The Alligator's Child was full of 'satiable curtiosity. One day while rummaging in a trunk in the lumber room he came across a photograph of his father wearing an aardvark uniform and standing by a large ant hill. All excitement, he rushed to his father and breathlessly said, ‘Father, I didn't know that you had been an aardvark! What is it like to be an aardvark?’.

I Norge er ikke surrogati tillatt, og myndighetene fraråder norske statsborgere å benytte seg av surrogati i utlandet. I denne artikkelen fokuserer vi på kommersiell gestational surrogati og stiller spørsmålet: Bør man tillate at norske statsborgere benytter seg av surrogati i India? De etiske problemstillingene rundt surrogati er mange og sammensatte og blir spesielt utfordrende når tjenesten tilbys i et land med store kulturelle og økonomiske forskjeller både internt og i forhold til Norge. Vi baserer analysen og drøftingen av dette (...) etisk utfordrende spørsmålet på Beauchamps og Childress sin veletablerte metodiske tilnærming innen biomedisinsk etikk. Vi anvender de fire allmennmoralske prinsipper: respekt for autonomi, velgjørenhet, ikke-skade og rettferdighet på sakskomplekset for å synliggjøre spenningene involvert i dette etiske dilemmaet. Med full bevissthet om at det ikke finnes noen lettvinte og omkostningsfrie løsninger på dilemmaer generelt og dette spesielt, konkluderer vi med at interessene til de berørte parter, og spesielt surrogatmødrenes, kan bli bedre ivaretatt om surrogati tillates under omfattende reguleringer. Dersom man velger å gjøre praksisen illegal, vil man også miste mulighetene til å påvirke prosessen og sikre rettighetene til de involverte partene.Nøkkelord: surrogati, Norge–India, utnyttelse, autonomi, regulering av prosessenEnglish summary: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India?Surrogacy is not permitted in Norway, and the government strongly advises against Norwegian citizens travelling abroad to have children through the use of the surrogacy industry. In this article, we focus on commercial gestational surrogacy and debate the question: Should Norwegian citizens be permitted to use surrogacy in India? The ethical concerns regarding surrogacy are complex and are especially challenging when the service is offered in a country with big cultural and economic differences both internal and in comparison to Norway. We base our analysis of this ethical, challenging question on Beauchamp’s and Childress’s well-established approach within biomedical ethics. We apply the four principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice to shed light on the conflicts of interests in this ethical dilemma. With full awareness that there are no simple and correct solutions to dilemmas in general and on this issue, especially, our conclusion is that the interests of the involved parties, and especially those of the surrogate mothers, might be better attended to if surrogacy is allowed with extensive regulations. If this practice is made illegal, the opportunity to influence the process and secure the rights of the involved parties is lost. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore people’s attitudes toward responsibility in the allocation of public health care resources. Special attention is paid to conceptualizations of responsibility involving blame and sanctions. A representative sample of the Norwegian population was asked about various responsibility mechanisms that have been proposed in the theoretical literature on health care and personal responsibility, from denial of treatment to a tax on unhealthy consumer goods. Survey experiments were employed to study treatment effects, such as whether (...) fairness considerations affect attitudes about responsibility. We find that, overall, a substantial minority of the respondents find it fair to let the health care system sanction people—in one way or another—for voluntary behaviors that increase the risk of becoming ill. Quite surprisingly, we find that people are more prone to report that they should themselves be held responsible for unhealthy lifestyles than others. (shrink)

Machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence can improve parts of clinical decision making regarding the gathering and analysis of data, the detection of disease, and the provis...

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar is one of the names who advocated to change social order of the age-old tradition of suppression and humiliation. He was an intellectual, scholar, statesman and contributed greatly in the nation building. He led a number of movements to emancipate the downtrodden masses and to secure human rights to millions of depressed classes. He has left an indelible imprint through his immense contribution in framing the modern Constitution of free India. He stands as a symbol of struggle (...) for achieving the Social Justice. We can assign several roles to this great personality due to his life full dedication towards his mission of eradicating evils from Indian society. The social evils of Indian society, also neglected this great personality even in intellectual sphere too. The so-called intellectuals of India not honestly discussed his contribution to Indian intellectual heritage, rather what they discussed, also smells their biases towards a Dalit literate and underestimated his great personality. This paper will attempt to discuss important facts about life and a short description of the literature written by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. This is followed by discussion his philosophy in the five major sections i.e. Feminism and women empowerment, philosophy of education, ideas on social justice and equality, philosophy of politics and economics and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

