This paper stems from the current global worsening of the scarcity of resources for healthcare, which will deepen even more in future public emergencies. This justifies strengthening the reflection on the allocation of resources which, in addition to considering technical issues, should also involve ethical concerns. The two plans in which the allocation of resources develops—macro and micro—are then systematized, both requiring the identification of ethical criteria for the respective complex decision-making. Then, we describe how the complexity at the macro (...) level focuses on the joint consideration of the rectitude of the principles, the goodness of the ends, and the integrity—respectively the deontological, teleological, and procedural perspectives; and at the micro level, it focuses in prioritizing people, which can result in the exclusion of some, as happened with the elderly during peaks of COVID-19. The main objective of this article is to show that, in public health emergency situations, in which the daily criteria for prioritizing access to health care are not efficient, it is possible not only to ration the available means but also to rationalize them. We argue that rationing and rationalization are different concepts, entail different consequences, have different ethical foundations, and draw different guidelines for patient care. We apply them to the distribution of intensive care and vaccines to the elderly thus demonstrating the ethically legitimate domain of implementation of each of these two prioritization criteria. We conclude that rationalization respects more strictly the core ethical principles of our common morality. (shrink)

Excerpt from Philosophie de la Pratique: Économie Et Éthique En décrivant cette façon de procéder de la réflexion ordi naire en présence de la réalité, et en en montrant l'impuis sance philosophique, nous avons, en mémé temps, 'montré déjà le caractère et l'impuissance de la méthode psychologique, appliquée aux problèmes philosophiques. En effet, la philo sophie psychologique, bien qu'elle ait été exposée en 'de pesants traités et en de solennelles conférences académiques, ne fait ni plus ni moins que ce que (...) fait cette réflexion ordi naire, ou plutôt elle n'est précisément que cette réflexion ordi naire. Après avoir ramené ades classes les images des infinies manifestations de l'activité humaine, en mettant par exemple, dans ces classes, à côté de la pensée et de l'imagination la volonté et l'action, elle considère ces classes comme des rén lités. Mais les classes sont des classes et non des distinctions philosophiques celui qui, les prenant trop au sérieux, les entend de cette seconde manière se trouve ensuite, sans s'y attendre, forcé de s'apercevoir un beau jour qu'elles n'ont rien de réel. Et alors il s'exclame, crie et proclame l'inexistence des facultés de l'âme, ou déclare qu'elles ne sont qu'un artie fice mental auquel rien ne correspond dans la réalité; ou mème il va plus loin et, en mème temps que ces fausses distinctions, iljette à I'cenle critérium lui - mème ou la dis tinction, et il affirme que toutesles manifestations spirituelles se réduisent à un élément unique. Puis, cet élément finit par ètre précisément une de ces classes auparavant rejetées: de là, la tentation de montrer les faits volitifs comme n'étant rien d'autre que des faits de représentation, ou ceux de représen tation comme n'étant rien d'autre que des faits de volition, ou les uns et les autres comme n'étant que des faits de senti ment, et ainsi de suite. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Medicine-Based Values?Åge Wifstad (bio)KeywordsEthics committees, judgment, common moralityToulmin's DiagnosisIn his classical article with the unforgettable title "How medicine saved the life of ethics" (Toulmin 1982), Stephen Toulmin claims that medicine saved ethics by giving the philosophers a positive reality check through medical challenges: (1) Ethics in medicine is a serious topic, not just something to discuss at seminars. If, for example, both A and B need treatment and there (...) are only enough resources for one, the fundamental interests of these two people compete against each other. (2) In clinical medicine, the individual case might demand a different approach than that suggested by theory. Similarly, an ethicist who is confronted by a diversity of medical cases becomes aware of the fact that solutions drawn from ethical theory can be irrelevant in practice. (3) The moral philosopher has often focused on the individual and his or her universal commitments. The fact that ethical dilemmas can have deep roots in practical challenges and must be understood within a certain context has been "forgotten." (4) In clinically relevant ethics, it is important to find solutions that all involved parties find reasonable. This revitalizes central Aristotelian schools of thought on, for example, ethical judgment and situational understanding.Today, there is a common understanding that in both the education of doctors and in the implementation of medical knowledge and technology there needs to be ethical guidelines and control. Toulmin wants us to see that the background for this agreement is multifaceted. It was not just the ethicists who saved the doctors. The doctors helped the ethicists to escape their academic isolation.Ethics CommitteesThe establishment of ethics committees is perhaps the most interesting example of this. Here it is especially clear how ethical judgment establishes a basis for decision making: Each case presented to an ethics committee is special because one cannot reference decisions made in similar cases. At the same time, we are expected to handle similar cases equally. Consideration of the concrete, individual case must be balanced with the principle of similar treatment. Second, as a committee member, one must interpret and respect ethical principles that cannot be easily defined. Every principle must be interpreted and implemented within a specific and concrete context. Third, one must consider the law, but seen isolated, the implications of relevant rules can be difficult to determine. Fourth, the status of principles and rules are open for interpretation. The most important example of this is the Declaration of Helsinki, which was established through cooperation between the worlds' doctors unions. The strength and end result of such a document can be discussed. Fifth, multiple but partly conflicting juridical and ethical considerations can be [End Page 179] relevant at the same time. An example: Decisions about confidentiality can prevent data gathering that is crucial in ensuring that a research project is scientifically acceptable. Two important ethical considerations are then put up against one another. As a sixth and final point, it can be mentioned that the ethics committee is expected to make a qualitative, scientific judgment. But what kind of quality judgment and how detailed it should be is up for discussion.Two Definitions of Ethical JudgmentThe fact that the committee must base their holistic decision on ethical judgment means that the committee, in an important sense of the word, stands freely: It can be difficult to refer to specific ethical rules or laws when making an external review of the committee's decision. Unless the committee has clearly not followed known principles and rules, then the committee is able to confront criticism by replying that the decision is based on holistic considerations, where many views have been taken into account. In this way, the usage of ethical judgment makes sure that the committee has freedom to act. The catch here is that the committee's responsibility becomes even more obvious. One cannot simply say that the decision is made based on rules and principles formulated by others, such as the state. The committee must, as a unit, be able to defend their decision.The complexity of the work of the committee can, however, make it more tempting to think about ethics in... (shrink)

