We propose a qualitatively new kind of governance for the emerging need to efficiently guide the densely interconnected, ever more complex world development, which is based on explicit and openly presented problem solutions and their interactive implementation practice within the versatile, but unified professional analysis of complex real-world dynamics, involving both the powerful central units and the attached creative worldwide network of professional representatives. We provide fundamental and rigorous scientific arguments in favour of introduction of just that kind (...) of governance at the modern development stage, after the complexity threshold in the real world dynamics evolution (sometimes intuitively designated as "globalisation"), where the traditional spontaneous-empirical kind of development and related administrative governance lose dramatically and inevitably their efficiency and the necessity of explicit consistent understanding and guidance of complex real-world dynamics becomes evident. (shrink)

An extended analysis compared to observations shows that modern “globalised” world civilisation has passed through the invisible “complexity threshold”, after which usual “spontaneous”, empirically driven kind of development (“invisible hand” etc.) cannot continue any more without major destructive tendencies. A much deeper, non-simplified understanding of real interaction complexity is necessary in order to cope with such globalised world development problems. Here we introduce the universal definition, fundamental origin, and dynamic equations for a major related quantity of (systemic) risk characterising real (...) complex system development tendencies at any level of dynamics. Practically important conclusions are derived, opening further detailed applications in economy, finance and development practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a new theory of normative reasons called reasons as good bases, according to which a normative reason to φ is something that is a good basis for φing. The idea is that the grounds on which we do things—bases—can be better or worse as things of their kind, and a normative reason—a good reason—is something that is just a good instance of such a ground. After introducing RGB, I clarify what it is (...) to be a good basis, and argue that RGB has various attractive features: it has intuitive implications, makes good sense of the weights of reasons, and attractively explains the relationship between normative reasons and motivating reasons. I then briefly defend the view from objections and compare it to rivals. Finally, I sketch two possible implications of RGB: some kind of constitutivism, according to which the norms that govern us are explained by the nature of agency, and second, the claim that agents who do things for reasons generally do them for good reasons. (shrink)

As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. Instead, (...) they may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

This paper proposes an approach to investigate norm-governed learning agents which combines a logic-based formalism with an equation-based counterpart. This dual formalism enables us to describe the reasoning of such agents and their interactions using argumentation, and, at the same time, to capture systemic features using equations. The approach is applied to norm emergence and internalisation in systems of learning agents. The logical formalism is rooted into a probabilistic defeasible logic instantiating Dung’s argumentation framework. Rules of this logic (...) are attached with probabilities to describe the agents’ minds and behaviours as well as uncertain environments. Then, the equation-based model for reinforcement learning, defined over this probability distribution, allows agents to adapt to their environment and self-organise. (shrink)

Several recent studies and initiatives have emphasized the importance of a strong ethical organizational DNA (ODNA) to create and promote an effective corporate governance culture of trust, integrity and intellectual honesty. This paper highlights the drawbacks of an excessively heavy reliance on rules-based approaches that increase the cost of doing business, overshadow essential elements of good corporate governance, create a culture of dependency, and can result in legal absolutism. The paper makes the case that the way forward (...) for effective corporate governance is to strike an optimal balance between rules-based and principles-based approaches. The recent corporate scandals have demonstrated that the ethical ODNA is critical to the driving force and basis of legal and regulatory requirements. Effective governance means adhering to ethical principles, not merely complying with rules, and is a crucial guardian of a firm’s reputation and integrity. It is through an effective corporate governance program (that is, one that optimally captures and integrates the appropriate aspects of rules-based and principles-based approaches, and identifies and assesses the related risks) that an organization can reconfigure its ODNA for improved performance. Focusing on the ethical ODNA as the basis of new governance measures provides an opportunity to develop a competitive advantage as it represents a potential source of differentiation, strengthens the relationship with all stakeholders of the organization by building a culture of trust and integrity, and re-instills investor confidence. This paper employs dialectical reasoning that links the ODNA through principles-driven rules in developing a risks-based approach. A comparison from a risk assessment perspective between rules-based and principles-based approaches is presented. Although there have been few applications employing dialectical reasoning in business research, this methodology can be extremely useful in isolating ethical issues and integrating them into the business process. The risks-based approach captures the benefits of both rules-based and principles-based approaches, and incorporates trust-based principles such␣as solidarity, subsidiarity and covenantal relationships. (shrink)

The previous literature analyzed the widespread imitative innovation of Chinese enterprises from various perspectives, including enterprises' rational choice of cost-gain, property rights system, human capital and policy environment. However, this paper provides a brand-new perspective on government subsidies for the reasons behind the imitative innovation of enterprises. According to the statistics from Chinese enterprise-labor matching, we found that government subsidies stimulated enterprises to make “imitative innovation” through patent purchase rather than independent R&D. Government subsidies were used for low-risk “imitative innovation” (...) because of enterprises' rent-seeking behavior, low R&D ability and the review of government subsidy projects. Based on the above conclusions, this paper suggests that the government should reduce or withdraw its intervention in enterprise innovation and implement the post-subsidy and post-evaluation mechanism for government-subsidized programs. (shrink)

This text maps the network of concepts that constitute the general catagory of reason. In the process it shows that some famous philosophical doctrines are based on mistaken assumptions in this conceptual area. In particular, it aims to undermine the arguments of Hume and is modern followers to the effect that reason can be theoretical but not practical (can govern thought but not action) and that value judgements cannot be validly inferred from facts.

