This article probes the advisability of regulating U.S. food and drug safety according to the precautionary principle. To do so, a precautionary regulatory regime is formulated on the basis of the beliefs that motivate most proponents of this initiative. That hypothetical regime is critically analyzed on the basis of an actual instantiation of a similarly stylized initiative. It will be argued that the precautionary principle entails regulatory constraints that are apt to violate basis tenets of political legitimacy. (...) The modifications that would change this finding would also change precautionary regulation to the point that it would be indistinguishable from orthodox safety protocols. It is concluded on the basis of its impoverished content that the precautionary principle should not be taken seriously as a formal approach to the regulation of U.S. food and drug safety. (shrink)

This paper considers, and rejects, three strategies aimed at showing that the KK-principle fails even in most favourable circumstances (all emerging from Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits ). The case against the final strategy provides positive grounds for thinking that the principle should hold good in such situations.

The ‘Precautionary Principle’ provides a somewhat ill-defined guide, often of uncertain normative status, for those exercising administrative decision-making power in circumstances where that may create potential risks to human health or the environment. This paper seeks to explore to what extent the precautionary principle should have been and was in fact utilised by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in its decision to approve the marketing of sunscreens containing titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) in nanoparticulate form. (...) In particular, this article assesses to what extent better application of that principle might have altered the TGA’s decision that TiO2 and ZnO ENPs in sunscreens do not require new safety testing, because they are considered to be functionally equivalent to their bulk counterparts. (shrink)

An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a (...) version of the KK principle with an “externalist” or “reliabilist” conception of knowledge commonly thought to make that principle particularly problematic. (shrink)

As a policy instrument that is deeply rooted in technology assessment, the precautionary principle examines the effects of a given object on humans and the environment. In practice the principle is rarely used to analyze the effects of our safety measures on the object itself or the way it is produced. Yet it is exactly in the effect on the blood procurement system that blood safety regulations based on the precautionary principle have to be particularly (...) careful, as the vast majority of blood products in the Global North are obtained through donations. (shrink)

Big data and Machine learning Techniques are reshaping the way in which food safety risk assessment is conducted. The ongoing ‘datafication’ of food safety risk assessment activities and the progressive deployment of probabilistic models in their practices requires a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of these advances. In particular, the low level of trust in EU food safety risk assessment framework highlighted in 2019 by an EU-funded survey could be exacerbated by novel methods of analysis. The (...) variety of processed data raises unique questions regarding the interplay of multiple regulatory systems alongside food safety legislation. Provisions aiming to preserve the confidentiality of data and protect personal information are juxtaposed to norms prescribing the public disclosure of scientific information. This research is intended to provide guidance for data governance and data ownership issues that unfold from the ongoing transformation of the technical and legal domains of food safety risk assessment. Following the reconstruction of technological advances in data collection and analysis and the description of recent amendments to food safety legislation, emerging concerns are discussed in light of the individual, collective and social implications of the deployment of cutting-edge Big Data collection and analysis techniques. Then, a set of principle-based recommendations is proposed by adapting high-level principles enshrined in institutional documents about Artificial Intelligence to the realm of food safety risk assessment. The proposed set of recommendations adopts Safety, Accountability, Fairness, Explainability, Transparency as core principles (SAFETY), whereas Privacy and data protection are used as a meta-principle. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of ‘tsunami-tendenko,’ a guideline suggesting that individuals prioritise their own safety over aiding others during large-scale disasters. Kodama defends tsunami-tendenko against accusations of egoism by arguing that the principle can be justified ethically on consequentialist (or more precisely, utilitarian) grounds. Kodama asserts that attempting to assist others during such disasters heightens the risk of ‘tomo-daore,’ where both the rescuer and the victim may perish. He claims that having people focus solely on saving themselves (...) can maximise the overall number of lives saved. However, we challenge Kodama’s assertion that utilitarianism inherently favours tsunami-tendenko over mutual assistance during disasters. Instead, this paper proposes an alternative ethical foundation for tsunami-tendenko grounded in the ‘antiextinction principle,’ which prioritises minimising the potential for catastrophic outcomes. When considering the ethics of responding to disaster, it is important to distinguish between maximising the number of lives saved (utilitarianism) and minimising the risk of tomo-daore (antiextinction principle). This distinction may be overlooked if the distribution of probabilities is not considered. We conclude that the antiextinction principle aligns more naturally with tsunami-tendenko, emphasising the avoidance of catastrophic outcomes—a concern not always addressed by utilitarianism. Therefore, tsunami-tendenko should be regarded as a societal guideline aimed at preserving community sustainability by averting total destruction. (shrink)

