Should the assessment of decision‐making capacity (DMC) be risk sensitive, that is, should the threshold for DMC vary with risk? The debate over this question is now nearly five decades old. To many, the idea that DMC assessments should be risk sensitive is intuitive and commonsense. To others, the idea is paternalistic or incoherent, or both; they argue that the riskiness of a given decision should increase the epistemic scrutiny in the evaluation of DMC, not increase the threshold for DMC. (...) We respond to the critics’ main concerns by providing a comprehensive account of how risk‐sensitive DMC is coherent, avoids paternalism, and best fulfills the epistemic goal of DMC evaluations. (shrink)

In their comprehensive article, Bayefsky and Berkman outline a framework for limiting access to certain types of fetal genetic information through professional self-regulation. Given the rap...

This essay considers how we are to understand the decision to end one’s life under medical aid-in-dying (MAID) statutes and the role of influencing others. Bioethical concerns about the potential for abuse in MAID have focused predominantly on the risk of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Most bioethical analyses of relational influences in MAID have been made by opponents of MAID, who argue that MAID is unethical, in part, because it cannot cleanly accommodate relational influences. In contrast, proponents (...) of MAID have downplayed the role of relational influences because they may threaten the pillars of autonomy and voluntariness on which the ethics of MAID rest. Drawing on a case study collected as part of an ethnographic study of MAID in Vermont, we show how relations of care are central to MAID decision-making. Such relations may muddle motives for assisted death, exposing the limits of conventional bioethics thinking on MAID and relational influence. Here, we argue that ethical frameworks for MAID should account for the role of relational influences in decision-making, and acknowledge that relational influences may support, as well as undermine, a decision for MAID. We then outline an evaluative framework for determining whether relational influences are undue that identifies six key domains for consideration: mental competence, authenticity, relationship context, having an adequate range options, financial considerations and irremediability. We conclude by suggesting that social relationships may constitute an important source of value in end-of-life decision-making and not only a liability. (shrink)

The ethical allocation of scarce medical resources has received significant attention, yet a key question remains unaddressed: how should scarce, divisible resources be allocated? We present a case from the COVID-19 pandemic in which scarce resources were divided among patients rather than allocated to some patients over others. We assess how widely accepted allocation principles could be applied to this case, and we show how these principles provide insufficient guidance. We then propose alternatives that may help guide decision-making in such (...) cases, and we evaluate the possibility of treating patients equally by dividing resources equally. Resource scarcity is not limited to pandemic situations, and many healthcare resources are divisible. This question—how to allocate these divisible resources—deserves greater attention from bioethics. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The (...) Ethics of our Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company’s CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company’s products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, a (...) poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences. (shrink)

In recent years, a plethora of high-profile scientific publications has been reporting about machine learning algorithms outperforming clinicians in medical diagnosis or treatment recommendations. This has spiked interest in deploying relevant algorithms with the aim of enhancing decision-making in healthcare. In this paper, we argue that instead of straightforwardly enhancing the decision-making capabilities of clinicians and healthcare institutions, deploying machines learning algorithms entails trade-offs at the epistemic and the normative level. Whereas involving machine learning might improve the accuracy of medical (...) diagnosis, it comes at the expense of opacity when trying to assess the reliability of given diagnosis. Drawing on literature in social epistemology and moral responsibility, we argue that the uncertainty in question potentially undermines the epistemic authority of clinicians. Furthermore, we elucidate potential pitfalls of involving machine learning in healthcare with respect to paternalism, moral responsibility and fairness. At last, we discuss how the deployment of machine learning algorithms might shift the evidentiary norms of medical diagnosis. In this regard, we hope to lay the grounds for further ethical reflection of the opportunities and pitfalls of machine learning for enhancing decision-making in healthcare. (shrink)

I argue that, all else being equal, theism is more probable than naturalism on the assumption that human beings are able to arrive at a body of moral knowledge that is largely accurate and complete. I put forth this thesis on grounds that, if naturalism is true, the explanation of the content of our moral intuitions terminates either in biological-evolutionary processes or in social conventions adopted for pragmatic reasons; that, if this is so, our moral intuitions were selected for their (...) utility, not their truth; and that, if our moral intuitions were so selected, they are probably false. I defend the argument against three objections: first, that the argument amounts to a generic skeptical challenge; second, that ethical naturalism explains how our moral intuitions could have been selected for their truth; and third, that there is a pre-established harmony between the utility of moral beliefs and their truth-values. (shrink)

This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company's CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company's products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, a (...) poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences. (shrink)

