Utilitarians, maximinners, prioritarians, and sufficientarians each provide examples of situations demonstrating, often apparently compellingly, that a sensible ethical observer must adopt their view and reject the others. I argue, to the contrary, that an attractive ethic is eclectic or pluralistic, in the sense of coinciding with these apparently different views in different regions of the space of social states. I reject the view that an appealing ethic can be universally maximin, prioritarian, or utilitarian. Key Words: distributive justice • utilitarianism (...) • maximin • sufficiency • priority. (shrink)

The ethics of corruption cannot be analysed without simultaneously addressing the legitimacy of public office or entrusted power. This paper introduces a concept of core unethical corruption, defined as violations of distributed ethical obligations for private gain. In other words, it is suggested that what is ethically wrong with corruption is that it entails the violation of certain obligations attributed to agents. By explicitly relating corruption to obligations, this approach helps make ethical sense of the concepts of public office (...) or entrusted power, attending to the question of their legitimacy. Since distributed obligations are implied by a wide range of ethical theories, the concept of core unethical corruption also reflects a (partial) overlapping consensus on the ethics of corruption. (shrink)

In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer articulates an approach to distributive ethics based on complex equality that is closely attentive to the specific ways particular communities value goods. A renewed interest in place and geography among practitioners and theoreticians is giving rise to questions that are beyond the scope of Walzer's system and reveal abstractions at the geographic level that undercut his overall approach. This internal inconsistency weakens, but does not ultimately discount, Walzer's overall system of distributive (...) ethics. When calibrated to allow for geographic particularity, Walzer's approach becomes even more useful to critique a range of contemporary development movements. (shrink)

This paper addresses the just distribution of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and sets forth an ethical framework that prioritises frontline and essential workers, people at high risk of severe disease or death, and people at high risk of infection. Section I makes the case that vaccine distribution should occur at a global level in order to accelerate development and fair, efficient vaccine allocation. Section II puts forth ethical values to guide vaccine distribution including helping people with the greatest need, (...) reducing health disparity, saving the most lives and promoting narrow social utility. It also responds to objections which claim that earlier years have more value than later years. Section III puts forth a practical ethical framework to aid decision-makers and compares it with alternatives. (shrink)

In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the fast and equitable distribution of effective vaccines worldwide is one of the challenges faced by international institutions in charge, as global equity in vaccine supply has not yet been achieved. Our paper explains the current state of ethical research on equity in global COVID-19 vaccine allocation, focusing on the COVAX Facility established by the WHO, acting as the global vaccine distributor. The article presents a detailed analysis of the first year of (...) COVAX allocation in 2021 identifying problematic aspects of its allocation framework regarding the implementation of COVAX’s fundamental allocation principles. We argue that the COVAX Facility has developed a proper concept to deal with global vaccine allocation—but to address uncovered defaults, we introduce the ‘Prioritized Distribution of Equal Shares’ model—a both ethical and practically feasible alternative allocation framework to protect the value of human lives in both high- and low-income countries through fair and fast global vaccine distribution in health emergencies. Nonetheless, we argue that the COVAX Facility remains the main organization to provide equitable access to vaccines. Yet, the global community has to consider further aspects such as patent protection, vaccine production and the lack of power of global structures to address the inequities that have arisen. Since new wars and further crises have arisen, a shift in public global attention endangers the processing of COVID-19-related issues. That is why now more than ever extensive efforts to achieve vaccine equity are needed. (shrink)

This article defends an ethics of care approach to global justice, which begins with an empirically informed account of injustices resulting from the workings and effects of contemporary neo-liberalism and hegemonic masculinities. Dominant distributive approaches to global justice see the unequal distribution of resources or ?primary goods? as the basic source of injustice. Crucially, however, most of these liberal theories do not challenge the basic structural and ideational ?frames? that govern the global political economy. Instead, they seek to (...) ?correct? unjust patterns of distribution according to an ideal theory. Subjects in these theories are generally understood as abstract, autonomous and impartial; this is in contrast to an ethics of care, which starts with an ontology of the subject as embodied, vulnerable and relational. The first part of this article explores the role and nature of theory in relation to the task of considering injustice on a global scale and offers a critique of the narrow focus in traditional theories of justice on the distribution of ?primary goods?. The second part considers the effects of neo-liberal globalization and hegemonic masculinities on global working families in order to illustrate the relationship between care and global justice. The final section sketches out a care-ethics approach to global injustice, focusing on three features: first, care as a relational approach; second, the focus in care ethics on intersecting structures of injustice; and third, care as a multi-scalar approach to global injustice. (shrink)