Drug regulatory bodies aim to ensure that patients have access to safe and effective drugs; however, no matter the quality of pre-licensure studies, uncertainty will remain regarding the safety and effectiveness of newly approved drugs until a large and diverse population uses those drugs. Recent analyses of Canada’s post-market drug surveillance system have found that Canada is not keeping pace with international requirements for PMDS, and have noted that efforts must be improved to monitor and address the safety (...) and effectiveness of approved drugs among vulnerable populations. Given the uncertainty that exists when drugs enter the market, some have suggested that the precautionary principle is relevant to guiding decision-making in this context. This paper responds to recommendations that the Canadian PMDS system should be responsive to the health needs of vulnerable populations by assessing the utility of deploying the precautionary principle to guide a post-market strategy for vulnerable populations. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that new research in such areas as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetic engineering should be halted or otherwise restricted because of concerns about possible catastrophic scenarios. Proponents of such restrictions typically invoke the precautionary principle, understood as a tool of policy formulation, as part of their case. Here I examine the application of the precautionary principle to possible catastrophic scenarios. I argue, along with Sunstein (Risk and Reason: Safety, Law and the Environment. Cambridge (...) University Press, Cambridge, 2002) and Manson (Environmental Ethics, 24: 263–274, 2002), that variants of the precautionary principle that appear strong enough to support significant restrictions on future technologies actually lead to contradictory policy recommendations. Weaker versions of the precautionary principle, which do not have this feature, do not appear strong enough to support restrictions on future technologies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

With a large number of forcibly displaced people seeking safety, the EU is facing a challenge in maintaining solidarity. Europe has seen millions of asylum seekers crossing European borders, the largest number of asylum seekers since the second world war. Endemic diseases and often failing health systems in their countries of origin, and arduous conditions during transit, raise questions around how to meet the health needs of this vulnerable population on arrival in terms of screening, vaccination, and access to (...) timely and appropriate statutory health services. This paper explores the potential role of the principle of reciprocity, defined as the disposition ‘to return good in proportion to the good we receive, and to make reparations for the harm we have done’, as a mid-level principle in infectious disease screening policies. More than half of the European countries implemented screening programmes for newly arrived asylum seekers. Screening may serve to avoid potential infectious disease risks in the receiving countries as well as help identify health needs of asylum seekers. But screening may infringe upon basic rights of those screened, thus creating an ethical dilemma. The use of the principle of reciprocity can contribute to the identification of potential improvements for current screening programmes and emphasizes the importance of certain rights into guidelines for screening. It may create a two way moral obligation, upon asylum seekers to actively participate in the programme, and upon authorities to reciprocate the asylum seekers’ participation and the benefits for the control of public health. The authors argue that the reciprocity principle leads to a stronger ethical justification of screening programmes and help achieve a balance between justifiable rights claims of the host population and the asylum seekers. The principle deserves a further and more thorough exploration of its potential use in the field of screening, migration and infectious diseases. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) is fundamentally a claim that acting to avoid and/or mitigate threats of serious harm should be accorded high priority in public policy. Over the last three decades, governments and international bodies have endorsed it in principle, and some of them have incorporated it into some areas of policy practice. Yet, PP is controversial in policy circles, public discussion and scholarly discourse. Here the PP literature is reviewed from the perspective of economics, where the tendency (...) is to see theory and methods for rational decision-making under risk and uncertainty as well-established and risk management tools as well developed, and to view the PP with some circumspection. Following a brief introduction to PP concepts, history, applications, and controversies, I review and critique the standard economic approach to decision-making and risk management (here labeled ordinary risk management, ORM), identifying areas of incompleteness especially in the treatment of disproportionate and asymmetric threats. After reviewing some of the more prominent PP controversies in the scholarly literature, I suggest a conceptual framework for a PP that may withstand the major criticisms levied against the PP and make a unique and valid contribution to a decision and risk management arsenal that includes ORM. The framework relates the nature of the threat, the evidence, and the remedy indicated; and each of these elements is discussed in some detail. The scope of this PP is identified in general terms and distinguished from the quantity restrictions and regulatory safety margins that often serve as practical heuristics when ORM-based policies are implemented. Because the PP is clearly identified as a principle, I discuss the role of principles in policy design and implementation, and conclude with some suggestions as to how this PP could guide policy and management. (shrink)