This study constructs a mechanism of the influence of Guanxi between boundary spanners on opportunistic behaviors in collaborative innovation projects based on the theory of reasoned action model. The study conducts a survey in the automobile industry in Changchun, Jilin Province, China, and analyzes the research data using the structural equation model. The findings show that Guanxi has a negative an significant influence on opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms., Guanxi has the greater influence on subjective norms than attitudes. (...) Then, opportunistic behavior attitudes and subjective norms positively influence intentions. The influence of subjective norms is stronger. The attitudes and subjective norms of opportunistic behaviors also play mediation roles. Furthermore, opportunistic behavior intentions have a positive and significant influence on behaviors. In short, the study’s findings reveal a mechanism of Guanxi between boundary spanners influencing opportunistic behaviors of boundary spanners. It also provides a reference for corporate managers to govern opportunistic behaviors of collaborator while inhabiting opportunistic behaviors of their own boundary spanners. (shrink)

I consider how we might begin to redress a cognitive model for thought experimental and other imagery-based scientific reasoning from an embodied cognition viewpoint. The paper gravitates on clarifying tour issues: (i) the danger of understanding the genuine novelty of thought-experimental reasoning and other imagery-based reasoning as a product of ‘quasi-perceiving’ new phenomenology with the ‘mind’s eye’ (as asserted by quasi-pictorialist theories of imagery); (ii) the erroneous choice of units of analysis that assume equivalence of external reports of (...) visual imagery with those internal structures that govern imagery-based reasoning, which are, as I will argue, largely linked to motor processes; (iii) the establishment of thought experimentation as imagery-based reasoning by providing evidence for the psychological necessity of imagistic simulation in thought experiments; (iv) a cognitive model for how learning via thought experimentation and other imagery-based reasoning takes place. The study was underpinned by constructivist assumptions. Case methodology was adopted, the case being a pair of final year A-level physics students. Data was collected through non-participant observation over two sessions of collaborative problem-solving. The tasks drew upon Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

The network society is generally challenging for today's communication practitioners because they are no longer the sole entities responsible for communication processes. This is a major change for many of them. In this paper, it will be contended that the normative practice model as developed within reformational philosophy is beneficial for clarifying the structure of communication practices. Based on this model, we argue that government communication should not be considered as primarily an activity that focuses on societal legitimation of (...) policy; rather, it focuses on clarifying the meaning of the actions of the government. If the government can convincingly answer the question about the reason for their actions, societal legitimation will subsequently follow. Hence, it is argued that government communication is primarily linguistically qualified. (shrink)

By a reasoned change in logic I mean a change in the logic with which you make inferences that is based on your evidence. An argument sourced in recently published material Kripke lectured on in the 1970s, and dubbed the Adoption Problem by Birman (then Padró) in her 2015 dissertation, challenges the possibility of reasoned changes in logic. I explain why evidentialists should be alarmed by this challenge, and then I go on to dispel it. The Adoption Problem rests (...) on a failure to distinguish between logical principles such as Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens which might or might not govern your inferences with superficially similar laws which must govern your cognitive architecture. (shrink)

The laws governing degeneration of the genetic code are discussed below. Of fundamental importance in this context is the classification of the amino acids into groups on the basis of the physicochemical behaviour of their residues. From this, it is possible to formulate arithmetic relationships between the number of amino acids in the same group and the number of coding triplets.It is found that the degeneration of the genetic code obeys certain laws, the reasons for this being related to the (...) number and the qualitative properties of the amino acids and triplets. The fact that the three bases of a coding triplet have different priorities must also be a critical factor. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular epistemological view, people need outright beliefs in addition to credences to simplify their reasoning. Outright beliefs simplify reasoning by allowing thinkers to ignore small error probabilities. What is outright believed can change between contexts. It has been claimed that thinkers manage shifts in their outright beliefs and credences across contexts by an updating procedure resembling conditionalization, which I call pseudo-conditionalization (PC). But conditionalization is notoriously complicated. The claim that thinkers manage their beliefs via PC is (...) thus in tension with the view that the function of beliefs is to simplify our reasoning. I propose to resolve this puzzle by rejecting the view that thinkers employ PC. Based on this solution, I furthermore argue for a descriptive and a normative claim. The descriptive claim is that the available strategies for managing beliefs and credences across contexts that are compatible with the simplifying function of outright beliefs can generate synchronic and diachronic incoherence in a thinker’s attitudes. Moreover, I argue that the view of outright belief as a simplifying heuristic is incompatible with the view that there are ideal norms of coherence or consistency governing outright beliefs that are too complicated for human thinkers to comply with. (shrink)

Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying the (...) legality of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

The base rate fallacy is a fallacy that occurs in probabilistic reasoning when available general information is omitted from the calculations and attention is given to specific information only. To illustrate this concept, this chapter discusses the scenario in Philip K. Dick's short story “Minority Report”, with some details augmented by the 2002 movie daptation by Steven Spielberg. The legislative approach seems to be based not just on the base rate fallacy but on assuming a base rate that is (...) divorced from reality, that the drug use rate among welfare applicants is significantly higher than the national rate. Once the accurate base rate is applied (be it the proportions between the races in the US population, or the percentage of drug users among the people receiving government welfare, etc.), one can clearly see that the original conclusion does not follow. (shrink)