A certain kind of externalism—"the view from nowhere"—lies at the heart of evidence-based medicine (EBM). As a consequence, the individual case glides out of focus. However, to judge to what extent external knowledge is applicable to an individual case, the clinician has to rely on some sort of knowledge of the case at hand. The article focuses on the tension between the externalism of EBM and the "internal evidence" one has to presuppose when making clinical judgments.

Combining information from two or possibly several blocks of data is gaining increased attention and importance in several areas of science and industry. Typical examples can be found in chemistry, spectroscopy, metabolomics, genomics, systems biology and sensory science. Many methods and procedures have been proposed and used in practice. The area goes under different names: data integration, data fusion, multiblock analyses, multiset analyses and a few more. This book is an attempt to give an up-to-date treatment of the most used (...) and important methods within an important branch of the area; namely methods based on so-called components or latent variables. These methods have already obtained an enormous attention in for instance chemometrics, bioinformatics, machine learning and sensometrics and have proved to be important both for prediction and interpretation. The book is primarily a description of methodologies, but most of the methods will be illustrated by examples from the above-mentioned areas. The book is written such that both users of the methods as well as method developers will hopefully find sections of interest. In the end of the book there is a description of a software package developed particularly for the book. This package is freely available in R and covers many of the methods discussed. To distinguish the different type of methods from each other, the book is divided into five parts. Part I is introduction and preliminary concepts. Part II is the core of the book containing the main unsupervised and supervised methods. Part III deals with more complex structures and, finally, Part IV discusses alternative unsupervised and supervised methods. The book ends with Part V discussing the available software. Our recommendation for reading the book are as follows. A minimum read of the book would involve chapters 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7. Chapters 4, 6 and 8 are more specialized and chapters 9 and 10 contain methods we think are more advanced or less obvious to use. We feel privileged to have so many friendly colleagues who were willing to spend their time on helping us to improve the book by reading separate chapters. We would like to express our thanks to: Rasmus Bro, Margriet Hendriks, Ulf Indahl, Henk Kiers, Ingrid MaÌ⁽ge, Federico Marini, AÌ⁽smund Rinnan, Rosaria Romano, Lars Erik Solberg, Marieke Timmerman, Oliver Tomic, Johan Westerhuis and Barry Wise. Of course, the correctness of the final text is fully our responsibility! (shrink)