What is it to be a woman? What is it to be a man? We start by laying out desiderata for an analysis of 'woman' and 'man': descriptively, it should link these gender categories to sex biology without reducing them to sex biology, and politically, it should help us explain and combat traditional sexism while also allowing us to make sense of the activist view that gendering should be consensual. Using a Putnam-style 'Twin Earth' example, we argue that none of (...) the existing analyses in the feminist literature succeeds in meeting all of our desiderata. Finally, we propose a positive account that we believe can satisfy all the desiderata outlined. According to our theory, the genders 'woman' and 'man' are individuated not by their contemporary connections to sex biology, but by their historical continuity with classes that were originally closely connected to sex biology. (shrink)

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar is one of the most eminent intellectual figures of modern India. The present year is being celebrated as 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Educationist and humanist from all over the world are celebrating 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar by organizing various events and programmes. In this regard the Centre for Positive Philosophy and Interdiscipinary Studies (CPPIS) Pehowa (Kurukshetra) took an initiative to be a part of this mega event by organizing (...) an national level esssay competition for students, publication of books, posters and research journals on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s ideas, writings and outlook could well be characterized as belonging to that trend of thought called Social Humanism. He developed a socio-ethical philosophy and steadfastly stood for human dignity and freedom, socio-economic justice, material prosperity and spiritual discipline. He showed the enlightening path for Indian society via his ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity and made India a democratic country. The complete works of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar published by the Governemtn of Maharastra and it has taken about 25 years to complete this initiative in 21 Volumes with the name, “Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writing and Speeches” and covers 14000 pages. In the words of Trilochan Sing, “Above all, Dr. Ambedkar is a philosopher. Those who read his books cannot be failed to be impressed with steadffastness with which he pursues truth; and only those who have dispassionately read his books can frame true estimate of the greatness of the man”. These 21 Volumes includes books published by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar himself and unpublished writings and speaches too. The present volume entitled “Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: The Maker of Modern India” contains 12 research papers on the different aspects of philosophy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar written by academicians from different branches of knowledge. You can find a variety of dialogues and concen about the theme of the book here. We are not defending this book as a highly an intellectual work but a smaller step to know the various aspects of this great personality and is a start to study his vast wisdom. You suggestions and comments are welcome to its first hand review version. (shrink)

This article presents a new criticisms of reductive approaches to knowledge-‘wh’ (i.e., those approaches on which whether one stands in the knowledge-‘wh’ relation to a question is determined by whether one stands in the knowledge-‘that’ relation to some answer(s) to the question). It argues in particular that the truth of a knowledge-‘wh’ attribution like ‘Janna knows where she can buy an Italian newspaper’ depends not only on what Janna knows about the availability of Italian newspapers, but on what she believes (...) about the matter. This dependence of Janna's knowledge-‘wh’ on her (possibly false) beliefs is incompatible with the reductive approach. (shrink)

Journal of the History of Biology provides a fifty-year long record for examining the evolution of the history of biology as a scholarly discipline. In this paper, we present a new dataset and preliminary quantitative analysis of the thematic content of JHB from the perspectives of geography, organisms, and thematic fields. The geographic diversity of authors whose work appears in JHB has increased steadily since 1968, but the geographic coverage of the content of JHB articles remains strongly lopsided toward the (...) United States, United Kingdom, and western Europe and has diversified much less dramatically over time. The taxonomic diversity of organisms discussed in JHB increased steadily between 1968 and the late 1990s but declined in later years, mirroring broader patterns of diversification previously reported in the biomedical research literature. Finally, we used a combination of topic modeling and nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques to develop a model of multi-article fields within JHB. We found evidence for directional changes in the representation of fields on multiple scales. The diversity of JHB with regard to the representation of thematic fields has increased overall, with most of that diversification occurring in recent years. Drawing on the dataset generated in the course of this analysis, as well as web services in the emerging digital history and philosophy of science ecosystem, we have developed an interactive web platform for exploring the content of JHB, and we provide a brief overview of the platform in this article. As a whole, the data and analyses presented here provide a starting-place for further critical reflection on the evolution of the history of biology over the past half-century. (shrink)

