by the JWT, on the basis of the fair distribution of risks and the need to restore damaged relationships. (shrink)

Attention and consciousness are two distinct neural processes which are intricately intertwined. However, there is asymmetry in the distribution of attentional abilities across the two hemispheres. The right hemisphere is asserted to be dominant for attentional abilities. Research suggests that the ventral frontoparietal cortex of the right hemisphere is dominant for exogenous attentional abilities, attention is phylogenetically more primitive than endogenous attention, and, compared to the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is more adept at abilities and functions that are (...) of more primitive origin. This review explores the attentional abilities of the mute right hemisphere, the extent to which these may affect consciousness, and whether the unilateral dominance of the exogenous network influences consciousness. (shrink)

Somatic mutations arising in human skin cancers are heterogeneously distributed across the genome, meaning that certain genomic regions (e.g., heterochromatin or transcription factor binding sites) have much higher mutation densities than others. Regional variations in mutation rates are typically not a consequence of selection, as the vast majority of somatic mutations in skin cancers are passenger mutations that do not promote cell growth or transformation. Instead, variations in DNA repair activity, due to chromatin organization and transcription factor binding, have been (...) proposed to be a primary driver of mutational heterogeneity in melanoma. However, as discussed in this review here, recent studies indicate that chromatin organization and transcription factor binding also significantly modulate the rate at which UV lesions form in DNA. The authors propose that local variations in lesion susceptibility may be an important driver of mutational hotspots in melanoma and other skin cancers, particularly at binding sites for ETS transcription factors. (shrink)

Effective vaccines for COVID‐19 are already available to humankind. In Peru, 86 million doses were administered to cover the demand for 33 million Peruvian people. Hence, vaccination has been prioritized in groups: health personnel, subjects with pre‐existing health conditions and those over 65 years of age. However, given the social problems and the public health situation in Peru, this work defends that the priority of vaccination should be focused on the population living in extreme poverty. The method used was an (...) ethical argumentation on the distribution of scarce antiSARS‐CoV2 vaccine in Peru. This argument is based on the analysis of the Peruvian population living in extreme poverty, which presents different layers of vulnerability, and that, in the face of an eventual SARS‐CoV2 infection, these would be exacerbated one after the other, through a cascade effect. This scenario would give rise to new vulnerabilities to those already existing, causing greater damage. Vaccination efforts on this key population would give them the opportunity to continue to find ways to bring food to their homes, significantly reducing the risk of contagion in their environment and mitigating the devastating effect of the local diseases to which they are already exposed. Four objections related to this argument are raised with their corresponding responses. Priority access to the vaccine would significantly reduce the humanitarian harm to people living in extreme poverty, prevailing the principles of justice and equity. (shrink)

In this chapter, Fourie identifies and systematizes the impairments associated with having privilege and evaluates their implications for theories of relational equality and distributive justice. Having certain social privileges, for example, being a man in a patriarchal society, can also be damaging; in other words, there are “impairments of privilege.” Fourie delineates six kinds of impairments—epistemic, evaluative, emotional, health-related, affiliative, and moral. She then goes on to assess the implications of the impairments of privilege for two theories in political philosophy. (...) Relational egalitarianism, she argues, has the theoretical resources to identify and address the problems associated with these impairments, whereas distributive egalitarianism does not. Furthermore, she argues that assessing the impairments of privilege through relational egalitarianism helps to characterize a society of equals: we must address the causes of functional impairments, express respect for the worse off by not normalizing the experiences of the privileged, and minimize competitive positionality. (shrink)

Integrated assessment models of climate and the economy provide estimates of the social cost of carbon and inform climate policy. We create a variant of the Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (RICE)—a regionally disaggregated version of the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE)—in which we introduce a more fine-grained representation of economic inequalities within the model’s regions. This allows us to model the common observation that climate change impacts are not evenly distributed within regions (...) and that poorer people are more vulnerable than the rest of the population. Our results suggest that this is important to the social cost of carbon—as significant, potentially, for the optimal carbon price as the debate between Stern and Nordhaus on discounting. (shrink)

We contribute to the growing literature on white fragility by examining how the distinctively emotional manifestations of white fragility (which we dub ‘emotional white fragility’) make it more difficult for white people to have constructive, meaningful thoughts and conversations about race. We claim that emotional white fragility typically involves a failure of emotion regulation, or the ability to manage one’s emotions in real time. We suggest that this lack of emotion regulation can contribute to an unjust distribution of burdens (...) that can further entrench moral damage in the context of relationships as well as help support large-scale patterns of white supremacy. Given the serious implications of emotional white fragility, we suggest a number of emotion regulation techniques that one can deploy to mitigate the potential harms wrought by emotional white fragility. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties—the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The chapter introduces (...) several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g. the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g. Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases which require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights-violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

