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

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we have to this land and its First Peoples. We put out a call to colleagues whose work has been concerned with (...) the pedagogies of professional ethics, the ethical burdens of institutional injustice, and the application of ethical theory to education’s applied fields. In the responses we received it can be seen that ethical concerns in education are broad ranging, covering terrain varying from the preparation of preservice teachers, ethics in higher education, early childhood and care, educational leadership, relational and communicative ethics. Perhaps it could also be argued that this paper demonstrates Gibbon’s observation that ‘Assumptions about the particularity of this time as new and ripe with opportunity to make a difference through philosophy of education are not new and there’s much to learn from the persistence of wanting to imagine that they are’. However, while the field of ethics is perennially concerned with human relations and pedagogical interventions to improve these, the responses collected here show that educational ethics is far from static. Educational ethics is a field that continues to develop in response to changing contexts. (shrink)

While it is true that health care costs are straining personal and governmental budgets, it does appear to be a manageable problem. There are tools available to moderate costs, efforts are already underway to control costs by modifying the financing of health care. Whether or not these will be effective remains to be seen. There also are efforts to control costs by modifying unhealthy habits. These efforts are showing notable success. Moreover, there are efforts underway to reduce health care costs (...) by altering the overall context of people's lives. This latter effort—to improve the health of whole communities—holds the greatest promise. (shrink)

Probably no other psychologist has aroused such contrary reactions from the public and from the scientific community as Hans Eysenck. To the public, he was some kind of noble "IQ warrior" or that disgraceful "race and IQ guy." Playing with Fire is the first full-length biography of Eysenck's career to be published since his death in 1997.

Michel Foucault’s suggestion that this century would become known as “Deleuzian” was considered by Gilles Deleuze himself to be a joke “meant to make people who like us laugh, and make everyone else livid.” Whether serious or not, Foucault’s prediction has had enough of an impact to raise concern about the potential “deification” of this enormously influential French philosopher. Seeking to counter such tendencies toward hagiography—not unknown, particularly since Deleuze’s death—Ian Buchanan has assembled a collection of essays that constitute (...) a critical and focused engagement with Deleuze and his work. Originally published as a special issue of _South Atlantic Quarterly_, this volume includes essays from some of the most prominent American, Australian, British, and French scholars and translators of Deleuze’s writing. These essays, ranging from film, television, art, and literature to philosophy, psychoanalysis, geology, and cultural studies, reflect the broad interests of Deleuze himself. Providing both an introduction and critique of Deleuze, this volume will engage those readers interested in literary and cultural theory, philosophy, and the future of those areas of study in which Deleuze worked. _Contributors_. Ronald Bogue, Ian Buchanan, André Pierre Colombat, Tom Conley, Manuel DeLanda, Tessa Dwyer, Jerry Aline Flieger, Eugene Holland, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Clet Martin, John Mullarkey, D. N. Rodowick, Horst Ruthrof, Charles J. Stivale. (shrink)

Recent literature on J. G. Fichte's ethical philosophy has tended to focus on a handful of interpretive issues while simultaneously emphasizing his under-appreciated relevance to contemporary moral theory. In this regard, Kosch's book on Fichte's ethics is similar to other recent publications. In almost every other way, however, it is unique. Kosch uses her talent for clear argumentation to propose several theses that have little precedent in Fichte scholarship.Her book's goal is two-fold: first, to fill a "yawning gap" in Fichte (...) scholarship by addressing aspects of Fichte's ethical system that have been misinterpreted or overlooked, and second, to present Fichte's ethical work to philosophers "who would be... (shrink)

The experience of time and temporally extended events is a fundamental property of mind, and of time-based media arts. In dealing with properties of time, does the operational logic of contemporary media production tools cohere with philosophical views on the experience of time? This article considers a range of views on the phenomenal experience of time as they relate to the production of time-based media. Embedded within our production technologies, the artist is faced with a new philosophical instrument: the production (...) timeline. The timeline utility in most time-based media software (and non-digital precursors) adopts the cinematic model as its operating metaphor; a series of frames, assembled one after the other in sequence. But the timeline brings new temporal complications such as reversibility, hierarchy and modifiability. The timeline also contorts time into a spatialized dimension, represented as a linear vector within the software interface. Automatic adoption of the linear timeline and the frame as the base unit of temporal thinking is problematic. J. M. E. McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time based on contradictions within a range of possible temporal modal logics is compared with approaches to animation and editing software, and also interactive media software and their unique approach to time as potential events is considered. (shrink)

This book discusses how rational choice theory grew out of RAND's work for the US Air Force. It concentrates on the work of William J. Riker, Kenneth J. Arrow, James M. Buchanan, Russel Hardin, and John Rawls. It argues that within the context of the US Cold War with its intensive anti-communist and anti-collectivist sentiment, the foundations of capitalist democracy were grounded in the hyper individualist theory of non-cooperative games.