An experiment was conducted to investigate the relative contributions of syntactic form and content to conditional reasoning. The content domain chosen was that of causation. Conditional statements that described causal relationships (if (cause>, then (effect>) were embedded in simple arguments whose entailments are governed by the rules -oftruth-functional logic (i.e., modus ponens, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, and affirming the consequent). The causal statements differed in terms ofthe number of alternative causes and disabling conditions that characterized the causal relationship. (A (...) disabling condition is an event that prevents an effect from occurring even though a relevant cause is present.) Subjects were required to judge whether or not each argument’s conclusion could be accepted. Judgments were found to vary systematically with the number of alternative causes and disabling conditions. Conclusions of arguments based on conditionals with few alternative causes or disabling conditionswerefoun~d:tobe-rnore accept~ able than cdnclusions based on those with many. (shrink)

Donald Lee has claimed that of three ethical values, freedom, justice, and security-survival, involved in the effects of population growth on the future and the survival of all human beings, security-survival is the most fundamental. As such, it should have priority over freedom and justice. Based on this hierarchy, Lee draws the conclusion that one does not have the right to unlimited procreation, and that ultimately it is the duty of government to impose limits on population growth. I accept (...) Lee’s argument that personal rights must be balanced by personal responsibility, but I argue that justice is the fundamental ethical principle in this discussion. This is not a trivial distinction, for it leads to two significant conclusions. First, by focusing proper attention on justice, the threat to survival of the race from overpopulation is reduced to reasonable and realistic proportions. Second, and particulady important with regard to Lee’s position, the recognition of the need for justice brings to light the fact that the primary responsibility of government is to address itself to redressing injustice in society, injustice which does pose a very real threat to the survival of mankind. In this context, I argue that under no circumstances should government have the right or the responsibility to enforce limits on procreation. (shrink)

Trends in corporate governance to minimize employee participation and to promote shareholder rights, in both the EU and US contexts, evidence the practical efficacy of the separation thesis and the dominance of models of corporate governance founded upon decision theory. Giving expression to a vision of human agency in terms of instrumental rationality, such models of corporate governance, presuppose clearly defined objectives. Drawing on the work of Talbot Brewer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Robert Brandom, this paper offers an (...) alternative practice-based model of corporate governance that emphasizes the role of socially and historically embodied forms of reasoning in promoting a better understanding of the aims or objectives of the corporation, particularly with respect to the social, environmental, and economic context of the firm. After reviewing recent empirical literature concerning employee participation, criteria are offered concerning effective employee participation programs, as a means of implementing a practice-based model of corporate governance. (shrink)

Why is it important for people to agree on and articulate shared reasons for just laws, rather than whatever reasons they personally find compelling? What, if any, practical role does public reason play in liberal democratic politics? We argue that the practical role of public reason can be better appreciated by examining the confluence of normative and positive political theory; the former represented here by liberal social contract theory of John Rawls and others, and the latter by rational (...) choice or game theory. Citizens in a diverse society face a practical as well as a moral problem. How can they have confidence that others will reciprocate their commitment to supporting governing principles that depart from their own ideal conceptions of truth and value in order to be reasonable to all? Citizens face a practical problem of mutual assurance that public reason helps them solve, and solve as a matter of common knowledge. The solution, on both views, requires citizens’ reciprocal commitment to basing law on a system of shared reasons. Both views place public reason at the core of liberal democratic politics in conditions of diversity, and for quite similar reasons. Our argument illustrates the complementary roles of positive and values-based analysis in constitutional design. (shrink)

This paper provides a short overview of how Oakeshott identifies the functions and limits of government, with reliance primarily on two texts. The first one from “Lectures on the History of Political” thought distinguishes nomocratic and teleocratic ways of governing. Oakeshott describes the two forms in a detached fashion, and indirectly hints at his preference for nomocratic rule. The second text is Oakeshott’s essay “On Being Conservative”, where Oakeshott gives a sceptical and critical description of human nature. The paper argues (...) that this account of human nature should be seen as the basis, on which a nomocratic rule can be defended. It will be argued, that the two texts should be read together, if we want to get a reasoned overview of Oakeshott’s criticism of contemporary forms of government, and of his reasons to choose nomocratic rule instead of the teleocratic one. It will be argued that a complex political philosophy based on these two pillars will be provided by Oakeshott’s late book On Human Conduct. (shrink)

:This essay argues for what may be called the parity thesis: Whenever it would be morally permissible to kill a civilian in self-defense or in defense of others against that civilian's unjust acts, it would also be permissible to kill government officials, including police officers, prison officers, generals, lawmakers, and even chief executives. I argue that in realistic circumstances, violent resistance to state injustice is permissible, even and perhaps especially in reasonably just democratic regimes. When civilians see officials about to (...) commit certain severe injustices — such as police officers engaging in excessive violence — they may sometimes act unilaterally and kill the offending officials. I consider and rebut a wide range of objections, including objections against vigilantism, objections based on state legitimacy, and objections that violence can produce bad fallout. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.WHEN MAY WE KILL GOVERNMENT AGENTS? IN DEFENSE OF MORAL PARITYVolume 32, Issue 2Jason Brennan DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000108Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. WHEN MAY WE KILL GOVERNMENT AGENTS? IN DEFENSE OF MORAL PARITYVolume 32, Issue 2Jason Brennan DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000108Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. WHEN MAY WE KILL GOVERNMENT AGENTS? IN DEFENSE OF MORAL PARITYVolume 32, Issue 2Jason Brennan DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000108Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The network society is generally challenging for today's communication practitioners because they are no longer the sole entities responsible for communication processes. This is a major change for many of them. In this paper, it will be contended that the normative practice model as developed within reformational philosophy is beneficial for clarifying the structure of communication practices. Based on this model, we argue that government communication should not be considered as primarily an activity that focuses on societal legitimation of (...) policy; rather, it focuses on clarifying the meaning of the actions of the government. If the government can convincingly answer the question about the reason for their actions, societal legitimation will subsequently follow. Hence, it is argued that government communication is primarily linguistically qualified. (shrink)