To believe that every single scientist ought to be individually engaged in ethical thinking in order for science to be responsible at a collective level may be too demanding, if not plainly unrealistic. In fact, ethical labor is typically distributed across different kinds of scientists within the scientific community. Based on the empirical data collected within the Horizon 2020 ‘RRI-Practice’ project, we propose a classification of the members of the scientific community depending on their engagement in this collective activity. Our (...) classification offers, on the one hand, a model of how the ethical aspects of science are taken into consideration by scientists and, on the other, some indications on how to institutionalize ethics in science. (shrink)

In situations with limited medical resources, be they personnel, equipment, or time, clinicians use “triage” to determine which patients receive treatment. What type of treatment a patient receives depends on the triage “lottery” rules in place. Although these rules for sorting patients and distributing resources are standardized for most situations, they must be somewhat altered after overwhelming, nonstandard disasters.

Technology moves us to a better world. We contend that through technology people can simplify and solve moral tasks when they are in presence of incomplete information and possess a diminished capacity to act morally. Many external things, usually inert from the moral point of view, can be transformed into the so-called moral mediators. Hence, not all of the moral tools are inside the head, many of them are shared and distributed in “external” objects and structures which function as ethical (...) devices. (shrink)

Organizational identification has increasingly attracted scholarly attention as a key factor in understanding organizational processes and in fostering efficient human resource management. Available evidence shows that organizational ethical climate crucially predicts OI, a key determinant of both employees’ attitudes and behaviors. In the present paper, we examined the relationship between two specific ethical climates, distributed leadership, and employees’ attitudes and behaviors, incorporating OI as a core underlying mechanism driving these relationships. Three hundred and forty-two employees filled out questionnaires to examine (...) ethical climate, DL, OI, and a series of measures concerning attitudes and behaviors toward the organization. Structural equation modeling confirmed that a perception of an ethical climate of friendship fostered OI, which elicited higher commitment, perceived trust and recommendation, and lower turnover intention. Perception of DL further contributed to increasing OI. Our findings suggest that HR practices should carefully consider employee perceptions of a collectivistic ethical climate, together with perceptions of DL, as key determinants of positive organizational outcomes. We discuss results in light of the social identity approach and present practical implications for HR management. (shrink)

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of human (...) beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker. (shrink)