The safety conception of knowledge holds that a belief constitutes knowledge iff relevantly similar beliefs—its epistemic counterparts—are true. It promises an instructive account of why certain general principles of knowledge hold. We focus on two such principles that anyone should endorse: the closure principle that knowledge is downward closed under competent conjunction elimination, and the counter-closure principle that knowledge is upward closed under competent conjunction introduction. We argue that anyone endorsing the former must also endorse the latter (...) on pains of an unacceptable form of bootstrapping. We devise new formal models to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for these principles to hold on conceptions that construe knowledge in terms of true counterparts. These conditions state that counterparts of premise and conclusion beliefs are coordinated in certain ways whenever these beliefs stand in the relevant inferential relations. We show that the safety conception faces insuperable problems vindicating these coordination principles, because its epistemic counterpart relation is symmetric. We conclude that it thus proves unable to account for minimal closure properties of knowledge. More generally, our formal results establish parameters within which any conception must operate that construes knowledge in terms of true counterparts. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard's version of the safety analysis of knowledge has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a (...) version of the lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better. (shrink)

The safety conception of knowledge holds that a belief constitutes knowledge iff relevantly similar beliefs—its epistemic counterparts—are true. It promises an instructive account of why certain general principles of knowledge hold. We focus on two such principles that anyone should endorse: the closure principle that knowledge is downward closed under competent conjunction elimination, and the counter-closure principle that knowledge is upward closed under competent conjunction introduction. We argue that anyone endorsing the former must also endorse the latter (...) on pains of an unacceptable form of bootstrapping. We devise new formal models to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for these principles to hold on conceptions that construe knowledge in terms of true counterparts. These conditions state that counterparts of premise and conclusion beliefs are coordinated in certain ways whenever these beliefs stand in the relevant inferential relations. We show that the safety conception faces insuperable problems vindicating these coordination principles, because its epistemic counterpart relation is symmetric. We conclude that it thus proves unable to account for minimal closure properties of knowledge. More generally, our formal results establish parameters within which any conception must operate that construes knowledge in terms of true counterparts. (shrink)

The paper considers the legal tools that have been developed in German pharmaceutical regulation as a result of the precautionary attitude inaugurated by the Contergan decision. These tools are the notion of “well-founded suspicion”, which attenuates the requirements for safety intervention by relaxing the requirement of a proved causal connection between danger and source, and the introduction of the reversal of proof burden in liability norms. The paper focuses on the first and proposes seeing the precautionary principle as (...) an instance of the requirement that one should maximise expected utility. In order to maximise expected utility certain probabilities are required and it is argued that objective Bayesianism offers the most plausible means to determine the optimal decision in cases where evidence supports diverging choices. (shrink)

The paper addresses charges of risk and loss aversion as well as of irrationality directed against the precautionary principle, by providing an epistemic analysis of its specific role in the safety law system. In particular, I contend that: 1) risk aversion is not a form of irrational or biased behaviour; 2) both risk and loss aversion regard the form of the utility function, whereas PP rather regards the information on which to base the decision; 3) thus PP has (...) formally nothing to do with risk or loss aversion but rather with risk awareness; 4) PP removes a fictional construct in the legal system, according to which any hazard should be ignored and denied until it is scientifically proven; 5) the quandary originates in the tension between current methods of evidence evaluation, and the logic underlying PP which demands for a probabilistic epistemology. (shrink)

The safety analysis of knowledge, due to Duncan Pritchard, has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a (...) version of the lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better. (shrink)

The safety analysis of knowledge, due to Duncan Pritchard, has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a (...) version of the lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better. (shrink)