What would something unlike us--a chimpanzee, say, or a computer--have to be able to do to qualify as a possible knower, like us? To answer this question at the very heart of our sense of ourselves, philosophers have long focused on intentionality and have looked to language as a key to this condition. Making It Explicit is an investigation into the nature of language--the social practices that distinguish us as rational, logical creatures--that revises the very terms of this inquiry. Where (...) accounts of the relation between language and mind have traditionally rested on the concept of representation, this book sets out an alternate approach based on inference, and on a conception of certain kinds of implicit assessment that become explicit in language. Making It Explicit is the first attempt to work out in detail a theory that renders linguistic meaning in terms of use--in short, to explain how semantic content can be conferred on expressions and attitudes that are suitably caught up in social practices. -/- At the center of this enterprise is a notion of discursive commitment. Being able to talk--and so in the fullest sense being able to think--is a matter of mastering the practices that govern such commitments, being able to keep track of one’s own commitments and those of others. Assessing the pragmatic significance of speech acts is a matter of explaining the explicit in terms of the implicit. As he traces the inferential structure of the social practices within which things can be made conceptually explicit, the author defines the distinctively expressive role of logical vocabulary. This expressive account of language, mind, and logic is, finally, an account of who we are. (shrink)

Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research designs (...) and approaches to analysing the scientific literature are sufficiently robust that they can settle what really ‘works’ in public policy. Can EBP succeed in displacing reliance on domain-specific expertise? On our account, this is seldom, if ever, the case. The key reason for this is that underlying this approach is generally an appeal to argument by induction, which always requires further assumptions to underwrite its validity, and if not induction, some other argument form that also requires assumptions that are very often not validated for the case at hand. (shrink)

Greco argues that knowledge by transmission involves joint agency whose norms are governed by the quality of the social relations in the transmission, and these norms differ from the norms generating knowledge in the source. This approach to the transmission of knowledge allows Greco to respond to three common arguments against the rationality of religious belief on testimony: the argument against belief in miracles, the argument from luck, and the argument from peer disagreement. I agree with Greco’s position on the (...) transmission of knowledge or reasonable belief in these cases and argue that the distinction between first person and third person reasons for belief can strengthen his position. The experience upon which a belief is based can be transferred intersubjectively and strengthens the ground for the belief based on experience, including the belief in miracles. Trust is another first person reason for belief, not only a background condition for reasonable transmission, and it also can be transmitted and is an important component in the formation and preservation of traditions. This feature permits a reply to the arguments from luck and from disagreement with people outside the tradition. But this feature also shows why we find these arguments threatening since we are rationally committed to a minimal degree of trust in all other reasonable persons. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Desire‐Based Theories of Reasons for Action Parfit on the Nature of Value Value‐Based Theories of Reasons for Action Why Parfit Prefers Value‐Based Theories of Reasons for Action to Desire‐Based Theories Sidgwick's Dualism of Practical Reason and Parfit's Response.

The contribution of food and diet to health is much disputed in the background culture in the US. Many commercial or ideological advocates make claims, sometimes with health as a primary goal, but often accompanied by commercial or ideological interests. These compete culturally with authoritative recommendations made by publicly funded groups. For public policy concerning diet and health to be legitimate, not only should it not be inconsistent with the scientific evidence, but also it should not be inconsistent with the (...) political environment. Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy (HEPPP), by Barnhill and Bonotti (2022), addresses how policy in this complex area might be justified. In the present essay I highlight some important strengths of their work and also make some points about how it might be clarified or enlarged in scope. The great strength of HEPPP is that it emphasizes the role of a political philosophy in evaluating the legitimacy of public policy. They presume a well-off liberal democratic state, and specifically they draw on Rawls’ political liberalism, as developed in Political Liberalism (PL). One of several interlocking technical concepts developed in this book, public reason speaks to the boundaries of what should be acceptable in public deliberation about constitutional essentials and basic justice. HEPPP explores the application of an extension of public reason to the justification of policies related to “healthy eating.“ Public reason has two components, both of which pertain to a common understanding among citizens: (1) a common understanding of the principles and ideals that are the foundation of the political society, and (2) a common understanding of the standards that govern reason and evidence, including common sense. HEPPP argues that even though for diet and health the complexity of the scientific evidence goes far beyond anything like common sense for a typical citizen, the technical idea of “accessibility” of the scientific evidence justifies reliance on it within the concept of public reason. I question this accessibility argument about scientific evidence and public reason because the nature of the population-level epidemiological evidence about diet and health is that it often includes judgments that are based on arguable interpretations, framing incidence in terms of risk and prevention; thus the issue is more than one of potential accessibility of scientific evidence. Nevertheless, evaluation and consideration of the scientific evidence is of obvious practical importance in policy deliberation concerning policy related to what Rawls call “ordinary legislation.“ Even though public reason applied to healthy eating policy may not be as pertinent as it is for constitutional essentials and basic justice, and even though it is unlikely to result in a “correct outcome,“ invoking reasons based on political values and principles held in common has important value even in these deliberations about more ordinary questions. That value applies not to the specifics of the particular issue, but to the larger context for the particular policy being deliberated, as a potential contribution to an overlapping consensus that is stable for the right reasons. If this vision of political liberalism were achieved, then contentious debate about health eating policy and its scientific basis could occur within that context and be resolved within the basic political structure. Because public health and political liberalism have a common concern for a good at the population level, they have an underlying affinity. Healthy eating policies could be evaluated in two not-unrelated ways: based on their instrumental contribution to the good of the public body of citizens as population-level health, and according to their stabilizing contribution to an overlapping consensus among citizens. In this latter way a policy would contribute to a conditional integral common good a la Sulmasy, one that has the prospect of conditioning a political system, and by doing so create the conditions of the possibility of a constitutive integral common good that is constituted on the right reasons for allegiance to an overlapping consensus. To conclude with reference to HEPPP, public reason may play an important function with respect to the political common good, even as debates about the weight and meaning of scientific evidence from epidemiology play out in deliberation of ordinary legislation concerning healthy eating. (shrink)