Translational research in medicine requires researchers to identify the steps to transfer basic scientific discoveries from laboratory benches to bedside decision-making, and eventually into clinical practice. On a parallel track, philosophical work in ethics has not been obliged to identify the steps to translate theoretical conclusions into adequate practice. The medical ethicist A. Cribb suggested some years ago that it is now time to debate ‘the business of translational’ in medical ethics. Despite the very interesting and useful perspective on the (...) field of medical ethics launched by Cribb, the debate is still missing. In this paper, I take up Cribb’s invitation and discuss further analytic distinctions needed to base an ethics aiming to translate between theory and practice. (shrink)

This paper presents a new taxonomy of sex/gender concepts based on the idea of starting with a few basic components of the sex/gender system, and exhausting the possible types of simple associations and identities based on these. The resulting system is significantly more fine-grained than most competitors, and helps to clarify a number of points of confusion and conceptual tension in academic and activist conversations about feminism, transgender politics, and the social analysis of gender.

In this article we provide a theoretical reconstruction of sub-Saharan ethics that we argue is a strong competitor to typical Western approaches to morality. According to our African moral theory, actions are right roughly insofar as they are a matter of living harmoniously with others or honouring communal relationships. After spelling out this ethic, we apply it to several issues in both normative and empirical research into morality. With regard to normative research, we compare and contrast this African moral theory (...) with utilitarianism and Kantianism in the context of several practical issues. With regard to empirical research, we compare and contrast our sub-Saharan ethic with several of Lawrence Kohlberg’s views on the nature of morality. Our aim is to highlight respects in which the African approach provides a unitary foundation for a variety of normative and empirical conclusions that are serious alternatives to dominant Western views. (shrink)

A provocative contribution to the new approach to the history and philosophy of science which emphasizes the role of radically new paradigms in scientific revolutions. While normal science proceeds as puzzle-solving within a relatively fixed paradigm, scientific crises lead to new paradigms where data, scientific problems, procedures, and standards for solutions are all altered. Scientific revolutions do not simply modify our understanding of a world which exists independently--they change the data and the world in which the scientist works. The essay (...) is filled with fascinating historical interpretations, though the analysis of the concept of a paradigm and scientific revolution is more suggestive than rigorous.--R. J. B. (shrink)

There has been much discussion about how to obtain legitimacy at macro-level priority setting in health care by use of fair procedures, but how should we consider priority setting by individual clinicians or health workers at the micro-level? Despite the fact that just health care totally hinges upon their decisions, surprisingly little attention seems being paid to the legitimacy of these decisions. This paper addresses the following question: what are the conditions that have to be met in order to ensure (...) that individual claims on health care are well aligned with an overall concept of just health care? Drawing upon a distinction between individual and aggregated needs, I argue that even though we assume the legitimacy of macro-level guidelines, this legitimacy is not directly transferable to decisions at micro-level simply by adherence to the guidelines’ recommendation. Further, I argue that individual claims are subject to the formal principle of equality and the demands of vertical and horizontal equity in a way that gives context- and patient-related equity concerns precedence over equity concerns captured at the macro-level. I conclude that if we aim to achieve just health care, we need to develop a complementary framework for legitimising individual judgment of patients’ claims on health care resources. Moreover, I suggest the basic structure of such a framework. (shrink)

Char et al. describe an interesting and useful approach in their paper, “Identifying ethical considerations for machine learning healthcare applications.” Their proposed framework, which see...

A provocative collection of technical and popular essays dealing with a variety of scientific and political topics which Popper has treated in his major works. For the most part Popper develops, sharpens, and extends to new areas, themes which he has already explored. The major theme running through the essays is that knowledge grows by unjustified and unjustifiable anticipations, guesses and conjectures. These are controlled by criticisms and refutations. Theories can never be positively justified; they can only prove to be (...) resistant to rational criticism. The boldness of Popper's conjectures demands attempted refutations on the part of the reader.--R. J. B. (shrink)

Clinical ethical support services (CESS) represent a multifaceted field of aims, consultancy models, and methodologies. Nevertheless, the overall aim of CESS can be summed up as contributing to healthcare of high ethical standards by improving ethically competent decision-making in clinical healthcare. In order to support clinical care adequately, CESS must pay systematic attention to all real-life ethical issues, including those which do not fall within the ‘favourite’ ethical issues of the day. In this paper we attempt to capture a comprehensive (...) overview of categories of ethical tensions in clinical care. We present an analytical exposition of ethical structural features in judgement-based clinical care predicated on the assumption of the moral equality of human beings and the assessment of where healthcare contexts pose a challenge to achieving moral equality. The account and the emerging overview is worked out so that it can be easily contextualized with regards to national healthcare systems and specific branches of healthcare, as well as local healthcare institutions. By considering how the account and the overview can be applied to i) improve the ethical competence of healthcare personnel and consultants by broadening their sensitivity to ethical tensions, ii) identify neglected areas for ethical research, and iii) clarify the ethical responsibility of healthcare institutions' leadership, as well as specifying required institutionalized administration, we conclude that the proposed account should be considered useful for CESS. (shrink)