Objective: Deficits in affective processing are associated with impairments in both mental and physical health. The role of affective processing in patients with functional somatic complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome remains unclear. Most studies have focused on the capacity for emotional awareness and expression, but neglect other dimensions of affective processing. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically analyze differences in six different dimensions of affective processing between patients with IBS and healthy controls. Additionally, we exploratively investigated the impact of (...) IBS symptom severity, psychological distress, and attachment styles on affective processing in IBS. Methods: A controlled cross-sectional multi-center study was conducted. Overall, 127 patients with IBS were compared with 127 matched HCs using multivariate analysis of variances. Affective processing was operationalized in line with the affect cascade model on six specific dimensions: emotional experience, emotional awareness, affect tolerance, affect differentiation, affect regulation, and emotional communication. They were measured using two subscales of the Mentalizing Questionnaire and four subscales of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis–Structure Questionnaire. Linear regression analysis was used to investigate the influence of IBS symptom severity, depression, anxiety, and anxious and avoidant attachment styles on the different dimensions of affective processing in IBS. Results: Patients with IBS compared to HCs showed deficits in all six dimensions of affective processing. Deficits were largest for affect tolerance and lowest for emotional experience and emotional awareness. Moderate effect sizes were found for affect differentiation, emotional communication, and affect regulation. Moreover, explorative analyses indicated that affective processing in patients with IBS was significantly influenced by levels of anxiety and insecure attachment. Conclusion: The results indicate a specific pattern of affective processing abilities in patients with IBS. The deficits in affective processing are more prominent in the area of understanding and tolerating difficult affective states than experiencing affective states. This opens interesting perspectives for the development of specific psychotherapeutic interventions. (shrink)

Pastor and influencer Noah Herrin gives you ten simple, powerful choices you can make each day that will lead to life-changing purpose, freedom, and impact. When you shift your relationship with Jesus from duty to delight, you will rest where you once were striving, stand firm in faith, rise in influence, and make an impact that echoes into eternity.

Companies increasingly communicate about corporate social responsibility (CSR) through interactive online media. We examine whether using such media is beneficial to a company’s reputation. We conducted an online experiment to examine the impacts of interactivity in CSR messages on corporate reputation and word-of-mouth intentions. Our findings suggest that an increase in perceived interactivity leads to higher message credibility and stronger feelings of identification with the company, which also boost corporate reputation and word-of-mouth. This result implies that using interactive channels to (...) communicate about CSR can improve corporate reputation. Our results also show that the detrimental impacts of negative user evaluations on corporate reputation are much higher than the favorable impacts of positive evaluations. This finding suggests that, despite the effectiveness of interactive communication channels, firms need to carefully monitor these channels. (shrink)

This book addresses some basic questions about intrinsic value: What is it? What has it? What justifies our beliefs about it? In the first six chapters the author defends the existence of a plurality of intrinsic goods, the thesis of organic unities, the view that some goods are 'higher' than others, and the view that intrinsic value can be explicated in terms of 'fitting' emotional attitudes. The final three chapters explore the justification of our beliefs about intrinsic value, including coherence (...) theories and the idea that some value beliefs are warranted on the basis of emotional experience. Professor Lemos defends the view that some value beliefs enjoy 'modest' a priori justification. The book is intended primarily for professional philosophers and their graduate students working in ethics, value theory and epistemology. (shrink)

I outline and defend a version of the aesthetic argument for the existence of God, according to which theism explains our capacity for subjective aesthetic experience better than its major competitor, naturalism. I argue that naturalism fails to adequately explain the nature and range of our aesthetic experiences, since these are amenable neither to standard Darwinian explanation nor to explanation in terms of more complex sociobiological mechanisms such as sexual selection or between-group selection. I concede that aesthetic experience may be (...) an evolutionary spandrel but argue that the conjunction of this thesis with naturalism is highly improbable given the prevalence of beauty in the natural world. Theism, on the other hand, furnishes a robust personal explanation of aesthetic experience, since on theism God has both good reasons to bring such experiences about and the power to do so. I address an objection to the theistic explanation from broadly negative aesthetic experiences, arguing that God plausibly has many reasons to allow these. I contend that this formulation of the argument is superior to other extant versions, since it does not depend on controversial probability judgments, dubious analogies between natural phenomena and human artefacts, or objectivism about aesthetic values. (shrink)