The safety analysis of knowledge, due to Duncan Pritchard, has it that for all contingent propositions, p, S knows that p iff S believes that p, p is true, and (the “safety principle”) in most nearby worlds in which S forms his belief in the same way as in the actual world, S believes that p only if p is true. Among the other virtues claimed by Pritchard for this view is its supposed ability to solve a (...) version of the lottery puzzle. In this paper, I argue that the safety analysis of knowledge in fact fails to solve the lottery puzzle. I also argue that a revised version of the safety principle recently put forward by Pritchard fares no better. (shrink)

The Precautionary Principle is a guide to coping with scientific uncertainties in the assessment and management of risks. In recent years, it has moved to the forefront of debates in policy and applied ethics, becoming a key normative tool in policy discussions in such diverse areas as medical and scientific research, health and safety regulation, environmental regulation, product development, international trade, and even judicial review. The principle has attracted critics who claim that it is fundamentally incoherent, too (...) vague to guide policy, and makes demands that are logically and scientifically impossible. In this paper we will answer these criticisms by formulating guidelines for its application that ensure its coherence as a useful normative guide in applied and policy ethics debates. We will also provide analyses of cases that demonstrate how our version of the principle functions in practice. (shrink)

Next SectionWainwright and Gallagher propose that when child protection concerns emerge significant difficulties arise for General Practitioners because of conflicts between the individual interests of children and parents who are their patients and the Paramountcy Principle. From a psychodynamic perspective their analysis does not give sufficient weight to the nature of personal as opposed to interpersonal conflict of a conscious or unconscious nature. When issues of major import arise, ordinary parenting inevitably involves parents in putting their children's needs first (...) if competing possibilities occur. It is an over-simplification to present this as a conflict between the interests of children and parents. Parents' own best interests are served by securing their children's safety and welfare. An appreciation of this is crucial in order to implement child protection procedures appropriately. Errors may occur because the complex emotions and relationships involved lead professionals to experience themselves as potential agents of harm rather than benefit. (shrink)

This article examines how scientists and regulators distribute the benefit of the doubt about drug safety under conditions of scientific uncertainty. The focus of the empirical research is the regulatory controversy over the hepatorenal toxicity of benoxaprofen in the United Kingdom and the United States. By scrutinizing the technical coherence of the arguments put forward by industrial and government scientists, it is concluded that these scientists are willing to award the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry an enormous benefit (...) of the sccentific doubt, which is not consistent with the best interests of patients. Interpretative flexibility, the burden of proof falling on regulators and their trust in, and dependence on, industrial scientists facilitates that distribution of the benefit of the scientific doubt. However, regulatory authorities' need for viability and the rationality common to opposing scientific views suggest that it is possible, in principle, to alter this dominant trend. To achieve adequate patient protection, drug regulation in the United Kingdom and the United States requires extensive reform. Some preliminary policy changes are sketched. (shrink)

Safety principles in epistemology are often hailed as providing us with an explanation of why we fail to have knowledge in Gettier cases and lottery examples, while at the same time allowing for the fact that we know the negations of sceptical hypotheses. In a recent paper, Sinhababu and Williams have produced an example—the Backward Clock—that is meant to spell trouble for safety accounts of knowledge. I argue that the Backward Clock case is, in fact, unproblematic for the (...) more sophisticated formulations of safety in the literature. However, I then proceed to construct two novel examples that turn out problematic for those formulations—one that provides us with a lottery-style case of safe ignorance and one that is a straightforward case of unsafe knowledge. If these examples succeed, then safety as it is usually conceived in the current debate cannot account for ignorance in all Gettier and lottery-style cases, and neither is it a necessary condition for knowledge. I conclude from these troublesome examples that modal epistemologists ought to embrace a much more simple and non-reductive version of safety, according to which the notion of similarity between possible worlds that determines in which worlds the subject must believe truly is an epistemic notion that cannot be defined or reduced to notions independent of knowledge. The resulting view is shown to also lead to desirable results with respect to lottery cases, certain quantum phenomena, and a puzzling case involving a cautious brain-in-a-vat. (shrink)

Recent research has identified a tension between the Safety principle that knowledge is belief without risk of error, and the Closure principle that knowledge is preserved by competent deduction. Timothy Williamson reconciles Safety and Closure by proposing that when an agent deduces a conclusion from some premises, the agent’s method for believing the conclusion includes their method for believing each premise. We argue that this theory is untenable because it implies problematically easy epistemic access to one’s (...) methods. Several possible solutions are explored and rejected. (shrink)