Change can be difficult to achieve, and system inertia may be considered relevant. There is a tendency for dynamic systems to enter into specific states characterized by stabilizing factors. The present work attempts to define inertia processes and explores these with regard to pro-environmental behaviour and decision-making. Inertia processes can be considered both within an organizational context and from the level of the individual, and may involve a number of psychological processes and aspects of the decision-making process. A few suggestions (...) for research are also presented. (shrink)

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...) people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

Religion and Science is a comprehensive examination of the major issues between science and religion in today's world. With the addition of three new historical chapters to the nine chapters (freshly revised and updated) of Religion in an Age of Science, winner of the Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in 1991, Religion and Science is the most authoritative and readable book on the subject, sure to be used by science and religion courses and discussion groups and to become the (...) introduction of choice for general readers. (shrink)

The main aim of this study is to test the validity of the Motivation, Engagement, and Thriving in User Experience model in higher education. We propose a process model in which we investigate how the need-satisfaction of digital learning tools within the interface sphere and task sphere accounts for engagement, learning, and well-being. A total of 426 higher education students drawn from two subsamples participated in this cross-sectional study. A structural equation model shows that interface autonomy and competence satisfaction positively (...) predict task autonomy and competence. Task competence, in turn, negatively predicts focused attention and positively predicts perceived usability and well-being. Task autonomy positively predicts perceived usability and reward. Based on our results, we provide some initial support for the METUX model in higher education. However, more validation work is needed to improve the scale that measures need-satisfaction in the interface and task spheres. Moreover, we find no support for the effect of task sphere on learning. Further investigations are needed into how METUX can be used in domain- and situation-specific contexts to account for increases in engagement, learning, and well-being. Finally, future studies need to include all aspects of the METUX model in order to fully test its validity. (shrink)

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyHerman Philipse sets out in this book an extremely detailed and thorough case for dismissing the claims of natural theology in the age of science. His main strategy is to refute the arguments of Richard Swinburne, claiming that Swinburne presents the strongest case for natural theology in a scientific age; hence if Swinburne fails, natural theology generally is discredited. Whether or not the broader conclusion is warranted, that we should all become atheists, the (...) wide‐ranging and detailed arguments and analyses should serve as useful material for teaching and debate.The structure of the book is commendably straightforward. The first part deals with the primacy and rationality of natural theology. The second part investigates the extent to which theism can be treated as a theory in the manner of scientific theories and how well it performs in this capacity, with Philipse concluding that... (shrink)

The Age of surveillance capitalism is a profound economical, sociological, political, philosophical, and ethical work by the American author, Harvard University Professor Shoshana Zuboff. In this work, she analyzes the new economic system, which she calls “surveillance capitalism.” This system revolves around the commodification of personal data, which allows human behavior to be predicted and “nudged” towards profitable ends. This system is historically unprecedented and has only become possible in the technological milieu of interconnected devices, which appeared in the 21st (...) century. In this article, I look at the issue of freedom in Zuboff’s work. I argue that her understanding of freedom involves three ethical dimensions, namely privacy, autonomy, and authenticity. I take “surveillance capitalism” as a theoretical framework, in which I explore several ethical challenges to freedom in the digital age. (shrink)

La sexualité préoccupe le Moyen Âge occidental : miroir de la nature peccamineuse de l’homme, elle en révèle le meilleur (tempérance, renoncement) et le pire (appétit, violence). Envisagée dans le seul mariage chrétien, elle est hors de ce cadre adultère, condamnée (juridiquement, judiciairement) et expose les individus à la vindicte populaire. Les lettres de rémission (grâce royale des crimes) des xiv e et xv e siècles témoignent de façon originale de l’impact que le type de conjugalité vécu peut avoir sur (...) les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes. Si les sources sont muettes et absentes sur les violences matrimoniales, isolement, célibat laïc, séparation et adultère exposent les femmes médiévales au viol. Mariée, la femme est appropriée, son corps territorialisé, gardé ; seule ou concubine, elle est mal famée et son corps à prendre. C’est dans ce paradigme que la question du couple et des violences sexuelles se pose alors. (shrink)