The effects that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will have on society in the short- and long-term are inherently uncertain. For this reason, many governments are avoiding strict command and control regulations for this technology and instead rely on softer ethics-based approaches. The Russian approach to regulating AI is characterized by the prevalence of unenforceable ethical principles implemented via industry self-regulation. We analyze the emergence of the regulatory regime for AI in Russia to illustrate the limitations of this approach. (...) The article is based on 50 interviews with policymakers, representatives of AI companies, and academics in the country. The findings show that this regulatory regime was formed under the strong influence of Russian big tech companies, which saw an opportunity to avoid regulatory oversight by washing out concrete regulatory measures from the policy. This approach is part of a broader protectionist sanction-proofing strategy for the local IT sector designed by the government, which can be characterized by lifting regulatory barriers for local companies. Unenforceable ethics-based self-regulation is a _regulatory gift_ from the Russian government to the industry. This _gift_ was intentionally designed because the government thought that prioritizing local innovation over consumer protection would benefit the public. However, the _gift_ can also unintentionally undermine the public interest by providing an opportunity for _ethics washing_. (shrink)

Feminization in agriculture due to increased labour migration has directed the national plan toward gender-inclusive youth involvement in commercial agriculture in Nepal. To understand the willingness to pursue agriculture among such youth and gender-based differences in their opinion, a convergent parallel mixed method survey among remittance receivers from 231 households, was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire in the Parbat district of Nepal. The willingness to pursue agriculture and factors affecting the willingness were studied using t-tests, chi-square test, and spearman’s (...) correlation. A 5-point Likert-type scale was used to measure the difference in opinion and reasons behind the willingness to pursue agriculture among the gender. The majority of women responded unwilling to pursue agriculture and factors like gender, income and education level had a significant impact on the decision. The prioritized reason for pursuing agriculture and the primary choice of the enterprise were similar but preferences in government facilities and services were found different among the gender. (shrink)

In “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” John Rawls suggests an approach to a public conception of justice that eschews any dependence on metaphysical conceptions of justice in favor of a political conception of justice. This means that if there is a metaphysical conception of justice that actually obtains, then Rawls’ theory would not be sensitive to it. Rawls himself admitted in Political Liberalism that “the political conception does without the truth.” Similarly, in Law of Peoples, Rawls endorses a political (...) conception of justice to govern the society of peoples that is not concerned with truth, but instead concerned with being sufficiently neutral so as to avoid conflict with any reasonable comprehensive doctrines. The odd result is that this neutrality excludes any conception of truth at all. Therefore, in times of crisis that demand incisive decision making based on scientific, economic or moral considerations, public reason will stall because it can contain no coherent conception of truth. (shrink)

Surveillance programs supporting the management of One Health issues such as antibiotic resistance are complex systems in themselves. Designing ethical surveillance systems is thus a complex task (retroactive and iterative), yet one that is also complicated to implement and evaluate (e.g., sharing, collaboration, and governance). The governance of health surveillance requires attention to ethical concerns about data and knowledge (e.g., performance, trust, accountability, and transparency) and empowerment ethics, also referred to as a form of responsible self-governance. Ethics (...) in reflexive governance operates as a systematic critical-thinking procedure that aims to define its value: What are the “right” criteria to justify how to govern “good” actions for a “better” future? The objective is to lay the foundations for a methodological framework in empirical bioethics, the rudiments of which have been applied to a case study to building reflexive governance in One Health. This ongoing critical thinking process involves “mapping, framing, and shaping” the dynamics of interests and perspectives that could jeopardize a “better” future. This paper proposes to hybridize methods to combine insights from collective deliberation and expert evaluation through a reflexive governance functioning as a community-based action-ethics methodology. The intention is to empower individuals and associations in a dialogue with society, which operation is carried out using a case study approach on data sharing systems. We based our reasoning on a feasibility study conducted in Québec, Canada (2018–2021), envisioning an antibiotic use surveillance program in animal health for 2023. Using the adaptive cycle and governance techniques and perspectives, we synthesize an alternative governance model rooted in the value of empowerment. The framework, depicted as a new “research and design (R&D)” practice, is linking operation and innovation by bridging the gap between Reflexive, Evaluative, and Deliberative reasonings and by intellectualizing the management of democratizing critical thinking locally (collective ethics) by recognizing its context (social ethics). Drawing on the literature in One Health and sustainable development studies, this article describes how a communitarian and pragmatic approach can broaden the vision of feasibility studies to ease collaboration through public-private-academic partnerships. The result is a process that “reassembles” the One Health paradigm under the perspective of global bioethics to create bridges between the person and the ecosystem through pragmatic ethics. (shrink)