The symbolism introduced earlier provides a convenient vehicle for examining the status and consistency of Aristotle's three diverse justifications and for explaining how he means to avoid Protagorean relativism without embracing Platonic absolutism. When the variables ‘ x ’ and ‘ y ’ are allowed to range over the groups of free men in a given polis as well as over individual free men, the formula for the Aristotelian conception of justice expresses the major premiss of Aristotle's three justifications: (1) (...) (∀ x )(∀ y ) (P(x)·W(x)/P(y)·W(y)=V(T(x))/V(T(y)))Democracy is justified by adding a minor premiss to the effect that as a group the many ( m ) are superior (>) in virtue and wealth to the few best men ( f ): 85 (2 d ) (P(m) · W(m)) > (P(f) · W(f)) (3 d ) V(T(m))>V(T(f))Absolute kingship is justified when a godlike man ( g ) appears in a polis who is incommensurably superior (≫) in virtue and wealth to all the remaining free men ( r ): (2 k ) (P(g) · W(g)) ≫ (P(r) · W(r)) (3 k ) V(T(g)) ≫ V(T(r))True aristocracy requires a more complex justification, which was symbolized in Section 4. These justifications are compatible with each other since they apply to different situations. The polises where democracy and true aristocracy are justified contain no godlike men, and the polis in which democracy is justified differs from that in which true aristocracy is justified in containing a large group of free men who individually have little virtue ( Pol. III.11.1281b23-25, 1282a25-26). Each of the justifications is a valid deductive argument. Aristotle affirms the major premiss they share on the basis of a twofold appeal to nature. The principle of distributive justice, the concept as distinguished from the various conceptions of distributive justice, is itself according to nature ( Pol. VII.3.1325b7-10) and so too is one particular standard of worth, the standard of the best polis. Consequently, the question of the status of these three justifications, whether they are purely hypothetical or not, is a question about the minor premiss or premisses of each. In the case of the democratic premiss Aristotle's answer is straightforward: it is sometimes but not always true ( Pol. III.11.1281bl5-21). Hence the justification of democracy is not purely hypothetical. Nor is the justification of absolute kingship. The man who is “like a god among men” ( Pol. III.13.1284a10-11) would be a man of heroic virtue (see VII.14.1332bl6-27); and such a man, Aristotle says, is “rare” ( σπávιoη ) (not nonexistent) ( E.N. VII.1.1145a27-28). The minor premisses of the aristocratic argument describe a situation where all of the free men in a given polis have sufficient wealth for the exercise of the moral and intellectual virtues and where all of the older free men of the polis are men of practical wisdom. In the Politics Aristotle makes only the modest claim that such a situation is possible: It is not possible for the best constitution to come into being without appropriate equipment [that is, the appropriate quality and quantity of territory and of citizens and noncitizens]. Hence one must presuppose many things as one would wish them to be, though none of them must be impossible ( Pol. VII.4.1325b37-38; see also II.6.1265al7-18). But Aristotle appears to subscribe to the principle that every possibility is realized at some moment of time ( Top. 11.11.115bl7-18, Met. Θ.4.1047b3-6, N.2.1088b23-25). This principle together with the claim that the situation described is possible entails that the situation sometimes occurs. Thus even Aristotle's justification of true aristocracy is not purely hypothetical. The final question is Aristotle's way of avoiding Protagorean relativism without embracing Platonic absolutism. The relativist, along with everyone else ( E.N. V.3.1131a13-14, Pol. III.12.1282bl8), can accept the principle of distributive justice: Q(x)/Q(y) = V(T(x))/V(T(y)) And he can concede that particular instances of this principle, particular conceptions of justice, accurately describe the modes of distributing political authority that appear just to particular polises and to particular philosophers. What he denies is that there is any basis for ranking these various conceptions of justice or for singling one out as the best (Plato, Theaet. 172A-B). Aristotle, following in Plato's track ( Laws X.888D7-890D8), maintains against the relativist that nature provides such a basis. But he departs from Plato in his conception of nature. For Plato “the just by nature” ( τó ρυσει δίκ↑oν }) ( Rep. VI.501B2) is the Form of justice, an incorporeal entity ( Phdo. 65D4-5, Soph. 246B8) that exists beyond time and space ( Tim. 37C6-38C3, 51E6-52B2), whereas for Aristotle the sensible world is the realm of nature ( Met. A.1.1069a30-b2). Thus in appealing to nature Aristotle does not appeal to a transcendent standard. Nor does he appeal to his main criterion of the natural, namely, happening always or for the most part. Aristotle's theory of justice is anchored to nature by means of the polis described in Politics VII and VIII, and he regards this polis as natural because it fosters the true end of human life and because its social and political structure reflects the natural hierarchy of human beings and the natural stages of life. Thus the nature that Aristotle's theory of justice is ultimately founded on is human nature. (shrink)

Concern with material equality as the central form of distributive justice is a very modern idea. Distributive justice for Aristotle and many other writers for millennia after him was a matter of distributing what each ought to get from merit or desert in some sense. Many, such as Hume, thought material equality a pernicious idea. In the medieval village life of Bodo, villagers knew enough about each other to govern relations through norms, including, when necessary, a norm of (...) charity. In more complex modern societies, economic destitution cannot so well be handled by individual charity, but now it can be handled by states. Hence, we begin to conceive of the idea of distributive justice as driven essentially by concern for material equality. The difference in state capacities is largely epistemological: states today can know much more about their citizens. (shrink)

Compensation has received a great deal of attention from social scientists. Characteristically, they have been concerned with the causes and effects of various compensation schemes. By contrast, few theorists have addressed the normative aspects of compensation. An exception is Elaine Sternberg, who offers in Just Business a comprehensive theory of compensation ethics. This paper critically examines her theory, and argues that the justification she gives for it fails. Its failure is instructive, however. The main argument Sternberg gives for her (...) theory points in the direction of a different one. This, in turns, helps us to see what a justification of Sternberg’s theory must look like. While focused on Sternberg, this paper is of general interest. It identifies what are likely to be important positionsand arguments in debates about compensation ethics, and thus provides a jumping-off point for further research in this neglected area. (shrink)