In this 2004 book, Noah Lemos presents a strong defense of the common sense tradition, the view that we may take as data for philosophical inquiry many of the things we ordinarily think we know. He discusses the main features of that tradition as expounded by Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore and Roderick Chisholm. For a long time common sense philosophers have been subject to two main objections: that they fail to give any non-circular argument for the reliability of (...) memory and perception; and that they pick out instances of knowledge without knowing a criterion for knowledge. Lemos defends the appeal to what we ordinarily think we know in both epistemology and ethics and thus rejects the charge that common sense is dogmatic, unphilosophical or question-begging. Written in a clear and engaging style, this book will appeal to students and philosophers in epistemology and ethics. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's insistence on submitting politics to the test of undecidability elicits the common accusation that an aporetic form of thought can only end in dubious conclusions concerning the pressing matter of politics and that no normative claims can emerge from a thought of radical undecidability. In this paper, I articulate the structural undecidability (aporia) that constitutes politics according to Derrida, the manner in which this structural undecidability elicits judgments, and the importance for critique of not ignoring it. In particular, (...) this structural undecidability is articulated within the event of foundation of any state or set of social relations by way of a declarative act. In addition, the aporetic structure of the political renders visible the essential relationship between (revealed) religion and politics. Ultimately, due to a necessary reference to an ultimate authority at any event of foundation, the political is always already theologico-political in character. (shrink)

I reply to an influential objection to evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism. According to this objection, our capacity for autonomous rational reflection allows us to grasp moral truths independently of distorting evolutionary influences, so those influences do not prevent us from having moral knowledge. I argue that rational moral reflection is not, in fact, autonomous from evolutionary influences, since it depends on our evolved, pre-reflective grasp of moral properties. I then consider and reject the suggestion that realists can supply (...) an autonomous foundation for rational moral reflection or do without any such foundation. Next, I address the allegation that my arguments have skeptical implications for rational reflection in non-moral domains. Finally, I conclude with a gesture toward a more promising route for realists who oppose debunking arguments. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 2, Page 134-142, February 2022.

True Faith and Allegiance is a provocative account of nationalism and the politics of turning immigrants into citizens and Americans. Noah Pickus offers an alternative to the wild swings between emotionally fraught positions on immigration and citizenship of the past two decades. Drawing on political theory, history, and law, he argues for a renewed civic nationalism that melds principles and peoplehood.This tradition of civic nationalism held sway at America's founding and in the Progressive Era. Pickus explores how, from James (...) Madison to Teddy Roosevelt, its proponents sought to combine reason and reverence and to balance inclusion and exclusion. He takes us through controversies over citizenship for blacks and the rights of aliens at the nation's founding, examines the interplay of ideas and institutions in the Americanization movement in the 1910s and 1920s, and charts how both left and right promoted a policy of neglect toward immigrants and toward citizenship in the second half of the twentieth century.True Faith and Allegiance shows that contemporary debates over a range of immigration and citizenship policies cannot be resolved by appeals to fixed notions of creed or culture, but require a supple civic nationalism that bridges the gap between immigrants' needs and American principles and practices. It is critical reading for scholars, policy makers, and all who care about immigrants and about America. (shrink)

The sages of Israel and natural wisdom -- Jews and natural philosophy -- Jews and science.

Is language understanding a special case of social cognition? To help evaluate this view, we can formalize it as the rational speech-act theory: Listeners assume that speakers choose their utterances approximately optimally, and listeners interpret an utterance by using Bayesian inference to “invert” this model of the speaker. We apply this framework to model scalar implicature (“some” implies “not all,” and “N” implies “not more than N”). This model predicts an interaction between the speaker's knowledge state and the listener's interpretation. (...) We test these predictions in two experiments and find good fit between model predictions and human judgments. (shrink)

This paper explores the editorial influence of Joseph Banks on the Philosophical Transactions—still, at the time of his accession to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778, the most prestigious scientific periodical published in English. In particular, it examines how Banks forged, and wielded, personal influence over what went into the Transactions. Nominally, at least, the periodical was under the collective control of the Society's council, with significant statutory safeguards in place to prevent editorship by a presidential clique. Yet (...) this was exactly what Banks was able to speedily create and maintain. In this essay I explore how Banks accomplished this and the pressures it produced, addressing two key questions. First, I examine the social dimension of Banks's management of the Transactions (and what contemporaries thought of it), including particularly the questions of how and to whom access to the periodical was afforded or denied by Banks and his associates; and second, I consider how Banks and the Society dealt with the emerging competitive pressure of new commercial and learned society periodicals. I outline a sphere of scientific sociability partly created by informal processes of communicating, circulating, and evaluating papers developed by Banks and his close associates, and its significance for the Transactions in its engagements with other sites, genres, and conventions of scientific publication. (shrink)

I address an objection to inference to the best explanation due to Bas C. van Fraassen, according to which explanatory virtues cannot confirm a theory, since they make the theory more informative and thus less likely to be true given the probability axioms. I try to show that van Fraassen’s argument, once made precise, is deductively invalid, and that even an ampliative version of the argument (i) implies, absurdly, that no theory is confirmed by its fit with empirical data; (ii) (...) fails to account for confirmatory closure under deduction; and (iii) falsely presupposes that a theory and its sub-theories can be competing explanations. (shrink)