In contrast to the recent trend of taking external world skepticism as a narrow problem for a demanding conception of "objective" or "certain" knowledge about the world, my thesis offers a re-examination of the distinctively perceptual basis of the skeptical problem. On my view the skeptic challenges the very possibility of rationally justifying beliefs in so far as they are based on sense experience, a characterization that helps to explain the continuity into the modern period of the ancient skeptical (...) challenge to the pretensions of reason. What is newly radical in external world skepticism is the discovery of the inner realm of the mind, and hence, of inner states as a component of every sense experience. ;I argue that the skeptic relies upon a distinctive, intuitively compelling, conception of sense experience which I call the causal model of experience. This is the view that experience is constituted by self-standing subjective experiences and their external causes, where cause and effect are logically distinct existences. The causal model is not to be identified with a view of perception as epistemically mediated by a "veil of ideas", though it can lead one to embrace that doctrine. My aim is twofold: to understand the motivation for the skeptic's causal model of experience; and to show that, when thought through, this model can ultimately be shown to be incoherent. ;The causal model has its roots in 17th century scientific metaphysics and the idea that the world can be exhaustively explained in terms of mechanical interactions between primary-qualified corpuscles governed by mathematically describable laws. I argue that the perceptual relation is not a mere efficient causal relation and I show that the skeptic is in the incoherent position of wanting a "private" language to describe his subjective experiences despite insisting on conditions of autonomy that deprive his terms of the normativity that is a necessary condition of meaning. Thus I do not answer the skeptical problem so much as undercut the basis upon which it is posed in the first place. (shrink)

This study proposes an operational approach to a metaphorical framing analysis using large-scale data. We conducted a case analysis of how war metaphors are framed to address various societal issues in a corpus of public speeches by Hong Kong government officials. By investigating patterns of lexical choices under the source domain of WAR and the underlying reasons for the source-target domain mappings (i.e. Mapping Principles), we found that the target domain of social issues in Hong Kong is primarily conceptualized in (...) terms of a combat frame, and governmental issues are primarily talked about in terms of a protection frame, both of which are positively evaluated. Additionally, economic issues are primarily addressed in terms of a strategy frame, which is both positively and negatively evaluated. We show that analyzing the Mapping Principles of these conceptual metaphors captures the “selection” process of framing at the dimensions of frame frequency and frame sentiment, allowing for a principled way to propose a metaphorical framing analysis in corpora-based studies. The proposed approach enriches Critical Discourse Analysis studies of metaphorical framing and bridges the link between metaphor analysis at a conceptual level and framing analysis at a communication level. (shrink)

Decision-makers in governments, enterprises, businesses and agencies or individuals, typically, make decisions according to various regulations, guidelines and policies based on existing records stored in various databases, in particular, relational databases. To assist decision-makers, an expert system, encompasses interactive computer-based systems or subsystems to support the decision-making process. Typically, most expert systems are built on top of transaction systems, databases, and data models and restricted in decision-making to the analysis, processing and presenting data and information, and they do (...) not provide support for the normative layer. This paper will provide a solution to one specific problem that arises from this situation, namely the lack of tool/mechanism to demonstrate how an expert system is well-suited for supporting decision-making activities drawn from existing records and relevant legal requirements aligned existing records stored in various databases.We present a Rule-based reporting systems architecture, which is intended to integrate databases, in particular, relational databases, with a logic-based reasoner and rule engine to assist in decision-making or create reports according to legal norms. We argue that the resulting RuleRS provides an efficient and flexible solution to the problem at hand using defeasible inference. To this end, we have also conducted empirical evaluations of RuleRS performance. (shrink)

The activity of democratic deliberation is governed by the norm of public reason – namely, that reasons justifying public policy must both be pursuant of shared goods and be shareable by all reasonable discussants. Environmental policies based on controversial theories of value, as a consequence, are in danger of breaking the rule that would legitimate their enforcement.

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but these are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask them. These (...) scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than a socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