Authorship is commonly used as the basis for the measurement of research productivity. It influences career progression and rewards, making it a valued commodity in a competitive scientific environment. To better understand authorship practices amongst collaborative teams, this study surveyed authors on collaborative journal articles published between 2011 and 2015. Of the 8364 respondents, 1408 responded to the final open-ended question, which solicited additional comments or remarks regarding the fair distribution of authorship in research teams. This paper presents the analysis (...) of these comments, categorized into four main themes: (1) disagreements, (2) questionable behavior, (3) external influences regarding authorship, and (4) values promoted by researchers. Results suggest that some respondents find ways to effectively manage disagreements in a collegial fashion. Conversely, others explain how distribution of authorship can become a “blood sport” or a “horror story” which can negatively affect researchers’ wellbeing, scientific productivity and integrity. Researchers fear authorship discussions and often try to avoid openly discussing the situation which can strain team interactions. Unethical conduct is more likely to result from deceit, favoritism, and questionable mentorship and may become more egregious when there is constant bullying and discrimination. Although values of collegiality, transparency and fairness were promoted by researchers, rank and need for success often overpowered ethical decision-making. This research provides new insight into contextual specificities related to fair authorship distribution that can be instrumental in developing applicable training tools to identify, prevent, and mitigate authorship disagreement. (shrink)

The global health crisis in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) reveals a deep global health inequity that lies at the heart of global justice concerns. Mirroring the HIV/AIDS epidemic, NCDs bring into stark relief once more the human consequences of trade policies that reinforce global inequities in treatment access. Recognising distributive justice issues in access to medicines for their populations, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members confirmed the primacy of access to medicines for all in trade and public health in the landmark (...) Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health of 2001. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that in addition to the generally accepted aim of reducing traffic-related injuries and deaths as much as possible, a principle of fairness in the distribution of risk should inform our thinking about how firms that produce autonomous vehicles ought to program them to respond in conflict situations involving human-driven vehicles. This principle, I claim, rules out programming autonomous vehicles to systematically prioritize the interests of their occupants over those of the occupants of other vehicles, including (...) human-driven vehicles. Because there is reason to think that most consumers would prefer to purchase autonomous vehicles that do systematically prioritize the interests of occupants over those of others, if my argument is correct it generates a substantial ethical restriction on firms’ efforts to gain market share in the initial stages of the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto the road. (shrink)

In this landmark volume, Samuel Hollander presents a fresh and compelling history of moral philosophy from Locke to John Stuart Mill, showing that a ‘moral sense’ can actually be considered compatible with utilitarianism. The book also explores the link between utilitarianism and distributive justice. Hollander engages in close textual exegesis of the works relating to individual authors, while never losing sight of the intellectual relationships between them. Tying together the greatest of the British moral philosophers, this volume reveals an (...) unexpected unity of eighteenth and nineteenth century ethical doctrine at both the individual and social level. Essential reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, political economy, history of ethics, history of political thought and intellectual history. -/- Samuel Hollander is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Canada, and an Officer in the Order of Canada. (shrink)

The manner in which limited vaccines are distributed during a pandemic is an ethical issue. The utility principle has been used to argue priority be given to certain individuals based on factors such as the epidemiology of the spread of disease and maintaining the functioning of society. The equity principle has been used to encourage fair practices that account for the economic and social costs of all decisions made. We argue that both principles are met through priority vaccination of homeless (...) individuals, as this strategy protects a medically vulnerable population while reducing the chances of transmission to others as they move through populated urban spaces. We begin by reviewing debates around ethical vaccine distribution. We then argue the homeless are a medically high-risk population who may contribute to the spread of disease through their mobility. As immunization rates are generally lower among the homeless and many do not access mainstream health care, we argue that community vaccine clinics must be used to reach these individuals. We provide support by analyzing Toronto Public Health’s operation of vaccine clinics in shelters and drop-in centres during pH1N1 and conclude that this strategy is effective for immunizing homeless individuals, bringing together the equity and utility principles. (shrink)

In the first part of this article, we considered how Thandi, a 15-year-old girl, was treated when taken by her mother to their GP, Dr Randera. Dr Randera notified them that Thandi was pregnant, HIV positive, and had syphilis and herpes. Dr Randera also informed them that there was a substantial risk that the baby would be born HIV positive. Both Thandi and her mother wanted an abortion. However, Dr Randera, who was morally opposed to abortions, refused to provide the (...) service and did not refer Thandi to another doctor who would perform the abortion.The saga continues:. (shrink)