Epistemology or the theory of knowledge is one of the cornerstones of analytic philosophy, and this book provides a clear and accessible introduction to the subject. It discusses some of the main theories of justification, including foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and virtue epistemology. Other topics include the Gettier problem, internalism and externalism, skepticism, the problem of epistemic circularity, the problem of the criterion, a priori knowledge, and naturalized epistemology. Intended primarily for students taking a first class in epistemology, this lucid and (...) well-written text would also provide an excellent introduction for anyone interested in knowing more about this important area of philosophy. (shrink)

The goal of this paper was to investigate whether and how a firm that engages in different kinds of corporate social performance can create a favorable corporate reputation among its stakeholders, and as a result achieve a good financial performance. Building on stakeholder theory, we distinguish two types of reputation—reputation among public stakeholders and reputation among financial stakeholders. We argue that CSP activities affect these two reputations differently. In addition, we empirically test the relationship among different types of CSP, reputation (...) among public and financial stakeholders, and financial performance. Our results suggest that Carroll’s four types of CSP affect financial performance differently, and their effects are mediated by reputation among public and financial stakeholders. Our findings provide guidelines for managers on choosing to emphasize certain CSP aspects in their communication, depending on the specific stakeholder group they are targeting. (shrink)

I argue for the viability of one neglected way of developing supervenience-based objections to metaethical non-naturalism. This way goes through a principle known as ‘Hume’s Dictum’, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. I challenge several objections to the Hume’s Dictum-based argument. In the course of doing so, I formulate and motivate modest and precise versions of Hume’s Dictum, illustrate how arguments employing these principles might proceed, and argue that the Hume’s Dictum argument enjoys some advantages (...) relative to other supervenience-based objections to non-naturalism. (shrink)

Those who write about pain management have focused almost entirely on delivery issues, paying essentially no attention to the federal regulatory challenges that affect the development of pain relief technologies — namely, pharmaceuticals and medical devices indicated for analgesic uses. The academic literature is strangely devoid of any sophisticated discussion of the difficulties that attend, first, the product approval decisions of the Food and Drug Administration and, second, the scheduling decisions made by the Drug Enforcement Administration. If a “bottleneck” develops (...) upstream, it could have serious repercussions downstream — without pain relief technologies, the issues of access that have preoccupied previous commentators would have little practical consequence.The modern pharmaceutical industry traces its origins back more than a century, around the time that the German company Bayer first synthesized aspirin and began marketing it as an analgesic. (shrink)

To meet the luck objection to incompatibilism, philosophers such as Timothy O’Connor, Randolph Clark, and William Rowe resurrected the Reidian notion of agent causation, which implies the “Substance-Causal Thesis” (SCT): some causes are fundamentally substances, not events. I examine an objection to SCT by C. D. Broad, developed by Carl Ginet, that substances cannot cause events because substances cannot explain why events happen when they do. The objection fails as it rests on a demand for contrastive explanations of free actions. (...) However, I show that a slightly different objection succeeds in showing SCT false. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, (...) I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation. (shrink)

In light of recent advances in machine learning for medical applications, the automation of medical diagnostics is imminent. That said, before machine learning algorithms find their way into clinical practice, various problems at the epistemic level need to be overcome. In this paper, we discuss different sources of uncertainty arising for clinicians trying to evaluate the trustworthiness of algorithmic evidence when making diagnostic judgments. Thereby, we examine many of the limitations of current machine learning algorithms (with deep learning in particular) (...) and highlight their relevance for medical diagnostics. Among the problems we inspect are the theoretical foundations of deep learning (which are not yet adequately understood), the opacity of algorithmic decisions, and the vulnerabilities of machine learning models, as well as concerns regarding the quality of medical data used to train the models. Building on this, we discuss different desiderata for an uncertainty amelioration strategy that ensures that the integration of machine learning into clinical settings proves to be medically beneficial in a meaningful way. (shrink)

Those who write about pain management have focused almost entirely on delivery issues, paying essentially no attention to the federal regulatory challenges that affect the development of pain relief technologies — namely, pharmaceuticals and medical devices indicated for analgesic uses. The academic literature is strangely devoid of any sophisticated discussion of the difficulties that attend, first, the product approval decisions of the Food and Drug Administration and, second, the scheduling decisions made by the Drug Enforcement Administration. If a “bottleneck” develops (...) upstream, it could have serious repercussions downstream — without pain relief technologies, the issues of access that have preoccupied previous commentators would have little practical consequence.The modern pharmaceutical industry traces its origins back more than a century, around the time that the German company Bayer first synthesized aspirin and began marketing it as an analgesic. (shrink)

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising almost (...) none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development. (shrink)

" In their ground-breaking book, "What the Angel Taught You; Seven Keys to Life Fulfillment," two world-renowned educators collaborate to ask and answer some of ...