Michael S. Gazzaniga, a pioneer and world leader in cognitive neuroscience, has made an initial attempt to develop neuroethics into a brain-based philosophy of life that he hopes will replace the irrational religious and political belief-systems that still partly govern modern societies. This article critically examines Gazzaniga’s proposal and shows that his actual moral arguments have little to do with neuroscience. Instead, they are based on unexamined political, cultural and moral conceptions, narratives and values. A more promising way (...) of interpreting the belief-forming system of the brain is to say that we cannot avoid thinking in terms of wider frameworks and narratives that are socially embedded and historically developed; consequently, any moral discussion has to be in terms of these frameworks and narratives. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to build a Confucian conception of public reason for Confucian-influenced East Asian societies to adopt and tackle political and bioethical issues. The chapter first indicates that public reason is present at various levels of human collectives, namely, communitarian, national, and international. It concentrates on constructing a proper Confucian notion of public reason at the national level given that only the sovereign states are able to make effective public policy and laws to govern their people, (...) although such a Confucian notion can be shared by the peoples across East Asian countries and regions, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Then I lay out Rawls’ liberal conception of public reason and explicate why it is not suitable for an East Asian country like China to accept. This is followed by two sections addressing the two Confucian conceptions of public reason that have been proposed, respectively, by Joseph Chan and Sungmoon Kim. I indicate how each of them faces a dilemma that cannot be adequately resolved. In Sect. 4, I outline a new Confucian conception of public reason based on the view developed in my book Reconstructionist Confucianism, including a Confucian account of basic liberty, equality, and individual rights consistent with the central requirements of the Confucian virtues that are still vibrant in East Asian societies. The values of political justice under this Confucian conception integrate both Confucian virtues and basic rights. Finally, the chapter appeals to this conception to review the bioethical issue of medically assisted suicide and argues why it should not be legalized in East Asia according to this conception of public reason. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Food fortification and water fluoridation are two public health initiatives that involve the passive consumption of nutrients through food and water supplies. While ethical analyses of food fortification and water fluoridation have been done separately, none have been done together. In this paper, we will consider whether the similarities between food fortification and water fluoridation override their differences and thus what ethical conclusions can be cross-pollinated between the two interventions. This study does three things: first, we review the origin, reasoning (...) and mechanisms behind food fortification and water fluoridation. From there, we deduce the primary ethical dilemma that overshadows food fortification and water fluoridation – they both require a form of deception and are consumed passively without the need for informed consent. Finally, we look at various approaches ethicists have taken to understand the ethical issues surrounding the programs. Two key ethical models appear in this discussion: the justificatory approach and the stewardship model. Beyond these two frameworks, one ethical analysis deduces from the Nuremberg Code that water fluoridation is unethical based on the definition of consent. As recent scientific papers and the general public have started discussing and debating the passive consumption of various drugs via public water supplies, it is prudent that we revisit the ethics behind food fortification and water fluoridation programs; this will ultimately allow us to better navigate complex problems in nutritional ethics and passive delivery. (shrink)

Key to concerns about public involvement in technology governance is the concept of lay expertise, the idea that lay people possess some kind of special knowledge that neither trained experts in technology, ethics and social sciences nor professional politicians possess. There are at least four different meanings of "lay expert": (1) Lay people who are educated into quasi-experts on a particular issue or technology; (2) Lay people who turn themselves into experts in order to challenge scientific experts; (3) Lay (...) people with particular knowledge based on tradition and experience; (4) Lay people who represent an alternative perspective to expert views because they are non-experts. The challenge is that lay people are often ignorant in the relevant matters and wish to leave governance to experts. Still, there are normative reasons for lay engagement, either as stakeholders or as citizens in a deliberative democracy. According to the second approach, political decisions should be based on an inclusive open debate aimed at the better argument, providing lay people a crucial role in governance. In order to include lay people without making them hostage to experts, politicians or interest groups, we can engage them in focus group interviews which are analysed by social scientists and included in the interdisciplinary debate in journals and political forums. (shrink)

TheFederalist, written by in 1787-1788 in defense of the proposed constitution of the United States, endorses a fundamental principle of political legitimacy: namely, This essay argues that this principlemay be traced back to Plato. Part I of the essay seeks to show that Plato's Statesman offers a clearer understanding of the rule of reason than his more famous Republic, and it also indicates how this principle gave rise to the ideal of constitutionalism, which was adopted and reformulated by Aristotle, (...) Polybius, and Cicero, as well as moderns including Locke and Montesquieu. Part II argues that TheFederalist agrees with Plato when it argues that popular sovereignty must be tempered by the rule of reason. A proper distance should be maintained between the people and the actual exercise of power in order that political decisions be based on reason rather than passion. The people must therefore act through a federal system divided between national government and state governments, and these governments must themselves possess separated powers which control each other by means of checks and balances. Indeed, federalism itself may be viewed as a modern counterpart of Plato's which unites naturally disparate and opposed parts of the city-state into a concordant whole. In declaring, TheFederalist concedes that politics is the art of the possible. But statesmanship is not an exercise in pragmatism devoid of principles. Here shares Plato's vision of politics as a that is, an attempt to approximate the ideal of rational governance as far as possible in ordinary politics. (shrink)

This thesis takes up a rights-based perspective to discuss a number of issues related to the problem of permissible harm. It appeals to a person’s capacity to shape her life in accordance with her own ideas of the good to explain why her death can be bad for her, and why each of us should have primary say over what may be done to her. The thesis begins with an investigation of the badness of death for the person who (...) dies. If death is bad for us, this helps explain the wrongness of killing. The thesis defends the deprivation account—i.e. the idea that death is bad for us when and because it deprives us of good life—against two Epicurean challenges. It adds that death is also bad when and because it thwarts our agency. Next, the thesis deals with the logic of our moral rights to non-interference. It proposes a conception of rights according to which the stringency of our rights derives from and is justified by the rational aspect of our human nature. It argues that this conception of moral rights solves the paradox of deontology. While our rights to non-interference are stringent, they are not absolute. The thesis considers two possible exceptions to the general rule that it is impermissible to harm an innocent person against her consent. First, using an actual case from WWII, it investigates the circumstances under which a government may expose some parts of its population to an increased risk of harm in order to decrease the risk to others. Second, it considers the permissibility of self-defence against an innocent threat. It argues that the potential victim of an innocent threat has a justice-based reason to treat her own interests as on a par with those of the threat. (shrink)