It is often either assumed or argued that political liberalism respects rights, while Marxism does not. In fact, many believe that the omission of rights in communism counts decisively against the viability of Karl Marx's social philosophy. Is there room for rights in Marx's social philosophy?This paper examines Allen E. Buchanan's interpretation of Marx's critique of rights. Contrary to Buchanan's view, I shall argue that Marx's critique of rights is limited rather than comprehensive in scope. I shall also (...) set forth part of a foundation of a Marxian theory of rights. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ambivalence is an important one for any philosophy of action. Despite this importance, there is a lack of a fully satisfactory analysis of the phenomenon. Although many contemporary philosophers recognize the phenomenon, and address topics related to it, only Harry Frankfurt has given the phenomenon full treatment in the context of action theory - providing an analysis of how it relates to the structure and freedom of the will. In this paper, I develop objections to Frankfurt's account, (...) all revolving around the charge that his account contains a serious ambiguity between willing and identifying. With such objections in place, I then develop an analysis that avoids the difficulties and ambiguities that Frankfurt's analysis is prey to. I briefly distinguish ambivalence from other types of internal conflict. This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the phenomenon of ambivalence, which will then allow for discussions about the normative merits and demerits of ambivalence, the effects of ambivalence on autonomous action, and methods of resolution of ambivalence. (shrink)

This paper was motivated by what we see as an inconsistency between a 1988 paper by Brennan and Buchanan expressing concern that public choice might erode public confidence in government and previous work by Buchanan, in particular Buchanan. The one advantage we saw with the 1988 paper was that it, all by itself, is all one needs to dismiss MacLean’s depiction of Buchanan as an ideologically rigid extremist. We also found the same inconsistency occurring simultaneously in (...) Buchanan’s writing in 1979. Yet, based on Wagner, we conclude that such inconsistencies may reflect a strength in Buchanan’s scholarship. (shrink)

In Epiphany Term, 1942, C.S. Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures in the Physics Lecture Theatre, King's College, Newcastle, which was then a constituent college of the University of Durham. The Riddell Memorial Lectures were founded in 1928 in memory of Sir John Buchanan Riddell of Hepple, onetime High Sheriff of Northumberland, who had died in 1924. His son, Sir Walter, was, like his father, a devout Christian, active throughout his life in public affairs. He was Fellow, and subsequently (...) Principal, of Hertford College, Oxford, and Secretary, and subsequently Chairman, of the University Grants Committee---at a time when the interventions of the UGC in academic affairs were entirely benign. I myself have a special personal interest in the founder of the Riddell Lectures. Sir Walter and my father were contemporaries at Oxford and close friends. Owing to his untimely death I never knew him, though I am credibly assured that he must have viewed me when I was taken to Hepple in a Moses' basket at the age of six months. In being invited to give this lecture on the Riddell Lectures, I am not only honoured but enabled to discharge a debt of family.. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan’s ‘The Heart of Human Rights’ addresses the moral justification of the international legal human rights system. Buchanan identifies two functions of the ILHRS: a well-being function and a status egalitarian function. Because Buchanan assumes that the well-being function is sufficientarian, he augments it with a status egalitarian function. However, if the well-being function is utilitarian or prioritarian, there is no need for a separate status egalitarian function, because the status egalitarian function can be subsumed by (...) the utilitarian or prioritarian well-being function. (shrink)

The strange story of the von Neumann impossibility proof is recalled, and the even stranger story of later impossibility proofs, and how the impossible was done by de Broglie and Bohm. Morals are drawn.

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

Supertasks recently discussed in the literature purport to display a failure ofenergy conservation and determinism in Newtonian mechanics. We debatewhether these supertasks are admissible as Newtonian systems, with Earmanand Norton defending the affirmative and Alper and Bridger the negative.