Many epistemologists hold that the Zebra Deduction fails to transmit knowledge to its conclusion, but there is little agreement concerning why it has this defect. A natural idea is, roughly, that it fails to transmit because it fails to improve the safety of its conclusion. In his ‘Transmission Failure Explained’, Martin Smith defends a transmission principle which is supposed to underwrite this natural idea. There are two problems with Smith's account. First, Smith's argument for his transmission principle (...) relies on a dubious premise. Second, even if his transmission principle is true, Smith shows neither that it prevents the Zebra Deduction from transmitting knowledge to its conclusion, nor that it secures the natural idea. I suspect that the failures of Smith's account will be instructive for anyone who wants to connect transmission failure with a failure to enhance the safety, reliability or probability of one's conclusion.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITHVolume 9, Issue 4Chris TuckerDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.24Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The safety principle is the view that, roughly, if one knows that p, p could not easily have been false. It is common for safety theorists to relativize safety to belief-formation methods. In this paper, I argue that there is no fixed principle of method-individuation that can stand up to scrutiny. I examine various ways to individuate methods and argue that all of them are subject to serious counterexamples. In the end, I conclude by considering (...) some alternative ways to preserve the insight behind safety without invoking a fixed principle of method-individuation. (shrink)

This study will be of interest to anyone concerned with a critical appraisal of mental health service users’ and carers’ participation in research collaboration and with the potential of the postcolonial paradigm of cultural safety to contribute to the service user research (SUR) movement. The history and nature of the mental health field and its relationship to colonial processes provokes a consideration of whether cultural safety could focus attention on diversity, power imbalance, cultural dominance and structural inequality, identified (...) as barriers and tensions in SUR. We consider these issues in the context of state‐driven approaches towards SUR in planning and evaluation and the concurrent rise of the SUR movement in the UK and Australia, societies with an intimate involvement in processes of colonisation. We consider the principles and motivations underlying cultural safety and SUR in the context of the policy agenda informing SUR. We conclude that while both cultural safety and SUR are underpinned by social constructionism constituting similarities in principles and intent, cultural safety has additional dimensions. Hence, we call on researchers to use the explicitly political and self‐reflective process of cultural safety to think about and address issues of diversity, power and social justice in research collaboration. (shrink)

Laboratory safety regulations have been traditionally viewed by its learners and practitioners as a matter of law and policy, which simply requires compliance. A compliance mindset tends be passive and dissociates individuals (or even institutions) from the important reasons and principles underlying the safety rules and regulations, leading to disinterestedness and disdain. I posit that laboratory safety regulations would need to be crafted, presented and taught in a manner that is coupled to, or at least with an (...) emphasis on, research ethics. Learners and practitioners of laboratory safety must be led to fully grasp the ethical underpinnings of the rules and regulations, however perceivably cumbersome or inconvenient the latter may seem. In extended definitions beyond the classical fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, laboratory safety violation (LSV) should indeed be considered a form of research misconduct (RM). A full appreciation of the ethical principles underlying laboratory safety regulations would intuitively make LSVs morally impermissible, and as such defiance would be morally unacceptable. Importantly, LSVs framed as moral transgressions would be equally applied to all perpetrators in terms of culpability regardless of one’s endowment and power status. LSV perpetrators should thus also be punishable in accordance with the federal or institutional laws or bylaws of research ethics and integrity. Pedagogical and content modifications to laboratory safety education to adequately reflect a research ethics emphasis, as well as promotion of epistemic acuity in this regard, would be desirable. (shrink)

Publication date: 21 March 2019 Source: Author: Viktoriia Varenyk Budget safety, as a component of financial security, depends on the results of the implementation of an effective state financial and economic policy as the basis for the achievement of national interests. Effective using of the budget, namely, effective management of the state's cash flows, should ensure the regulation of economic and social processes in the interests of society, and create stable conditions for economic development of the country. Budget policy (...) is an integral part of the state's financial policy and as one of the driving forces of Ukraine's development implies further stabilization of public finances, ensuring economic growth and raising standards of living for the maintenance of balanced development of the state. In today's conditions of development, the state faces the task of ensuring the balance and stability of the state budget against adverse external influences, establishing effective management of the country's cash flows, establishing effective budget and monetary policy, as well as long-term fiscal sustainability and stability. In recent years, to overcome this task, control over the activities of financial institutions has intensified, as a result they guided by the principles of responsible management of public finances, aimed at introducing the principles of medium-term financial planning, the availability of a system of forecasting budget parameters, ensuring the feasibility of economic forecasts, and creating and maintaining necessary financial reserves. (shrink)