Since the beginning of UN peace operations, there has been discussion as to exactly how they should be carried out. Thus far, a just theory of UN peacekeeping operations has not yet been formed, in the way a Theory of Just War for waging war or a theory of police ethics for law enforcement in a peace context had been formed. The article discusses what a justified risk distribution between UN peacekeepers and local civilians should be. One of the (...) points of criticism of UN peacekeeping missions is the lack of protection of the local population in the course of an escalating situation. Familiar examples are the traumas of Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995). Discussing differences between UN peacekeeping missions, warfare, and law enforcement, it appears that peacekeepers have more in common with law enforcers than with combatants during wartime. Through the method of analogy and by applying some typically military ethics principles, the moral status of the UN peacekeepers is analyzed. Finally, a risk distribution analysis between UN peacekeepers and the local population is carried out, by offering a concise overview by philosophers of arguments for and against taking fewer risks by peacekeepers. The analysis reveals important deontological and consequentialist arguments. Taking also into consideration that transferring more risk to the peacekeeping troops alone does not mandatory lead to less exposure to risk of the vulnerable and innocent local civilians, it can be concluded that a more practical, virtuous, responsible risk calculation will be necessary at that point to find the best risk distribution. (shrink)

This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several “calibration dilemmas,” in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. (...) Finally, we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources. (shrink)

The broad range of the managements of the natural resources in Tanzania has resulted into the creation of complex organizations and systems which has led to the exploitation of the workers depending on these resources for livelihood. These are various groups of actors such as insurgents’ groups, minority groups, and corrupt democratically elected leaders. Obviously, these leads to internal mistrust and commotion within a state rendered in calmness and contrary to peaceful coexistence. As a researcher the bottom line of these (...) constrains needs holistic education and realization to combat the eminent crisis at hand. Each person has a role to play for the peaceful living in a society with great goals and opportunities. The dignity and integrity of each person is a very important and at stake. My research analysis indicates how Kantian ethics will tackle the above mentioned constrains for the peaceful coexistence in the society. For Kant, every human being has a right and obligation for every moral action. In any democratic society where laws and statutes are adhered to the issues of natural resources must be accounted for with the aim of common good. Using Immanuel Kant’s dictum on categorical imperative, these transformations in the management of the natural resources in Tanzania can be effectively be achieved. (shrink)

North America is in the grips of an epidemic of opioid-related poisonings. Overdose education and naloxone distribution programmes emerged as an option for structurally vulnerable populations who could not or would not access mainstream emergency medical services in the event of an overdose. These task shifting programmes utilize lay persons to deliver opioid resuscitation in the context of longstanding stigmatization and marginalization from mainstream healthcare services. OEND programmes exist at the intersection of harm reduction and emergency services. One goal of (...) OEND programmes is to help redress the health-related inequities common among people who use drugs, which include minimizing the gap between people who use drugs and the formal healthcare system. However, if this goal is not achieved these inequities may be entrenched. In this article, we consider the ethical promises and perils associated with OEND as task shifting. We argue that public health practitioners must consider the ethical aspects of task shifting programmes that may inadvertently harm already structurally vulnerable populations. We believe that even if OEND programmes reduce opioid-related deaths, we nevertheless question if, by virtue of its existence, OEND programmes might also unintentionally disenfranchise structurally vulnerable populations from comprehensive healthcare services, including mainstream emergency care. (shrink)

A natural view in distributive ethics is that everyone's interests matter, but the interests of the relatively worse off matter more than the interests of the relatively better off. I provide a new argument for this view. The argument takes as its starting point the proposal, due to Harsanyi and Rawls, that facts about distributive ethics are discerned from individual preferences in the "original position." I draw on recent work in decision theory, along with an intuitive (...) principle about risk-taking, to derive the view. (shrink)