The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables , results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less linguistic complexity, and (...) less referential coherence . The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes that are likely operating on a subconscious level. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE GREAT GATSBY: ROMANCE OR HOLOCAUST? Thomas J. Cousineau Washington College In an otherwise appreciative response to The Great Gatsby, H. L. Mencken expressed a reservation about the plot ofthe novel, which he characterized as "no more than a glorified anecdote" (Claridge 156). Writing to Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald suggested, in turn, that what Mencken did not find in Gatsby was "any emotional backbone at the very height of it" (...) (Turnbull 342). Critics ofthe novel, however, have tended to overlook the self-evident fact that the novel's ostensible emotional center—the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy—does not possess sufficient significance to justify the classic status that has been largely accorded to Fitzgerald's novel. We need only remember Daisy's effusive appreciation ofGatsby's "beautiful shirts," or the even more telling detail that the truly "romantic" moments in Daisy and Gatsby's relationship all occurred several years earlier in Louisville and that the period of the reunion is scarcely mentioned in the novel to convince ourselves that the putative grandeur of Gatsby's dream does not adequately account for the novel's power or its lasting significance. Reading Gatsby as a novel about its hero's dream makes of it, in fact, a precarious literary achievement, one whose numerous absurdities were perceptively delineated by the English novelist L.P. Hartley, who admired Fitzgerald's literary gifts but thought that he had squandered them in Gatsby. In a 1926 review of the novel, Hartley offered the following summary of its plot: An adventurer of shady antecedents builds a palace at a New York seaside resort, entertains on a scale which Lucullus would have marveled at but could not have approved, and spends untold sums ofmoney, all to 22Thomas J. Cousineau catch the eye ofhis one time sweetheart, who lives on an island opposite, unhappily but very successfully married. At last, after superhuman feats ofostentation and display, the fly walks into the web. A train ofdisasters follows, comparable in quantity and quality with the scale ofthe Great Gatsby's prodigies of hospitality. Coincidence leaps to the helm and throws a mistress under a motor-car. The car does not stop, which, all things considered, is the most natural thing that happens in the book. An injured husband finds the Great Gatsby in suicidal mood sitting on a raft in his artificial lake and (apparently) forestalls him; anyhowthey are both discovered dead. The elder Gatsby is unearthed and gives a pathetic account ofhis son's early years. All the characters behave as though they were entitled to grieve over a great sorrow, and the book closes with the airs oftragedy. (Claridge 178) Minor inaccuracies aside, this must be among the most cogent, disabused responses that the plot of The Great Gatsby has ever received. It is such a welcome antidote to the reams of interpretation ofthe novel produced by critics who, dutifully aping Nick Carraway in this respect, have allowed their conviction as to Gatsby's "greatness" to be matched only by their equally adamant certainty as to the moral tawdriness of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. As Hartley's exasperated summary reminds us, The Great Gatsby, read as the account ofthe eponymous hero's dream, simply cannot support the weight of morally serious interpretation that it would like to invite or that so many ofits critics, in their turn, would like to bestow upon it.1 Nor do we move any closer to appreciating the greatness of Gatsby by shiftingourattention tothe growth in moral awareness thatcountless critics have attributed toNick Carraway, whose self-evaluation as "one ofthe few honest people that I have ever known" (64) should in itself arouse our suspicions.2 As we shall see, the fruits ofNick's presumed moral education The seemingly indestructible resistance to Hartley's lucidity that has been displayed by the great majority ofthe novel's critics may be observed in the chapter that Jeffrey Hart devotes to Gatsby in his recently published Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe. Arguing that "magical transformation" is the novel's true subject (230), Hart credits Nick with achieving an "epiphany" whereby he recognizes Gatsby's superiority to "the whole damn bunch put together" (238) and concludes that the larger... (shrink)

James Buchanan often argued that fairness is an obligation toward our equals. If Adam Smith is our equal, then we are under obligation to try to understand him. We see this in Buchanan’s attempts to reformat political economy on the basis of natural equals, a world in which Smith’s street porter does indeed have the same capacity as the philosopher. This shows in Buchanan’s excitement over increasing returns models as well as John Rawls’ Theory of Justice both (...) of which he saw a way to make this view operational. (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

Discovering obligations that are ascribed to them by others is potentially an important element in the development of the moral imagination of engineers. Moral imagination cannot reasonably be developed by contemplating oneself and one’s task alone: there must be some element of discovering the expectations of people one could put at risk. In practice it may be impossible to meet ascribed obligations if they are completely general and allow no exceptions — for example if they demand an unlimited duty to (...) avoid harm. But they can still serve to modify engineers’ prior ethics, for example by limiting a purely utilitarian approach to deciding who should bear risk and how much risk they should bear. Ascribed obligations can also give engineers insight into the public reaction to risks that arise from engineered systems, and the consequent expectations that the public have about how much protection is desirable and where the responsibility for this protection lies. This article analyses the case for taking ascribed obligations seriously, and reviews some of the obligations that have been ascribed in the aftermath of recent engineering failures. It also proposes ways in which ascribed obligations could be used in engineers’ moral development. (shrink)

Central to the argument of ‘Biodefense and the Production of Knowledge: Rethinking the Problem’ are claims that the vast majority of ethical debate about biodefense research to date has focused on the dual use problem, and the focus of ethical discussion of dual-use research has been on the need to strike ‘a proper balance of only two dominant values: biosecurity and “open science”’ —the idea being that ‘under current conditions other values can and ought to be ignored because the stakes (...) are so high’.1With regard to , Buchanan and Kelley's main point is that policy making regarding biodefense and dual use should be seen as an ‘optimisation problem’—the aim should be to achieve the greater good of society, where all relevant values are taken into account, rather than limiting attention to just two values—security and open science—in particular. While, as other commentators have argued, it is questionable whether these authors have provided an accurate account of ethical discussion of biodefense and dual use to date, in this brief commentary my purpose is to argue that the values of security and open science should themselves be seen as proxies for other values and that solution to …. (shrink)