Law and economics scholarship has traditionally analyzed efficient breach cases monolithically. By grouping efficient breach cases together, this literature treats the subjective motives and the distributive effects of the breach as immaterial. The Restatement (Third) of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment introduced a distinction based on the intent and the effects of the breach, allowing courts to use disgorgement remedies in cases of ‘opportunistic’ breach of contract (i.e., ‘deliberate and profitable’ breaches). In this article, we evaluate this approach, focusing on the (...) effects of disgorgement remedies on allocative and productive efficiency, information-forcing and competitive effects, and restraint of breach-searching incentives. We show that, even from a purely consequentialist perspective, disgorgement remedies may be normatively warranted, especially when involving sellers’ breach. Recent experimental evidence revealed that the preferences and reactions of ordinary people are in line with our evaluation of the effects of opportunistic breach. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of gentrification have tended to focus on residential displacement. However, the prevalence of residential displacement is fiercely contested, with many urban geographers regarding it as quite uncommon. This lends some urgency to the underexplored question of how one should evaluate other forms of gentrification. In this paper, I argue that one of the most important harms suffered by victims of displacement gentrification is loss of access to the goods conferred by membership in a thriving local community. Leveraging the (...) social scientific literature, I go on to argue that non-displacement gentrification also often damages local communities. One can hence extend existing philosophical critiques of displacement gentrification to argue that non-displacement gentrification likewise poses a threat to relational equality, and often violates certain basic occupancy rights. Focusing on the value that inheres in thriving local communities also suggests some new possibilities for critiquing gentrification. For instance, existing occupancy rights critiques focus on incumbent land users’ interests in stability. However, one can also argue in a Lockean mode that incumbent land users’ occupancy rights are at least partially grounded in their community having laboured together to create objects of value. An extension of Michael Walzer’s theory of justice to incorporate community goods as a separate ‘sphere’ might also have widespread appeal. Taken together, these arguments constitute a sustained and theoretically ecumenical case for the pro tanto moral objectionability of gentrification. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referendums. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris (...) paribus more affected than people who don’t, because the former stands to pay more in carbon taxes than the latter. Consequently, people who pollute a lot receive large voting power, while people who pollute a little receive little voting power. This is a puzzling distribution of voting power for several reasons. First, it is instrumentally counterproductive if the goal is to rectify damages to the climate. Second, it introduces prudential incentives for everyone to pollute more to gain voting power. Third, the relative difference in voting power between people who pollute a lot and people who don’t is puzzling from a desert-based point of view, since the former often make a serious effort to avoid polluting, while the latter don’t. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, environmental damage is one of the most important challenges facing contemporary human beings. This is important because the signs that threaten this damage have now become apparent, threatening humans with widespread environmental pollution. On the other hand, humanity will not be able to live a normal life without a safe and healthy environment. Therefore, preservation and protection of the environment, as the most important basic needs of survival, are considered by everyone, including researchers. As a consequence, various (...) studies aim to identify the factors that play a role in how humans and the environment interact. To this end, the present study considered the comprehensiveness of Islam and paid attention to all human needs, and intended to examine the role of religious beliefs on how to interact with the environment. It is worth mentioning that the statistical population of this study comprised 387 Iranian Muslim students from different universities in Iran. After the distribution of standardised research questionnaires whose validity and reliability was confirmed, the collected data were analysed by statistical software. Finally, the results concluded the following: The investigated statistical population pledged and bonded to religious instructions, the investigated statistical population had an appropriate interaction with the environment and the obligation and pledge to religious beliefs had a positive and significant role in people interacting with the environment so that people with strong religious beliefs had a more appropriate interaction with the environment, in opposition to people with less religious beliefs whose interaction with the environment was not apt.Contribution: This research provides further insight into the relations between Theology, religious beliefs and the interaction of people with the environment. (shrink)

"International and domestic laws commonly hold states responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, and reparations for their historical wrongdoings. Some argue that states should incur punitive damages for their international crimes. But there is a troubling aspect to these practices: States are corporate agents, comprised of flesh and blood citizens. When the state uses the public purse to finance its corporate liabilities, the burden falls on these citizens, even if they protested against the state's policies, (...) did not know about them, or entirely lacked channels of political influence. How can this "distributive effect" of state-level responsibly be justified? The book develops an answer to this question, which revolves around citizens' participation in their state. It argues that citizenship can be a type of massive collective action, where citizens willingly orient themselves around the authority of their state, and where state policies are the product of this collective action. While most ordinary citizens are not to blame for their participation in their state, they nevertheless ought to accept a share of the remedial obligations that flow from their state's wrongful policies. However, the distributive effect cannot be justified in all states. Specifically, in non-democratic states most citizens are not participating in their state in the full sense, and should not pay for their state's wrongdoings. This finding calls then for a revision of the way we hold states responsible in both the domestic and international levels"--. (shrink)

In times of crisis, one of the areas heavily affected has been food, as a direct consequence of the damage caused to family farming and therefore to Food and Nutrition Security (SAN). Climate change, in turn, causes widespread crises, which, due to their impact on humanity, and above all, on SAN, provide complex humanitarian crises, worsening hunger. The military conflict imposes difficulties in access to food and production. This study aimed to critically describe the panorama of climate change and (...) armed conflicts in Africa, relating them to the pandemic of COVID-19 as a factor of aggravating the situation of food insecurity in African countries. A literature review study was carried out in various databases, journals and portals for this purpose, with emphasis on Google Scholar, CAPES and governmental portals. The results point to climate change, as being multicausal, and constitute a risk factor for agriculture and SAN, in African countries, characterized by the destruction of crops and the reduction of food availability. Armed conflicts makes difficult to produce and distribute food, especially for people who’s affected. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as (...) well as economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)