In any academic discipline, published articles in respective journals represent "production units" of scientific knowledge, and bibliometric distributions reflect the patterns in such outputs across authors or "producers." Closely following the analysis approach used for similar studies in the economics and finance literature, we present the first study to examine whether there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric patterns of research productivity in the business ethics literature. Our results present strong evidence that there indeed exists a distinct empirical (...) regularity. It is the so-called Generalized Lotka's Law of scientific productivity pattern: the number of authors publishing ç papers is about Í /n c of those publishing one paper. We discuss the likely processes that underlie the productivity pattern postulated by the Generalized Lotka's Law. We find that the value of the exponent is equal to about 2.6 for the comprehensive bibliometric data across the two leading business ethics journals. The observed research productivity pattern in the business ethics area, a relatively young discipline, is interestingly very consistent with those found in much older, related business disciplines like economics, accounting, and finance. We discuss the general implications of our findings. (shrink)

The phenomenon of distributed knowledge is well-known in epistemic logic. In this paper, a similar phenomenon in ethics, somewhat neglected so far, is investigated, namely distributed morality. The article explains the nature of distributed morality, as a feature of moral agency, and explores the implications of its occurrence in advanced information societies. In the course of the analysis, the concept of infraethics is introduced, in order to refer to the ensemble of moral enablers, which, although morally neutral per se, (...) can significantly facilitate or hinder both positive and negative moral behaviours. (shrink)

The moral philosopher Dan Brock has argued that equality of health outcomes “even if achievable” is problematic as a goal in its own right—because it is open to the levelling down objection. The levelling down objection to egalitarianism has received surprisingly little attention in the bioethics literature on distribution of health and healthcare and deserves more attention. This paper discusses and accepts an example given by Brock showing that prioritarianism and egalitarianism may judge distributions of health outcomes differently. We should (...) accept that levelling down is never a good thing, all things considered, but that equality often is. By discussing variants of Brock’s example, it is demonstrated that if equality, prioritarianism and aggregation are combined, as in a population-wide summary measure of health, such as the health achievement index, this combined set of principles is not open to levelling down. The paper suggests—although a more thorough investigation of the properties of the achievement index is needed—that this measure is always sensitive to inequality in health, is always sensitive to average health, can assign priority to those with lowest health outcomes and is not sensitive to levelling down. Levelling down is not an embarrassment for egalitarians if they adopt a pluralist theory that integrates fairness with goodness. Equality is not the only value egalitarians promote. But equality is so important that we should not reject it. (shrink)

What is the appropriate criterion to use for distributive justice? Is it efficiency, need, contribution, entitlement, equality, effort, or ability? Globalization and Economic Ethics maintains that far from being rival principles of distributive justice, efficiency and need satisfaction are, in fact, complementary norms in our emerging knowledge economy. After all, human capital plays the central role in effecting and sustaining long-term efficiency in the Digital Age. This book explores the vital link between human capital formation and allocative (...) efficiency using the properties of the market and the knowledge economy as analytical tools. (shrink)

The article examines the role of ethnic favoritism in maldistribution of national resources in Kenya and discusses two broad proposals for attacking such corruption. Evidence drawn from research in Kenya disproves the view of Chabal and Daloz, who argue that Africans prefer to distribute goods according to ethnic ties, and shows that frustration with the lack of alternatives to such a system, rather than enthusiasm for it, drives cooperation with corrupt maldistribution. One solution to the problem is to decentralize government (...) so that resources are retained locally. A second solution is to attack the culture of appropriation and push for a fair evaluation of needs and the equitable distribution of national resources to where they are needed most. Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, the article proposes a modified federalism where government is small enough to enlist the help and support of locals but powerful enough to provide funds to impoverished sectors of the country. (shrink)

This paper considers the distribution of responsibility for prevention of negative social or ecological effects of production and consumption. Responsibility is related to ability and ability depends on welfare. An increase in competition between Western companies depresses their profitability, but increases the welfare of Western consumers and,hence, their ability to acknowledge social values. Therefore, an increase in competition on consumer markets shifts the balance in responsibility from companies to consumers to prevent negative external effects from production and consumption patterns. An (...) increase in competition on investor markets will shift the balance in an opposite direction. (shrink)

We begin with our reasons for seeking to bring Kant to bear on contemporary information and computing ethics (ICE). We highlight what each contributor to this special issue draws from Kant and then applies to contemporary matters in ICE. We conclude with a summary of what these chapters individually and collectively tell us about Kant’s continuing relevance to these contemporary matters – specifically, with regard to the issues of building trust online and regulating the Internet; how far discourse contributing (...) to deliberative democracy online may include storytelling and appeals to the emotions; and whether or not search engine algorithms should be made public. We further highlight how certain chapters – especially as they incorporate more recent philosophical traditions such as phenomenology and cognitive psychology – develop a Kantian approach (or at least one that is both inspired by while simultaneously transforming Kant) to ethical issues in ICE, including the ethical implications of the on-going blurring of the border between the real and the virtual; designing software in light of distributed ethical responsibility; and trust-building in e-Science collaborations. (shrink)