The requirement that animals be used in research and testing in order to protect humans was formalized in the Nuremberg Code and subsequent national and international laws, codes, and declarations. We review the history of these requirements and contrast what was known via science about animal models then with what is known now. We further analyze the predictive value of animal models when used as test subjects for human response to drugs and disease. We explore the use of animals for (...) models in toxicity testing as an example of the problem with using animal models. We conclude that the requirements for animal testing found in the Nuremberg Code were based on scientifically outdated principles, compromised by people with a vested interest in animal experimentation, serve no useful function, increase the cost of drug development, and prevent otherwise safe and efficacious drugs and therapies from being implemented. (shrink)

The lottery problem is the problem of explaining why mere reflection on the long odds that one will lose the lottery does not yield knowledge that one will lose. More generally, it is the problem of explaining why true beliefs merely formed on the basis of statistical evidence do not amount to knowledge. Some have thought that the lottery problem can be solved by appeal to a violation of the safety principle for knowledge, i.e., the principle that (...) if S knows that p, not easily would S have believed that p without p being the case. Against the standard safety‐based solution, I argue that understanding safe belief as belief that directly covaries with the truth of what is believed in a suitably defined set of possible worlds forces safety theorists to make a series of theoretical choices that ultimately prevent a satisfactory solution to the problem. In this way, I analyze several safety principles that result from such choices—the paper thus gives valuable insights into the nature of safety—and explain why none solves the lottery problem, including their inability to explain away Gettierized lottery cases. On a more positive note, I show that there is a viable solution in terms of safety if we get rid of the unquestioned assumption that safe beliefs directly track the truth. The alternative is a conception of safe belief according to which what safe beliefs directly track is the appropriateness of the circumstances and, indirectly, the truth. The resulting safety principle, I argue, explains why mere statistical evidence is not a safe source of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point—depending on how we understand robustness, we'll end up (...) with different conceptions of safety in epistemology. Lastly, and most controversially, there's an attractive choice at this point that will not vindicate some of the most influential applications of the safety-theoretic framework in epistemology, e.g., Williamson's arguments against the KK principle, and luminosity. (shrink)

In “Knowledge Under Threat” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2012), Tomas Bogardus proposes a counterexample to the safety condition for knowledge. Bogardus argues that the case demonstrates that unsafe knowledge is possible. I argue that the case just corroborates the well-known requirement that modal conditions like safety must be relativized to methods of belief formation. I explore several ways of relativizing safety to belief-forming methods and I argue that none is adequate: if methods were individuated in those ways, (...) safety would fail to explain several much-discussed cases. I then propose a plausible externalist principle of method individuation. On the one hand, relativizing safety to belief-forming methods in the way suggested allows the defender of safety to account for the cases. On the other hand, it shows that the target known belief of Bogardus’s example is safe. Finally, I offer a diagnosis of a common error about the kind of cases that are typically considered potential counterexamples to the necessity of the epistemic condition: proponents of the alleged counterexamples mistake a strong condition that I call super-safety for safety. (shrink)

The safety condition on knowledge, in the spirit of anti-luck epistemology, has become one of the most popular approaches to the Gettier problem. In the first part of this essay, I intend to show one of the reasons the anti-luck epistemologist presents for thinking that the safety theory, and not the sensitivity theory, offers the proper anti-luck condition on knowledge. In the second part of this essay, I intend to show that the anti-luck epistemologist does not succeed, because (...) the safety theory fails to capture a necessary requirement for the possession of knowledge. I will attack safety on two fronts. First, I will raise doubts about whether there is any principled safety condition capable of handling a kind of case, involving inductive knowledge, that it was designed to handle. Second, I will consider two cases in which the safety condition is not met but the protagonist seems to have knowledge nonetheless, and I will vindicate my intuitions for thinking that those are in fact cases of knowledge by contrasting them with traditional, well-known Gettier cases. I want to conclude, finally, that safety failures do not necessarily prevent one from acquiring knowledge. (shrink)