Omfanget av helsepersonells reservasjonsrett har nylig vært gjenstand for debatt i Norge. Vi spør om leger bør ha reservasjonsrett ved utførelse og henvisning til assistert befruktning, og drøfter argumenter for og imot ved hjelp av et rammeverk med sju kriterier for vurdering av reservasjon. Reservasjonsrettens grunnleggende dilemma er hvordan to viktige hensyn, henholdsvis pasientens rett til behandling og hensynet til helsepersonellets moralske integritet, best kan ivaretas. Det argumenteres for at leger bør ha rett til å reservere seg mot å utføre, (...) assistere ved og henvise til assistert befruktning generelt hvis begrunnelsen er hensynet til befruktede eggs moralske verdi. Videre finner vi at leger også kan ha en moralsk rett til reservasjon mot å utføre, assistere ved og henvise til assistert befruktning for likekjønnede, men da på nærmere spesifiserte vilkår.Nøkkelord: reservasjonsrett, assistert befruktning, samvittighet, moralsk integritetEnglish summary: Should physicians have the right to conscientiously object to assisted reproduction?The extent of the healthcare worker's right to conscientious objection has recently been debated in Norway. This article asks whether physicians should have a right to conscientious objection to the performance of, and referral for, assisted reproduction, and discusses arguments for and against the same, utilizing a framework of seven criteria for the evaluation of conscientious objection. The fundamental dilemma of conscientious objection is how two important considerations can be reconciled: the patient's right to treatment, and the protection of the healthcare worker's moral integrity. It is argued that physicians should have the right to object to performing, assisting with, and referring for assisted reproduction generally when the objection is grounded in the moral value of the embryo. Furthermore, physicians may also have a moral right to object to performing, assisting with, and referring for assisted reproduction for same-sex couples, but only on conditions that are further specified. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 71-73.

The Alligator's Child was full of 'satiable curtiosity. One day while rummaging in a trunk in the lumber room he came across a photograph of his father wearing an aardvark uniform and standing by a large ant hill. All excitement, he rushed to his father and breathlessly said, ‘Father, I didn't know that you had been an aardvark! What is it like to be an aardvark?’.

This paper considers two of the most prominent kinds of evidence that have been used to argue that certain embedded questions receive weakly exhaustive interpretations. The first kind is exemplified by judgments of consistency for declarative sentences that attribute knowledge of a wh-question and ignorance of the negation of that question to the same person, and the second concerns asymmetries between the role of positive and negative information in validating question-embedding surprise ascriptions, and similar judgments for other attitudes. I argue (...) that neither type suffices to show weak exhaustivity. The first can be analyzed in terms of strong exhaustivity in combination with domain restriction effects, while the second can be analyzed in terms of a mention-some interpretation. These kinds of evidence have served as the empirical basis for many claims about weakly exhaustive readings, so the observation that they are unreliable calls into questions a large body of established work on the semantics of question embedding. (shrink)

The overall aim of this article is to discuss the organization of limit setting in healthcare in terms of legitimacy. We argue there is a strong ethical demand that such processes should be arranged to provide adversely affected people well-justified reasons to confer legitimacy to the processes despite favouring a different decision-making outcome. Two increasingly popular approaches, Accountability for Reasonableness (A4R) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), can both be applied to support legitimate decision-making processes. However, the role played by ‘fair-minded (...) people’ in the A4R framework can be shown to undermine an adequate conceptualization of legitimacy according to the ethical demand. We discuss and specify conditions enabling A4R to meet this ethical demand when being implemented in a real-world setting without having to renounce the aim of striving for ‘reasonableness’ and impartiality. The methodological approach MCDA describes how to arrange for transparent resource allocation. This approach does not encompass any normative guidance on how to shape limit settings in terms of ‘reasonableness’; it basically promotes ‘rational’ decisions. We discuss how this practical methodology can be integrated with the theoretical A4R framework to meet the ethical demand while at the same time promoting politically required impartiality of healthcare limit setting. (shrink)