It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to (...) recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in virtue of that which we distribute and equalize that our policy formulations treat us as politically “counting” or “mattering” for purposes of social aggregation and maximization. To attend systematically to this form of inter-translatability, with a view in particular to that which maximization formulations latently prescribe that we distribute and equalize, might be called “putting distribution first.” It is explicitly to recognize the fact that all law and policy are implicitly as equalizing and citizen-defining as they are aggregative and maximizing, and to trace the many salient consequences that stem from this fact. It is likewise to recognize that all law and policy treat us as equals in some respects and as non-equals in other respects. Putting distribution first by attending explicitly to these “respects” yields greater transparency about how well or poorly our laws and policies manage to identify, count, and treat us as equals in the right respects. This Article works to lay out with care how to put distribution first in normative legal and policy analysis. The payoffs include both a workable method by which to test proposed maximization norms systematically for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a workable normative touchstone for legal and policy analysis. Indeed, the Article concludes, much — though not yet quite all — of our law can illuminatingly be interpreted as giving inchoate expression to just such an ethic. (shrink)

Ethical issues relating to the use of the injectable contraceptive in developed and developing countries alike involve public policy decisions concerning both criteria for testing a new drug and individual choices about using a specific form of contraception approved for national distribution. Drug testing consists of an important but still evolving set of procedures. Depo-Provera is not qualitatively different from any other drug and some unpredictable risks are inevitable, even after extensive animal experiments and clinical trials. In assessing the risks (...) and benefits of Depo-Provera use, epidemiological data from large-scale human use is now beginning to become more important than data from animal experiments and clinical trials. The consumer's best interest is central to any ethically responsible system of drug distribution. Systems of informed choice are needed, even in societies where illiteracy remains common and medical services are weak. In the case of a contraceptive, the risks of non-use leading to unintended pregnancy, which can result in high mortality, are relevant as well as the side-effects of the method. An attempt, therefore, is made here to categorise those issues which are universal and those which are country-specific. (shrink)

The article outlines the distributive demands of relational equality in the form of a dynamic corridor of legitimate distributive inequality. It does so by complementing the already widely accepted sufficientarian floor with a limitarian ceiling, leading, in a first step, to a "corridor" of limited distributive inequality as a necessary condition for relational equality. This corridor alone, however, only provides necessary distributive conditions for relational equality and still allows for degrees of distributive inequality that would (...) risk undermining egalitarian relations. Thus, in a second step, intra-corridor distributive inequalities must be regulated by two further constraints: a (context- dependent) ratio between the best- and worst-off, and a demand for equality of opportunity so that inequalities result from people’s responsible choices. This set of demands spells out the distributive conditions that are not only necessary, but sufficient to provide a sound distributive basis for relational equality. After presenting this view, the article defends it against several objections. (shrink)

The increasing implementation of and reliance on machine-learning (ML) algorithms to perform tasks, deliver services and make decisions in health and healthcare have made the need for fairness in ML, and more specifically in healthcare ML algorithms (HMLA), a very important and urgent task. However, while the debate on fairness in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) and in HMLA has grown significantly over the last decade, the very concept of fairness as an ethical value has not yet been (...) sufficiently explored. Our paper aims to fill this gap and address the AI ethics principle of fairness from a conceptual standpoint, drawing insights from accounts of fairness elaborated in moral philosophy and using them to conceptualise fairness as an ethical value and to redefine fairness in HMLA accordingly. To achieve our goal, following a first section aimed at clarifying the background, methodology and structure of the paper, in the second section, we provide an overview of the discussion of the AI ethics principle of fairness in HMLA and show that the concept of fairness underlying this debate is framed in purely distributive terms and overlaps with non-discrimination, which is defined in turn as the absence of biases. After showing that this framing is inadequate, in the third section, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness and argue that fairness ought to be conceived of as an ethical value. Following a clarification of the relationship between fairness and non-discrimination, we show that the two do not overlap and that fairness requires much more than just non-discrimination. Moreover, we highlight that fairness not only has a distributive but also a socio-relational dimension. Finally, we pinpoint the constitutive components of fairness. In doing so, we base our arguments on a renewed reflection on the concept of respect, which goes beyond the idea of equal respect to include respect for individual persons. In the fourth section, we analyse the implications of our conceptual redefinition of fairness as an ethical value in the discussion of fairness in HMLA. Here, we claim that fairness requires more than non-discrimination and the absence of biases as well as more than just distribution; it needs to ensure that HMLA respects persons both as persons and as particular individuals. Finally, in the fifth section, we sketch some broader implications and show how our inquiry can contribute to making HMLA and, more generally, AI promote the social good and a fairer society. (shrink)