Ideals of democratic participation and rational self-government have long informed modern political theory. As a recent elaboration of these ideals, the concept of deliberative democracy is based on the principle that legitimate democracy issues from the public deliberation of citizens. This remarkably fruitful concept has spawned investigations along a number of lines. Areas of inquiry include the nature and value of deliberation, the feasibility and desirability of consensus on contentious issues, the implications of institutional complexity and cultural diversity for (...) democratic decision making, and the significance of voting and majority rule in deliberative arrangements.The anthology opens with four key essays--by Jon Elster, Jürgen Habermas, Joshua Cohen, and John Rawls--that helped establish the current inquiry into deliberative models of democracy. The nine essays that follow represent the latest efforts of leading democratic theorists to tackle various problems of deliberative democracy. All the contributions address tensions that arise between reason and politics in a democracy inspired by the ideal of achieving reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens. Although the authors approach the topic of deliberation from different perspectives, they all aim to provide a theoretical basis for a more robust democratic practice.Contributors : James Bohman, Thomas Christiano, Joshua Cohen, Jon Elster, David Estlund, Gerald F. Gaus, Jürgen Habermas, James Johnson, Jack Knight, Frank I. Michelman, John Rawls, Henry S. Richardson, Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

My aim is to explain the relation of ‘right reason’ to Ockham's voluntarism by analysing what Ockham takes individual liberty to mean and how men come to know of it. The Christian law of liberty reveals what individuals come to know by other means — from their own experiences and reason, about certain rights which can never be alienated either to Church or ‘state’. It is argued that his distinctive and later political positions can be supported by positions (...) maintained in his earlier logical, psychological and philosophical writings from his Oxford period. He explains the three sources of our knowledge as experience, natural reason and infallible scriptural authority. Based on his explanation of how Scripture is to be interpreted and linking this to his epistemology which starts with intuitive cognition, it is argued that Ockham's understanding of the separate roles of ‘state’ and Church can be defended. From his earlier positions can also be derived his understanding of corporation theory, his defence of individual members of the community's consent to the constitution of government and the limits on absolute government, no matter what its constitutional form. Because right reason always operates in social contexts with their respective, prevalent knowledge, Ockham has some startling things to say about men's access to the truth. (shrink)

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but there are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask such questions. (...) These scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

In daily life, perceivers often need to predict and interpret the behavior of group agents, such as corporations and governments. Although research has investigated how perceivers reason about individual members of particular groups, less is known about how perceivers reason about group agents themselves. The present studies investigate how perceivers understand group agents by investigating the extent to which understanding the ‘mind’ of the group as a whole shares important properties and processes with understanding the minds of individuals. (...) Experiment 1 demonstrates that perceivers are sometimes willing to attribute a mental state to a group as a whole even when they are not willing to attribute that mental state to any of the individual members of the group, suggesting that perceivers can reason about the beliefs and desires of group agents over and above those of their individual members. Experiment 2 demonstrates that the degree of activation in brain regions associated with attributing mental states to individuals—i.e., brain regions associated with mentalizing or theory-of-mind, including the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and precuneus—does not distinguish individual from group targets, either when reading statements about those targets' mental states (directed) or when attributing mental states implicitly in order to predict their behavior (spontaneous). Together, these results help to illuminate the processes that support understanding group agents themselves. (shrink)

Over Plato's Academy in ancient Athens, it is said, hung a sign: "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." Plato thought no one could do philosophy without also doing mathematics. In The Waltz of Reason, mathematician and philosopher Karl Sigmund shows us why. Charting an epic story spanning millennia and continents, Sigmund shows that philosophy and mathematics are inextricably intertwined, mutual partners in a reeling search for truth. Beginning with-appropriately enough-geometry, Sigmund explores the power and beauty of numbers (...) and logic, and then shows how those ideas laid the ground work for everything from the theory of a fair election, to modern conceptions of governance, cooperation, morality, and even of reason itself. Did you know, for example, that John Locke, author of some of the most important texts in the Western theory of government, was motivated in his work by his study of geometry? Or, that Locke was actually terrible at geometry, a seventeenth-century mathematical laughingstock? He was, a fact that might want us to think again about the logic of his life's work. And Locke wasn't the only one! Sigmund reveals how many of our modern ideas about what is true and what is reasonable are based on similarly shaky grounds. The economists and other thinkers who promulgated game theory, classical economics, and behavioral economics-the basis of so much in modern life-were not necessarily good at either math or philosophy, or both. The result is a remarkable book: accessible, funny, and wise, it tells an engrossing history of ideas that spins as dizzyingly and beautifully as a ballroom full of expert dancers. But it doesn't just celebrate the past. Instead, by making all these great ideas accessible to all, The Waltz of Reason empowers as it entertains, giving each of us the tools to ask, what do we know, how do we know it, and what do we want to do, with all these ideas? (shrink)

As a recent special report in the Hastings Center Report demonstrates, many bioethicists are rethinking the way we regulate both biomedical research and clinical practice, as well as the sharp boundary that the field has assumed can and should exist between them. Such a rethinking is long overdue. There is surely a meaningful normative distinction between activities whose expected risk‐benefit profile is and is not “reasonable” for participants (to echo the language in the Common Rule—the core set of human research (...) guidelines found in many federal regulations). But neither the research‐practice distinction nor the criteria underlying it—the intention of the actor, whether the activity is “systematic,” and whether its results are “generalizable”—closely track good and bad outcomes for research participants and patients or justify either the bureaucratic, paternalistic licensing system that governs human subjects research or the comparatively lax governance of medical practice. The specious distinction between research and practice is especially ripe for dismantling in light of the embarrassing fact that evidence‐based medicine remains more aspiration than reality. (shrink)