The Malaysian government recognises the potential contribution of biotechnology to the national economy. However, ongoing controversy persists regarding its ethical status and no specific ethical guidelines have been published relating to its use. In developing such guidelines, it is important to identify the underlying principles that are acceptable to Malaysian society. This paper discusses the process of determining relevant secular and Islamic ethical principles and establishing their similarities before harmonising them. To achieve this, a series of focus group discussions were (...) conducted with 23 knowledge experts representing various stakeholders in the biotechnology community. Notably, several principles between the secular and Islamic perspectives are indirectly or directly similar. All the experts agreed with the predominant six ethical principles of secular and Islamic philosophy and their importance and relevance in modern biotechnology. These are beneficence and non-maleficence as the main or overarching principles, the preservation of religious and moral values, the preservation of the intellect and the mind, the protection of human safety, the protection of future generations, and protection of the environment and biological diversity. Several adjustments were made to the terminologies and definitions of these six principles to formulate acceptable guiding principles for the ethics of modern biotechnology in Malaysia. These can then be adopted as core values to underpin future national guidelines on modern biotechnology ethics. These principles will be particularly important in guiding the policy makers, enforcers, industries and researchers to streamline their activities. In so doing, modern biotechnology and its products can be properly managed without jeopardising the interests of the Muslim community as well as the general public. Importantly, they are expansive and inclusive enough to embrace the religious sensitivity of diverse quarters of Malaysia. (shrink)

Research on quantum gravity has historically relied on appeals to guiding principles. This essay frames three such principles within the context of the condensed matter approach to QG. I first identify two distinct versions of this approach, and then consider the extent to which the principles of asymptotic safety, relative locality, and holography are supported by these versions. The general hope is that a focus on distinct versions of a single approach may provide insight into the conceptual and foundational (...) significance of these principles. (shrink)

Large organisations are especially advised to consider the possibility of an Ethics Helpdesk in which all employees and managers can report with all suspected cases of unethical conduct, critical comments, dilemmas and advice for which there is insufficient room within the organisational hierarchy. A helpdesk is a central contact point where it is decided who the most appropriate person is to dealing with a given case. The helpdesk model is characterised by low barriers in its easy accessibility, positive approach and (...) the simple procedures employees need to follow. It offers employees consistent support while relying on the responsibilities of the individual employee as much as possible and it facilitates adequate monitoring and reporting. A helpdesk increases the chances of detecting unethical conduct which enables management to take adequate and timely measures against improper conduct. This article formulates principles, discusses critical factors and considers three models for adopting a sound and integrated ethics safety net. It also presents a case study and shows why organisational openness needs to be institutionalised. (shrink)

In this paper, I first seek a relatively plausible formulation of the safety principle. To this end, I refute a recent form of safety by Duncan Pritchard and then defend another weaker form of safe...

Decision-making by a Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) regarding clinical trial conduct and termination is intricate and largely limited by cases and rules. Decision-making by legal jury is also intricate and largely constrained by cases and rules. In this paper, I argue by analogy that legal decision-making, which strives for a balance between competing demands of conservatism and innovation, supplies a good basis to the logic behind DSMB decision-making. Using the doctrine of precedents in legal reasoning as my (...) central analog will lead us to a decision-theoretic analogy for much more systematic documentation of decisions in clinical trials. My conclusion is twofold: every DSMB decision should articulate a clear general principle (a ratio decidendi) that gives reason for the decision; and all such decisions should be made public. I use Bartha’s (2010) theory of analogical arguments to both frame and assess my argument by analogy. (shrink)

In this objective, practical and authoritative introduction to animal law, the author examines the fundamental principles of the human-animal relationship and how those have, or have not, been translated into contemporary animal welfare law. The book describes the various uses of animals in society, the practical relevance of animal health and welfare to activities of professionals, and animal welfare in the context of global issues including climate change, disease control, food safety and food supply. It identifies 29 key principles (...) which guide animal law and welfare. Relevant to companion, farm, captive and wild animals, the book has international application in countries with both established and developing legislation. It focuses on the issues and principles, referencing contemporary animal welfare law to provide a global benchmark. The author acknowledges the diversity of views regarding animals as individual beings and beloved pets, to pure commodities. Yet animals need to be treated as one stakeholder, along with other interests, under the law. Based on successful courses run by the author and his own legal practice, the book combines science and ethics to provide an accessible introduction to the key principles of animal law and welfare. (shrink)

Food safety is a preoccupation of the European Commission, but there are major shortcomings in its governance. Reviewing legislation and practice, this paper explores the background of EU food safety institutions, and develops recommendations to make the EU decision process more transparent, accountable, and democratic.