This paper challenges the “characterological” theory of racial injustice. This theory, widely held in corporate efforts to address race, simultaneously endorses a “structural” account of racism while advocating deeply individualistic remedies: challenging systemic racism, on this view, requires directing our energies inward toward our most ingrained habits and self-conceptions. I begin by reconstructing the characterological theory and its appeal. I then argue that it rests on questionable, if not untenable, cognitive assumptions. Instead of seeing racism as carried forth by agents’ (...) deeply internal characters, I argue that a structural account of racial domination is better served by understanding cognitive processes as externalized and conducted through our environments. Drawing on theories of the “extended mind” and distributed cognition, I offer an account of both structural racism’s persistence and individual racist actions, which is anchored in the environmental (and not characterological) manifestations of racial hierarchy. I conclude with the normative potential of business ethicists adopting the distributed cognition framework. (shrink)

A traditional ethic of medicine asserts that physicians have special obligations to individual patients with whom they have a clinical relationship. Contemporary trends in US healthcare financing like bundled payments seem to threaten traditional conceptions of special obligations of individual physicians to individual patients because their population-based focus sets a tone that seems to emphasise responsibilities for groups of patients by groups of physicians in an organisation. Prior to undertaking a cogent debate about the fate and normative weight of special (...) obligations and a traditional ethic for contemporary healthcare, we need a deeper examination of what the traditional ethic of special obligations really means. Here we offer a conception of ‘doubly distributed’ special obligations. Physicians and similarly minded healing professionals abiding by a traditional ethic have always spread their devotion and attention across multiple patients and have shared responsibilities with physician and non-physician colleagues in much the same way devoted parents have frequently distributed their special obligations across multiple children and across multiple parents. By taking up the extended analogy of parent we argue that doubly distributing special obligations need not contradict the possibility of special obligations in restructured collective forms of healthcare delivery and financing. (shrink)

BackgroundIncreasingly, hospitals and research institutes are developing technical solutions for sharing patient data in a privacy preserving manner. Two of these technical solutions are homomorphic encryption and distributed ledger technology. Homomorphic encryption allows computations to be performed on data without this data ever being decrypted. Therefore, homomorphic encryption represents a potential solution for conducting feasibility studies on cohorts of sensitive patient data stored in distributed locations. Distributed ledger technology provides a permanent record on all transfers and processing of patient data, (...) allowing data custodians to audit access. A significant portion of the current literature has examined how these technologies might comply with data protection and research ethics frameworks. In the Swiss context, these instruments include the Federal Act on Data Protection and the Human Research Act. There are also institutional frameworks that govern the processing of health related and genetic data at different universities and hospitals. Given Switzerland’s geographical proximity to European Union (EU) member states, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may impose additional obligations.MethodsTo conduct this assessment, we carried out a series of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders at Swiss hospitals and research institutions. These included legal and clinical data management staff, as well as clinical and research ethics experts. These interviews were carried out with two series of vignettes that focused on data discovery using homomorphic encryption and data erasure from a distributed ledger platform.ResultsFor our first set of vignettes, interviewees were prepared to allow data discovery requests if patients had provided general consent or ethics committee approval, depending on the types of data made available. Our interviewees highlighted the importance of protecting against the risk of reidentification given different types of data. For our second set, there was disagreement amongst interviewees on whether they would delete patient data locally, or delete data linked to a ledger with cryptographic hashes. Our interviewees were also willing to delete data locally or on the ledger, subject to local legislation.ConclusionOur findings can help guide the deployment of these technologies, as well as determine ethics and legal requirements for such technologies. (shrink)