Dunn has recently argued that the logic R-Mingle (or RM) is a good, and good enough, choice for many purposes in relevant and paraconsistent logic. This includes an argument that the validity of Safety principle, according to which one may infer an arbitrary instance of the law of excluded middle from an arbitrary contradiction, in RM is not a problem because it doesn’t allow one to infer anything new from a contradiction. In this paper, I argue that while (...) Dunn’s claim holds for the logic, there is a good reason to think that it’s not the case for (prime) theories closed under the logic, and that this should give relevantists, and some paraconsistentists, pause when considering whether RM is adequate for their purposes. (shrink)

In several areas of Mathematical Logic and Computer Science one would ideally like to use the set F orm(L) of all formulas of some first-order language L for some goal, but this cannot be done safely. In such a case it is necessary to select a subset of F orm(L) that can safely be used. Three main examples of this phenomenon are: • The main principle of naive set theory is the comprehension schema: ∃Z(∀x.x ∈ Z ⇔ A).

When the evidence leaves us with a choice among hypotheses of unequal strength, how is the choice to be made?Caution would counsel us to choose the weakest, the hypothesis that asserts the least, since it is the least likely to fail us later. But the principle of maximum safety quickly reduces to absurdity; for it always dictates the choice of a hypothesis that does not go beyond the evidence at all.

In today's conditions of postmodern space the most significant resource of the modern economy, which is being formed in the leading countries of economic development, is human capital. The main goal of the article is to study the process of managing the formation of human capital in the functioning postmodern society as the basis of the national economy and ensuring the economic security of the enterprise. The basic components of human capital are determined on the basis of the analysis. It (...) is established that the basic component is knowledge that affects others and in postmodern conditions of development of the national economy and determines the process of development of human capital. At the same time, the process of forming knowledge, in accordance with the principles of the functioning of the knowledge economy, is associated with the availability and possibility of obtaining information. The object of study is the enterprises of Eastern Europe. The subject of the study is human capital, the economic security system of the enterprise The results of the study allowed us to develop a model for the formation of human capital and to form a mechanism for ensuring the economic security of the enterprise through management of the formation of human capital under the conditions of the postmodern society. (shrink)

: Duncan Pritchard has recently highlighted the problem of veritic epistemic luck and claimed that a safety‐based account of knowledge succeeds in eliminating veritic luck where virtue‐based accounts and process reliabilism fail. He then claims that if one accepts a safety‐based account, there is no longer a motivation for retaining a commitment to reliabilism. In this article, I delineate several distinct safety principles, and I argue that those that eliminate veritic luck do so only if at least (...) implicitly committed to reliabilism. (shrink)

Contemporary regulation of food safety incorporates principles of quality management and systemic performance objectives that used to characterize private standards. Conversely, private standards are covering ground that used to be the realm of regulation. The nature of the two is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. The case study of the Ugandan fish export industry highlights how management methods borrowed from private standards can be applied to public regulation to achieve seemingly conflicting objectives. In the late 1990s, the EU imposed repeated bans (...) on fish imported from Uganda on the basis of food safety concerns. However, the EU did not provide scientific proof that the fish were actually “unsafe.” Rather, the poor performance of Uganda’s regulatory and monitoring system was used as justification. Only by fixing “the system” and performing the ritual of laboratory testing for all consignments for export to the EU did the Ugandan industry regain its status as a “safe” source of fish. Yet, gaps and inconsistencies abound in the current Ugandan fish safety management system. Some operations are by necessity carried out as “rituals of verification.” Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the compliance system, “alchemic rituals” provide an appropriate metaphor. These rituals are part and parcel of a model that reassures the EU fish-eating public that all is under control in Uganda from boat to point of export. As a consequence, actual non-compliance from boat to landing site allows the fishery to survive as an artisanal operation. (shrink)